Trent. For five days and nights there is
firing without intermission. Within the walls
of the castle there are not more than eighty
men. The musqueteers on St. Nicholas' steeple
pick off the cannoniers at their guns.

Now and then, as the assailants are beaten
from the walls, they leave a wounded man
behind, and he is dragged into the castle. On
the sixth day, after that terrible period of
watchfulness, relief arrives. The Cavaliers are
driven from the town witli much slaughter,
and the castle is filled with prisoners. Lucy
has not been idle during those six days of
peril. There was a task to be performed,—a
fitting one for woman's tenderness. Within
the castle was a dungeon called the Lion's Den,
into which the prisoners were cast ; and as
they were brought up from the town, two of
the fanatical ministers of the garrison reviled
and maltreated them. Lucy reads the
commands of her Master after another fashion.
As the prisoners are carried bleeding to the
Lion's Den, she implores that they should be
brought in to her, and she binds up and dresses
their wounds. And now the two ministers
mutter and their souls abhor to see this
favour done to the enemies of God—and they
teach the soldiers to mutter. But Lucy says,
"I have done nothing but my duty. These
are our enemies, but they are our fellow-
creatures. Am I to be upbraided for these
poor humanities ? "And then she breathes a
thanksgiving to Heaven that her mother had
taught her this humble surgery. There is a
tear in John's eye as he gazes on this scene.
That night the Cavalier officers sup with him,
rather as guests than as prisoners.

In the vale of Belvoir, about seven miles
from Belvoir Castle, is the little village of
Owthorpe. When Colonel Hutchinson
returned to the house of his fathers, after the
war was ended, he found it plundered of all
its moveables—a mere ruin. In a few years it
is a fit dwelling for Lucy to enjoy a life-long
rest, after the terrible storms of her early
married days. There is no accusing spirit to
disturb their repose. John looks back upon that
solemn moment when he signed the warrant
for the great tragedy enacted before Whitehall
without remorse. He had prayed for
"an enlightened conscience," and he had
carried out his most serious convictions. He
took no part in the despotic acts that followed
the destruction of the monarchy. He had no
affection for the fanatics who held religion to
be incompatible with innocent pleasures and
tasteful pursuits. At Owthorpe, then, he
lived the true life of an English gentleman.
He built—he planted—he adorned his house
with works of art he was the first
magistrate the benefactor of the poor. The earnest
man who daily expounded the Scriptures to
his household was no ascetic. There was
hospitality within these walls—with music
and revelry. The Puritans looked gloomily and
suspiciously upon the dwellers at Owthorpe.
The Cavaliers could not forgive the soldier who
had held Nottingham Castle against all assaults.

The Restoration comes. The royalist
connexions of Lucy Hutchinson have a long
struggle to save her husband's life ; but he
is finally included in the Act of Oblivion.
He is once more at Owthorpe, without the
compromise of his principles. He has done
with political strife for ever.

On the 31st of October, 1663, there is a.
coach waiting before the hall of Owthorpe.
That hall is filled with tenants and labourers.
Their benefactor cheerfully bids 'them
farewell ; but his wife and children are weeping
bitterly. That coach is soon on its way to
London with the husband and wife, and their
eldest son and daughter. At the end of the
fourth day's journey, at the gates of that
fortress within which she had been born, Lucy
Hutchinson is parted from him whose good
and evil fortunes she has shared for a quarter
of a century.

About a mile from Deal stands Sandown
Castle. In 1664, Colonel Hutchinson is a
prisoner within its walls. It was a ruinous
place, not weatherproof. The tide washed
the dilapidated fortress ; the windows were
unglazed ; cold, and damp, and dreary was
the room where the proud heart bore up
against physical evils. For even here there
was happiness. Lucy is not permitted to
share his prison ; but she may visit him
daily. In the town of Deal abides that
faithful wife. She is with him at the first
hour of the morning ; she remains till the
latest of night. In sunshine or in storm, she
is pacing along that rugged beach, to console
and be consoled.

Eleven months have thus been passed,
when Lucy is persuaded by her husband to
go to Owthorpe to see her children.

"When the time of her departure came, she
left with a very sad and ill-presaging heart."
In a few weeks John Hutchinson is laid in
the family vault in that Vale of Belvoir.

Lucy Hutchinson sits in holy resignation
in the old sacred home. She has a task to
work out. She has to tell her husband's
history, for the instruction of her children :
—"I that am under a command not to grieve
at the common rate of desolate women, while
I am studying which way to moderate my
woe, and, if it were possible, to augment my
love, can, for the present, find out none more
just to your dear father, nor consolatory to
myself, than the preservation of his memory."

So rests her shadow, ever, in our poor
remembrance.

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