even at Perth, the assurance of Victory, and as he passed through the towns and villages of England, men would not be restrained. They threw down the sickle and the spade in the field, the hammer in the forge, the plane at the bench, and catching hold of the stirrups of the riders, ran with them to the halting-place. Cromwell had no need to beg Englishmen yet a little longer to stick to him. His form of rugged grandeur, the majesty and fierceness of his face, and his air of invincible strength and purpose, said to all, This is the Pathfinder of your English Freedom! Follow Him! The man was a magnet, and drew men to him; he looked at them, and they fell into his ranks; he rode singing of Victory at their head, and women knelt on the streets and by the roadside to pray for the success of those going up "For the help of the Lord, and for England." This battle call, ringing from men at full spur, was taken up even by the old crones and little children, and their shrill trebles were added to the mighty shouting of strong men, whose heroic hands were already tightly closed upon their sword-hilts. So, with his ten thousand troops augmented to thirty thousand, he reached Warwick, and making his headquarters at the pretty village of Keynton near by, he gave his men time to draw breath, and called a council of war.
Cromwell was now on the very ground where the first battle of the Civil War had been fought. Nine years previous the Puritan camp had lain at Keynton with the banner of Charles the First waving in their sight from the top of Edgehill. Outside the village there was a large farmhouse, its red tiled roof showing through the laden orchard trees; and the woman dwelling there gladly welcomed Cromwell to rest and comfort.
"All my sons are with General Harrison," she said; "and I have not seen their faces for two years."
"Nevertheless, mistress," said Cromwell, "they shall keep Harvest Home with you, and go out to fight no more, for the end of the war is near at hand." He spoke with the fervour of a prophet, but she had not faith to believe, and she answered —
"My Lord Cromwell, our Sword and our Saviour, their names are Thanet, James, and John, and Dickson, and Will. Surely you have heard of them, dead or alive?"
His keen eyes lost their fire and were instantly full of sadness as he answered, "Oh, woman, why did you doubt? If they have fallen in battle, truly they are well. Judge not otherwise. Your blood and your sons' blood has not run to waste."
Two hours after this conversation, Cluny Neville lifted the latch of the farm gate. He had heard reliably of Cromwell's pursuit of Charles at Newcastle, and turning back southward, had followed him as closely as the difficulty of getting horses in the wake of the army permitted. He was weary and hungry, but he was at last near the chief he adored. He gave himself a moment of anticipation at the door of the room, and then he opened it. Cromwell was sitting at the upper end of a long table. A rough map of the country around Worcester lay before him, and Harrison, Lambert, Israel Swaffham, and Lord Evesham were his companions. There were two tallow candles on the table, and their light shone on the face of Cromwell. At that moment it was full of melancholy. He seemed to be listening to the noble fanaticism of Harrison, who was talking fervidly of the coming of the Kingdom of Christ and the reign of the saints on earth; but he saw in an instant the entrance of Neville, and with an almost imperceptible movement commanded his approach.
Neville laid the letters of which he was the bearer before Cromwell, and his large hand immediately covered them. "Is all well?" he asked – and reading the answer in the youth's face, added, "I thank God! What then of the city?"
"Its panic is beyond describing," answered Neville. "Parliament is beside itself; even Bradshaw is in great fear; there are surmises as to your good faith, my lord, and the rumours and counter-rumours are past all believing. London is manifestly with the Commonwealth, and every man in it is looking to you and to the army for protection. Some, indeed, I met who had lost heart, and who thought it better that Charles Stuart should come back than that England should become a graveyard fighting him."
"Such men are suckled slaves," said Lambert. "I would hang them without word or warrant for it."
"Yea," said Cromwell; "for Freedom is dead in them. That's their fault, it will not reach us. Thousands of Englishmen have died to crown our England with Freedom; for Freedom is not Freedom unless England be free." Here he rose to his feet, and the last rays of the setting sun fell across the rapture and stern seriousness of his face across his shining mail and his majestic soldierly figure. His eyes blazed with spiritual exaltation, and flamed with human anger, as in a voice, sharp and untunable, but ringing with passionate fervour, he cried —
"I say to you, and truly I mean it, if England's Red Cross fly not above free men, let it fall! Let it fall o'er land and sea forever! The natural milk of Freedom, the wine and honey of Freedom, which John Eliot and John Pym and John Hampden gave us to eat and to drink, broke our shackles and made us strong to rise in the face of forsworn kings and red-shod priests, devising our slavery. It did indeed! And I tell you, for I know it, that with this milk of Freedom England will yet feed all the nations of the world. She will! Only be faithful, and here and now, God shall so witness for us that all men must acknowledge it. For I do know that Charles Stuart, and the men with him, shall be before us like dust on a turning wheel. We shall have a victory like that of Saul over Nahash, and I know not of any victory like to it, since the world began —Two of them – not left together. Amen! But give me leave to say this: In the hour of victory it were well for us to remember the mercy that was in Saul's heart, 'because that day, the Lord had wrought salvation in Israel.' From here there are two courses open to us, a right one, and a wrong one. What say you, Lambert?"
"London is the heart of the nation, and just now it is a faint heart. I say it were well to turn our noses to London, and to let the rogues know we are coming."
"What is your thought, Harrison?"
"Worcester is well defended," he answered musingly. "It has Wales behind it. We cannot fight Charles Stuart till we compass the city, and to do that, we must be on both sides of the river. Then Charles could choose on which side he would fight, and we could not come suddenly to help each other."
"What way look you, Israel?"
"The way of the enemy. I see that he is here. What hinders that we fight him?"
"Fight him," said lord Evesham, "better now, than later."
"Fight him! That, I tell you, is my mind also," said Cromwell striking the table with his clinched hand. "Some may judge otherwise, but I think while we hold Charles Stuart safe, London is safe also."
"Surely," said Lambert, "it may be more expedient to secure Charles Stuart, but – "
"Expedient, expedient!" interrupted Cromwell. "Who can make a conscience out of expediency? Expediency says, it may be; Conscience says, it is. If Worcester were ten times as strong, I would not hesitate. God has chosen this battle-field for us, as He chose Dunbar; and because the place is strong, and because it is on both sides the river, we will draw closer and closer our crescent of steel round it. We will fight against it on both sides of the river, and we will expect that miracle of deliverance which will surely come, for we never yet found God failing, when we trusted in Him. In these parts we struck our first blows for Freedom, and here, at point and edge, we will strike our last, and then sheathe our swords. I give my word to you for this, and I will fully answer it. But there must be no slackness. The work is to be thorough, and not to do over again. The nation wishes it so, I know it. The plain truth is – we will march straight on Worcester; we will cut off Charles Stuart from all hope of London; we will fight him from both sides of the river, and bring this matter of the Stuarts to an end; for they are the great troublers of Israel."
The man and the time and the place had met, and there was no doubting it. His words burned this assurance into the hearts of all who heard him, and when he struck his sword-hilt to emphasise them, they answered with the same movement, unconscious and simultaneous.
In some remarkable way, this tremendous national crisis had become known in every corner of the land. If the great angel who guides and guards the destinies of England had sent out a legion of messengers to cry it from every church tower, there could not have been any more conscious intimation of the final struggle. And the very vagueness and mystery of the conviction intensified its importance, for generally the information came as the wind blows, no one knew whence – only that the billows of war, though low and far off, were