Philip Rollo; or, the Scottish Musketeers, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by James Grant

Book the First.

CHAPTER I.
OF MY FAMILY, AND THE MISFORTUNE OF NOT HAVING A LARGE MOUTH.

I was born in the year after King James VI. acquired the dominion of England, at my father's tower of Craigrollo, which overlooks the great bay of Cromartie. The youngest of four sons, I was (God knows why) a child of ill-omen from my birth; for, before that event came to pass, my mother had various remarkable dreams, which were darkly and mysteriously construed by certain Highland crones of the district; and the whole family made up their minds to expect that I should never be the source of aught else but discomfort and disgrace to them.

All unconscious of the disagreeable impressions regarding me, I was ushered (poor little devil!) into this world on a Friday, the most ominous day of the week for such an arrival; when a furious storm of wind was rolling the waves of the North Sea against the Sutors of Cromartie; and a tempest of rain was lashing the walls and windows of the old tower, and drenching the older pine-woods that surrounded it. A knife and spade had been placed below my mother's bed, a Bible below her pillow, and the room was plentifully sprinkled with salt, to avert the mal-influence of the fairies, and every way the old fashions of the Highlands were complied with strictly.

My father had been particularly anxious for a daughter, that he might marry her to his nephew, M'Farquhar of that Ilk, to whom he was tutor or guardian; and various wise women, who had been solemnly convened in council before I was born, had all been morally certain that my mother would have a daughter.

"You have long loved French apples," said old Mhona Toshach; "your ladyship is sure to have a daughter."

My sudden appearance upset all their calculations, and none more than those of my father.

"The devil's in the brat!" said he. "There goes the estate of M'Farquhar, with its five hundred broadswords;" for, in our Scottish fashion, he was what we call the tutor of the property.

As if to increase the general prejudice against me, I squalled right lustily, which made all the old crones of the household, and the wise women of the parish, with Mhona Toshach, my mother's nurse, at their head, tremble and predict that, through life, "sore trials and evil would attend the course of the Friday's bairn." All the crickets in the bakehouse disappeared that day for ever, a surer foreboding of dire calamity.

Though we were a branch of a Lowland or Perthshire family, the gallant Rollos of Duncruib, my father, partly to humour my mother, who was a daughter of the race of M'Farquhar, and partly to please his Highland neighbours, resolved to celebrate my arrival in the old country fashion. The old family banner, with its azure chevrons, on which the spiders had been spinning their webs since it had been last unfurled on the birth of my brother Ewen, (for my father was eminently a peaceful man,) was displayed on the old tower; and more than one gallant puncheon of ale, and bombarde of Flemish wine were set abroach in the yard. I was baptized over a broadsword. Then came the solemn and important ceremony of placing in my mouth "the Rollo spoon," which was done in presence of the whole household; and which, from the consternation it occasioned, requires some explanation.

An ancestor of ours, Sir Bingan Rollo of that Ilk, who had accompanied Earl Douglas (afterwards Marshal of France and Duke of Touraine) on his successful invasion of England, in the year of God 1420, when sacking the manor-house of a certain English squire, found therein a silver spoon of great size and curious workmanship, which he brought home with him to Cromartie, leaving in place thereof his right eye, which he lost by an English arrow in the assault. This spoon, doubtless the palladium of a long race of well-fed Saxons, became the heirloom of the house of Rollo, on which it produced a very remarkable effect—not unlike that which Rigord tells us the loss of the true cross at Tiberiade, had upon all children born afterwards in Christendom—for instead of thirty teeth they had but twenty. So all the future Rollos of the Craig, came in time to be distinguished by the unusual size of their mouths from the first year after this spoon was deposited in the oak charter-chest of the family. I had a great-uncle whose mouth, when born, extended from ear to ear; but still it was almost insufficient to contain this capacious English spoon, which was quite round, measured three inches in diameter, and on which our valiant ancestor had engraved his crest, a stag's head, with the legend,

"This spune I leave in legacie
To the maist mouthed Rollo, after me.
RINGAN ROLLO, 1421."

Thus, whenever a son or daughter of the family was born, the insertion of this remarkable heirloom into their mouths was one of the usual ceremonies, and was considered as indispensable as marriage or christening. Such a trophy was considered something to be vain of, by the Rollos of the Craig, who were sorely jealous of their neighbours, the Urquharts of Cromartie, who deduced their descent from Alcibiades the Athenian!*

* See Sir Thomas Urquhart's Works.

It had been remarked that every Rollo of the Craig, whose mouth would not admit this spoon, or at least a portion of it, was remarkably unfortunate; thus, of my father's ten brothers, three, who were so unhappy as to have mouths like other people, after being distinguished for their facility in getting into quarrels and turmoils, were all cut off, early in life; one being slain by the English at the Raid of the Redswire; a second with Buccleuch in the Lowlands of Holland; and the third, who had become an officer in a Scottish frigate, being taken by the cruel pirates of Barbary, who basely murdered him. Most happily for themselves, my three elder brothers were blessed with enormously wide mouths—in fact, they were like nothing that I can remember but the mouth of a cannon, or the stone gutters of a cathedral; but I—poor little wretch!—had a mouth so remarkably small, that no part of this capacious spoon would enter therein—not even a segment of it; and from that moment I was unanimously considered as a lost, an untrue Rollo. My father turned his back upon me from that day, and vowed there was less of the Rollo than the M'Farquhar about me; so, from thenceforward, I was, as it were, delivered into the hands of mischance and misfortune.

A goodly volume would be required to narrate all the heart-burnings and sore taunts I endured in boyhood, for the smallness of my mouth; the studied coldness of my father; the gibes and laughter of my brothers; the ominous forebodings and doleful anticipations of the old nurse, Mhona Toshach; and the equivocal taunts of the good-natured friends and tenantry, among whom I seemed to be viewed like the poor dog, that should be hung after acquiring the bad name, the mob and their misdeeds, have given him. That diabolical old spoon was the bane of my existence; and, influenced by certain hints from my poor mother, who, having a very small and very pretty mouth herself, sympathised with me, I made more than one essay, to obtain possession of it, for the purpose of throwing it into the deepest part of Cromartie bay, with a pretty heavy stone attached thereto. But the ancient charter-chest, with its iron bands and triple locks, defied all my efforts; and many a hearty kick I gave it, in pure rage and despite, after every attempt of myself and Mhona had failed to widen my mouth to the family size, by the simple mode of inserting our fingers therein, and pulling the corners in contrary directions.

Had my father (worthy man!) been of a jealous disposition, I doubt not that it might have occasioned some dispeace between him and my mother, who told him often, that "he ought to love my mouth the more for being so like her own;" but, wedded to his own opinions, based as they were on the traditions and predictions of two hundred years, the old gentleman, who had himself a singularly open countenance, was inexorable, and sorely dreaded that little Philip was foredoomed to bring disgrace, or at least mischance, on the Rollos of the Craig.

Save this peculiar prejudice, he was one of the best men in the county; and was one of those old gentlemen who are always looking back and never forward: he stuck manfully to the bombasted doublets and fashions of his father's days, and never allowed a Michaelmas to pass without eating a St. Michael's bannock, or a Christmas without seeing the yule log laid on the hearth, and never was known to kill a spider, in memory of the good service once rendered to Scotland and the Bruce in the days of old.

Though I suffered severely from his strange pique, it was perhaps the source of good to me ultimately. Instead of being retained at home, like my brothers, spelling over the Auld Prymar, and trembling under the ferrule of Domine Daidle, the tutor, fiddler, and factor of the family, and spending three parts of the day in hunting, shooting with the bow, banqueting, dancing, and learning to handle the claymore and target, I was despatched to the King's College at Aberdeen, where I was duly matriculated in 1621, about the time when the battle was fought in Leith Roads between the Spaniards and the Admiral of Zealand; for I remember well that it formed the constant topic of conversation among my brother students, many of whom were from the south country.

Here my usual mischance accompanied me, for I was always involved in quarrels with the ruffling gallants of the Brave City, or lost my money among cheats and sharpers at post and pair, or the old game of trumps. Lord knows! I never had much to lose, and I nearly reached the end of my wits and my purse together. Then, to crown all, I fell deadly sick of that terrible pestilence which has so frequently desolated Aberdeen, having swept away its citizens no less than ten times between the years 1401 and 1647. So great was the panic latterly, that the classes of the universities were removed to Peterhead; but I, unable to accompany them, was borne to the huts erected for the sick on the Links, where we were strictly guarded by soldiers, to prevent the infection spreading.

While there, I received a letter from my father condoling with me on my doleful case, and hinting broadly, that, had my mouth been larger, I could have eaten more, and should assuredly have escaped, like my brothers, who were strong and well. As I had been robbed of my last plack by the cruel nurses, a few silver crowns had been more welcome, and I crushed up the poor man's letter, for the least mention of my "small mouth" was sufficient to make me tremble with rage. My dear mother sent me two jars, one filled with usquebaugh, and the other with honey; but as the soldiers drank the first, and the nurses eat the second, I got no use of either. There, among the pest-stricken, I lingered long, hovering, as it were, between life and death, sighing to be beside my mother, to feel her gentle hand on my hot and throbbing brow, and to hear her kind voice whispering in my ear; for, boy like, I thought if I were only once again beside that kind parent, and she touched me, I should become whole and well.

I thought of the old tower too, though, save one, none loved me there; I saw the dark pines that shaded its old grey walls; the whin rocks, the heath-clad hills, and the blue bay of Cromartie, with the great Sutors, like two Cyclopean towers, that overhang its narrow entrance; and sorely I longed to see them all once again, before I died.

Weary, weak and feeble, I hoped to die soon; but by the blessing of God, and the strength of my own constitution, I recovered; nor must I omit to make honourable mention of that worthy chirurgeon, Donald Gordon, author of the learned "Pharmaco-pinæ, or Table and Taxe of the Vsual Medicaments contayned in his Apothecarie and Chymicall shope, in New Aberdene;" and but for whose skill and kindness, I had never lived to write these my memoirs.

I recovered, the plague passed away, the Senatus Academicus once more returned to the King's College, and the classes were resumed. I commenced my studies again with renewed ardour, and again became immersed in the classic pages of Plutarch, of Sallust, and of Nepos. I longed to become a great scholar, a renowned statesman, or a gallant soldier—any thing famous and lofty, that I might cast from myself the slur that hateful heirloom of the Rollos had fixed upon me; that I might leave for ever the atmosphere of ill omens with which it had surrounded me, and the dark predictions that were ever grating in my ears and rankling in my memory. I perfected myself in mathematics and the humanities, and spent my whole spare time in acquiring the use of arms; thus, before I completed a year at King's College, I could handle the bow and the arquebuse, toss the pike and throw the bar, vault and ride, use pistolette, rapier, and backsword to perfection, so that the oldest and stoutest—yea, and the boldest—of our students were somewhat wary of offending me; for on the shortest notice, off went my gown, and out came bilbo and poniard.

I know not whether it was the nature of my studies, the force of circumstances, or my natural inclination towards high enterprise, that have guided me; but this I may boldly aver, that never, to my knowledge, have I swerved from the proper path which a gentleman of honour and cavalier of spirit ought to pursue in his intercourse with society.

CHAPTER II.
HOW I BECAME A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

Having completed my studies at the King's College, I left it in the June of 1626, and returned to my father's house, from which I had been so long absent, and as I felt with bitterness, unregrettedly so, by all save my poor mother, whom to my sorrow I found on the verge of death. She had long been suffering from a pain in her side, and was divining away (as we Scots say,) but I was not prepared to see her only live to bless me, and then close her eyes for ever.

I felt that the only friend I possessed on earth had left both it and me! I was very—very desolate.

Many a ghastly visage, and many a stiffened form, have I seen since that day of grief, which passed so many years ago; but that pale face, and those kind sinking eyes, come vividly before me at times, out of the mist of the years that have gone. My father, as he closed her eyes, averred sorrowfully, "that, had her mouth been larger, she would have respired more freely, and might have lived for ten good years longer;" but she died—and on a bed of pigeons' feathers too, to the dismay of all the wise women in Cromarty; for it is an old superstition, that one cannot die on the feathers of those birds.

Though a numerous host of relations were around that gloomy bed, and crowding the chambers of the old tower, I felt lonely (for such was the miserable prejudice against me), and that I was viewed as somewhat of an alien among them—even by those of my own blood and kindred; and the consciousness of that filled my heart with mingled rage and grief.

My father was cold as ever, the more so, perhaps, as his heart was full of sorrow, and sorrow is ever selfish; but my brothers, Farquhar, Finlay, and Ewen, were colder still with unkind envy, for they had heard such glowing reports of my progress in all those studies which most become a gentleman. Being certain that I had outstripped their slender knowledge, which was confined to the narrow limits of Dominie Daidle's classes, they were so full of jealousy, that our mother had scarcely been lowered down into her dark and lonely home, before these youths, who were now grown into tall and swinging Highlandmen, challenged me to various trials of strength and skill. Though I could easily encounter them with broadsword and target, or with single-stick, Farquhar could beat me at throwing the hammer, and Finlay at tossing the bullet, as Ewen could at bringing down an eagle on the wing with a single shot, or splitting a tree by one blow of a Lochaber axe; for they were all strong as young horses, untamed as mountain goats, and from their cradles had been wont to sup usquebaugh with their porridge.

My mother's funeral was celebrated after the good old fashion of the Highlands, and we buried her by torchlight in the ancient kirk of St. Regulus. Under their chief, Ian Dhu, three hundred of her kinsmen, the M'Farquhars, came down from the hills, with six pipers playing before them, and I shall never forget the sad, low wailing of the lament performed by those mountain minstrels, as the long funeral procession wound by night, along the margin of Cromartie Firth. The pall was emblazoned with sixteen proofs of her gentle blood, and the nearest kinsmen carried her poor remains on a bier, around which all the old women of her own clan, and my father's barony, moved in a melancholy crowd, beating their breasts, tearing their dishevelled hair, and lamenting wildly.

There was no prayer at the grave, because we were old Protestants; but the Seanachie of her father's race pronounced a long oration on her virtues; the M'Farquhars fired their pistols in the air, with an explosion which nearly blew out all the church windows; then followed a frightful shovelling of earth, the careful adjusting of a large stone slab—and all was over.

I was the last who left the darkened church.

I followed the procession, which, with the pipers strutting in front, returned to the tower of Craigrollo, where the funeral feast was spread and the dredgie to be drunk, the great silver spoon of Sir Ringan being laid, on this solemn occasion, beside my father's platter, which stood above the salt.

The dredgie I willingly pass over, and would as willingly commit to oblivion; for I may safely assert that, of four hundred men who were in the tower, not one was sober when the morrow dawned; and not less than two hundred gallons of mountain whisky were consumed as a libation in my mother's honour. Happily there was no fighting, but only a blow with a dirk and a slash with an axe exchanged between a M'Farquhar and a Rollo of Thanesland, about precedence at table.

After six years of a quiet life at King's College, being somewhat unused to our Highland manners, I was scared by this terrible debauch; for, amid it all, I saw by the hall fire, a chair which stood vacant, and there seemed to be ever before me that black coffin, with its gilded handles and armorial blazon—the wreath of rosemary and the hour-glass on its lid—the deep dark grave yawning horribly, in the red light of the torches, that had glared on the groined vaults of the ancient kirk. On the morning after the dredgie, leaving the hall encumbered by more than four hundred armed Celts, who, in their plaids, were sleeping and snorting on the floor, I walked forth from the tower to ruminate, and view again the old familiar scenery from which I had so long been absent.

Rising in his full refulgence from the sea, the morning sun was soaring high above the noble Firth of Cromartie, and no prospect that I have since beheld, (and in my wandering life I have looked on many,) can compare, in my estimation, with the wild mountain shores of my own native bay.

Its entrance is by two steep and lofty hills named the Sutors, which are covered with wood, and overhang the water about a mile apart; between these natural towers, as between the piers of a floodgate, the morning sun poured all his splendour on the Firth, which at my feet spread out for seventeen miles in length, until it vanished in the deep bosom of the Ross-shire mountains, and those of the Black Isle. It is the grandest bay in Britain, and after experience has shewn me, that, if its promontories were fortified by cannon, there is no place wherein our Scottish ships could ride with greater security.

In pure white haze the morning mists were rising from the pine-covered glens, and the fishermen were putting forth their nets upon the Firth, which was dotted by the brown sails of their little craft. The sky was cloudless, and the waters of Crom Ba (the winding bay) slept like a sheet of polished gold and crystal blue, at the base of its steep green bordering mountains.

I sought M'Farquhar's Bed, a large and rocky cavern which lies below the southern Sutor of Cromarty. It had been a favourite haunt of mine in boyhood; for there an ancestor, Doughal Glass, had once found shelter and concealment, after having slain an Urquhart of Cromartie by a blow of his dirk in a sudden quarrel.

The rock in which this cavern yawns, and above which the hill rises, possesses an enormous arch, forming a grand natural bridge, below which the waves are ever chafing and booming; and within it lies another, hollowed by the billows of the eternal sea. From the roof and sides of this cavern, there is a continual dropping of water, which petrifies whatever it falls upon, into a hard substance, whiter than snow; thus myriads of white pendants cover the walls and deep recesses of this cavern, the whole sides and roof of which glitter as if built of ice, of crystal, and alabaster, presenting the most wonderful and beautiful appearance when a casual ray of the sun glides along the waves which roll within it, lighting up the countless prisms of its rocks and stalactites.

To sit there, as in a fairy palace, and dream, with the summer sea murmuring at my feet, and the Sutors shaking their dark green woods above me, had been my favourite employment in other days; and now, with a heart saddened by recent events, and somewhat anxious for the future, on this fair morning in June, I sought my old familiar haunt.

When approaching, I was surprised on being suddenly confronted by the figure of an armed Highlander, in the M'Farquhar tartan, with his plaid belted and claymore at his side. My first thought was of Grey Doughal, whose spirit is said to haunt the place which yet bears his name; but when he turned, I recognised the dark locks and handsome face of my mother's nephew, young Ian Dhu, who, having been earlier abroad than even I, impelled by his own solitary thoughts, had sought this place of so many old memories and dark traditions, the shelter of our common ancestor.

"Your servant, my cousin," said he, drawing off his gauntlet to shake me warmly by the hand.

The keen expression of Ian's clear bright eye, showed that he was a Duinewassal of spirit and bravery, while the ardour of his manner and the full tone of his rich voice, betokened a good and sensible heart. After some conversation upon the beauty of the morning, the wonderful grotto in which we had met, and then a few observations on the sad ceremony of yesterday, Ian became impressed by the melancholy of my manner.

"You say that in my kinswoman, the good lady, your mother, you have lost your only friend," said he; "Dioul! I marvel much, cousin Philip, that you continue to tarry here, where all men show you the boss of their bucklers, and the crust of the loaf, your father's race and kindred though they be."

"True, Ian," I replied; "but what would you have me to do?"

"Push your way in the world, to be sure."

"But I have no friends," said I.

"Friends! what other friend than his sword does a brave fellow require? With a good buff belt to keep it at your thigh, it will go all over the world with you, and is the best knife I know of, with which to carve out a fair fortune; for it will never fail you, if you are but true to it. Now, Philip, when all the brave spirits of Scotland are flocking to the German wars, in tens of thousands, why should you stay behind? All the troops of the great Gustavus Adolphus are led by brave Duinewassals and Lowland cavaliers—yea, every company, regiment, and brigade of his Swedes and allies. All his cities and fortresses are governed by Scotsmen, and there are not less than fourteen thousand valiant Scots covering themselves with glory and honour in the war against the tyrants of the empire. Ten thousand other Scots are going to Denmark to fight the battles of King Christian against Ferdinand of Hapsburg; and my cousin, Sir Donald of Strathnaver, is now raising three thousand soldiers for that service. Under his banner, I am to lead a hundred of my father's men to the Lochlin of the bards of old."

"For what?"

"Dias Muire let! Can you ask? to seek honour for ourselves, and to add one ray to the martial glory which for ages has encircled the tribes of the Gael."

Fired by the romantic energy of my stately Highland kinsman—

"Ian," I replied, "I am sorely tempted; for you open up the path I have so long wished to pursue. Here I have nothing left to care for, and, if you allow me, I will gladly trail a pike under your orders, and march to the wars of Low Germanie."

"There spoke the M'Farquhar blood, and I was thinking you no better than a Lowlander!" said Ian, his eyes flashing as he clapped me on the shoulder; "but it shall never be said that a kinsman so near and so dear to Ian Dhu, trailed a pike as a private man under our banner, when so many Gunns, Grants, and Munroes, cock their bonnets as commissioned officers. I shall write to my kinsman, Sir Donald, and in a fortnight from this time you shall hear from me. Come, take new courage! together we will push our fortune in these foreign wars, and in the hour of battle and danger, my hundred steel hearts of your mother's tribe will be ever as a shirt of mail around you, Philip!"

I gave my hand upon it to this high-spirited youth, whose energy—as he spoke in his native Gaëlic—I cannot infuse into this dialogue, which is written from memory.

"I will leave this place, Ian, with sensations of bitterness rather than regret," said I, as we ascended to my father's tower; "the only being who would have wept for my departure we laid yesterday in yonder chapel, on which the morning sun now shines so redly. None seem to love me here——"

"The more reason to march—eh?"

"From my birth my father has hated me, because——" (I could not mention the ridiculous reason, for it always filled me with anger.)

"Because—why?"

"I was not a girl, whom you might have married."

Ian burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, and kissed the silver brooch by which his plaid was fastened.

"By my soul! I think my good uncle was mistaken; for the more sons a baron hath to defend his hearth-stone and hall-door, the better in these unruly times."

"I was born on a Friday, too, and that day has ever been regarded in all countries as an unlucky one."

"Because it was the day on which our Saviour died," said Ian, uncovering his head; "and doubtless," he added with a smile, "it is an unlucky day on which to march, to fight, to hunt, or to marry; but as for being born—Dioul! as that is an event over which we possess no control in our own proper persons, I cannot see any ill fortune in it. And you will quit your student's cap for the bright helmet, your studies for the camp and leaguer, without regret?"

"Without regret, and with ardour!"

"It is true that here, at Craigrollo, you have no great scope for indulging your taste for book-learning——"

"Our literary resources are indeed small; for the only book in the tower is Bishop Carsewell's Prayer-Book for the Reformed Kirk, which Robert Lickprivick printed in Gaëlic, in 1567, and even that lacks half its leaves, Ewen having used them as wadding for his pistols."

This gallant mountaineer, to whom my heart drew the more closely because there were few or none else for whom it could care, marched back to his native glen with his people, and I waited anxiously for his expected letter.

Punctually at the close of the fourteenth day, Ian's henchman, Phadrig Mhor M'Farquhar, a tall strong Highlander, presented himself at the tower of the Craig, and taking a letter from his sporran, kissed the seal to shew that it had been respected, and handed it to me with the deepest reverence, for it contained the handwriting of his chief. While Mhona, who was now housekeeper, gave refreshments and a stoup of whisky to Phadrig Mhor, I opened his missive, which proved as unintelligible to me as Sanscrit, being written in that ancient character the Litir Eireinich, or Gaëlic letter, which bears some resemblance to the Hebrew, but was even then (1626) becoming somewhat obsolete and antiquated. I was compelled to have recourse to old Dominie Daidle, by whose aid I learned that the missive ran as follows:—

"For my Right Honourable Cousin, Philip Rollo of the Craig—these,

"LOVING COUSIN,—I have conferred with our kinsman, Mackay of Strathnaver, and he was proud to have the honour of appointing you to be an Ensign in my company of pikes. Our cousin M'Alpine is your lieutenant, so that it will be no dishonour to be commanded by one who shares our blood. Sir Donald will embark with the entire regiment for Denmark in two king's ships, which are to be waiting us in the Bay of Cromartie, immediately below your father's tower, about the end of this month; so that, against that time, I beg you will prepare your best coat-of-mail, consisting of back, breast, and pot, together with the breacan fheile of the Mackay tartan.

"I need scarcely remind you again of how many brave Scots, by their good swords, their true hearts, and indomitable valour, have raised themselves from humbler rank than ours, to the highest honours a subject can attain, in the courts and camps of that glorious arena on which we are about to enter! Loving cousin, the wide world is all before us, and we have our fathers' swords! If we live to return to the land of the Gael, I hope we shall do so covered with wounds (here the dominie shrugged his shoulders) and with honour; if we fall, we shall do so gloriously, fighting for the civil and religious liberties of Europe. We may die far from our homes; but, believe me, the dew of heaven, as it falls on our unburied faces, will not be the only tears shed over us, Philip. I have but one real regret—that we may find our last home, so far from the homes of our kindred; for the dying wish of the true Highlander is ever to be laid in the grave of his fathers, beneath the purple heather and the yellow broom. But away with such fears, for it matters little where a heart moulders, if that heart be true; and so, with the assurance that you will be in readiness to meet us on the day we march into Cromartie, I commit you, loving cousin, to the protection of God.

"MACFARQUHAR.

"Post Scriptum.—The bearer, my cousin and henchman, who is to be a sergeant in our said regiment of Strathnaver, will afford you all other information."

CHAPTER III.
SIR DONALD AND HIS REGIMENT.

From an eminent armourer in the Castlegate of the Brave Town of Aberdeen, I had purchased a suit of plain but well-tempered armour, such as a gentleman might wear, and such as no gentleman could be without in those days, before the wars of the Covenant. It consisted of back and breast plates, curiously inlaid with many rare and quaint devices; steel gloves, arm-pieces, a gorget and open helmet, with three iron bars, to protect the face from sword-cuts. As leg-pieces had now gone out of fashion, and withal I was to wear a kilt like my comrades, tassettes were not required. I had a good pair of our Scottish pistols, with iron butts, a back sword and dagger. These cost me many pounds Scots, all of which I had saved, with some trouble, from the small sums sent me by my poor mother, per the favour of John Mucklecuits, the Aberdeen carrier.

On receiving the letter of Ian, I showed it to my father, and so strong was his silly prejudice against me, that he said—with an unmoved aspect which stung me to the soul—he feared much I would never return again; for my uncle Philip, whose mouth was too small for the spoon of Sir Ringan, never again darkened the door of his father, and so forth; but, having pledged my word to our kinsman, I must march, or rather sail for Low Germanie, whither his blessing would assuredly follow me.

Filled with ardour at the prospect before me, and the life of wild and warlike adventure, happiness, and pleasure (for such I deemed it,) on which I was about to enter, I spent my whole time in putting on and taking off my harness, polishing the pieces, burnishing the handles of my sword and Glasgow pistols, until they shone like silver; and I hailed with joy the appearance of two of our Scottish ships of war, which, on rising from bed one morning, I saw at anchor in the Firth of Cromartie. The early dawn was beautiful, and I remember well how gallantly those vessels rode, with their heads to the wind, and the pennons of St. Andrew streaming astern.

Sent round from Leith, by order of the Privy Council and of His Grace James Stewart, Duke of Lennox, who in that year was Lord Great Chamberlain and Lord High Admiral of Scotland, they were the Unicorn and Crown Royal, two of our bravest ships. Each of them carried thirty gross culverins, and had two galleries on each side. Their poops and aftercastles, which rose like towers above the water, were carved over with trophies of artillery, and blazons of honour. Their cabins were all loopholed for musket shot, and two gallant frigates they were, as ever unfurled our Scottish flag above the waters. And so I thought, as on that beautiful morning in September I saw them riding in the noble bay, with their gilded sides, the polished muzzles of their brass cannon, and their snow-white canvass shining in the rising sun. Their captains breakfasted at the tower of Craigrollo, and about midday, with a beating heart I began to arm me in good earnest; for afar off, on the western hills, the glitter of steel announced that my future comrades from the wilds of Ross were approaching the shore.

The bitter pang of leaving my father's roof, perhaps for ever; of breaking bread where I might never break it more; of performing the little routine and courtesies of our family circle, each as I felt sorrowfully for the last time, had all to be endured on that morning. My father's austere look was softened, and it seemed at times that his usually cold eye almost glistened when he gazed on me. I thought that my three uncouth brothers were kinder and gentler than was their wont. All this might be fancy, but my heart was full. I was hearing their voices for the last time, I was going far away for a long and indefinite period; the future was full of danger and obscurity, and never more might I be under my father's rooftree. But I flung these chilling thoughts from me as one would do a wet plaid, and betook me to my armour.

For the first time I put on my kilt and hose, and to my surprise, found that they were not only exceedingly warm, but easy and comfortable; much more so than the bombasted breeches I had hitherto worn.

The aspect of Sir Donald's men, this brave regiment of Strathnaver, whose name in future wars was fated to carry terror and defeat into the ranks of the Austrian and Spanish Imperialists, would have fired even a coward-heart with a glow of chivalry, as on that morning they marched down, by the shores of the Firth of Cromartie, fifteen hundred strong; raised entirely among his own clan and kinsmen in Farr, Strathnaver, and Strathalladale, together with a few Munroes and Gunns. The regiment of Sir Donald well deserved the name given it in the "Svedish Intelligencer," the Scottish Invincibles.

Though it was the fashion in foreign armies to have companies of infantry varying from one hundred and fifty to three hundred men, those of Sir Donald were regularly composed of one hundred men each, the officers being invariably the kinsmen of their soldiers; thus my cousin Ian led the company of M'Farquhars, and young Culgraigie the company of Munroes; the Laird of Tulloch led a company of the clan Forbes, and old Kildon, the company of Mackenzies, and so on. In the Lowlands, and among the English, it was then customary to have a colour for each company, with a certain number of halberdiers to guard it, then so many musketeers to flank the halberts, while the pikes in turn flanked the muskets; but the regiment of Strathnaver, with five hundred pikes and a thousand muskets, had only two standards, our Scottish national ensign, and the great banner of Mackay, bearing a chevron argent, charged with a Reabuck's head, and two hounds grasping dirks. The same designs were painted on all the drums, and on the little flags that waved from the pipers' drones.

The whole fifteen hundred were uniformly accoutred in steel-caps and buff-coats, the officers being fully armed in bright plate to the waist, and having plumes in their headpieces; their kilts were of dark green tartan, and belted up to the left shoulder, according to the custom of Highlandmen when going on service. The musketeers carried their powder in bandoliers; and, in addition to his dirk, every officer and man wore the claymore, or genuine old Highland sword, which could be used with both hands. Their purses were of white goatskin, and profusely adorned with silver.

Marching in sections of six abreast, this noble regiment poured down the steep and narrow pass overhung by Craigrollo, and I shall never forget how my heart expanded, when I beheld them moving far down below where I stood, with their colours waving, the tall reedy pikes, the burnished musket barrels, helmets, and breastplates glittering in the sun; the waving of the tartans; the regular motion of the bare brown knees and gartered hose; the hoarse bray of ten great war-pipes, and the hoarser battle of fifteen drums, beating the old Scottish march, and making wood, rock, and water echo, as if the thunder of heaven was floating over them. The waving plaids and nodding plumes, the flashing steel and martial music, the measured tramp of so many marching feet, all combined to raise a wild glow in my bosom, and I exulted to think that I was one of these, and never assuredly did finer men depart for foreign wars. They were the flower of Ross and the Lewis, but chiefly from Duthaich Mhic Aio, or the Land of the Mackays; and many of them exhibited a strength and stature such as our Lowlanders never attain, having always at their command the best of game and venison, with all manner of animal food, for the mere trouble of shooting or slaying.*

* How different with the poor Highlanders now!

Though accoutred like the rest, and wearing the Mackay tartan, I knew the company of M'Farquhars by the badges in their steel caps, and by the remarkable plume of Ian, who marched at their head. It was the whole wing of an eagle, with the feathers expanded over the cone of his helmet, which gave him all the formidable aspect of a Roman warrior. As I descended the rocks, he sprang from the ranks to greet me.

"My cousin and captain," said I, laughing, "a thousand welcomes to Cromartie!"

"Philip, a thousand welcomes to our ranks! My children," he added in Gaëlic to his company, "this gentleman is one of ourselves—'tis our kinsman, Rollo of the Craig—his mother was a daughter of our race; remember that, and be his Leine Chrios (his shirt of mail) in every danger."

A wild Highland hurrah was Ian's response.

While the regiment marched down towards the beach, Sir Donald of Strathnaver, my colonel, in obedience to a courteous invitation which I tendered him in my father's name, turned aside to visit our poor tower on the Craig, and attended only by his henchman, and a piper who played before him, rode his horse slowly and carefully up the steep and rocky path which led to the outer gate.

Mackay was somewhat lofty and reserved in manner, but brave and generous as a prince of romance; his dark grey eyes were keen and bright; his form was sinewy, but flexible and full of grace; he was about forty years of age, and, although long reputed to be one of the most ferocious and predatory among the western chiefs, he had a singularly pleasing suavity of manner. All the Highlands were then ringing with the story of the terrible vengeance he had recently taken on the bandits who dwelt in the vast cave of Ben Radh, a mountain in his parish of Reay; and I gazed on him with no ordinary interest, for he was the chief to whom I had committed my fortunes, and whom I was to follow to far and foreign battle-fields.

Two sturdy Highland pages carried his armour; and thus the handsome olive doublet, which he wore slashed, after the Spanish fashion, imparted a somewhat courtly aspect to his lordly figure, and formed an agreeable contrast to his tartan truis, his steel gauntlets, and cliobh, or basket-hilted sword. Conforming to the spirit of his forefathers, who, coeval with the Lollards of Kyle, had been among the earliest promoters of the Reformation, this brave chief raised at different times no less than three thousand men for the German wars; such was his enthusiasm in the cause of religious freedom and of Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James VI., whom, with her husband Frederick, the Austrians had driven from the kingdom of Bohemia.

I cared not for the elector Frederick, for we Scots deemed him but a pitiful German princeling; but I sympathised with the fair queen who had honoured him with her hand, for she was a Stuart and a Scot, born in our ancient palace of Linlithgow; and, when at college, I had heard much of the sufferings which her husband's base cowardice compelled her to endure after the great battle of Prague. Yearly our stout-hearted Scots were crowding in thousands to the German wars; I longed, like them, to have an opportunity of avenging her on the cruel and aggressive Imperialists; and it was this sentiment which shed the glory of chivalry around our mission.

Our hereditary enemies, the English, who naturally hated us as Scots, were wont to taunt us as mercenaries, who sold our swords and our blood to the highest bidder; though, God wot! we got more blows and bullets than silver dollars in Low Germanie; and once, by the banks of the Rhine, for lack of those same silver dollars, I saw old General Morgan's brigade of English and Dutch refuse to attack the enemy, when our Scottish invincibles, and a regiment of gallant Irishmen, fell briskly on, and did their work with pike and rapier.

CHAPTER IV.
WE SAIL FOR THE ELBE.

The culverins of the Unicorn and Crown Royal fired a salute to the chief of Strathnaver as we embarked, on the first day of October, though contrary winds delayed us till the tenth, when we set sail. I have an indistinct recollection of feeling then a suffocating sense of sorrow—the more bitter and suffocating because pride compelled me to repress it—sorrow at finding myself fairly adrift from my old parental home; and the pressure of my father's hand, the first kindly pressure it had ever bestowed on mine, yet lingered there; and, amid the din and hurry of the embarkation, I still seemed to hear his parting blessing, mingled with the obstreperous lamentations of old Dominie Daidle, to whom I promised to bring a real metal horologue from Germany, which was then famous for that new invention.

The anchor was weighed, and the sails spread; the sun was setting behind the mountains; the shores of the Black Isle receded fast, the figures on the beach lessened to small black dots, and then faded away. My father's tower grew less and less, while the old chapel of St. Regulus, where my mother lay in her dark and narrow home, had long since disappeared. There was a roar and din of voices around me, and it seemed sad and strange, that the good being who had loved me so dearly should know nothing of this eventful day, which threw me on the world like a leaf on the blast; but, as I gazed upwards on the blue sky, I hoped that her eye was still upon me.

The waters of the Firth were gleaming in gold, and the clouds cast a purple shadow on their bosom.

The deep green or russet-brown tints of the hills gradually became blue, and as I lay against a culverin, watching—with a heavy heart—the setting sun and the receding shore, I felt like the hundreds around me, very sorrowful and very sick.

I knew that when again the sun whitened our sails, we should see those old familiar hills no more. The wind favoured, and as the strong current which is ever passing in, or flowing out between the steep Sutors, ran with us, the two ships rolled heavily. On our larboard lay the old town of Cromartie, and as we passed, a great copper bombarde, which belonged to the provost, was repeatedly discharged in our honour. A flag was displayed at the ancient cross, which was then at the town-end; though I had heard my poor mother tell me, that its place, was wont to be the centre of the royal burgh, before the sea swallowed up one half its streets, the ruins of which, covered with seaweed, were visible to us as we passed along the shore.

The cavern of M'Farquhar's Bed seemed to open and shut again as we shot past it; we were soon between the stupendous brows of the Sutors, against whose shining rocks vast sheets of snow-white foam were hurled by the Murray Firth, though within the bay we were leaving—perhaps for ever—the water was smooth as a mountain lake. Being sharply built, and swift sailers, our ships glided through the narrow passage like shafts from a bow, and almost immediately the shores of the inner firth, the town of Cromartie, Craigrollo with its tower—already diminished to a speck—vanished from our view; and, like an ocean-gate fenced by the Sutors, two mighty towers of rock, with a narrow stripe of water between, was all that remained of the place we had left. The tide was ebbing, and the sunken reefs, known as The King's Seven Sons, were showing their naked and ghastly heads above the foam; there, as Mhona Toshach told me, the seven sons of a king had perished by shipwreck.

The features of the shore lessened and changed in hue and aspect, while the deep green water was thrown up beneath our bows in spray, leaving under our quarter galleries a long track of white froth on the ocean path behind us; but no sooner were the vessels clear of the Sutors, than a very sensible alteration in their motion made us remember that they were ploughing the stormy waves of the Firth of Murray, amid whose waters I saw the hills of Cromartie, reddened by the last flush of the sun that had set, sink gradually low and melt, as it were, away.

Till darkness settled on the northern deep, the sides of the ships were lined with soldiers, who gazed with sad and eager eyes at the last blue stripe of their native land; many wept, and uttered emphatic ejaculations of sorrow, with all the poetical energy of their native Gaëlic.

Though feeling far from comfortable in many respects, I drew to the side of M'Farquhar, who, being accustomed to boating expeditions on the vast lochs of the Great Glen, kept his feet manfully; and, as the shore and the daylight had faded away together, he was now gazing by the light of the moon on the large silver brooch which fastened his tartan plaid.

"A love gift, Ian?" said I.

His dark eyes flashed in the moonlight, as he replied with one of his honest smiles—

"Yes—the brooch of Moina Rose, which she gave me before we parted at the chapel of Gill Chuimin. If I should be slain, Philip, you will take it back to Moina, by the hills that look down on Loch Oich?"

"I will, Ian; but if I, too, should be slain——"

"Chut! then some other brave fellow will surely live to do so. There is Munro of Culcraigie, or Mackenzie of Kildon, or our kinsman, Phadrig Mhor, for we cannot all be knocked on the head. My poor Moina!"

"Take care you do not forget her among the blue-eyed Danish damsels."

"Forget!" reiterated Ian, with honest warmth; "I swore by the great Chief of the universe, and by our fathers' graves in Iona, to be faithful and true to Moina, and, as we dipped our hands together in St. Chuimin's well, she pledged the same to me. Nay, nay, Philip, judge me not, as you would by a rake-helly student of the King's college."

Ian kissed the brooch, which is the dearest gift of a Highland love; for, among the mountains, the bridegroom gives his bride, not a ring, but a brooch, engraved with some heraldic device, or affectionate inscription, and as the same gift served for many generations, those love-tokens became priceless reliques of remembrance, by their hallowed and enduring associations, and such was the brooch of Moina. It had been her mother's, and Ian was to wear it until he returned to espouse her in Kill Chuimm.

"And why did you leave her, Ian?"

"Eighteen months ago—fully six months before I was so happy as to know and to love her, at a great hunting match on the braes of Lochaber, I unfortunately pledged my word to Sir Donald that I would go with him to Germany. Like a generous gentleman, he offered to release me from my promise; but a hundred of my people expected that I was to lead them, and I alone; thus it would ill become M'Farquhar to keep his sword in the scabbard when he had pledged his word to unsheath it. I could have made Moina mine before I left the hills of our race; for a missionary priest, who acts as chaplain to her family, Sheumas Stiubhart, or James of Jerusalem, as the Lowlanders call him, offered to unite us secretly at Kill Chuimm; but I would not run the risk of leaving Moina a wedded mourner, a widowed bride, like the dames of Fingal's warriors, who spent half their time sitting upon the seashore, with hair unbound and harp in hand, looking towards the ocean for the return of their absent spouses. Thus, if in three years and three days I come not again, I will hold Moina free to be wooed and free to won by another."

Ian's voice quavered, though he endeavoured to assume an air of bravado, but I saw through the sickly effort.

"From your gay manner yesterday, Ian, I deemed you happiest of the happy; but, doubtless, every heart has some inward sorrow which the eye sees not."

"True, true, the loudest laugh does not always come from the lightest heart."

"Thank God!" said I, observing how his dark eye glistened, "that I have no regret of this kind to render yet more sad this day of parting with my home."

"Be happy, Philip," said he; "for all who love you truly are here—myself and the hundred brave men of your mother's name, who follow the banner of Mackay."

"And you will return in three years?"

"If alive, I will return in one year, despite the offers of our Lowland Chancellor, who has promised me a feudal charter of my hereditary estate, to be granted under the Great Seal at Holy rood, on the day we enter Prague. Dioul! as if M'Farquhar valued the right that was held otherwise than as it was won, by the edge of the sword. Nay, nay, as Donald of the Isles said, I hold my lands by this (laying his hand on his claymore), and not by a sheepskin."

CHAPTER V.
GLUCKSTADT.

His Danish majesty, the gallant King Christian IV., whom we were about to reinforce, was at this time waging with the vast forces of the empire, an unequal warfare in the same cause which the great Gustavus Adolphus, a few years after, maintained so successfully, though he did not survive to behold the conclusion of that bitter contest, which from the gates of Prague spread along the banks of the Po and the shores of the Baltic.

The edict of toleration granted by the Emperor Rodolph II. to the Bohemians, had been revoked; and thus they rose in arms. They had been defeated at the White Mountain, where the chivalry of the Empire trod the standards of the elector Frederick in the dust, and the laurels of the Imperialists were drenched in Protestant blood. Though wedded to a princess of the house of Scotland, the Elector was the basest of cowards, and fled, leaving his queen to her fate. Two hundred thousand persons had been driven into exile; and though the illustrious Count of Mansfeldt, and Christian Duke of Bavaria, for a time defended the Bohemians and the Reformed faith with the most heroic valour, they were driven headlong before the conquering Tilly, whose ferocious legions burst like a torrent into Lower Saxony, giving all to fire and sword, and carrying terror and despair into the hearts of the Protestants.

It was at this desperate crisis, and while Gustavus of Sweden was warring with Poland, that Christian IV. of Denmark, anxious to have the entire glory of saving the Reformed Church of Germany from utter destruction, commenced, as it were, a new crusade against the mighty power of the Emperor Ferdinand, and drew to his banner the flower of the Saxon circles and of the Danish isles, and I may add of our own dear Scottish mountains; for, in addition to nearly fourteen thousand Scots who followed the standard of Gustavus, there were in the Danish army, in addition to our own regiment of fifteen hundred men, Sir Alexander Seaton's, of five hundred; Sir James Leslie's, of a thousand musketeers; while in the same year we were joined by John Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale. Alexander Lindesay, Lord Spynie (a gallant grandson of Cardinal Beaton), and Sir James Sinclair, son of John Master of Caithness, levied each a regiment of three battalions; and each battalion being a thousand strong, made altogether about eleven thousand Scottish soldiers, who were marching under the Danish cross.*

* Here the Denmylne MSS. corroborate our Cavalier.

The noble King Christian, then the rival of the Swedish conqueror, from his peculiar position, as sovereign of Lower Saxony, of Jutland, and of Denmark (the isles of which secured for him a strong retreat in case of reverses), had many advantages which induced the Protestant powers to give him the command of those forces raised by them to protect the liberties of Germany. Christian urged on Gustavus the necessity of co-operation; but that brave prince being at war with Poland, the Dane was left single-handed, and fearlessly he undertook the terrible task of waging battle with the overgrown empire.

Trusting to those supplies which were promised to him from every part of Reformed Christendom, he had attended the convocation of the Saxon states, held at Lauenburg, in March, 1625, where he entered into a league with the rich burghers who inhabited the free cities of the circle, and was chosen Captain-General of the confederate army, which was to muster in the duchy of Holstein. From thence, with 25,000 Danes, Scots, and Germans, he crossed the Elbe, and was joined at the Weser by 7000 Saxons.

Under Tilly, the forces of the Catholic league hovered on the opposite bank; while Wallenstein, attacking Count Mansfeldt at Dessau, cut to pieces 10,000 Protestants, and received the title of Prince of Friedland. Mansfeldt died of a broken heart. Duke Christian died soon after; and thus the Danish monarch was left alone to cope with the two greatest generals the empire ever possessed.

One town after another became their prey, and at a decisive battle fought near the castle and village of Lütter in Barenberg, the Danes and their Scottish allies were defeated by the Catholics, with the loss of sixty standards, their whole artillery, many officers of distinction, and four thousand men, who were left dead upon the field.

This was on the 27th August, 1626, a full month before we sailed from Cromartie. This severe blow at Lütter compelled Christian to retreat to Stade, in the duchy of Bremen, and to that place we supposed Sir Donald would march the small portion he commanded, of the quota sent by our mother Caledonia to the German war.

After an easy voyage of five days, during which the Unicorn and Crown Royal never lost sight of each other, on the 15th of October we entered the broad bosom of the Elbe; and, just as the hazy sun was setting, dropped our anchors in the mud, opposite Glückstadt, a little city on the northern or right bank of the river.

The spire of the great church, and the cannon on the ramparts, were shining in the last rays of the sun, and the many trees which encircled the fortifications gave a pleasant aspect to the place. The harbour is large, and at the end of the canal which ran from it into the town, there was a large tower built on piles of oak, encircled by platforms having batteries of cannon to command the Elbe. This tower has long since disappeared. Our cannon saluted the Danish cross which was flying on the wooden tower, the cannon of which replied by a salute of forty pieces to our double flags; for, according to the order of his majesty James VI., issued in 1606, we carried the interlaced crosses of St. Andrew and St. George at our main-masthead, and the Scottish ensign on the colour staff at our stern. Soon after we anchored, Sir David Drummond (a cavalier of the house of Meedhope), who commanded two thousand Danish foot in the city, came off in a gay pinnace to bid us welcome, and pay his respects to our colonel, the great Sir Donald Mackay of Farr and Strathnaver.

Being Scotsmen, we naturally looked for hills in surveying the coast, but we might as well have looked for the pyramids of Egypt; for there were only swampy morasses lying on both sides of the turgid Elbe, which was dyked, to keep out the water from the fields where the fat sleepy cattle were chewing the cud, surrounded by rich grass, and the drowsy hum of the evening flies.

The broad river flowed slowly and turgidly, and being impregnated with mud, was all of a yellow colour, unlike the pure deep blue of those fierce torrents, that, bearing trees and rocks with them, rush from the giant mountains of our native land. The fortifications were built on piles, and innumerable water-rats were swimming and paddling among the mud and slime that oozed between the timber.

Though the sun was shining, a frowsy pestilential fog rested on the bosom of the river, and overhung the town; there was a closeness, a stillness in the atmosphere, which imparted a strange dulness to the place, and seemed to infect us; for our soldiers while they crowded the sides of the vessels, instead of being full of gesture and animation like Highlanders, were silent and inert, like the fat old burghers who sat on the parapets, smoking their long Dutch pipes without any sign of motion or life. The sentinels stood like statues on the ramparts, and their motionless pikes glittered like stars in the sunlight.

By break of day next morning—at least an hour before the sun had risen from the flat morasses, and while the same white mist was resting on the river—we disembarked in large flat-bottomed boats, and drew up in order under our colours, by companies on the quay, while our pipes played Mackay's pibroch, Brattach bhan clan Aiodh, till the Holsteiners stuck their fingers in their ears, and the stones of the street shook below us.

Here Captain Torquil M'Coll of that Ilk lost his brother, who was sergeant of his pikes. Falling overboard into the muddy river, despite all our efforts to save him, the poor man sank under the weight of his headpiece, back, breast and bracelets, and was drowned, or rather suffocated. In my haste to succour this unfortunate, when floundering among that hideous mud, I nearly fell in after him, but was saved by Ian grasping my plaid.

"Dioul!" said he, "the tide is out—are you mad? the water is thick as piper's brose—the man is lost—would you too lose your life?"

It was fortunate my strong kinsman seized me, otherwise I might have perished with M'Coll. The sergeant was a brave man, and had fought for his majesty James VI. at the battle of Belrinnes, twenty-eight years before.

That maxim of the great Count Tilly, "a ragged soldier with a bright musket," applied not to us, for our harness was polished as bright as when the armourer had sent it from his shop; and I was astonished by the finery displayed among our poorest private soldiers. The mouths of their sporrans, the brooches of their plaids, and the hilts of their dirks, were either ornamented with silver, or such precious stones as their own mountains afforded—the topaz, the amethyst, the cairngorm, and the river pearl; for it was their ambition that, if they were slain, or should die far from their home, there should be wherewithal on their persons to pay for a respectable funeral.

My brave comrades! too many of them were doomed to find no other grave than the maws of the gorged and hideous crows that hovered over the battle-fields of Low Germanie, when the boom of the culverin summoned them from the four winds of heaven to their terrible feast.

We were formed in line, three ranks deep, on the quay, and there were exactly one thousand five hundred and forty men in their helmets; the colours, with the pipes and drums, were in the centre; the pikemen flanked the musketeers. Well mounted, and clad in a magnificent suit of Italian plate, which was covered with so many rare and gold devices that it was usually believed to be enchanted, Sir Donald, with his claymore drawn, gave the words of command rapidly, as became a cavalier of spirit.

"Gentlemen, height your musketeers—dress your ranks, pike-men! To the right—turn; quick march."

The colours bent forward rustling in the wind, five hundred pikes and a thousand muskets were sloped in the sunshine, and with our drums beating that brave Scottish march, which has led so often to death but never to defeat, we entered Glückstadt, being duly saluted at the gates with all the honours of war, by the Laird of Craigie's regiment of Danes, who formed line, with pikes advanced and drums beating.

This city of Glückstadt had been so strongly fortified by King Christian IV., in 1620, that it held out against the besieging forces of the Emperor Ferdinand II. for two years, and defied the whole power of the imperialists to take it by sea; and, being then all unused to regularly fortified towns, to me it seemed the strongest place in the world. Its locality was originally a mere swamp, and there is still a possibility of laying the whole outworks under water. We crossed several of the canals by which it is intersected, as we marched through the narrow streets into the quaint and old-fashioned market-place, where we halted before the great church, which stands at one corner thereof, and wherein the German colonists and the old Catholics were both allowed a chapel for their own worship—a toleration and good-fellowship which somewhat surprised our Scottish cavaliers, who believed it could exist nowhere but in the Highlands; for there the real and traditionary ties of clanship were dearer and stronger than those of religion, the powers of the patriarchal chief being superior alike to those of priest and presbyter.

In the market-place we received our billets from the burgomaster; and by good fortune, as it afterwards proved, my cousin the captain, M'Alpine our lieutenant, and myself, were quartered in one house—a tall building, situated immediately over against the great church.

CHAPTER VI.
AFTER ESCAPING A FALL INTO THE ELBE, I AM IN DANGER OF FALLING
IN LOVE.

Though the majority of the inhabitants of Glückstadt had retired to adjacent villages or elsewhere, on the town being occupied by foreign troops, a considerable crowd surrounded us in the market-place, attracted no doubt by the martial and imposing aspect of the garb we wore. The women—they interested me most, of course—seemed to be all rather pretty, with blooming complexions and fair tresses; and I—being fresh from King's College—was reminded of those yellow-haired dwellers by the banks of the Elbe, of whom I had read in Lucan. They were all gaudily dressed in hoods, cloaks, and fardingales, of many colours, among which the Danish red predominated.

By command of the magistrates, the whole regiment had free inquartering on the burgesses; and thus, after marching our colours, under a guard of pikes with pipes sounding, to the residence of Sir Donald, who had been invited to occupy the mansion of our good countryman the governor, I looked about for my billet, which, as I have said, was at a corner of the Platz, and almost opposite the great church of the town.

The house was a large building of Dutch brick and plaster, crossed in various ways by diagonal bars of wood, like many of the old timber-fronted "Lodgings" in the borough-towns at home in the Lowlands; it had a row of poplars before it, and was surmounted by a high peaked roof, with a double tier of dormer windows. Several solemn-looking storks sat on the sharp ridges, twisting their long throats and clapping their wings. I would not have discovered the place (each fantastic house being just like its neighbour) but for the kindness of a cavalier whom I met in the street, and knew by his white silk scarf to be one of my countrymen. This was the renowned Sir Quentin Home, rittmaster of a corps of mounted Holsteiners, of whom more anon. On showing him my billet order, addressed Otto Roskilde, Hausmeister, he led me at once to the place.

Like the houses of the Scottish and French towns, this mansion had six or seven stories, opening on each side from one common staircase; but, as nearly all its inhabitants had either fled or perished of the plague, there were but two flats occupied, and one of these was by a personage who styled himself the Hausmeister, having been appointed by the proprietor, as he afterwards told me, to watch over the building and its tenants, and generally to attend to its safety and preservation. Among the Austrians, I have since met with many such officials, who were considered little better than gate-porters or link-boys; but my Holsteiner, or Dane, or Dutchman (for I could not discover what country claimed the honour of giving him birth), received me with all the formality of the governor of a fortress welcoming his successor. There was an ill-concealed scowl on his forbidding face as he met me at the door, on which I had knocked loudly more than once, with the hilt of my dirk, before it was opened.

"Otto Roskilde?" said I inquiringly, shewing my slip of paper, stamped with the town arms.

He replied with a "Yes," which sounded like a long yawn, and bowed. He was a great and powerful fellow, with a broad tiger-like mouth, and sinister eyes, that shone like pieces of grey glass. He wore enormous red roses on his shoes; a plum-coloured doublet, a pair of bombasted fardingale breeches, Spanish leather boots with lawn tops, a high sugar-loaf hat, which every puff of wind that shook the poplars threatened to blow away; a long Dutch espadone and spurs, though I suppose the fellow never had a horse in his stable, or rode any other nag than the wooden mare, or cheval de bois, with a six-pound shot at each of his heels. To my words of compliment—craving pardon for my intrusion and so forth—he answered by another profound bow, which tilted up the end of his great sword; then, ushering me in, he shut the door, and left me to shift for myself.

The staircase was dark, the building silent; I felt as if still in the rolling ship, and my footing seemed wavering and uncertain, as I ascended. Every apartment sounded hollow, and appeared to be empty—unfurnished and uncarpeted. I knew that my billet was to be on the third floor, and continued my ascent, but by mistake tried the doors on the second. Six different apartments which I entered were empty, destitute of furniture, cold, desolate, and rendered damp by the slimy atmosphere of the canal, which flowed beneath the window. I was on the point of retiring, and descending again to seek this rude and unceremonious host or Hausmeister, who treated me with such inattention, when before me there appeared a door half open, revealing beyond an apartment, that was, at least, furnished.

"Zounds!" thought I, "right at last—this is the floor, and that is my room!"

I knocked gently, however, but without receiving an answer; pushed the door fully open, and entering, found myself in a bedchamber furnished with innumerable articles of ornament and luxury.

In the chimney, which was lined with the blue ware of Delft, a cheerful fire burned on the hearth, between the brass-knobbed andirons. Warm tapestry covered the walls, which were hung with pictures and gaudily tinted engravings, by the great Westphalian engraver, Israel Van Meknen, who died in the last century; statues of alabaster and vases of flowers, jars of red Bohemian glass and little figures, decorated the mantelpiece and oak side-tables; a guitar and music-book lay on a chair in one corner; a small library occupied another, and within a recess stood a most enchanting little bed, with graceful silk drapery. There, indeed, beauty might sleep softly, intrenched among downy pillows edged with the finest lace.

"All this for me?" I muttered aloud; "Oh no! it cannot be—there is some mistake."

One glance had just made me acquainted with all these items of luxury, when another made me aware that this pretty little boudoir, or bedchamber, had an occupant; for on a sofa, which stood between me and the fireplace, a young lady lay fast asleep, with a book in her hand. She had fine features, a brilliant complexion, long lashes, and the most luxuriant jet hair. Her figure was small and graceful in its contour; her hands and fine bosom white as snow, for though she wore a high ruff, it opened considerably in front. She had on a great tub-fardingale of crimson satin, with a monstrous hoop, like those of the Countess of Essex (of happy memory), flounced and slashed with black velvet; but this, instead of spoiling her figure from her position, gave it rather a new charm; for it permitted more than usual to be seen of two very handsome taper ankles, encased in scarlet silk stockings, which were embroidered with silver about eight inches above the shoe, in the Spanish fashion.

In the whole aspect of this sleeping beauty there was a nameless charm, which extremely interested me. Courtesy compelled me to retire immediately; but I could not restrain my desire to know what book she had been reading, and it proved to be a Spanish drama by Cervantes, that brave soldier whose name will ever reflect immortal lustre on the noble profession of arms.

Charmed with the air of innocence and candour which pervaded this unknown beauty, I would fain have kissed the little hand that drooped over one arm of the sofa; but hearing voices, I softly and hastily withdrew, mentally resolving—like a rogue who had fought his way through all the classes of the King's College—that our acquaintance should end less abruptly than it had begun.

Ascending to the third story of the great and seemingly desolate house, I found myself in presence of my cousin Ian, and our lieutenant M'Alpine, for, as I have said, we had all been happily billeted in the same edifice; and in one of its unfurnished chambers Phadrig Mhor was lighting a fire, and preparing a meal with all the ease and rapidity of a Highland mountaineer.

CHAPTER VII.
THE REPAST.

"Welcome, Philip, as we are here before you," said Ian; "in the name of mischief's mother, where have you been wandering to?"

"Over all this empty house, which I vow is like a great castle, and is almost without furniture."

"Almost!" replied Ian; "why, my cousin, except this room, and that one occupied by the Hausmeister, it seems quite deserted. Its inhabitants have all died of the plague——"

"The plague!—pleasant that, for their successors."

"This was four years ago; or else they have fled to Copenhagen, to escape the chances and mischances of war—the troubles (as the Hausmeister calls them) which always attend the march of foreign troops."

"Troubles?" said I.

"Ay," replied our lieutenant, Angus Roy M'Alpine, who had been in the Low Countries and Germany before; "troubles—for so the Hausmeister was pleased to name free inquartering, and the occasional abduction of a pretty maid or a wine-cask, things that will now and then happen, where soldiers shake their feathers."

"He is an ill-looking dog, that Hausmeister," I observed, "and wears a devilish odd hat and pair of breeches—I hate the aspect of the varlet!"

"Hate no one, Philip," said M'Alpine, quietly; "for hatred and anger are sure to go together—and sorrow perchance may follow; but I instinctively dislike this person, too."

M'Alpine, a fine-looking soldier, and brave fellow, was somewhat of a gloomy and thoughtful cast. Having once slain a friend in a single combat (as we were informed)—the result of a sudden quarrel—he made a vow to wear crape on his left arm till the end of his days, and never to give another challenge, though he had often received them, and been compelled to fight more than once in defence of his honour and reputation.

"I am sorry you are averse to the Holsteiner," said Ian; "for I have invited him to dine with us."

"Dine!" we exclaimed together; "surely it was more his part to have invited us."

"Four hungry Highlandmen to dine with one German or Dane," replied Ian; "oich! gentlemen, the thing was not to be thought of."

"I hope I shall not quarrel with him," I continued, remembering how he had received me; "in those green eyes of his are the very smile of a Campbell."

"And you know the adage?" added Tan, as he flung aside his sword, plaid, and pistols.

"While there are leaves on the trees, there will be guile——"

"Do not say in a Campbell," said the sergeant, Mhor, pausing in his culinary occupation, and bluntly interrupting M'Alpine; "do not say so, lieutenant, for my great-grandmother was a daughter of Barcaldine."

"I crave your pardon, sergeant," replied M'Alpine; "but my father, Torquil Dhu, was slain at Glenlivat by the men of Loch Awe, and I have a score to settle with that tribe."

"Hush!" said I, "here comes our Dane."

"Dane—dost thou call him?" said Angus; "nay, being a Holsteiner, he is pure German."

"What a clatter he makes!"

"'Tis his espadone on the stair."

"Dioul!" said my cousin; "and now let us to dinner."

We all rose to receive this personage, whom our Highland education made us disposed to treat with the utmost respect as the master of the house, or husbonde, as the Danes would call him (though only his deputy); Ian bade him welcome in Gaëlic, and Phadrig Mhor, whose vast stature made the Northman open wide his eyes, placed a chair for him, and we proceeded to dine.

I have said each of the five or six stories of the mansion had two dwellings, consisting of several apartments. Phadrig Mhor had ransacked the whole place, and collected within our chamber such furniture and utensils as he could procure among the vacated and desolate rooms. From one he brought a table; from another a high-backed antique chair; from a third a stool; from a fourth a tabourette; from another a pot, a kettle, and so on, until he had almost furnished our damp chamber, which overlooked the row of poplars, beyond which, in the Platz, we saw a regiment of Scottish pikemen being drilled to the use of the pike, according to the new fashion, as laid down in the Pallas Armata of that eminent tactician, Captain Sir Thomas Kellie of Edinburgh and that Ilk.

Our dinner dishes had been borrowed from the old housekeeper of Otto Roskilde; for knives each of us had his skene-dhu, and for cups each had his hunting-quaigh or shell, hooped with silver; but Otto Roskilde brought his own pewter pot which reminded me of a Low lander's beechwood bicker. A saddle of mutton, which Phadrig had procured (Heaven alone knows how), with boiled Russian tongues, bread and cheese, composed a repast on which Fingal himself might have fared with satisfaction; and we brewed a brave tappit hen in a gigantic Flemish jug, with Dutch skeidam and hot water in equal proportions, sweetened with sugar from the Indian isles. Beside this, we had four bulbous-looking flasks of French brandy, which Phadrig had found when foraging about the rooms, and to the evident chagrin of our host, whose grey eyes glistened with surprise at the discovery, and anger at our henchman.

As neither M'Farquhar nor Phadrig Mhor (whom as his fosterer we always treated as an equal) could speak one word of any language but their native Gaëlic, nearly the whole conversation fell to the share of the lieutenant, M'Alpine, and myself. He spoke a little German, having served in the Low Countries under Sir James Ramsay, and I knew a little Spanish, having acquired it at King's College.

Now it chanced that both these languages were spoken by the Hausmeister, who, though at first somewhat reserved even to sullenness and silence, when his heart warmed by the contents of our gallant tankard, became loquacious in the extreme.

Though his name was Scandinavian enough in its sound, having imbibed certain undefinable suspicions about this man—awakened doubtless by the deep and secret smiles which I detected stealing over his sallow and swarthy face, like the quiet ripples on the surface of a Dutch canal—I found myself baffled in deciding to what country he belonged; for one moment there was something of the Danish softness in his voice, the next it had the deep twang of the Swedish, or the harsh growl of the German; and all these various tones were least discernible in his Spanish, which he spoke with the greatest fluency.

Filling up his quaigh to the brim, my cousin Ian, believing that we were in presence of a Holsteiner, stood up and drank courteously—

"To the honour of the brave and faithful Holsteiners."

I translated this to Otto Roskilde, who thereupon stood up in his great calf-skin boots, and returned thanks with tolerable politeness; then we all drank to each other's healths again, clinking our cups together, above, below, and side by side, in the old German fashion. The peg-tankard was refilled, and, as the afternoon subsided into evening, the evening into night, and the shadows of the Platz were thrown upon the stagnant canals, our good-fellowship increased; and we spoke openly of the chances of the war, and our hopes of beating the Imperialists back to the gates of Vienna. At this our Hausmeister shook his great curly head of black hair, assuring us that all the power of the North could never withstand the torrent which the Emperor Ferdinand was rolling against it.

"And which way do you march, sirs, on leaving Glückstadt?" he asked.

"We know not," replied M'Alpine.

"Towards the Weser, probably?" he continued, with a casual but inquisitive tone.

"That is as King Christian shall direct," said I.

"Your route must be towards the Weser; for all the Danes, Holsteiners, and Germans who follow Christian IV., have been marching in that direction since the battle of Lütter was won."

"I thought a Holsteiner would have said lost," observed M'Alpine.

"True!" replied Otto, with some confusion of manner, "for it was indeed lost to the princes of the Protestant confederation; but how many more of your brave countrymen are coming to join king Christian?"

"We know not," said I; "but if they come here as they are flocking to the standard of Gustavus Adolphus, like his, the army of Christian will be all Scots, I think, and nothing bub Scots."

"And you know not how many more are expected?"

"You are very inquisitive," said I, laughing; "about nine thousand."

"All Scots?"

"All—Murkle's, Spynie's, and Nithsdale's regiments—each being a brigade."

"And of the English, how many?"

"We know nothing about the English," replied M'Alpine, imbibing somewhat of my distrust at these categorical queries; "nothing save that, when we sailed, Scotland expected a war with them about this new court called the Commission for Grievances, which King Charles is about to thrust upon us, and we consider to be only that devilish Star-chamber under another name."

"Then, are there no English coming?"

"One regiment of pikes," I replied briefly, "for they generally prefer the service of the Prince of Orange; but why are you so anxious for all this information, Herr Otto?"

The blood rushed into his sallow face, and he stammered—

"Is it strange that I, a Holsteiner, should be anxious to learn the number of our friends?"

"Oh! 'tis quite natural," said I, feeling the justice of his reply; "but now, Herr, since I have answered all your questions, will you please to answer a few of mine?"

"It will afford me the utmost gratification if I can do so," he rejoined, filling up his cup, and letting out another button of his doublet to make room for its contents. "On what matter can I give you information?"

"Who is that very attractive damoiselle that occupies one of the apartments below?"

"Damoiselle!" he reiterated, while the paleness of anger overspread his face in the twilight; "you are mistaken, young gentleman; there is—assuredly there is no young lady there."

"Come, Herr, rally your thoughts," I continued, with a loud laugh, as the liquor mounted to my brain; "you will be sure to remember her—fair and handsome, with the most beautiful dark hair, and the longest eyelashes in the world. I warrant me, there is not a prettier jung-fer in all Holstein!"

"You mean Jung-fraü," replied Otto, with another of his quiet but obnoxious smiles, and this time the fellow was laughing in earnest, for I had made—what I afterwards learned to be—a mistake; "but I beg to assure you, that no young damoiselle could be hereabout without my knowledge."

"I am aware of that," I continued in my tone of banter; "but, pray, make no more assertions; I have no wish to pry into your little secrets, Herr—not I, though doubtless this damoiselle is the prettiest little woman in Glückstadt."

"Were this St. John's night, when our fairies and white women are all abroad, I would swear thou hadst seen a Trold; for there is no woman here but the old crone my housekeeper, to whose smiles thou art welcome. There is none, I vow to you, by the soul of Holger Danske!"

Confounded by the earnestness of the man, struck by a sudden and ferocious gleam that passed over his glassy eyes, and supposing there was in the affair some strange mystery with which I had no right to meddle, I dropped the subject, and assisted to fill and refill the tankard; nor did we separate until the midnight moon was shining on the broad waters of the Elbe, and the strong round tower of Glückstadt.

Then Otto Koskilde retired, and the moment he was gone we rolled our tartan plaids around us, and lay down on the hard boarded floor, with our targets and claymores for pillows.

CHAPTER VIII.
OUR CANTONMENT.

The next day's sun rose bright and radiant; the birds sang in the green poplars; the storks screamed on the red gable-tops; the great frogs were croaking hoarsely among the bronze-like slime which was generated on the bosom of the stagnant canals, and the business of life commenced in Glückstadt.

"I'll find her out;" I muttered, as we sat down to breakfast on the remains of our supper, together with a can of Dantzig beer, a ham and basket of eggs, which our invaluable Phadrig had procured from some confiding sutler in the Platz; "I will find her out, if she is between the rooftree and the ground-stone!"

"Who?" asked Ian, overhearing my Gaëlic.

"A fair young lady, whom I discovered yesterday."

"Dioul! we have been but one night in this land of Holstein, and this inflammatory student hath fallen in love!" replied Ian, laughing aloud, for he thought I was jesting. "How these petticoats influence the fate and the fancies of men!"

"And where does this fair dame dwell?" said Angus.

"Below us; did you not hear me speaking about her to the husbonde, Hausmeister, or whatever yonder august man in boots considers himself."

"How could we? you spoke in Dutch."

"Or Spanish, or some such gibberish, known only to yourselves," said Ian, slicing down the ham with his dirk.

"Below us, too," continued Angus Roy; "that is good! Why, Phadrig Mhor and I investigated the whole place when we came in yesterday, and saw no woman but that delectable old housekeeper, with her linen coif and wrinkled visage. Depend upon it, there is no lady here!"

"You are as bad as that sullen dog, the Herr; for I assure you there is a woman—a lady—a very pretty one, too! Pass the beer-can, Angus, please."

"'Tis a fairy," said the sergeant, Mhor, breaking his sixth egg.

"She is fair as the daughter of the snow—that love of Fingal, of whom I have heard you sing a hundred times, Phadrig," said I.

"Here, in this desolate house?"

"Below us, Ian, as I have said, in a magnificent chamber, too."

"Come, now," replied Ian, "he is jesting with us all; this is some quip he has picked up at college. Look at us again, cousin Philip, have our ears grown, since we marched in yesterday?"

"Cousin Ian, I never was more serious in my life."

"Why, you might as well tell us there was snow last night, as that this beautiful lady and stately apartment are in this mansion, when we searched every nook and corner of it for food, fuel, and furniture, and the sergeant thrust his Lochaber axe into every hole we could not enter ourselves. And pretty, you say?"

"Actually beautiful! a dazzling skin—dark hair—an adorable figure—the air of a countess."

"What a diamond?" exclaimed Angus Roy, shaking back the thick red hair which gained him that sobriquet; "what a love of a little woman she must be! By the grey stone of M'Gregor, I would give my best brooch to see her! however," he continued, pouring some skeidam into his silver-hooped hunting quaigh, "I drink to her health."

"A fairy's health?" said Ian.

"Nay, to the countess thou knowest about, Philip," and then the whole three laughed loudly, like frank hearty mountaineers, as they were.

"Beware of snares, Philip," said Ian, as he adjusted his graceful plaid with the brooch of Moina Rose; "as for me, I would not give my brown-eyed Highland maid for all the dames of Almaynie—by St. Colm of the Isles, I would not!" and, as he buckled on his sword, the light-hearted young chief began to sing an old Gaëlic song.

"Gu ma slàn a chì mi,
Mo chaillin dileas donn;
Air 'n d' fhas an cualan reidh,
'S air an deise dh'eireadh fonn.

"How happy could I be with thee,
My bonnie brown-eyed maid!
In thy loveliness and beauty,
With innocence array'd.

"Se cainnt do bheoil bu bhinne leam,
'Nuair bhiodh mintinn trom;
'Stu thogadh suas mo chridhe
'Nuair bhiodh tu bruidhiun reum."

"Thy voice to me was music
When my poor heart was sad;
With thee, how fled the fleet hours,
Conversing in the shade!

Breakfast being over, we took our swords and bonnets, and sallied forth to the sunny Platz, where the regiment was parading under the colours to commence the course of drill, and training to march and countermarch by files, sections, and companies. As to the handling of arms, our clansmen had known that since their childhood; for they were all men of that glorious old race, whose first food in infancy was received from the point of their father's sword; and who were reared like the Spartans of old by their Highland mothers, whose prayers were ever, that their warlike sons might have the grace to die—not on their beds like sloths or hounds—but on the field of battle, with their shields below and their plaids above them. Thus were the Scottish clansmen reared in arms, and trained to war and daring; and hence we cannot wonder, at finding the Highland brigades of Christian IV., and of Gustavus Adolphus, the terror of the Poles, the Muscovites, and the Imperialists.

"Now, cousin Philip," said Ian, as we descended the great staircase of the mansion; "show us the bower of your invisible countess."

Undeterred by their jesting, I examined all the doors of the empty flats below our billet; but found no trace of the one I looked for. Every chamber appeared to have been long deserted; the walls were damp; the dust lay on the floors; there was rust on the andirons and grates, and spiders had spun their webs across the small thick panes of the windows. Though completely silenced by the disappearance of the chamber, and by the consequent jests, laughter, and disbelief of my friends, I was not the less convinced that there lurked some strange mystery in the lady's concealment, and the Hausmeister's connivance thereat.

This mystery I secretly resolved to probe and unravel. It was doubtless a very impertinent determination; but there was less beard then on my chin than now, besides I was very heedless and rash.

I applied my powers of persuasion to the old housekeeper; but she was deaf as a cannon, shook her paralytic head, determined not to understand me, and pouched with true German avidity a gold Scottish noble, or a twelve shilling piece, which I gave her in mistake for a dog-dollar.

The old pile of building became invested with an interest which otherwise it would never have possessed. My friends, who frequently discovered me searching for the lost chamber, laughed at me for a time without mercy; and none entered more into their spirit of raillery than Otto Roskilde, who swore that it was a spirit I had seen, a Danish Trold from Juteland—a spirit of the Elbe—a white woman from the forests of Bremen—or a Trold, and nothing but a Trold!

Rather provoked by all this, I frequently ascended and descended the staircase alone; examined all the doors, and tapped on the walls of the desolate rooms; listened for a sound, but heard none save the guttural voices of the people in the Platz the croaking of the frogs in the canal, or the hoarser croak of Roskilde's old timber-toned housekeeper, dame Krumpel, singing a monotonous ditty of Holstein to the birr of her spinning-wheel. My beauty was certainly not in the apartments of her master; he had but two, and I had taken the liberty of examining them both, twenty times. Having been educated at the college of James IV., and moreover been a residenter in "the brave city" of Aberdeen for so many years, I considered myself more than usually acute; but I was now forced to confess, that with all the knowledge of the world I had gathered at the London of the North, in this affair of "my countess" (as Ian and Angus named her), I was completely baffled.

At Glückstadt on the Elbe we lay in quarters for some time, during which we improved in all points of discipline, according to the rules of war then practised by all noble cavaliers of the Scottish nation, who had first carried them into the armies of northern Europe.

By speaking our pure old Lowland language, I found little or no difficulty in making myself understood by the Danish officers, and by the brave and honest Holsteiners, whose peculiar dialect of the German I soon acquired.

Our pay was poor. A captain had about £130 per annum, and mine, as ensign of musketeers, was only a slet-dollar per day, out of which I had to furnish myself with wine and beer; but we had come to fight for honour and glory, not for the base lucre or copper skillings—for Elizabeth Stuart, and her uncle, the brave king Christian—for the liberties of Germany and the freedom of the Protestant religion—for, Vivat! we were all true Scottish cavaliers. Yet there were many among us who, when the season became moist and the marsh fevers thinned our ranks, grumbled sorely, and openly averred we would have been better at home, fighting our own neighbours, the English, than gasping among the frowsy fogs of Holstein.

CHAPTER IX.
THE MYSTERIOUS DOOR;—A DISCOURSE ON NYMPHS.

On the 6th day after our landing, Ian and his sergeant, Phadrig Mhor, with sixty of our pikemen, were on guard in the great tower at the harbour mouth. After spending the forenoon in lounging with them on the ramparts of their post, from whence we had an extensive view of the flat and fertile country, with its houses of bright red brick roofed with yellow straw, and sheltered by rows of tall elms and taper poplars; after explaining to them in Gaëlic, some chapters of a treatise on fortification by Errard of Bois le Duc—for we had all resolved to become perfect soldiers; after a few glasses of wine with them an a tavern close by the guardhouse, and having some lively good-for-nothing chatter with the pretty jungfers, or waitresses, whose plump round figures, in their short petticoats and spotless white vests, made them as charming and piquant as the soubrettes or grisettes of Paris, I returned slowly to our billet, passing through the evening crowds in the Platz, with my bonnet cocked smartly on one side, my plaid waving behind me, and my claymore under my arm, feeling very much satisfied with my own appearance, and proud that I belonged to a regiment whose fifteen hundred pair of sturdy bare legs were the admiration of all the women in Glückstadt.

I entered the vast and silent house of Otto Roskilde, and was ascending the stair, with my head full of ravelins and breastworks, pretty ankles and counterscarps, waitresses and fortifications, flying sap and salient angles, when a sound struck my ear; I suddenly paused—drew breath, and listened.

The notes of a guitar and of a clear female voice, sweetly modulated, made my heart beat like lightning; for a guitar was in the apartment of that sleeping beauty, whom I had nearly forgotten.

I approached softly; the door of the same apartment I had formerly seen was standing partly open, and I again saw the same fair young girl, who had been asleep on the sofa, running her fingers over a beautiful guitar, to which she was softly singing a lively Spanish song. Her back was towards me, and her neck and shoulders (where visible between her thick lace veil and high Spanish ruff) were dazzlingly white. I could distinctly see her face, which was reflected in an opposite mirror. Her hair was dressed loftily over a high pearl-studded comb, after the fashion of her countrywomen; she had bright lively eyes, the most wicked smile, and the finest teeth, in the world. The little coquette seemed to be studying smiles and positions in the mirror, and, as she did so, a little dimple appeared in each of her cheeks, which were pale, or exhibited the faintest tinge of red—altogther unlike the full blushing cheeks of the German maids of Holstein. Then, as she sang, her voice rang clearly and beautifully as a little silver bell. It was a Tonadilla, from a play of the old dramatist, Lopez de Vega; but from which of them Heaven only knows; for old Lopez wrote such an incredible number, that I do not believe he would have recognised it himself.

"Gentil Donna, gentil donna—
Gentil donna, goddess bright!
Fairer than the morning light!
How long shall I be doom'd to feel,
The wound thy hand alone can heal?
Gentil donna, gentil donna—
Gentil donna, to me give
The hope from this dear wound to live.
Gentil donna—see, the dart
Of love has pierced my bleeding heart."

———

"Caballero, caballero,
Caballero, hence away,
Lest I laugh at what you say:
Caballero——"

Suddenly, in the mirror's polished depth, her eye caught a glimpse of my reflected figure, with its shining cuirass and dark green tartans. The guitar dropped from her hand, and she turned towards me with a pale and startled expression. It was now my turn to be confused, for I had no business there.

"Pardon me, señora," said I, in my most dulcet Spanish, for I had perceived at once that she was a Spaniard; "I have mistaken the way to my own apartment, and—and——"

She appeared to rally her spirits, and bowed.

"This old house," I continued, advancing one pace, "with its long wooden stairs, its dark passages, so full of doors to the right and to the left—you understand me, señora?"

"Oh yes! señor—I think I do."

"Its wainscoted galleries and ambulatories," I continued, advancing another pace, "are quite perplexing, and I feel that I am an awkward intruder."

"You look, señor, just like one dropped from the moon," said she with a smile, as she resumed her guitar with its broad blue ribbon; "but I have the honour to wish you a good day——"

"And you pardon my intrusion?"

"Pardon—oh yes! but, in ascending the stair, keep always to the right, remember. I cannot be angry with so gallant a cavalier," (galante caballero.)

There was a wicked smile on her lips; but my heart beat quick, and I remained gazing upon her, fascinated by the expression of her eyes.

Those beautiful orbs attracted me more than the curved brows, the straight nose, the fine nostril and short upper lip, their accessories. They were somewhat of a blue black, or violet colour, and sparkled under long fringes of silk, which chastened and subdued the fire of their expression. They were full of obscure language, of inspiration, and undefined thoughts, those beautiful eyes! They were full of sweetness too, and of power: I could imagine that their expression would have been magnificent in love, and terrible in rage; but at that moment they expressed only the most charming archness and timidity.

"Come, señor—are you going?" said she.

"Certainly, señora," said I, with confusion; "but permit me to kiss your hand, in token that you really forgive me."

"There, señor—and now begone; for, on my honour, you tire me."

I kissed her pretty hand with all the confusion of a boy, and hurried away. Such was my flutter, and such my tumult, that I omitted to mark well the features of the passage, that I might find my way back again.

I saw only those timid, dark, and seducing eyes!

I sprang up-stairs to our apartment, in search of any of my friends.

"Rollo, Angus M'Alpine!" cried I.

"Dia! what is the matter?" cried the tall lieutenant of our company, as he sprang from a table where he was playing at chess with the Hausmeister, and in doing so overset the board and their wine-pot together; "is the house on fire?"

"No! but I have found her."

"Her—who?" he asked, while the Hausmeister changed colour very perceptibly.

"I have seen her again."

"What, thy countess?" said Red Angus, laughing.

"Yes—and spoken with her."

"I wish you had tarried with her; for you have spilled our wine, and spoiled our game."

"It is all an illusion—an impossibility," said Herr Roskilde; "for I swear to you, gentlemen, there is no such person——"

"Hold, Rollo," said M'Alpine, gravely, on perceiving that I was getting wroth; "perhaps there is something supernatural in all this."

"Nothing supernatural at all, Angus. I spoke with her—saw her, and kissed her hand."

"Oho! Mahoud! thou art getting on apace," said the lieutenant, laughing.

"Beware!" growled Otto in his deep German bass, "for these Trolds are mere unsubstantial forms; hollow behind——"

"Trolds be hanged!" said I; "hollow behind, indeed! Do you laugh at me, friend Otto?"

"No—but I say, that I think you have been deceived."

"Nay, may I die if I ever touched a hand more fair, more round, more beautiful! And then her eyes! Ah, Master Otto! 'tis for yourself you keep this fair prize so slily locked up—but you cannot deceive me. Come with me, gentlemen, and I will show you whether or not I have been deceived by the Herr or my own eyes, and whether I have deserved the jests of Ian for the last week."

Angus took his sword in case of accidents; we all descended the stair, and I confidently led the way to the lower landing-place, turned to the right, and advanced along the passage. Passing several doors, I paused: for lo! that one which led to the chamber of my Spaniard had vanished again. I was perplexed—thunderstruck; while both M'Alpine and the German laughed immoderately. I felt conscious that I looked exceedingly foolish; but knew not what to say. Gaping about me, I felt all the walls, and sounded them with the pommel of my poniard; I listened for the tinkle of the guitar, and bell-like notes of that soft warbling voice, but all was still as the grave.

"'Tis the work of the devil!" said I.

"Then you agree with me at last, Herr Ensign?" said Otto.

"You have been at the wine-house, Philip," added M'Alpine, "and the memory of some red and rosy jungfer has been haunting you."

"Beware, young man!" continued the Hausmeister, with a dark and most inexplicable look; "it may be a wile of the evil one, or perhaps of Holger Danske, to bear you away. She may be one of the Elle people, whose touch is bewitching, and whose breath produces pestilence and sickness. They dwell among the sedges of the canals, and the moors of Juteland; but there are times when they venture to enter cities."

"Have the Elle women beautiful eyes?"

"They are fair and winning in aspect, but are a mere appearance, being hollow like a dough trough. They excel in playing upon stringed instruments, the notes of which are enchanting; and young men like you, Herr Ensign, find the utmost difficulty in resisting their fascinations. They are most frequently to be met with in the moonlight nights, dancing among the long soft grass, or in summer evenings under the shadow of trees, to the music made by grotesque gnomes, who play on enormous fiddles; and no young man whom they meet, ever experiences a cold reception or denial of any thing. You hear me, Herr?"

"By the soul of king Alpine!" said Angus, "they are just like our Daoine-shie at home! For God's sake and your own, Philip Rollo, beware, or we may find a bunch of reeds, or a bundle of rotten sticks, in your place some morning when the drum beats! Then how would it sound for the sergeant-major to report to Sir Donald, that Ensign Rollo had been carried off by the fairies!"

"I have heard old Dominie Daidle expatiate on the Lamiæ of the early Greeks—evil demons, who assumed the forms of beautiful nymphs, and enticed young men——"

"Especially ensigns," suggested Angus.

"Into lonely places, where they devoured them."

"Bones and all—oh Lord!" said Angus.

"Well, Herr," continued Otto Roskilde, "such are our Elle women in Denmark and Holstein, and such may be the fair spirit you have seen; so I would beseech you to be wary."

Honest M'Alpine half believed him; but I observed there was a ray of secret mirth twinkling under the glassy surface of this man's grey, deceitful eyes; I felt certain that he was jewing me, but resolved to "byde my time."