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

by James Grant

Book the Sixth.

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE MERODEURS.

From the place where I parted with Father Ignatius, Lauenburg, was about three miles distant, and the Elbe about one. The dusky evening was giving place to duskier night. At a little distance from the road lay a German village, with two or three large, old, and crumbling houses overhanging the narrow thoroughfare, and a number of picturesque little cottages, built of dark and intricate wood-work, carved and plastered. The coppice or wood near me was composed of lofty beeches, which fringed a small and quiet lake; a large misshapen block carved with ancient Runes stood among the long grass, and between the stems of the distant trees, I saw the moon rising afar off, and shedding a soft pale light upon the hazy landscape.

One or two small stags flitted past me, and a solitary stork flapped its large wings on the branch of a hawthorn-tree. Every thing was silent, and the place was so lonely that I sat down on the Runic-carved stone of other times, to reflect on my position.

I was seventy miles at least from Glückstadt; my comrades were a full day's march—thirty miles—in front of me; and though they, by force of numbers, could make their way in safety, I knew the case was different with an individual; for the officers and soldiers of our regiment, who straggled far from camp or quarters, were frequently maltreated, and even murdered by the savage boors, for the sake of their military finery.

Though permitted to retain my back, breast, and head-pieces, I had been deprived of my sword and dirk, yet fortunately my skene-dhu, which was of course stuck in the garter of my right leg, had escaped unseen, and my sporran or purse had a curiously constructed mouthpiece or clasp, containing four small pistol barrels, which were cocked by the pressure of one spring, and discharged by the pressure of another. This remarkable piece of Highland mechanism had been a gift from Ian, and was the work of Thomas Caddel, whose manufactory of pistols at the Doune of Menteith, was soon after to become so celebrated. To this clasp and its deadly secret, I more than once owed my life. I kissed the velvet purse of poor Ernestine, and sighed to think I should never behold her again; I examined my skene-dhu, and was about to commence my journey, when several soldiers suddenly appeared at a short distance off.

Sinking softly down among the long grass, and enveloping myself in my green plaid, I lay still and scarcely breathed, as they passed close by me, hewing at the bushes with their brandished swords, drunk, swearing, and intent on outrage. By the colour of their doublets I could perceive they were musketeers of the Count de Merodé's regiment—a band so infamous for cruelty, that in its members first originated the now familiar term marauders—from Merodeurs. Their colonel, a brutal and licentious noble, was afterwards slain by John de Wart, a colonel of irregular horse; but from his outrages, and those of his soldiers, in the capture of provinces and sack of towns, the name of Merodé will ever be remembered with abhorrence by the maids and mothers of Germany.

Expecting nothing but instant death for the value of my accoutrements if discovered, I was happy to find that the ruffians passed me without observation, and bent their steps towards the adjacent village, between two green hedge-rows which concealed me from them; I then sprang up, threw my plaid across me, grasped my black-knife, and commenced my long and solitary journey towards Glückstadt.

As I walked quickly away, the noise of pistol-shots and screams announced that the Merodeurs were committing some outrage upon the quiet and unoffending villagers; and by a blaze of light, that shot up between the trees, it was evident that several of the cottages had been set on fire.

I was now in the territory of Saxe-Lauenburg; and, being aware that its duke, Rodolph Maximilian, served under Tilly as colonel of horse, and was one of the six brothers of that gallant House, all of whom fought in this war of aggression, I felt somewhat dubious as to my chances of escaping all the boors and peasants, his vassals, whom I was certain to meet before reaching the territory of Hamburg, over which I knew that King Christian claimed sovereignty as Count of Holstein.

I suffered excessively from hunger and thirst; the excitement so recently undergone conduced greatly to increase the latter, and being aware that, if refreshment was not soon procured at all risks, the whole night would assuredly be passed without it, I resolved to put a bold face upon the matter, and, entering the first village I came to, knocked boldly at the door of a house, on the front of which swung a sign, bearing an eagle of a colour so undecided that it could not fail to please all the troops who, by chance or misfortune, might happen to march that way.

The host was somewhat surprised to behold me; but, bustling out my plaid, I swaggered in with an air of unconcern, and ordered supper to be laid for myself before my comrades came in. As this indefinite term might have referred to the whole Danish army, the host bowed to the very rosettes at his knees, and summoned Karoline, the jungfer or waitress, to attend me. Such was the wholesome terror imparted by the announcement of approaching troops, that in their anxiety to please I had host and hostess, jungfer and ostler, all attending me at once. Candles were brought; a joint of cold meat, with a piece of clean white paper twisted about the end, by which it was to be grasped for carving; eggs, cheese, snow-white bread, strong waters, and Danish beer, were all brought with edifying celerity, and I supped sumptuously. Dismissing all my attendants, I retained only the waitress, a pretty girl of Holstein, the bright expression of whose merry blue eyes announced a decided disposition for coquetry.

"Come, jungfer," said I, my spirits rising as I began to feel comfortable; "you will take a little glass of wine?"

"I would rather be excused—the Herr looks so wickedly," said she, hesitating.

"My pretty Karoline—that is your name, I believe—what you call wickedness is mere admiration. It is a way we soldiers have—that is all."

I kissed the pretty waitress in a soldierlike way, and she seemed no way displeased; I was giving myself all the airs which I had seen the Baron Karl, Major Fritz, and others, play off with such ease in similar places, when the host put in his round stupid face to say, that he "heard the drums of my comrades approaching!" I had no small trouble in concealing my discomposure at this strange intelligence, the source of which was in the good man's brain alone; for his fear of soldiers had conjured up the distant sound of drums, though drums are seldom beaten at night, and never by marching troops. But I immediately rose to depart.

"'Tis my friends," said I, putting on my headpiece.

A dollar for supper, four more for an old rapier which I bought from the host, were paid, and I walked anxiously to the door. The night was calm, and no sound broke the stillness of its starry sky or of the landscape, which slept in the pale splendour of the August moon.

"I am going to meet my comrades," said I.

"What may their force be, Mein Herr?"

"About two thousand."

"Two thousand!" reiterated the host; "Mein Gott! they will eat us up."

"Eat you up, rogue! I think not, if they pay you as I have done, with rix instead of slet dollars."

"You have paid like a prince," said he bowing. "Two companies wearing the same garb as Mein Herr passed through the village about noon—but they behaved like honest gentlemen, and paid for every thing."

"That is the way to Korslack, is it not?"

"That is the way you have just come, Mein Herr," said the host with surprise.

"Ah! true—how stupid of me to forget!"

"As the Herr has been so kind," said he again; "perhaps he will escort Karoline past these troops, so far as the pathway which leads to the little chapel of St. Patto; she has to adorn the altar with flowers for service to-morrow; and, perhaps, she will be safer there, too——"

"Than in a village among soldiers—you think right. But you put great trust in me. May I not run off with her?"

"I know that the soldiers of King Christian are not like our Imperialists. Ah! Mein Herr, do you imagine I would make such a request of one of them! It would be setting the wolf to guard the lamb. Besides, the Herr has an expression of so much candour."

I bowed; for the confidence this stranger placed in me was the highest compliment I ever received. In a little hood and cloak, with a large basket of beautiful flowers on her arm, the jungfer accompanied me through the village, pausing every two or three paces to hearken for the rat-tat of the drums, which, she said, "had ceased." I walked on by her side, well satisfied with myself; for being well supped, having a good sword in my belt, and a purse in my pocket, I felt that I could have faced the devil; and strutted on, chatting as gaily to my pretty companion as if I had been lord of all Lauenburg.

At the door of his inn, the host stood watching us until we reached the end of the street, where a little wicket gave admittance to the narrow lane that led to the chapel of St. Patto. There I bade my little devotee adieu, with proper gallantry; and, glad that my brief halt had terminated so pleasantly, walked on quickly by the highway that led to Korslack, a town which lay something less than eighteen of our Scottish miles distant. I resolved to pass beyond it, and not halt again until I reached Bergedorf, in the territory of the quiet and industrious Hamburgers, where I expected to find comparative safety.

After the keen and varied excitement of the last day or two, there was something soothing and pleasing in this solitary night march through a strange and foreign country; and, like a kaleidoscope, my mind was full of ever-changing thoughts and figures, as I journeyed on.

Midnight came.

I had passed through several little villages of grotesque old houses, but they were buried in silence, as their quiet inmates were asleep. Not a sound was heard in them but the occasional bay of a watch-dog, the boom of a stork's wing overhead, or the solemn chime from the ivy-clad spire of an old gothic church; and I reflected with a sigh, on how soon—to-morrow, perhaps—fierce Tilly's lawless Croats and Merodé's musketeers would carry rapine, murder, and a thousand crimes through these rural and sequestered districts.

A white gauzy mist overspread the sailing moon; a light shower fell—just sufficient to lay the dust; and then a rich fragrance arose from the teeming earth, from the dewy flowers, and from the tossing leaves. Again the moon came forth unclouded, and the shadows of the fleecy vapour were seen chasing each other across the fields of ripening corn.

I had walked about ten miles, when far behind I heard the hoofs of horses ringing on the hard beaten road; and the fear of being pursued, or overtaken by some patrol, made me look for a place of concealment; for by the light of the moon I could discern two horsemen, diminished to mere black specks on the far stretching roadway. Close by me was a large beech-tree covered with dense foliage; no better place of concealment offered; and, clambering in, I hid myself among the branches.

In less than two minutes the riders came near, and, slackening their pace as they approached, reined up their blown and foam-covered horses immediately below my lurking-place. They were bareheaded—one had a sword in his hand; the other grasped a pistol.

"It is useless, Gustaf," said the last, in whom I recognised my late host of the Eagle; "quite useless, my poor boy! The vagabond Scot cannot have had time to accomplish this dreadful deed, and thereafter proceed this length on foot. We must long ere this have overtaken him."

"Karoline—my poor little Karoline!" sobbed the young man; "to perish thus!—Heaven—Heaven—cruel Heaven! There were two wounds in her bosom—here—here—just here! poniard wounds——"

"Had the villain but murdered her alone, Gustaf——"

"My Karoline!" said Gustaf, letting his reins fall as his hands sank by his side, and the tears ran over his cheeks; "so pure—so happy—so merry!"

"The Scot carried a poniard."

"The assassin!"

"All these Scots of King Christian carry poniards," continued the host. "Oh, Gustaf! I was indeed mad to trust him; but he had such an honest look. There must have been a fearful struggle, Gustaf: for in her hands there were fragments of a man's lace collar, and I think the Scot wore one."

This was true. I had one over my gorget, or rather part of it; the rest having been rent away in some of my recent scuffles.

"There was a figure before us, on the road. Now, where has it vanished to?"

"Ah! if it should be the Scot," said Gustaf, "and concealed not far from us!"

"In that tree, perhaps."

"Fire your pistol into it."

"Come down, murderer!" cried the host of the Eagle.

"Come down, thou vile Merodeur!" added the young man, as they each cocked a pistol. My heart beat like lightning. It was evident that they spoke at random; but both levelled their pistols, and fired right among the foliage. The balls whitened the branches as they crashed through the leaves, without touching me; I sat still as death, waiting for the next act of this desperate drama, and feeling a violent inclination to let four bullets fly at them in return, from the pistol-barrels concealed in the lock of my sporran.

There was a pause as they reloaded, during which the young man Gustaf wept bitterly.

Some frightful crime was undoubtedly imputed to me! The poor girl whom I had left a few hours before, had been most barbarously murdered, and these men, her lover and her master, had come in pursuit of me; but I felt assured, that to come forth and attempt any explanation with men so excited, and so prejudiced against me, would be recklessly throwing away my life. Her hands held the fragments of a man's ruff, and mine was torn—but by the hands of Tilly's soldiers. Honour then required that, at all risks, I should no longer lurk within earshot of those who imputed to me a crime so terrible, and I was just about to descend when the lover exclaimed furiously—

"I can never return the way we have come! On—yet on—for my heart is on fire!" and, spurring their horses, they galloped away at headlong speed, and were quickly out of sight.

The next moment I dropped from the tree, and paused with irresolution. My first impulse was to return to the village, though ten miles distant, and confront my accusers; my second reflection urged me to continue my flight, as the chances of mercy from the exasperated peasantry on one hand, and the Imperialists on the other, were very slender. Striking across the fields, I made a detour to the right for the purpose of avoiding the high-road; about that time the waning moon became enveloped in clouds, and I found myself on the borders of a wood.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE HUNTER'S COT.

I had lost the path, and knew not which way to turn; yet the necessity for action made me walk hastily forward in the line which seemed parallel with the road I wished to pursue; but on becoming confused among the trees and thickets of large bushes, I lost the way irretrievably, and stumbled on through the wood, deprived of the waning moonlight, and even that of the stars, while having, moreover, to fear the wild animals, and other denizens of a more dangerous character, who usually haunt the German forests.

After pursuing a narrow path for nearly half an hour, I came to an open space where the trees had been cleared away, and in the centre of which stood a hut of the most rustic description.

Four trees, yet rooted, formed its four corners; the walls were of spars with the bark on; the roof was composed of planks covered by bark and moss, with large stones placed at intervals to keep down the eaves, and make the whole erection steady; while above the little doorway, which was almost buried under a mountain of sweet honeysuckle and wild-roses, a deer's skull and antlers were elevated on a large pole, and served to inform me that it was the dwelling of a huntsman.

After some hesitation I knocked, and though the hour was unusually late, or rather early, the door was opened almost at the first summons, for a huntsman is as easily roused as a soldier. Before me stood a man half dressed, blowing the match of his carbine, and viewing me narrowly from head to foot.

"Your business, Mein Herr?" he asked, with surprise.

"I have lost my way, and will reward——"

"Handsomely?"

"Ay, handsomely, any one who will be so kind as be my guide," I added, surprised at Lis parenthetical remark; "will you do so?"

"That depends upon which way yours may be," replied the fellow gruffly, lowering his carbine.

"My way is the road to Bergedorf."

"Are you sure it is not Bredenburg? there were some of your countrymen in garrison there yesterday."

"Nay, Bergedorf, I tell you!" said I, becoming impatient at the fellow's incivility.

"You are nearly four miles from the direct road, and could never find it alone; but if you would choose to pass the night, or rather I should say the remainder of the morning, with me, I will gladly set you on the right road for a draught of beer at the first tavern."

"That would not be a very handsome reward," said I, entering; "so, you are not an Imperialist, then?"

"I am nothing but the humble servant of Mein Herr, and, being under the authority of Duke Rodolph Maximillian, care not a jot either for the King of Denmark or the Emperor Ferdinand."

"But your lord serves under the banner of Austria."

"I have no lord," replied the hunter gruffly, as he shut the door with a bang that shook the cottage; "I am an enemy to all lords—I am a free forester, and own no master. Der teufel! what between the taxes of the Duke, the knights of Ertemberg, who would hang us for shooting the deer, and the bishops of Anhalt and Bremen, who would burn us because we will not go to mass, life is not worth having save in the woods, where one is free."

The interior of the hut was as rude as its exterior had promised. In a small chimney built of rough stones a fire was smouldering; on the plain wooden table, something like a cold supper of meat and bread, with beer, in one of those large glazed bowls which come from Muscovy, was standing, as if awaiting a belated visitor; and by the smoky oil lamp that hung from a rafter of the roof, and shed a light over the rudely constructed and humble edifice, I could perceive that, under his bushy eyebrows, my host scanned me frequently in a scrutinizing manner, which, to say the least of it, was very unpleasant.

His bearing and expression were by turns full of oily civility and sullenness; his figure was strong and athletic—short, and somewhat bow-legged; his head and face were large, and the latter had a very unprepossessing cast of features; the nose of a hawk, wide cracked lips of a livid colour, teeth like fangs, but coated with tartar; a low brow overshadowed by a forest of hair, and ears partly shorn off—in their mutilation announcing most satisfactorily the reason of his aversion to the bishops, knights, and lords of the district. In short, he was hideous.

"I fear I have disturbed you, my friend," said I.

"Not in the least—make no apologies, I pray you. All night I have been waiting for a friend who is journeying from Bredenburg to the castle of Lauenburg. Here is his supper, of which you may partake if you choose, and then pass the remainder of the morning on these deer-skins, or in that poor bed in the little room within."

"Many thanks, woodman," said I; "though not much used to luxuries of late, I shall be but too happy to accept of your little bed."

"The Herr may please himself," he muttered gruffly.

"At what hour of the morning do you usually set forth?"

"In these woods all hours are alike, Mein Herr—say, six."

"But, I have not a horologue, and how shall we know?"

"When the sun shines between the forked branches of a tree opposite, I know at this season the hour of six."

"I have five hours to sleep, then—fail not to waken me, and when we pass the boundary of the Hamburg territory, I will give you all I can afford at present—ten rixdollars!"

"'Tis a bargain—I will not fail," he replied, as a deep gleam shot over his sullen eyes, and he ushered me into a little room, where, setting down the light, he left me. The bed was little better than a palliase, filled with dry rushes or straw, spread upon a sparred frame; but to me, who had slept so often on the bare ground in my belted plaid, and when hunting had slumbered on the winter moors till my locks were frozen to the whitened heather, even that palliase was a luxury; and after laying against the door a few large billets of wood, to prevent ingress without my knowledge, I was about to extinguish the light, when several stains of blood upon the floor—blood recently spilt, arrested me; but the quarters of a deer which hung in a corner seemed sufficiently to account for them.

I blew out the lamp, and threw myself upon the truckle-bed to sleep.

Familiarity with danger certainly deadens at times the keener sense of it; and now, when reflecting upon the adventures of that morning, I can perceive that my position was full of perils, which sufficiently indicated themselves. Far from my comrades, close to the Imperialists, solitary and alone, I had entrusted myself to a foreign outlaw, a man of whom I knew nothing, save that his ears had been shorn off by a common executioner—the half savage denizen of a German forest, who in my sleep might slay me for the value of my jewelled brooch or gilded corslet.

The small aperture, which in the daytime lighted the inner room of this little log-hut, overlooked the dense obscurity of the forest, and was securely fastened by a crossbar of oak. Retreat that way was impossible, even had I thought of looking for it; but that idea never occurred to me, for suspicions scarcely suggested themselves. Thus, I lay placidly down to sleep, and the monotonous rustle of the forest leaves, and creaking of the laden branches, soon nursed me into the land of dreams.

I had slept about two hours, when one of those convulsive starts, which come so unaccountably in one's sleep, awoke me to all my energies. I heard a noise in the outer apartment, and through the roughly boarded partition saw a light shining into the darkness around me. The sound of hoofs were heard, and several men dismounted at the door of the hut.

I sprang up, and, placing my eye to the partition, beheld through the aperture Bandolo, the spy, enter, accompanied by three soldiers of the regiment of Merodé, who immediately attacked the platter of victuals, and drained by alternate draughts the wooden bowl of beer.

I gave myself up for lost!

"Well, Bernhard, my jovial schwindler, here we are at last!" said Bandolo, adding with a mighty oath, "and a rough ride I have had of it from Bredenburg. (Give me a glass of strong water.) I have just left Dunbar, the Scottish major, there. He will not surrender, he swears, while he has breath to draw; and begs King Christian to relieve or reinforce him, as the post must fall (some beef, Bernhard), and as the respectable Hausmeister, Otto Roskilde, I bear his urgent letter to——"

"To the Danish king?"

"No, to Count Tilly!" said Bandolo, with a loud oath and a hoarse laugh; "the old Scot may wait long enough for succour. If I could respect any quality but wealth, I should certainly respect his valour. He gave me six doubloons to carry this letter to King Christian!"

"Six doubloons!" muttered the Merodeurs, whose eyes sparkled at the idea of such a sum being in the pockets of a man who was within arm's length of them.

"When I give it to Tilly," said Bandolo, speaking with his mouth full, "he will pay me six doubloons more—happy dog! Maldicion de Dios! I shall retire from business some of these days, and buy me a count's patent in the Electorate of Hanover. The avenues will all be blocked up to-morrow night, and the poor old fool of a Scot, who trusts to me as the king's messenger, will be deceived by me, as Count Tilly's friend."

"Friend!" reiterated the Merodeurs with a roar of laughter.

"Then the Scot will be taken," said Bernhard.

"Nay," said a soldier of Merodé; "he may be taken dead, but never alive. I am one of Tilly's old grumblers, and have met with this ironheaded Scot before. He will never surrender—but I remember me, Bandolo, he was too free in giving thee wine at Bredenburg."

"Ah! when I said that Tilly was retreating towards the Weser—Rollo, Bernhard, another cup of the strong water!" Bandolo swore in German and Spanish alternately, though he was disguised again in a brown hat, a black cloak, and false paunch, like the well-fed Holsteiner, our old Hausmeister at Glückstadt. "Drink, Bernhard, drink!—to the amiable and generous Count Tilly, who hath the face of a rat, with the heart of a tiger! Drink to the eternal perdition of all Protestants, my merry Merodeurs, and to the continuance of this glorious war, which pours the doubloons into the pockets of Bandolo, who will erelong give you all a right welcome to his county in Hanover! Drink, drink—or, maldetto! I will dash my glass in the face of the first who refuses!"

"Hush!" said the forester, with a prolonged whisper, laying a hand upon his mouth, and pointing towards the little chamber I occupied.

"Hush—why? is there any one there who knows me?"

"No."

"I am glad of it—for I am becoming such a well-known rascal; but have you women, there? if so, you must lend me another ruff, for mine was torn to rags overnight."

(My heart beat quicker! I remembered the story of the village girl's death, and that her clenched hand retained the fragment of a man's ruff or collar—and now I saw that Bandolo's broad lace one, of point d'Espagne, was nearly all torn away. This ruffian—this bravo—the assassin of poor Dreghorn—this man of a hundred murders—had just added another item to his frightful list of atrocities!)

I was pondering whether or not his false paunch was pistol proof, while my host whispered something rapidly in his ear. The wretch set down his glass, and grew red and white by turns.

"'Tis he—'tis my man!" said he in a low thick voice, as he arose and flung aside his cloak.

"Who—who?" asked the Merodeurs.

"A prisoner who has escaped from Tilly's quarter-guard—a scurvy Scottish musketeer. He knows me, Bernhard, and has recognised me frequently. Thus, if once he reaches the Danish lines or garrisons, I can never act the spy and befriend the Count Tilly again; for I tell you all he has discovered me—and must die! For Vida del Demonio! I have killed many a better man before this, and shall I," he added, with a satanic smile on his fierce Spanish mouth, "shall I leave in my path this adder, whom I can crush with so little danger—here in Bernhard's hut—far from help or succour? Has he pistols?"

"No—nor dagger; for of course I looked well," replied the forester in the same low voice.

"We have pistols and daggers," said Bandolo, as he and the three Merodeurs unsheathed their long poniards, and examined the edges and points of the keen broad blades, which gleamed in the lurid light of the smoky lamp. Its rays fell on the dogged visage of the forester, on the bloated and ferocious features of the Merodeurs, browned by exposure, fringed by black beards, and seamed with the scars of battle and brawl; and on the face of Bandolo, whose eyes gleamed with cruelty, and whose lips were compressed with determination.

It is impossible for me to describe my emotions during this conversation, every word of which I had heard with a painful distinctness, which has impressed it upon my memory. I was single-handed against five! Resistance, though it might revenge, could never save me. The window was a fixture; the door I had not the means of barricading; and the roof of bark and planks, against which I thrust with all my strength, was too solid for a single hand to move. My goatskin Highland purse, the gift of Ian, with its four concealed pistol-barrels (though each of them was not bigger than a man's middle finger), could alone save me—and the ruffians thought I was without pistols.

I seized the clasp of this priceless sporran. I pulled the spring, cocked the secret locks, and placed my skene-dhu between my teeth. Then, while these five men, intent on wanton murder, were in the very act of examining their weapons, I softly opened the door, and, by a single turn of my hand, fired the contents of four barrels right amongst them, and then with sword and skene in hand, dashed through in the smoke, and gained the outer door.

It was all the work of a moment!

Two Merodeurs had fallen wounded, and so completely were the third, Bandolo and the forester, taken by surprise, that I had time to give the spy a back-handed blow, which broke his right arm, and thereafter reach their horses, which the Merodeurs had stolen, and which were fortunately standing close by, with their bridles thrown over the broken branch of a tree.

Though kilted, and in no way prepared for riding, I sprang across the saddle of the first nag that came to my hand, and, dashing at random along the forest road, was soon far from the hunter's cot—that almost fatal trap in which I had so witlessly enclosed myself.

Thus, between the sunset and sunrise, I had thrice narrowly escaped death.

Avoiding by something like a miracle the vast forces of Tilly, who were then moving on to capture Bredenburg, I reached Hamburg in safety. Long before this I had let loose the Merodeur's horse; for, being aware that it was stolen, I feared suspicion or discovery if found with it in my possession.

Thus, I could not overtake Major Wilson's party, as they were a full day's march before me on the Glückstadt road.

Though anxious to reinforce the gallant Dunbar of Dyke at Bredenburg, their honour was pledged to refrain from hostilities until they had reached the place mentioned in their capitulation, and thus the poor sergeant-major was left with only four hundred of our Highlanders to contend with a column of the Imperialists, ten thousand strong.

This column was led by Tilly in person, and it invested on all sides the town and castle of Bredenburg, the principal stronghold of the Counts of Rantzau, a noble and warlike family of Holstein. I heard the cannonading on my right hand, while proceeding on my solitary way; but I only learned the frightful slaughter when I rejoined the regiment.

Whether owing to Bandolo's treachery, or that King Christian remembered our quarrel about the Scottish and Danish crosses, and omitted wilfully to send succour, I knew not; but succour never came, and Dunbar refused all terms, vowing that "the Scots, who never feared the Romans—nathless what that liar Hegisippus said—would never surrender to Germans or Spaniards, while they had breath to draw!" and this answer will be found in the Amsterdam Courant.

The place was stormed on all sides; and old Dunbar, who maintained the breach for nearly an hour with his two-handed sword, was killed by a musket-shot, and every one of his brave Scots was put to the sword, save Ensign William Lumsdaine, who escaped by swimming the wet graff.

Before Captains Carmichael and Duncan Forbes, with the last of the four hundred, were slain, nearly a thousand of the Imperial dead were piled up within the slimy fosse.

Our Highlanders all died like good soldiers and true; for, of the four companies who perished there, three were composed of the very flower of the great Clan Chattan.*

* The Imperialists on this occasion shamefully mutilated the body of Dunbar. "They ripped up his breast," according to Colonel Munro; "tooke out his heart, sundered his gummes, and stuck his heart in his mouth; they also killed our preacher, who, being on his knees begging life, was denied mercy."

CHAPTER XXXIV.
I OBTAIN A COMPANY OF MUSKETEERS.

The Imperialists were rapidly penetrating into Holstein, and every where the troops of King Christian were falling back before them; the Lords Nithsdale and Spynie with their Scottish battalions, the Count de Montgomerie with his regiments of French Protestants, were all retiring, and the advance of Wallenstein, who was marching out of Hungary with his powerful army to reinforce Tilly, promised to lay prostrate for ever the pride and power of Denmark. Yet the heart of the gallant Christian IV. never failed him; and in that ferocious and desultory war, his little army of thirty thousand Danes, Scots, and Germans, disputed hand to hand every inch of the ground over which they were compelled to retreat.

When beaten from one castle or town, they garrisoned the next; and thus the Imperialists, whose natural brutality was inflamed by fanaticism and exasperated by resistance, committed the most atrocious cruelties upon the poor inhabitants—carrying fire and sword, death and devastation, wherever their drums beat, or their banners waved.

At Hamburg I met with Major Fritz, of the Sleswig musketeers, with whom I travelled to Glückstadt in his coach, a comfortable vehicle, covered with carving and gilding, and made by Heinrich Andersen of Stralsund, in Pomerania, the same person who obtained a royal patent from James VI. to run a stage coach between Edinburgh and Leith. Andersen was then the most famous coach-manufacturer in Europe.

Glückstadt was almost the last fortress in the German states possessed by Christian IV. There my comrades received me with a true Highland welcome, and the warm-hearted Ian embraced me like a brother—as one recovered from among the dead. Some changes had taken place since we were last in that city.

The large house of the spy in the Platz, was now converted into a barrack for the Laird of Craigie's pikemen, and old dame Krümpel had been turned adrift, to resume her former occupation of fish-fag. The theatre had been turned into a cavalry stable for the Baron Karl's pistoliers, to the great satisfaction of old Dubbelstiern, the burgomaster, who was a strict Calvinist, and professedly hostile to all such amusements.

All the troops were marched to church, to join in solemn prayer for the success of their arms against the foe, who was now almost at Hamburg.

"We pray earnestly to Heaven for success," said the Baron Karl to me in a low voice, as he leant with a lounging air against one of the shafted pillars of the great church; "Tilly, and his Jesuits, are probably saying solemn mass for the success of their arms also."

"How is Heaven to judge between us?" asked Major Fritz, whose mother was one of the principal ladies at the Imperial court.

"Come now, Fritz," said the baron; "do not be staring at that lady in a way so peculiar."

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said Fritz, slipping from among us; "'tis a little beauty I met at Hamburg."

On seeing the major approach, the lady, who was elegantly dressed, but, according to a dangerous custom then fashionable, wore a black velvet mask, retired from the church, and Fritz, who in such affairs was undaunted, followed her. After having been in camp for some time, he had a great desire to make some important conquest among the fair sex. His inamorata, who looked round at him slyly from time to time with two bright eyes, seemed to be the little wife of a citizen, and, to a half worn-out rake like the major, there was something excessively attractive in the pretty white stocking, drawn smoothly over the handsome leg and ankle, which she shewed from time to time, when holding up her silk dress. The major followed, stroking his short mustache, and saying a hundred fine things, to which she responded briefly, and by bursts of laughter—for so he afterwards told us; but she led him a devil of a dance through all Glückstadt, and to the barrier of the Hamburg road.

"I did not think Glückstadt contained a neck and ankles half so pretty," lisped the major; "but upon my soul, little one, I don't think I am very wise in following you so far."

"It is better to be happy than wise," replied the lady, in her soft low voice.

The musketeer was enchanted.

"Ah—if I could only see its pretty face!" said he.

"Come with me to Pinneberg, and you may."

"That is only twelve miles—I will go with you to the end of the earth."

"A long way, Major Fritz," laughed the lady.

"The deuce, my pretty one, you know my name!—we are acquainted, it seems." Again the little mask laughed immoderately, and the major thought her the merriest conquest he had ever made. He handed her into one of Heinrich Andersen's hackney coaches, and, just as the gates were closing, they drove off for Pinneberg.

The major was confounded by all the charming mask told him of his most secret affairs; the amount of his income—his expectations from his uncle the Baron of Uberg, and his cousin the Count of Flensbörg; his love adventures, too, were all known to her—it was very perplexing! Pinneberg was reached—the major proposed they should alight at the door of a celebrated restaurant, but the lady declined peremptorily, and he was compelled to let her please herself. They stopped at the door of a charming little house; the servants were richly liveried, the vestibule lighted and carpeted. She led him up-stairs into a magnificent apartment, where a cold collation—wine, fruit, crystal and plate—lay on a spotless table-cloth, under the perfumed light of wax candles placed in beautiful girandoles.

"I am dying with curiosity," said the major; "do tell me your name, or at least shew me the charming face I have come so far to see!"

The lady took off her mask, and he beheld his own mother—the Baroness Fritz of Vibürg, who he thought was at Vienna.

The old lady laughed heartily at the trick she had played, and repeated all her son's soft speeches over again. At first he was ready to sink with mortification—then he uttered a shout of laughter; but the most serious part was to follow. The old lady—for, notwithstanding her youthful figure and grace, she was very old—told him, that she had come all the way from Vienna to Glückstadt, for the purpose of entrapping him, and bringing him over from the allegiance to the paltry Count of Holstein (Christian IV.), that he might enter the Imperial service, where higher honours and greater rewards awaited him than could ever be obtained by adherence to falling Denmark.

"I am extremely sorry, madam, that it is quite out of my power to gratify you," replied the major, as he walked towards the door. "Ah—treacherous old devil!" he muttered, on finding himself confronted by six or eight of Camargo's stoutest pikemen.

By this trick, and his own folly, he was made a prisoner, and carried away to Vienna; after which, for a long time we heard no more of him.

After a four days' halt, the companies of Major Wilson were commanded to march with all speed to the Upper Elbe, with orders to cross into Silesia, and join Major-general Slammersdorf, who, on that side of the river, was maintaining a desperate and desultory struggle with the Imperialists.

"Dioul!" said Ian, as, with our pipes playing, we marched from Glückstadt on a dark foggy morning about the end of August; "Heaven be praised we are again out of this dull solemn town, with its high bastions and deep ditches, where the slime floats and the frogs squatter in the mud—its dull canals and duller streets—its fat burghers and close-clipped trees. I would give a bonnet full of silver for one glimpse of a dark pine forest or a steep heather mountain; for there is nothing about us but what is flat and stale as Rostock beer."

"M'Farquhar, are the pretty market maidens—those blooming Holsteiners, with their red petticoats and handsome legs, their bright eyes and rosy cheeks—all as nothing?" asked McAlpine.

"Yea, as less than nothing to me," replied Ian, as he fastened his graceful plaid with the brooch of Moina, and began to hum his favourite song, "The bonnie brown-eyed maid," and shook the great eagle's wing which adorned the cone of his helmet; "I should be sorry if they made me the more pleased with Glückstadt. Believe me, cousin Angus, I shall never—if I can avoid it—do aught that will cause me regret!"

"Or remorse—you are right," muttered M'Alpine, as a cloud passed over his face, and he adjusted that broad scarf of crape, which he had made a vow to wear to the last of his days.

We had no idea of how we were to reach Silesia, as Tilly's troops lay partly between us and that country (of which the Emperor is duke, as King of Bohemia); and Wallenstein, against whom we were advancing, had just succeeded in driving into Hungary Count Mansfeldt, that great leader and champion of the Bohemian queen, who was compelled to sell his baggage and artillery, and disband his soldiers, after which he retired to Zara, where he died of a broken heart. Christian, Duke of Brunswick, died about the same time, and the unfortunate King of Denmark was left single-handed to cope with the two greatest generals of the German empire.

On came Wallenstein, and he poured his army, one hundred thousand strong, like an irresistible torrent into Mechlenburg, Brandenburg, and Silesia; General Slammersdorf was there irretrievably beaten and outflanked. The Danes and their auxiliaries, Scots and Germans, now retired from all their outposts along the Havel, the Elbe, and the Weser; and Wallenstein prepared at once to carry the war into the heart of Denmark.

We received these startling tidings from the Baron of Klosterfiord, who overtook us at Horst, with a despatch from the king, ordering Major Wilson to change his route, and with all speed join the remnant of Slammersdorf's defeated army, which was intrenching itself at the Isle of Poel, being almost cut off from the king, who was then retiring out of Holstein into Denmark with his main body, abandoned by his former allies, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and the electoral Duke of Brandenburg.

The remainder of our valiant regiment were with Sir Donald Mackay, under Slammersdorf, and our hearts yearned to be with them, that together we might stand or fall in the good cause of Denmark; for, remembering the glorious struggles of our own native country for that freedom which we transmit to our posterity, unfettered as we received it from our Celtic fathers, we had a sincere interest in seeking by our valour to defend the Danes from the mighty masses of the aggressive empire.

If these Danes proved stanch to their fatherland, we had no fears for Denmark or its king. Our own history has shown us how, against greater powers than those of the Imperialists, Scotland has preserved her name, her nationality, and her liberty, amid the wars of long successive ages, since that remote time when her frontier formed the boundaries of the Roman empire on the west, and all who dwelt beyond were free.

One sword drawn for freedom on the slope of the Grampians, has ever been worth a thousand in the ranks of the invader; for God will ever aid a people fighting for their liberties, and the land he has given them.

We were sixty miles distant from the Baltic, and Tilly had actually pushed forward his advanced posts between us and its shore; yet we pressed on, and passed the whole distance in an incredibly short time; for we could usually march thirty miles a day, though our soldiers carried snapsacks or clothes-bags, like the Swedes.

We saw nothing of the Imperialists but the smoke of burning villages, which rose at the verge of the flat horizon, and served frequently to indicate where their ravagers were at work; but they were so far off, that our men never once unstrapped the hammerstalls from their locks and matches.

Two unpleasant affairs happened to me on this march.

During a halt at Segeberg, where, for a few hours, we occupied the old castle which the Emperor Lothaire built to keep the Sclavonians in check, I remember having a serious quarrel with Mr. Amias Paulet, an English cavalier who had come to seek his fortune in these wars. While taking a glass of Würzburger together in a tavern, his name unfortunately led me to ask if he "was any relation to that Sir Amias Paulet, the infamous abettor of Elizabeth in her treachery to Mary, queen of Scots?"

He bluntly told me that he was the younger son of the said Sir Amias, though a man well up in years; and thereafter spoke of our queen's memory in a manner which I, as a Scottish gentleman, considered insulting to myself. I threw my glove in his face, drew my sword, and required him "to retract;" but Gaffer Englishman, being a stout and brave fellow, declared that he "would see me in a warmer climate than Holstein before he would do so!" Upon this, I invited him to the parade before the castle gate, where the Danish guard came forth to see the sport, and enforce fair play. There, at the second pass, I ran him fairly through the lungs, and, with my sword at his throat, compelled him to retract, as a lesson in future to speak mercifully of the dead, and of injured women. I left him in charge of the castellan, without having time to see to his wound, for our piper blew the gathering for the march in ten minutes after the rencontre; but he recovered, to die long afterwards, a prisoner—poor fellow!—in the hands of the Imperialists, at the castle of Dillingen, on the Danube.

My next little affair was nothing less than burning the house of a contumacious boor about his ears.

Marching by a road, each side of which was richly bordered by laden fruit-trees, or fields skirted by wild hops wound over hedges, where the mint and the red barberry grew in the ditches, we passed a farm-house, a picturesque little place, two stories high, painted brown, surrounded by a gallery to which a flight of steps gave access, and having a broad-eaved roof, covered with turf of emerald green.

I commanded the rearguard, which consisted of twenty musketeers, all M'Phersons. Hot and dusty with our march, I halted, and civilly requested a draught of water for each man. This modest request—the host, a sulky boor, who appeared at the door with four servants armed with crossbows and carbines, and dressed in white coats and peaked hats—acceded to most unwillingly; for, like a true German, he looked coldly on the soldiers of Christian, because the tide of war was setting in hard against them.

Perceiving this, I demanded, instead of water, a glass of Rostock beer for every man, and, accompanied by Sergeant Phadrig Mhor, entered the kitchen of the house, where the first objects I observed were two of those many pasquils or caricatures of his majesty James VI., which were then circulated through all Germany, in ridicule of the poor and tardy assistance he sent to his son-in-law, the timid Elector of Bohemia. One represented the king in a Scots bonnet and plaid, with a number of men striving in vain to draw his sword from its scabbard; the other depicted three armies marching into Bohemia—King James VI. of Scotland at the head of a hundred thousand ambassadors, Christian IV. at the head of a hundred thousand herring-barrels, and the States-general leading the same number of butter-firkins.

I endeavoured to deface or tear down these pasquils, upon which the farmer dealt me a blow with the boll of his carbine, that would assuredly have ended all my campaigns but for the interposition of Phadrig's axe; after which, to punish the fellow, we cleared the house, threw the grate with its burning coals into the middle of the floor, heaped the furniture thereon, and leaving the whole place in flames, hurried after our main body. It made little difference to the farmer, as the Croats would undoubtedly have burned his premises next night.

Without snapping a musket we reached the western shore of the Baltic, and, seizing such vessels as we could find (being on the king's service), sailed through the Gulf of Lübeck, and reached the Isle of Poel, where Slammersdorf lay with the wreck of his Silesian army, only ten thousand strong, including horse and artillery, but all resolute and well-appointed men. Our arrival there caused the utmost astonishment, for the major-general considered himself as completely cut off from all communication with Holstein; and, indeed, one day after, even we could not have reached the Baltic by the same route.

At Poel our Highlanders were mustered under baton by Sir Donald, and were found to be about eight hundred, for so had the defence of Bredenburg, Lauenburg, and the Boitze reduced them; no less than seven hundred men had fallen in these paltry affairs since our first landing at Glückstadt.

By this sad slaughter I found myself a captain, and Ian succeeded to poor Dunbar's commission; our old patents or commissions being assigned to other cavaliers, who were on their way from Scotland with six hundred new recruits from the Highlands. On the day after our landing at Poel I carried my half pike as captain, and went through the pleasant ceremony of presentation to the regiment—a custom which we Scots have copied into our army from our ancient allies, the French.

The whole battalion being drawn up in line, and in review order, the colours, pikes, and drums in the centre, musketeers and pipers on the flanks, the officers in front with their half pikes advanced, the colonel, Sir Donald, bearing my new commission in one hand, led me forward with the other, fully accoutred with back, breast, and head pieces, sword, pistol, steel gloves and dagger, and said in Gaëlic—

"Gentlemen and soldiers, by the will of the king, you will receive and acknowledge Philip Rollo of the Craig, to be captain of the company lately commanded by M'Farquhar of that Ilk; and you will obey in that capacity for the good of the Danish service."

Immediately upon this, the regiment presented arms, the drums beat the Point of War, the pipes struck up "Mackay's Salute"—the officers crowded round and drew off their gloves to congratulate me; after which we all spent a merry night in my quarters over a few dozen of right Würzburger, while my company regaled themselves on Rostock beer.

M'Alpine also became a captain, and Ensign Lumsdaine, the only survivor of Bredenburg, a gallant cadet of the family of Invergellie in Angus, became my lieutenant.

The most pleasant feature in this promotion was, that my increased exchequer enabled me to repay to the Baron Karl the money he had so generously advanced to me in the days of my first folly at Glückstadt; for I had been sorely afraid I might be shot in action, and leave that debt unpaid.

CHAPTER XXXV.
PROTEUS AGAIN.

Major-General Slammersdorf had once been one of the happiest old fellows in the Danish service; but having had the misfortune to distinguish himself at Carelia, in the Swedish war, and never having that good service requited as he thought it deserved, he forthwith became a grumbler; and "the affair at Carelia" was the pet grievance of his life. Every old soldier has one. This martial fragment of the Danish wars had lost a leg at the siege of Elfsburg, an arm at Marstrandt, and had left his best eye with the Imperialists at Lütter, having altogether received eight wounds, three of which he was in the habit of averring were mortal.

While he employed our most skilful trenchmasters and sturdy soldiers in fortifying the Isle of Poel with ravelins and redoubts, stockades and graffs, we heard that King Christian attributed his successive defeats, and lastly, the desertion of his allies—the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and the Duke of Brandenburg—to the secret intelligence derived by the Emperor from behind the Danish lines, and to the endless intrigues of Tilly, maintained by the medium of his able scoutmaster, Bandolo, whom I had so frequently encountered; and for whom, in consequence of my information and description, a strict watch was maintained throughout the whole Danish frontiers; and orders had been issued to kill him, without mercy, wherever he should be found.

"To discover this fellow will be no easy task," said our friend, the Baron Karl, as he sat with me on a gun-carriage, overlooking our soldiers who were at work in the trenches; "for he is master of several languages, and possesses a great power of visage, with a mind which, to the cunning of the fox, unites the ferocity of the tiger; he is a very Proteus, and may, for aught we know, be among us at this very moment, and in this little Isle of Poel."

"I could almost rejoice at that idea," said I; "for believe me, Herr Baron, I have a heavy account to settle with him."

"You are, indeed, particularly his enemy, and have most cause to dread him, having been the means of rendering his character first known to us, and making the king aware that Otto Roskilde, the stout and respectable burgher of Glückstadt, who resided there in time of truce, was the bravo Bandolo, the tool, the paid spy of Count Tilly. We know the man now, and that he is a source of terror even to that terrible Tilly, to Wallenstein, to Carlstein, and Merodé—to the very men he serves, and who pay him like a prince; for, though suspected of a hundred assassinations at Naples and Vienna, this subtle Spaniard has continued to elude every inquiry."

"If the Count of Carlstein was aware, as I am, of the man's presumption," said I, remembering bitterly the daring proposal he had made to Tilly concerning Ernestine, "he would assuredly have him hanged."

"Hanged! what—the right hand of the venerable Jesuit!" reiterated the bantering baron; "why, this amiable individual is as necessary to the leader of the Imperialists as his soothsayers and stargazers; for we know that old John of Tserclä never fights a battle without having an omen of victory, or a long consultation with the stars. But, come—let us have a flagon of wine; and harkee, my Fourrier, broach this beer cask for our thirsty pioneers."

The Danish baron was the beau-ideal of a soldier; his figure was tall and strong; his hair was just becoming grizzled; but his healthy brown cheek and white teeth declared his happy temper; while his broad brow and bold bright eye betrayed an open heart and fearless soul. He was a man whose fine intellects neither war nor time could destroy.

"If Bandolo," said I, "were but once covered by my pistol, he should have such mercy as he gave my poor companion at Bredenburg."

"Cousin Philip," said Ian, "a wretch so vile deserves not to die by the hand of a gentleman. And yet, good sooth! it is not meet that the blood of the humblest of our companions, should dye this foreign earth unavenged."

"There spoke the true Celt!" said the baron, laughing; "but I fear me, Major M'Farquhar, you shall have many to avenge before we see King Christian's camp again; for cut off, as we are here in Poel, by the thousands of the enemy, if the king's ships do not afford us timely relief in flight, we shall have but two alternatives—to die by our cannon, or die of starvation."

To prevent all possibility of the latter catastrophe we laid the whole country under contribution, as far as Grevismühlen in Mecklenburg; still, as the Imperial troops were pouring into Holstein, and a strong body of them under the Scottish colonel, Graham, had seized the free town of Wismar in our immediate vicinity, the chances of our ever rejoining the main army under the king, or reaching him through the duchies of Sleswig and Holstein became extremely slender.

After remaining at Poel more than a month, working constantly to strengthen the isle, and only laying aside the shovel and pickaxe to take up the sword and musket, disproving the assertion of Gustavus-Adolphus, "that, with all their bravery in the field, the Scots were too proud to work as pioneers," eight ships of Leith,* in the Danish service, came from Copenhagen to transport us to a point of Holstein where we were to land, and, at all risks, cut a passage to the king, whose circumstances were now more desperate than ever.

* Gustavus had at this time seventeen Scottish ships of war in his service.—See Hepburn's Memoirs.

These orders were a source of sincere satisfaction to my comrades, but I must own to feeling a singular indifference on the matter; for it seemed that, by this removal towards Denmark, I was conveyed further from that pretty chateau in Luneburg, and from Ernestine, to whom I owed so much; and whose memory came ever and anon to me, with mingled sensations of gratitude, pleasure and jealousy, for I knew not how high the Count of Kœningheim might stand in her favour; at all events, he was her father's choice, and handsome enough to be a dangerous rival to me. Returning from the daily turmoil of the trenches to indulge in reverie, I frequently asked myself, "What am I to Ernestine, or what is Ernestine to me, that I should think so much about her? nothing—of course." But her image was ever before me, and I pondered frequently on the distance that lay between us from Poel to the shore, and from thence to Luneburg—a bird's flight of seventy miles—and the chances of our ever—or rather never meeting more, were all considered again and again. I knew that I could never see her more but at the price of my liberty, and perhaps my life. This probably enhanced her value, for we are strange and perverse mortals; ever prizing that which is beyond our reach. It seemed odd to me, that I should think so much of this dark-haired girl—that the interests of my heart should wander so far beyond the Imperial outposts; and that there should now be a being who excited imaginary fears and pleasures in my breast—a being of whose existence I was perfectly ignorant three months ago. Let me fling these fancies from me, thought I; they are absurd!

Leaving Major-general Slammersdorf to defend the Isle of Poel with two thousand men, Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, embarked with eight thousand horse and foot, including our regiment of Strathnaver, and sailed for Heilinghafen, a town in the province of Wagria (an appendage of Holstein), which forms a peninsula in the Baltic; and there without loss or accident, on a beautiful day of September, that gallant prince landed his whole force, with their horses, arms, and cannon.

Notwithstanding the vast number of Tilly's forces, we had few doubts of our ability to force a passage through them, when led by the immortal Duke of Saxe-Weimar, the bravest of eleven brave brothers, all of whom had bled for German liberty. His valour at the great siege of Brissac, before the gates of which he was victorious in four pitched battles, where he captured four generals, and where he had no less than six horses killed under him, together with his long and desperate combat with Colonel John de Wert, have embalmed his memory in the annals of German chivalry; even as his generosity, which bequeathed his whole fortune to the wounded officers and soldiers who followed his banner, was long the theme of the veterans of Christian and Gustavus. Duke Bernard was all that a soldier should be—handsome, gallant, frank, and lavish of his means; for no soldier of any nation ever lacked money while the conqueror of Savelli, and the preceptor of Turenne, had a guilder to spare or a jewel to sell.

We cavaliers of fortune adored him, and it was with the utmost exultation that, on a beautiful evening of September, as I have said, when the last rays of the sun were shining on the broad blue Baltic, on the flat green isle of Fehmarn and the narrow Sound, that we put off in boats, pulled by the blue-bonneted mariners of our eight native ships, and with three hearty cheers drew up under our colours in the streets of Heilinghafen.

War and rapine have changed the town since those days; but I remember that its houses were old and irregular—that their upper stories projected far over the lower, and had steep gables, with galleried fronts that rested on gaudily painted wooden columns. Inscriptions in Latin or German were carved upon the door-lintels to keep away evil spirits, as in our Scottish towns at home; and the drowsy storks, with drooping wings, nestled under the lee of the chimneys. We saw these birds every where perched upon trees, steeples, and house-tops; for they are considered sacred and useful, as they kill the little snakes and adders that are bred among the slime and corruption of the marshes.

The setting sun gilded the rent edges of the ruddy clouds; dotted with white sails, the sound of Fehmarn and the blue Baltic stretched far away to the dim horizon; but few persons were abroad in the streets of Heilinghafen, though several gazed with fear and apprehension from the upper windows, as the troops passed through the town, accompanied by all the sounds of a marching army, the tramp of feet, the shrill fifes and brattling drums, the trumpets of the cavalry, and the sharp clang of hoofs, with the hoarse lumbering roll of the artillery over the hard and stony streets.

Sheathed in bright steel, with the colours of Weimar on his housings, and his mother's crest, the demi-eagle of Anhalt, on his helmet, Duke Bernard, accompanied by Sir Donald Mackay, rode at our head, mounted on Raven, that famous black horse which he had so often ridden in battle, which the Imperialists believed to be enchanted, and which, at his death, he solemnly bequeathed to the Count of Nassau.

His first dispositions were to order the Baron of Klosterfiord, with his troop of pistoliers, to ride at full speed towards Oldenburg, for the purpose of reconnoitring; while I, with my company of Highland musketeers, followed double quick to support him, with instructions to lie en perdue in a wood, which I would find some miles in front of the town.

"Now, gentlemen," said Sir Donald jestingly as we filed forth, "I hope you have put your worst doublets under your armour, for there will be many a helmet on the grass to-morrow."

"By my faith, colonel," replied Ian; "I have but one—my best and worst; so, if ever it comes to the drum-head, remember, gentlemen, that Tilly's Croats abstracted my wardrobe on the Elbe."

"Yes, but will it not be rather extravagant, M'Farquhar, to be killed with diamond buckles on your brogues?" asked Phadrig Mhor, his henchman and fosterer.

"What," retorted my cousin; "would you have Ian Dhu to lie on the field without other badge than his eagle's feather to shew that he deserves a deeper grave or a higher cairn than a gillie or trencherman?"

"Farewell, Sir Donald, and farewell, Ian," said I; "forward, gentlemen and soldiers!" and with our muskets trailed, at a double quick march, we took the road towards the pass of Oldenburg—the last road which many among us were ever to tread again.

By the time we were clear of the town, we could see the pistoliers far in advance of us, with their forked pennon of red silk fluttering on the wind, and their bright helmets flashing as they galloped to the front along the level roadway, from which the polished hoofs of their horses rolled up the smoke-like dust.

Our hearts beat high with excitement, for we expected every moment to see them rein up and halt, as a signal that the enemy's outposts were in sight; but they continued galloping on, and at last disappeared beyond that wood which had been indicated to me by the duke, and we scanned the horizon in vain for those columns of smoke,, which, from burning villages, and ravaged farms, invariably announced the scene of Tilly's operations, and the movements of his troops.

The ripe corn waved in the unshorn fields on each side of us; but with the moon a thick mist rose as usual from the meadows and pasture-lands, which gleamed like silver lakes through a veil of gauze. We passed a few wayside cottages, roofed with red tiles or bright yellow thatch; their owners had fled, and no places were occupied but the wooden dovecot—a perforated box, or old beer-barrel, elevated on the summit of a painted post, or on some scathed and leafless tree. Shortly after the rising of the moon, a man rode past us. He was dressed like a peasant of Holstein, in wide breeches having rows of metal buttons at the sides; a low broad hat and canvass doublet, belted with a rough baldric; coarse grey stockings, red garters, and wooden-soled shoes. He rode a strong and active horse.

"Softly, sir," said I, "a word with you."

He still rode on without attending to me.

"Harkee, fellow—dost hear?" I added, as Gillian M'Bane blew the match of his musket. Upon this the peasant turned back his horse, and touched his hat.

"Are you deaf, fellow?"

"A little, sir," said he, pointing to a bandage which encircled his head; "a Croatian sabre has laid bare my head from ear to eye."

"Are you a Dane?"

"I am of Schönburg."

"Have you travelled far to-day?"

"About three pipes," said he, taking his pipe from his mouth.

"Where did you come from last?" I asked, impatiently.

"Oldenburg, Mein Herr."

"Have you seen any thing of the Imperialists?"

"Heaven be blessed, no! They would have made but a mouthful of me. I am a poor, inoffensive man—a dealer in cattle, Mein Herr—I am going to Heilinghafen."

"You will find customers enough and to spare, my Schönburger; for Duke Bernard is there in quarters with eight thousand hungry men."

The trader appeared somewhat startled by this intelligence, but politely begged me to be assured that the Imperialists had not yet passed the Stoer; and then asked if I required his services in any way—on which I thanked him, and we parted. He galloped off.

His last observations had been less brief than others; they caused something of a familiar voice and manner to flash upon my memory. I paused and looked back; he had turned aside from the Heilinghafen road, and was riding headlong through the ripe corn-field in an opposite direction, but far beyond our reach.

"Oh no!—it cannot be—and yet, his voice! Fool that I am—was I blind?" I exclaimed.

"What—what is it?" asked Lieutenant Lumsdaine and Phaclrig Mhor together.

"But for his white eyebrows and beardless face, I could have sworn that was Bandolo."

"Oh—impossible!" said Lumsdaine; "Bandolo wandering here, in that way; besides, like a true German or Dutchman, he measured the distance by the smoking of his pipe. Cunning as he is, I do not think a Spaniard would ever have thought of that. It was so natural."

"True—but this man is a spy by profession, and practises all these little things."

"Dioul!" muttered Phadrig Mhor, shaking his halbert; "why did you not think of that before, captain?"

"There was a glamour before his eyes," said Gillian M'Bane in a whisper.

"No," replied Phadrig, gravely, as he shouldered his enormous axe; "but the spy's time is not yet come; it may come with our next meeting, if the captain looks better, for the oldest man that ever lived had to die at last."

I was both ashamed and exasperated at being so outwitted by a rascal like this Spaniard.

"May my tongue be blistered!" thought I; "for, if that was really Bandolo, between his cunning and my folly Duke Bernard will never reach the main army." I remembered the accurate numerical information I had afforded, and had no doubt he was riding as fast as his horse's heels could carry him to communicate with Tilly, who as yet was ignorant of our landing.

We halted at the wood—the remnant of a venerable fir forest, covering about a square mile. I placed a sentinel in front of it, and towards the road; then we penetrated to the centre, and there in an open space piled arms, lighted a fire, and after carefully fencing it round with stones to prevent it reaching the roots of the trees, prepared to cook the provisions our havresacks contained.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
A FOREST ON FIRE!

The poultry gleaned up by our foragers from the houses we had passed (deserted houses, remember), and the beef provided by our Fourrier de Campement before leaving the good ship, Scottish Crown of Leith, were boiled together in camp-kettles; and while I, with Lieutenant Lumsdaine and my ensign, Hugh Rose (of the Kilravock family), and Phadrig, with Gillian M'Bane, and three other gentlemen-musketeers of my company, formed one little mess, the rest of our comrades formed another, and were squatted on the grass, rending the tough beef with their teeth, and cutting the fowls with their dirks and skenes, and each was as merry as a man may be whose life is so uncertain as a soldier's, and who tries to make the most of it while it lasts.

Phadrig and Gillian were both duinewassals, and when at home in Strathdee both wore the wing of the Iolar in their bonnets. Honest Phadrig had lately declined a commission in another Scottish regiment, preferring his sergeant's halbert to the certainty of rank and being separated from Ian Dhu, whom his mother had nursed, and to whom he was hereditary henchman, loving him with that strong and reverential love which none but a Scottish Celt or an Irish peasant can understand.

Supper over, we rolled our plaids about us, and, after posting fresh sentinels at the verge of the wood, lay down to sleep on the soft dry moss and grass which grew under the thick trees of this old primeval wood—the last fragment of an ancient forest that once had spread from sea to sea.

At the same hour last night we had been breasting the waves of the Baltic.

Watching the changing features of the wood as the last embers shed their fitful light upon the tossing branches, I endeavoured to court sleep—but in vain, for the anxiety necessarily felt by every officer—especially a young one—when in charge of that most important of all duties, an outpost, kept me restlessly wakeful. I knew that the Baron of Klosterfiord was far in advance of me with his pistoliers; but then I expected momently to hear the sharp report of pistols and clang of hoofs upon the distant roadway, announcing that his reconnoitring troop was driven in by Tilly's Reitres.

As the few brands that crackled on our watch-fire brightened and reddened up to die away again, I lay watching the varying and fantastic shadows of the midnight wood, the gnarled trunks of whose red pines shone ruddily in the casual glow, then wavered indistinctly, and became black even as their wiry foliage, or the deeper black beyond, where the thick vista stretched away into obscurity. Above, not a star was visible; for the thick, broad branches were densely interwoven, and formed a roof, beyond which the tall black spires of the firs rose against the sky; and as the passing wind, when penetrating to the place where we lay, fanned the dying brands into a scarlet glow again, the passing gleam revealed the old knotty stems and branches twisted into a thousand fantastic shapes, red and black, or silver grey, like the freakish demons and stinted gnomes of Danish story, or the rude carvings in some grotesque cathedral aisle.

In the middle and dark ages, that peninsula had been covered by dark forests, in whose depths the pagan Wends, when spreading along the shores of the Baltic, worshipped their four-headed god of light; even in his own time (the 11th century), Adam of Bremen tells us, that only the shores of Denmark were inhabited, the interior being all a dark and impenetrable forest. I remembered the wild Holstein legend of the Pale Horse, which yearly bore the assassin of St. Erik the king, sweeping over hill and hollow, accompanied by shadowy hounds and the distant echoes of infernal horns, from that morass near the Eyder, where, embarrassed by the weight of his armour, he sunk and died; to the river where, in the preceding year, he had thrown the body of his murdered prince, and from thence to the royal vault at Ringsted, where the canonized victim lay. Once in each returning year, since that fatal night in 1252, the Holsteiners see the shadowy assassin making his terrible pilgrimage to the scenes of his sorrow, his crime, and his grave, where horse and man go down with a shriek that startles the Eyder in its oozy bed.

I thought of this and many another tale, while to my drowsy eyes all was becoming indistinct: my bare-kneed comrades slept beside me soundly and in close ranks; officers and men lay side by side, for, like friendship and misfortune, campaigning levels many petty distinctions. The lingering light of the fire fell upon their piled muskets with one last gleam, and then expired.

The almost palpable darkness of the forest banished my drowsiness, and I began to reflect on the strange tide of circumstances which had brought me so far from my secluded home, that old tower among the woods and rocks of Cromartie, and from my quiet and gloomy little chamber at the King's College, in the granite city, to the land of these wild scenes and bloody conflicts; and all because—but you will laugh when I say it—an antique silver spoon would not suit my poor little mouth when a child.

I smiled at my father's ridiculous prejudices, and, blessing the poor old man, uttered a fervent wish that in this protracted war I might yet win me a name, which would make him hail with pride the return of the son he had banished. Already I was a captain of musketeers, and I made a mental resolution that the fame of many a great feat should precede my return to my home, or that, like too many perhaps of my gallant comrades, I would lay my bones on the foreign battle-field for ever.

And Ernestine! I thought then of Ernestine—of her goodness and her beauty; of her father's wishes concerning that rough Reitre, Count Kœningheim; I writhed in my plaid at the thought of them, and grasped my dirk on recalling the conversation between Tilly and his ruffian follower.

By separation from Ernestine, the tender impression she had made upon me was increased—for such is the strength of imagination. This fancy or attachment I might doubtless have vanquished by an effort; but I had no reason to exert this effort, and so the fancy lingered in my breast, and strengthened there.

Something startled me.

Raising myself on an elbow, I looked round. Near me a hundred men were sleeping in the darkness; but beyond, at the skirts of the wood, a strange glow appeared between the trees. Some distant town was perhaps in flames; but no, it grew redder, deeper, broader, and then came a crackling sound, with a strong smell of smoke and burning wood. On turning round, the same appearance met my eye on two opposite points; and the lights brightened so fast, that I could see the helmets of the sleepers close beside me shining in the yet distant gleam.

Our sentinels fired their muskets. A pang of horror and dismay shot through my heart.

"Up, up! gentlemen and comrades!" I exclaimed, starting to my feet; "to your arms—to your arms! In three places the wood is on fire!"

At this appalling cry, the whole company sprang to their feet and unpiled their arms.

"The Imperialists are upon us!" cried Lumsdaine.

"The four corners of the wood are on fire," added Hugh Rose, drawing his claymore.

"Iosa—Iosa!" shouted the soldiers; "here come the flames!"

"What matters it, Captain Rollo," said Phadrig Mhor, brandishing his Lochaber axe, and belting his plaid about his giant figure; "the cowards would smoke brave men like rats, but we will break through, and do as Conan did with the devil. If bad they give, they will get no better. Into your ranks, my brave lads—close in, close in!"

"Put your plaids above your bandoleers, or they will explode!" I exclaimed; "hammer-stall your locks and matches—follow me—forward!"

"Quick, Donald M'Vurich!" cried Phadrig, administering a cuff with his gauntlet to a Highlander who lingered to poke his dirk into an abandoned camp-kettle, in the faint hope of fishing out something that might be left; "into your ranks! Is faide t-fhacail na t-fhéosag! By the Holy Iron! your teeth are longer than your beard!"

How shall I describe the scene of horror that immediately ensued!

Around us the whole wood was in flames!

Many of the pines were aged, dry, and decayed, and they stood in a bed of parched moss, thickly strewn with the old leaves and the withered branches of past summers. Running like wildfire along this inflammable stratum, the spreading flame caught the pines by their hollow trunks, and, narrowing on all sides to the centre, its frightful circle rapidly enclosed us. The glare, as the flame shot from pine to pine, from root to root, and branch to branch, though almost shrouded in the suffocating smoke of the green wood, was blinding; and the heat, blaze, and smoke increased—approaching nearer and more near.

My company became bewildered as the fiery circle narrowed round them; they were uncertain whether to advance or retreat—to keep together or to break and scatter. Volumes of smoke and columns of fire surrounded us; every knot and gnarl on the trunks of the trees, every leaf and blade of grass, every check in our tartans, became visible, as the red, livid glow that hemmed us in became closer and closer. From the broad yellow blaze which sheeted all the background, the solemn pines came forward in black outline—gloomy, tall, and towering, like conical spires. My soldiers were appalled; for the same brave hearts that would have stormed a breach or charged a brigade with all the heedless valour of their race, now quailed at the prospect of being roasted alive; and I cursed my own folly in bivouacking so far in the centre of the wood, instead of lying on its skirts; but who could have foreseen such a horrible catastrophe? Was it the result of chance, or the diabolical spirit of Bandolo?

"Dioul!" snorted Phadrig Mhor, half choked and half blinded; "we wander here like hornless cattle in a strange fold. Oich! we'll all be birselled in our iron, like partans in their shells!"

Surrounded on all sides by falling and flaming trees, and a terrific glare which, brightened and reddened as the forky flames waved in every puff of wind; while the roar of the conflagration, the hiss of the green branches, and the crackling of the knots and fissures as the old fir trunks were torn asunder, increased, till at last we felt the frightful glow upon our faces; and the burning moss, as the spreading fire consumed it almost under our feet, raised a smoke that had already suffocated more than one of my poor comrades.

Driven from their nests in the branches above, and their lairs in the roots and brambles below, the birds and other wild tenants of the wood flitted about us, blinded by terror.

Bewildered as we were, another minute had perhaps destroyed us; for the crash of every tapering pine, as it fell prostrate across our devious path, shot a million of sparkles and burning brands in every direction. Suddenly I perceived one dark spot!

There a rivulet trickled through the moss, in a broad and swampy channel, which the flame could not pass, and thus as yet the trees that overhung it were untouched.

"This way, comrades!" I exclaimed; "follow me—quick! Let us pursue the track of the burn; on—on! we have not an instant to lose."

This saved us; but still we had many perils to encounter, and by the way lost several men, who were suffocated by the smouldering moss, and the smoke it emitted, or were mutilated by the explosion of their bandoliers, or by the falling trees; for every moment, as I have said, some tall pine sheeted with flame came thundering down across our tortuous path, hissing in the little stream, scorching our bare legs, and blinding us still more with sparks and smoke. In a few minutes we were free, though fifteen men were left behind us; and next day we found them roasted in their corslets like tortoises in their shells.

On getting clear of this frightful place, the smoke of which enveloped all the country, and rolled across the waters of the Sound, we found ourselves upon the highway, where three of our sentinels, who had been posted in front of the wood, joined us. The fourth we found lying dead, with a poniard buried in his neck, and his musket gone, together with all the silver buttons which had adorned his doublet. To the poniard was attached a slip of paper. On this one word was written—Bandolo!

"And this act of horror has been his!" I exclaimed, looking back to the yet blazing wood; "truly, Count Tilly fights with worthy weapons."

"Tush!" said Lieutenant Lumsdame, shaking from his plaid and hair the sparks that yet retained there; "I heard Tilly order poor Dunbar's heart to be torn from his gallant breast, and then to be forced between his teeth! He saw this done by the hands of Bandolo, and then he turned deliberately to pray to an old pewter Madonna that adorns the band of his steeple-crowned hat. Ah!—you don't quite know Tilly yet."

And his ruffian had escaped me but a few hours before, though I had determined to have shot him like a wild beast, if there was not time for hanging him. In imagination, I often had him within my grasp as closely as once upon a time he was; and now I had seen him, conversed with him, and been again baffled by his confidence and matchless cunning! When I thought of that, and the sixteen brave men we had lost, I clenched my hands and ground my teeth with grief and anger.

"Gentlemen and soldiers!" I exclaimed, unsheathing my sword; "like true Highlandmen, swear with me to avenge the deed of this night. By wayside or hillside, by field or by forest, in hall or in homestead, swear that, if you cannot give him up to graver justice, you will slay this man Bandolo without mercy, even as the king has commanded; for, had he a thousand lives, his crimes require them all."

The whole company unsheathed their claymores, took one step forward, and, raising their eyes to heaven with their blades raised aloft, exclaimed in Gaëlic, and with an energy excited by the hot smart of many a scorch and scar—

"By M'Farquhar's soul, and by our fathers' graves, we swear it!"

Then in the Highland fashion, when swearing thus upon the Holy Iron, they kissed the bare blades, and, thrusting the points into the turf at their feet, stood for a moment in solemn silence.

"Now, my brave hearts," said I, "fall into your ranks—take off your hammerstalls and prepare for service! Hark, I hear the clink of hoofs!"

"And the drone of the Piob Mhor," added Phadrig, pricking up his ears; "hark you, my captain—if that is not Beallach na Broige, call me a Lowland bodach."

And as he spoke, the morning wind—for it was then about the hour of three—brought towards us distinctly the notes of the bagpipe.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE PRISONERS OF THE PISTOLIERS.

The horsemen came up rapidly. We challenged, and they proved to be the baron's troop of pistoliers retiring from the front with a dozen of prisoners, whom they had taken somewhat by mistake, when falling suddenly among the cantonments of the enemy, having been misled, as their leader informed us, by the statements of a Schönburg cattle-dealer as to the locality of Tilly's outposts.

So dense was the smoke which had rolled from the burned wood across the country, that we could scarcely discern each other, and the baron's inquiries about the conflagration which had so greatly alarmed him were soon satisfied; and now, like a true man of the sword, perceiving that among the prisoners there were two ladies on horseback, I approached to discover whether they were young or old, pretty or plain, and prepared to sympathize with them. Both were clad in dark riding habits, and broad hats with gracefully drooping feathers; and both wore masks of black velvet.

"We have given the enemy's outguards an alerte," said the baron, "and, in revenge for it, some of the restless Croats will assuredly come this way. Allow me to direct that you should halt your musketeers here, until I report unto the Duke of Saxe-Wiemar the utter impracticability of attempting to make any junction with the king's troops by the way of Holstein; besides, I have just learned that he has fallen back on Flensburg, and that the whole duchy is in the possession of Tilly's troops, while those of Wallenstein are daily pouring in from Silesia."

"Then we must again seek flight by our ships."

"Such would be our wisest course; but no doubt Duke Bernard, who is brave as a lion, will endeavour to fall down into Holstein, if the sword can cut a passage for him. He will remember how Mansfeldt's Scots and Germans hewed their passage through the Spaniards at Fleura."

"And your fair prisoners—who are they?"

"Ladies of rank I believe, or," he added with one of his impudent winks, "ladies attached to the staff of one of Tilly's generals. By her voice, and her hands when ungloved, I could swear that the tallest one—she who sits in her saddle so erectly—is the most beautiful woman in Germany. 'Pon my soul I am quite enchanted, and shall become ensnared at last, like Mark Antony. As for that little one, with her nose somewhat retroussé, she is, also, enchanting."

"Where did you pick them up?" I asked, a little piqued at hearing any woman so praised—but one.

"We fell suddenly upon them near a village—shot four of the escort—scattered the rest—dismounted the officer (a dainty cavalier wearing a black velvet hat and white feather), and carried them off, with three other prisoners and ten horsemen, as you may perceive.

"Sir," said one of the ladies in a low voice, urging her horse sidelong towards me; "I beseech you to protect me from insult, if you have not forgotten that old chateau of Luneburg."

"Ernestine!" said I, as my blood rushed back upon my heart.

The Count of Carlstein had obtained the baron's castle and estate; and now the baron had unwittingly made reprisals by seizing the count's two daughters. Here was a catastrophe the end of which it was impossible to foresee.

"Ah, madame!" said I, timidly touching the hand which grasped her riding whip, "I owe you my life, and with that life I will protect you. And this is——"

"My sister Gabrielle!"

"Ah, Herr Kombeek!—I knew it was the Herr Kombeek," cried Gabrielle, almost riding me over, as she pushed her horse towards me; "ah, speak to me—I have not had one good laugh since you left us. How merry we used to be!"

"You are safe among us, ladies," said I, kissing the little hand of the childlike Gabrielle; "for we have no regiments of Croats or Merodeurs under the banner of Christian IV."

"His soldiers have indeed the reputation of being good and gentle, as they are valiant and strong," replied the haughty Ernestine; "but we are now prisoners, and at the mercy of these uncourteous pistoliers——"

"Mention my name to any one who would insult you; and believe me, madame, it will be a sufficient protection in the Danish camp."

"Oh yes!" said Gabrielle, bustling up in her saddle, "I will just say our friend is Herr Kombeek—or M'Combeek, is it?"

"The Highlanders call me M'Combich, because I am the friend of their chief; but my proper name——"

Here the baron uttered an impatient cough.

"Klosterfiord," said I; "you will protect these ladies, and see them conveyed to a place of safety."

"Undoubtedly—I have commanded a baggage guard before this."

"In both I have discovered friends——"

"What! is one the señora Prud——"

"Pshaw!" I exclaimed, placing my glove before his mouth; "treat them with every respect; to-morrow we shall have a cartel for their release. They are the daughters of the great Count of Carlstein, camp-master and colonel-general of the Imperial horse."

"Der teufel! the holder of my fief in Luneburg!"

"The same."

"By Jove! my boy, I shall take most particular care of them," replied the baron, twirling his mustaches; "they are my prisoners, and the price of ransom lies with me. This is a fortunate stroke of the goddess—that blind jade with the wheel. Ha! ha! Sir Count—thou hast my domain, with its parks and woods; my house, with its library, its wine-cellar, and other appendages—I have thy daughters. Let us see which we value most. 'Pon my soul, as things go I would rather have the women than the old house."

Knowing the baron to be somewhat of a gay man, and a roué, I felt my anger rise at his remarks; while he, probably piqued at the familiar terms on which I stood with his fair captives, said suddenly—

"You will halt here, my friend, until orders are sent to you to withdraw, and fear not for the ladies. I have had the care of all the women of an army before this——"

"Now, Karl, I must protest against this appropriation."

"Der teufel! appropriation—are they not my prisoners? ha! ha! ha! Do you want both, my unconscionable Scot! Wait till to-morrow, and we may share the spoil in fair camaraderie, but not till then. Pistoliers—forward—trot!"

The troop moved off towards Heilinghafen; I received a wave of the hand from Ernestine; Gabrielle brandished her whip, and then the whole group disappeared into the smoke which still rested on the face of the peninsula, for we occupied but a narrow headland which jutted out into the Baltic.

Any pleasure which I felt at the prospect of being able again to enjoy the society of Ernestine and her sister, and of having it perhaps in my power to return them the kindness with which they had treated me at Luneburg, was considerably clouded by the knowledge that they were the prisoners of this gay and provoking baron, whose gallantry and intrigues had gained him rather an evil reputation in our camp, and at the quiet court of Copenhagen. Besides, though both of us were captains, he was doubly my senior officer, for the Danish pistoliers ranked next to the king's regiment of guards. I knew not how he might be disposed to treat them; for the appropriation of his German property by the count, would naturally make the baron a little vindictive. One reflection consoled me; while they were Danish prisoners, I knew that Ernestine would be safe from the addresses of Count Kœningheim on one hand, and the daring stratagems of his worthy rival, Count Tilly's friend, on the other; but then they might be exposed to the insults of drunken soldiers or hostile boors, to the hardship and danger of that wandering and desultory warfare we were about to maintain among the Danish Isles; and, if I was shot or taken prisoner, they might be utterly unfriended.

My speculations had just reached this point, and I was about to become pathetic at the double prospect of my own demise and their unprotected condition, when day began to dawn; a rising wind rolled away the vapour, and, amidst the beautiful green of the landscape, we saw the scathed site of the burned wood, and the blackened trunk of many a pine, standing scorched and branchless among the mass of ashes and charcoal. In some places, a slight puff of smoke arose, to show where the embers yet were smouldering.

On that dark spot lay the bodies of sixteen of our comrades—men who yesterday morning were in the full enjoyment of life and all their faculties; but we had no time to bury them, so their poor remains were left to the wild animals, the "devouring dogs and hungry vultures," or to the polecats and weasels that lurked among the adjacent marshes.

While the morning was yet grey, the right wing of our regiment under the colonel, Sir Donald, came up with pipes playing; we joined, and together advanced towards the enemy.

"I have heard of all that has happened overnight, Captain Rollo," said the colonel; "and this day, before sundown, you shall perhaps have ample room to revenge your danger and loss. Duke Bernard has ordered us to seize the pass of Oldenburg and maintain it against Tilly until he has reimbarked his troops for Flensburg, as we have not the slightest chance of successfully reaching it by the way of Holstein. Our Scottish ships, and three others of the Danish fleet, are now close in shore at Heilinghafen."

"But can we undertake this desperate service with honour to ourselves?"

"With honour to ourselves we can undertake any thing," said Ian proudly; "and with honour to ourselves we hope to fulfil whatever we undertake. Look on the blade of my sword, Philip, and see what my ancestor, Gillespoc M'Farquhar, wrote there before he drew it against the Danes at the glorious battle of Luncarty, where we fought under King Kenneth III."

Ian held the blade, then brown with age, before my eyes, and I read upon it the noble sentiment, in the old Gaëlic letter, "Na tarruig mi gun obhair, 'sna cuir air ais mi gun onair."*

* It is curious, that many old Persian sabres are similarly inscribed.—Draw me not without cause—sheathe me not without honour.

"If ever I fall in battle, Philip, this sword is yours, but you must convey it to my father's house in Strathdee; for while they possess this sword, the Clan Farquhar will flourish, at least unto the tenth generation."

The sun rose brightly from the azure Baltic, the flowers put forth their perfume, and with our war-pipes pouring an old Highland march on the breeze—the cool fresh breeze of the autumn morning that floated over the fields—we advanced, with the fate of Duke Bernard's army in our hands (for we had to cover their retreat or perish), and entered the narrow pass of Oldenburg, four hundred strong; all stout fellows of the best clans in Scotland—resolute hearts as ever met death front to front, by flood or field.

In an hour we reached Oldenburg, a venerable town where Otho the Great founded a bishopric in the eighth century. It once had a noble harbour; but in the wars of Margaret of Denmark, whose chemise was carried on a lance against the armies of the Count of Holstein, the port and town were alike destroyed, since when it has been a poor place, and of little consideration. But it is of great antiquity; for I remember reading in an old MS. history, that on Harold Klack, King of Sleswig in 826, turning Christian, and being defeated in battle by his subjects near Flensburg, he took shelter in Oldenburg, and had himself, with his favourite wife and charger, built up in a stone wine tun, where the lady is heard to sing, the charger to neigh, and the king to wind his war-horn, until this day. We made the MS. up into ball cartridges; thus the reader may be assured, this account of Harold Klack's exit would be found in no other book extant than these memoirs.

We took possession of the pass, and proceeded at once to cut a trench across the road, to throw up a breastwork, and get under cover, on being further reinforced by the baron's pistoliers and a few Danish field culverins of brass, upon travelling carriages.