“Ay, and my place was here, in the midst of my good soldiers.  Oh, it has been a glorious day!  ’Lancaster will remember it ever.  And see, Paul—­see how they fly on yonder height!  See how the battle rages and becomes a flight!  It is the same everywhere.  The Red Rose triumphs.  Proud York is forced to fly.  Shall we join them, and lead again to victory?  They are chasing them to the very walls of the town.”

Paul looked in the direction indicated, and a change came over his face.  He had the wonderful long, keen sight which often comes to those who have grown up in the open air, and have been used from childhood to the exercise of hunting and hawking.  The prince saw only the flying rout, which he concluded to be the soldiers of York; but Paul could distinguish more.  He could see the colours, and the badges they wore, and he recognized with a sinking heart the terrible fact that it was the followers of the Red Rose who were flying before the mailed warriors of Edward of York.

The change in his countenance did not escape young Edward’s keen eye, and he at once divined the cause, The bright flush faded from his own face, and his gaze was turned in the same direction again.

Alas! it was but too plain now; for the rout was plainly in the direction of the town, and it was easy to understand that had it been the Yorkists who had fled they would have taken an opposite direction, in order to reach their own lines.

For a moment prince and subject sat spellbound, watching that terrible sight in deep silence.  But then the peril of their own position, and the deadly danger that menaced the prince if the situation should be realized by their foes surrounding them here, flashed across Paul like a vivid and terrible lightning gleam.

He turned and laid his hand upon the shoulder of the prince.

“My liege,” he said, “we may not linger here.  We must regain our comrades, and see if we may rally them yet.  All may not be lost, but it were madness to remain here.  Let me call our followers together, and we will charge back through the foe to our own lines.  It is not safe to be here.”

Edward made no reply.  The face that had been flushed with victory and bright with hope was now set in those stern lines which seem to speak of a forlorn hope.  He saw their peril as clearly as Paul; but if the day were lost, what mattered it if his life were yet whole in him?  The face he silently turned upon his companion seemed to have grown years older whilst he had been speaking.

And to make matters worse, the knowledge of the disaster to their own side spread to the soldiers who had followed the prince, and that instant demoralization which so often accompanies and aggravates defeat seized upon the men.  They flung away their heavier arms, and with a shout of “Treason, treason!”—­for they were assured there had been foul play somewhere—­fled each man by himself, without a thought for aught save his own life.