up to them some more bread and cheese. They also brought a cushion for the King to sit on, "And the Colonel humbly desired his Majesty (who had taken little or no rest the two preceding nights) to seat himself as easily as he could in the tree and rest his head on the Colonel's lap, who was watchful that his Majesty should not fall, and in this posture his Majesty slumbered away some part of the day, and bore all these hardships and afflictions with incomparable patience."
This unaffected description presents a picture which an eminent artist might paint to the life. The imagination does it involuntarily. Who cannot see it? The rising sun throws it into vivid perspective. In the encircling arms of the oak, on its gnarled shoulders, are nestled the two men. Remember the garb of Charles—the coarse noggen shirt of Martin the servant, and Richard Penderel's leather doublet, his face still begrimed with soot, and his hands stained with walnut leaves by goodwife Woolf at Madeley. Not two consecutive hours of sleep had closed his eyes since the morning of that disastrous battle at Worcester. Two nights long he had been walking in the cold and rain, wet and wearied. There he now sits in the tree with his head in his companion's lap, who is kepeing his eyes and ears open to every sight and sound, though both are heavy and longing for rest. "To be or not to be perchance to dream." The
