He was the best shot in the army, and the best tennis-player among the courtiers, and Pepys calls him “the boldest attacker in England for personal courage.”  Seemingly without reverence or religion, he yet ascribed his defeats to Satan, and, at the close of a letter about a marauding expedition, requested his friend Will Legge to pray for him.  Versed in all the courtly society of the age, chosen interpreter for the wooing of young Prince Charles and La Grande Mademoiselle, and mourning in purple, with the royal family, for Marie de Medicis, he could yet mingle in any conceivable company and assume any part.  He penetrated the opposing camp at Dunsmore Heath as an apple-seller, and the hostile town of Warwick as a dealer in cabbage-nets, and the pamphleteers were never weary of describing his disguises.  He was charged with all manner of offences, even to slaying children with cannibal intent, and only very carelessly disavowed such soft impeachments.  But no man could deny that he was perfectly true to his word; he never forgot one whom he had promised to protect, and, if he had promised to strip a man’s goods, he did it to the uttermost farthing.  And so must his pledge of vengeance be redeemed to-night; and so, riding eastward, with the dying sunlight behind him and the quiet Chiltern hills before, through air softened by the gathering coolness of these midsummer eves, beside clover fields, and hedges of wild roses, and ponds white with closing water-lilies, and pastures sprinkled with meadow-sweet, like foam,—­he muses only of the clash of sword and the sharp rattle of shot, and all the passionate joys of the coming charge.

III.

THE FORAY.

The long and picturesque array winds onward, crossing Chiselhampton Bridge, (not to be re-crossed so easily,) avoiding Thame with its church and abbey, where Lord-General Essex himself is quartered, unconscious of their march; and the Cavaliers are soon riding beneath the bases of the wooded hills towards Postcombe.  Near Tetsworth, the enemy’s first outpost, they halt till evening; the horsemen dismount, the flagon and the foraging-bag are opened, the black-jack and the manchet go round, healths are drunk to successes past and glories future, to “Queen Mary’s eyes,” and to “Prince Rupert’s dog.”  A few hours bring darkness; they move on eastward through the lanes, avoiding, when possible, the Roman highways; they are sometimes fired upon by a picket, but make no return, for they are hurrying past the main quarters of the enemy.  In the silence of the summer night, they stealthily ride miles and miles through a hostile country, the renegade Urry guiding them.  At early dawn, they see, through the misty air, the low hamlet of Postcombe, where the “beating up of the enemy’s quarters” is to begin.  A hurried word of command; the infantry halt; the cavalry close, and sweep down like night-hawks upon the sleeping village,—­safe, one would