Fortunate it was for me that the blow, without being sufficiently violent to bereave me of life, had been severe enough to deprive me of all sense or motion, for I was thus passed over as dead, and I found afterwards that no one had been taken to mercy by the victors. It was evening when we began a fight, which, in duration, did not last ten minutes; but when I woke from the sort of sleep into which I had fallen, I found the moon shining bright upon the moors, with my father and five-and-twenty gallant soldiers lying dead around me. In truth, this was the first event that ever made me think of death, even for a moment, as of a thing to be feared, or regard strife as the great destroyer of all dear affections and kindred ties. The sight was horrible enough, to see the bodies of such a number of brave and noble-hearted men now cold, inanimate, and most of them stripped of every thing valuable, lying dead in the pale moonlight, with their faces bearing all the various expressions which the human countenance can assume under different modes of violent death; but it was the sight of my father's corpse which brought it home to my own heart.
When I had recovered my senses completely--which was not for several minutes after consciousness began to return--crept onward to the spot where my father had fallen, which was not above ten paces from that on which I had been lying; and as I gazed on his still, silent face, and thought of all the affection towards myself which I had seen it bear so often, I could not help feeling that death is indeed a horrible thing. I looked at it long, till the moon began to go down, and I knew not well what to do. I had no means of burying the body, and yet there was a feeling in my bosom, not to be defined, which would not let me leave the corpse of my father uninterred for the ravens to make it their prey, or the dogs to mangle it.
Near the spot, however, there was a little copse, with some tall trees rising out of the brushwood; and, after many a painful thought, thither I retreated for shelter. As I knew not who might visit the field from the town, and as I had heard that the people of the neighbourhood were rank Roundheads, I thought it best to climb one of the oaks; and there I watched till the dawn of morning. Hardly was the sky grey with the first light when I saw six or seven people coming over the Downs with spades and shovels, and I soon found that their purpose was to bury the dead. By them that office was performed decently enough on the spot itself; and in about three or four hours it was all over, leaving no trace of the skirmish, but the turf beaten up by the horses' feet, and here and there died with gore, and the long low mound of fresh earth which covered the trench containing the dead bodies. I found, by the conversation of the men employed, that this act of charity had been performed by order of some persons in the little town who had witnessed the affair; and who, partly moved by a sense of decency, and partly with a view to salubrity, had caused the corpses to be thus covered over with earth.