the column halted, and endeavored to open a fire upon the upper windows.  This, however, effected but little harm, while every brick from above told upon their crowded mass.  The column was instantly in confusion, and Harry and his followers, leaping over the barricade, and followed by the watermen and apprentices behind, fell upon it with fury.  In vain did the Roundheads strive to repulse the attack.  Their numbers melted away as they fell, killed or senseless, from the rain of missiles from above.  Already the column was rent by their assailants on the flanks, and in less than five minutes from the commencement of the assault those who remained on their legs were driven headlong out into Moor Fields.

Loud rose the triumphant cry of the defenders, “God and King Charles.”  Some hours elapsed before any attempt was made to renew the assault.  Then toward evening fresh troops were brought up from Westminster, and the attack was renewed on two sides.  Still the apprentices held their own.  Attack after attack was repulsed.  All night the fight continued, and when morning dawned the Royalists were still triumphant.

“How will it go, think you, Jacob?” Harry asked.

“They will beat us in the long run,” Jacob said.  “They have not been properly led yet.  When they are, guns and swords must prevail against clubs and stones.”

At eleven o’clock in the morning a heavy body of cavalry were seen approaching from Westminster.  The Roundheads had brought up Cromwell’s Ironsides, the victors in many a hard-fought field, against the apprentice boys of London.  The Roundhead infantry advanced with their horse.  As they approached the first barricade the cavalry halted, and the infantry advanced alone to within thirty yards of it.  Then, just as its defenders thought they were going to charge, they halted, divided into bodies, and entered the houses on either side, and appeared at the windows.  Then, as the Ironsides came down at a gallop, they opened a heavy fire on the defenders of the barricade.  Harry saw at once that the tactics now adopted were irresistible, and that further attempts at defense would only lead to useless slaughter.  He therefore shouted: 

“Enough for to-day, lads.  Every man back to his own house.  We will begin again when we choose.  We have given them a good lesson.”

In an instant the crowd dispersed, and by the time the Ironsides had dismounted, broken the chains, and pulled down the barricade sufficiently to enable them to pass, Ludgate Hill was deserted, the apprentices were back in their masters’ shops, and the watermen standing by their boats ready for a fare.

Seeing that their persons were known to so many of the citizens, and would be instantly pointed out to the troops by those siding with the army, who had, during the tumult, remained quietly in their houses, watching from the windows what was going on, Harry and his friends hurried straight to Aldersgate, where they passed out into the country beyond.  Dressed in laborers’ smocks, which they had, in preparation for any sudden flight, left at the house of a Royalist innkeeper, a mile or two in the fields, they walked to Kingston, crossed the river there, and made for Southampton.