Our moments of quiet, indeed, were always of very short duration; and, during all my early remembrances, I scarcely can recollect having passed six weeks without seeing blood flow in civil strife.
It must not be thought, however, that our state was melancholy or painful. To those who thought as little of human life as the persons did by whom I was generally surrounded, this kind of existence was gay and happy enough. When they saw a comrade sent to his long home, or a friend fall dead by their side, a minute's mourning, and a vow to revenge him, was all that the sight excited; and many a cheerful bowl, and a gay jest, would circulate in the evening amongst the Cavaliers who had lost, in the morning, the dearest acquaintances and oldest companions.
Habit is a wonderful thing; and it would be difficult to make other people comprehend how little emotion bloodshed or massacre produces in the minds of men accustomed to be daily spectators of such scenes. It is not at all surprising then, that a boy--born, as it were, and brought up in the midst of them--should feel their awful nature less than others, and should enter with more pleasure into the adventurous excitement which they certainly afford. Such, at all events, was the case with myself; and although I have learned, from after events, to believe that my heart was neither naturally hard nor cruel, yet it is scarcely possible to describe the joy and enthusiasm I experienced on the approach of strife or battle, the triumph that I felt at the overthrow or death of any remarkable foe, or the careless disregard with which I viewed the slaughter of my countrymen, and the fall even of those I personally knew. This military zeal was known and remarked by all my father's comrades; and the amusement and gratification which they derived from my early passion for that course of life, to which they had given themselves up at a more mature age, caused me to be a general favourite with every old soldier in the ranks of the royalists; so that each one vied with the other in exciting me more and more upon the very track which I was already too eager to pursue. Amongst the Cavaliers I was generally known by the name of "Little Ball-o'-Fire;" and I soon learned to be proud of that appellation, and vexed when I was addressed by any other. In times of prosperity I was loaded with presents and caresses; and in moments of defeat and danger there was still some one to think of and protect Little Ball-o'-Fire, the soldier's son. Nor were these good deeds entirely without requital on my part; for, shrewd, active, and fearless, I was often enabled to assist the defeated or pursued Cavalier, to mislead the Parliamentarian by false information, or to gain intelligence of the enemy's movements, and to guide my friends either to security or victory.