Last night the Canary wine flashed in the red Venice glasses on the oaken tables of the hall; loud voices shouted and laughed till the clustered hawk-bells jingled from the rafters, and the chaplain’s fiddle throbbed responsive from the wall; while the coupled stag-hounds fawned unnoticed, and the watchful falcon whistled to himself unheard.  In the carved chairs lounged groups of revellers, dressed in scarlet, dressed in purple, dressed in white and gold, gay with satins and ribbons, gorgeous with glittering chains and jewelled swords:  stern, manly faces, that had been singed with powder in the Palatinate; brutal, swarthy faces, knowing all that sack and sin could teach them; beautiful, boyish faces, fresh from ancestral homes and high-born mothers; grave, sad faces,—­sad for undoubted tyranny, grave against the greater wrong of disloyalty.  Some were in council, some were in strife, many were in liquor; the parson was there with useless gravity, and the jester with superfluous folly; and in the outer hall men more plebeian drained the brown October from pewter cans, which were beaten flat, next moment, in hammering the loud drinking-chorus on the wall; while the clink of the armorer still went on, repairing the old head-pieces and breastplates which had hung untouched since the Wars of the Roses; and in the doorway the wild Welsh recruits crouched with their scythes and their cudgels, and muttered in their uncouth dialect, now a prayer to God; and now a curse for their enemy.

But to-day the inner hall is empty, the stag-hounds leap in the doorway, the chaplain prays, the maidens cluster in the windows, beneath the soft beauty of the June afternoon.  The streets of Oxford resound with many hoofs; armed troopers are gathering beside chapel and quadrangle, gateway and tower; the trumpeter waves his gold and crimson trappings, and blows, “To the Standard,”—­for the great flag is borne to the front, and Rupert and his men are mustering for a night of danger beneath that banner of “Tender and True.”

With beat of drum, with clatter of hoof, and rattle of spur and scabbard, tramping across old Magdalen Bridge, cantering down the hill-sides, crashing through the beech-woods, echoing through the chalky hollows, ride leisurely the gay Cavaliers.  Some in new scarfs and feathers, worthy of the “show-troop,”—­others with torn laces, broken helmets, and guilty red smears on their buff doublets;—­some eager for their first skirmish,—­others weak and silent, still bandaged from the last one;—­discharging now a rattle of contemptuous shot at some closed Puritan house, grim and stern as its master,—­firing anon as noisy a salute, as they pass some mansion where a high-born beauty dwells,—­on they ride.  Leaving the towers of Oxford behind them, keeping the ancient Roman highway, passing by the low, strong, many-gabled farmhouses, with rustic beauties smiling at the windows and wiser fathers scowling at the doors,—­on they ride.  To the Royalists, these troopers are “Prince Robert and the hope of the nation";—­to the Puritans, they are only “Prince Robber and his company of rake-shames.”