seven miles distant only, Essex had found his way stopped by the
king, and that a battle had been raging ever since the early
morning.

Having given his horse a good feed of oats and a draught of ale,
Richard mounted again and rode hard for Newbury. Nor had he rode
long before he heard the straggling reports of carbines, looked to
the priming of his pistols, and loosened his sword in its sheath.
When he got under the wall of Craven park, the sounds of conflict
grew suddenly plainer. He could distinguish the noise of horses'
hoofs, and now and then the confused cries and shouts of
hand-to-hand conflict. At Spain he was all but in it, for there he
met wounded men, retiring slowly or carried by their comrades. These
were of his own part, but he did not stop to ask any questions.
Beelzebub snuffed at the fumes of the gunpowder, and seemed
therefrom to derive fresh vigour.

The lanes and hedges between Spein and Newbury had been the scenes
of many a sanguinary tussle that morning, for nowhere had either
army found room to deploy. Some of them had been fought over more
than once or twice. But just before Richard came up, the tide had
ebbed from that part of the way, for Essex's men had had some
advantage, and had driven the king's men through the town and over
the bridge, so that he found the road clear, save of wounded men and
a few horses. As he reached Spinhamland, and turned sharp to the
right into the main street of Newbury, a bullet from the pistol of a
royalist officer who lay wounded struck Beelzebub on the crest--what
of a crest he had--and without injuring made him so furious that his
rider had much ado to keep him from mischief. For, at the very
moment, they were met by a rush of parliament pikemen, retreating,