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

by James Grant

Book the Eighth

CHAPTER I.
A DISCOVERY.

A week glided away at the quiet old castle of Nyekiöbing.

Every day the old queen rode forth on a fat Danish horse, accompanied by Ernestine and other ladies; every day, at the same hour as yesterday, the guard presented arms at the gate—the officers saluted—the drum rolled—the pipe yelled, and for the remainder of that day all became quiet again. A few ships now—but very few, for war had desolated the cities of the coast—spread their white sails on the waters of the Sound, and listlessly we watched them from the lower ramparts, where moss and grass grew under the wheels of the unused cannon. I saw Ernestine frequently, but always briefly and in presence of her father; so that no opportunity was afforded to me for addressing her as my heart wished, and as vanity and hope told me she, perhaps, expected.

As our commandant, Ian was, more than I, about the queen's little court; I envied his opportunities of enjoying the society of the two charming sisters; and I frequently saw him in the garden with Gabrielle leaning on his arm; for, though grave and somewhat thoughtful, he told me that he loved her prattle, for it reminded him of Moina. When not on duty I rarely saw the venerable widow of Frederick II., and she spoke to me seldom; but on these occasions it was invariably to make some remark on her late son-in-law, the king of Scotland, James VI., or on his gallant retinue—the chancellor, old John of Montrose, and the three hundred Scottish nobles and cavaliers, who accompanied him to Upsala, when he espoused her daughter Anne, and when so merry a winter was spent by the whole Danish court.

From King Christian couriers came frequently, and it was evident that they bore evil tidings, which were industriously concealed from us.

One day the Count of Carlstein met me hurriedly; I observed that he had on his belt with his sword and poniard, as well as a stout corslet, which the Baron Fœyœ had given him.

"I am about to leave you, captain," said he.

"Leave us, count—for whence?"

"The king generously gave me liberty, and, while the great game of glory and fortune is being played so well by Wallenstein, by Tilly, and Merodé, can I remain inactive here at Falster? Another column of Christian's army has surrendered to the soldiers of the empire."

"Another!" I reiterated, thunderstruck by the intelligence; "which?"

"That which retreated first by the Limfiörd. Tilly overtook it, and forced every regiment successively to lay down its arms. The old corporal has sworn by our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, that ere Yule-day every inch of Danish earth shall be under the dominion of Ferdinand. Christian has fled with all his court—fled none know where, and Denmark is all but conquered! Kœningheim has sent word that Tilly expects to see me daily."

"Can all this be true, Baron Fœyœ?" I asked the steward incredulously, as he joined us at the castle gate.

"About as true as that the Norwegian bears speak very good Danish," he replied, twisting his yellow mustaches and looking spitefully at Carlstein.

"No doubt such tidings are very unpleasant for you, Herr Baron," replied the count, with a haughty and somewhat provoking smile; "but I beg again to assure you that all laid down their arms without firing a shot—all save the Scottish battalions of Lord Nithsdale and Sir James Sinclair of Murkle, who obtained leave to march into Sweden, and join the banner of the young and gallant Gustavus Adolphus."

"It is impossible!" said the stout baron passionately, as he stamped about in his calfskin boots; "it is impossible, and I will never believe it!"

"I had it from the best authority," said the count, still smiling; "Bandolo has been here."

"Bandolo!" I exclaimed; "I had quite forgotten that wretch."

"Well, then, he who is to Tilly what Father Joseph is to Richelieu, has been here."

"Bandolo here,—on this island of Falster?" said the baron, turning angrily to me. "Now, by the holy Dannebrog, mein Herr, your kilted sentinels must be no better than moles or blind bats!"

"A single company of soldiers cannot furnish sentinels for the whole island, Herr Baron," I replied, with some asperity; "there are here a hundred little creeks and bays where a boat may land a man unseen, and sail again. But I thought this rascal died at Heilinghafen."

"He bears a charmed life," growled Fœyœ.

"The deil is aye gude to his ain, as we say at home," said the count; "but to me this rogue appears at present a very amiable and estimable character—ha! ha!"

The passionate old baron took this merriment in deep dudgeon, and retired abruptly.

"Tilly, who knows every thing," continued the count, "on learning that I was here and at liberty, sent a small skiff across the Belt for me—yonder it is afar off, floating like a seagull. At night it will be here to take me to the isle of Fehmarn, where my honour and the emperor's service require my instant presence; for Wallenstein is about to take command of the whole army, and the most brilliant conquests are expected. Ere another year is past, the Swedish rocks and Norwegian Alps shall have echoed to the trumpets of the Empire. I will gladly avail myself of the good queen's offer to leave my daughters here; for in this cold season they could not cross the Belt in an open boat, exposed to the mist by day and dew by night. However, that they may not be dependent even on a queen, I have given Ernestine five hundred doubloons, and, in case war or disaster should reach this peaceful isle, you will protect them—will you not, sir?"

"Oh! count—to the last drop of my blood will I guard them; and, if I request it, they shall never lack protection while one brave heart survives in the regiment of Strathnaver."

"The mother of Ernestine was of Spanish Flanders; Gabrielle of France—as I have told you, but——"

"We will never forget that they are the daughters of a countryman—of a brave soldier."

"Enough, captain; in the care of Scottish cavaliers they are safe."

"Yes, count—doubt not that if poor Rollo is knocked on the head, that in Ian Dhu, the Lairds of Kildon or M'Coll, they will find steadfast friends."

"Rollo!" said he, with a start and a smile, "your Highlanders call you M'Combich, and I have never heard your officers name you otherwise than Philip; my name," he added, taking my hands in his, "is also Rollo!"

"Yours, count?"

"Yes, my ancestors were a branch of the Rollos of Duncruib, in Perthshire."

"Astonishing! we all spring from the same stock."

We shook hands, and would have made other inquiries, but there was no time.

"My nom de guerre is Rupert-with-the-Red-Plume," said the count, as we walked into the castle.

"A name that all men know of, from the shores of the Baltic to the mountains of Carinthia. We have all been so familiar with it, that we never thought of inquiring whether you had another."

"My story is a strange and a sad one; some time I may tell it to you; but not just now."

My soul rose to my lips, and I was about to divulge the secret of my heart—to tell him how I loved Ernestine, and would strive by good works and gallant deeds to make myself worthy of her; but he left me hurriedly, and the opportunity passed, like many others which never return again.

Fear of the Danish burghers in the town made us circumspect, and at midnight I saw him embark in a small dogger manned by four or five men, who immediately put to sea, and long before the morning sun shone upon the waters of the Baltic, which widen there between the Danish isles and Pomeranian shore, the little vessel, speeding before an eastern wind, had vanished at the horizon towards the isle of Fehmarn.

He was gone, and I had forgotten—so much had I been occupied with my own thoughts—to narrate to him that conversation between Tilly and Bandolo, which I had overheard in the bed-chamber of the former at Luneburg. Thus, though Carlstein was not ignorant of the spy's great ambition, to settle down in private life as a count of Hanover, he had no idea that the expected coronet was to be shared with his own daughter—with Ernestine; for, with all its presumption, the project seemed so mad and ridiculous, that it had never until that night made much impression on my mind.

CHAPTER II.
THE ARMS OF EXPECTATION.

On the day after their father's departure, I saw neither Ernestine nor Gabrielle. They were no doubt discomposed by his sudden absence; but they had been so used to see him go and come again, and generally little the worse save a slash or two, that in the evening I expected to meet them in the garden adjoining the royal residence of Nyekiöbing, the spacious donjon tower of which, with its heavy battlements and grated casements, overlooked it. I was not disappointed. From the window of my apartment I saw them walking there, and hurried to meet them.

It was a beautiful autumnal evening; the low flat shore of the island was bordered by a stripe of golden sand, encircled by the glittering waves of a dark blue sea, on which the sunburnt woods of the past summer cast a long and lingering shadow. Behind the yellow beach and its shady woods of brown, the sun like a golden targe began to sink, and as it sank, a million of sparkles seemed to shoot from its descending disc; down, slowly down it went; the wavering rays shot further upward; they played upon the clouds above, and lingered long there after the sun itself had disappeared; then a deeper blue spread over the waters of the Guldborg Sound—those waters among which (as the old queen once told us) Grön Jette—or the Green Giant—shot a beautiful mermaid, whom he had pursued round Falster for seven years and a day; the woods appeared in darker outline against the lurid sky, and their crisped leaves rustled in the rising wind, as the evening deepened.

Gabrielle was looking sadly towards the sea, as if she was pondering on the path their father was pursuing; but Ernestine had seated herself, and was embroidering on the cover of a large Roman missal, a coat of arms with gold and variously coloured thread. Poor Ernestine's ideas of Catholicism were not very well defined, and consisted more in forms than belief; for nearly all that her Spanish mother had taught her in infancy, the mother of Gabrielle—a French or Belgian Protestant—had left no means untried to obliterate; but Ernestine loved to do all that she thought would please her mother who was in heaven; she loved, as she said, to consider herself "the peculiar care of the mother of God;" she read more prayers than usual in the month of May, and decorated her little altar with the lilies of Mary; but her opinions were very vague and undecided. She and Gabrielle said their prayers every night and morning together on their knees, and before a crucifix; yet Gabrielle did not consider herself a Catholic. Ernestine seemed the most devout in the queen's train when in the Lutheran church of Nyekiöbing, yet she would have repelled with scorn the imputation of being a Protestant. They had both been taken frequently to task by Father d'Eydel, but his asceticism and his harangues rather terrified them; and, being almost entirely occupied by military duty and dreams of ambition, the count had permitted them both to please themselves. Ernestine had an intense love for Gabrielle, and her regard for Gabrielle's mother had only been second to that which she bore her own.

There was but one heart—one soul seemed to animate these two winning creatures.

"Herr Kombeek," said Gabrielle, hastening to me; "you saw our father before he left this, and can tell us his last messages?"

"The most tender love to you, and that you were both to keep light hearts till his return. But you must not call me that name now, Gabrielle. Mine is the same as your father's—the same as yours, as I have just discovered—Philip Rollo."

"Oh, that is charming!" exclaimed both the girls looking up, one with her blue eyes, and the other with her black, beaming with pleasure.

"Your father——"

"Our poor father!" said Gabrielle sadly, as the tears rose again to her eyes, and she turned towards the sea.

"He deputed me to be your guardian."

"You!" said Gabrielle, with a sunny smile of wonder in her bright blue eyes.

"You!" added Ernestine, with a flash of astonishment in her dark orbs, which were red with weeping, although she proudly endeavoured to conceal it.

"I—there is nothing so surprising in that surely, except to myself—that I should have so great an honour, so supreme a happiness.

"A rare guardian—as if we were mere children, who could not look after ourselves!" they said, laughing.

"Besides, there is that dear old queen," added Gabrielle.

"Nay, ladies, if the wild musketeers of Merodé, or Tilly's savage Walloons—if some exasperated Holsteiners or discomfited Danes, paid a visit in the dark to this castle by the sea; or if the boors revolted under some popular ruffian, as they do at times, and assailed the dowager's court, because her son the king will not make peace with an emperor, who has sworn to conquer Denmark as he has conquered Bohemia, you might find there were worse protectors than Philip Rollo and his company of kilted musketeers."

"And your tall kinsman that wears the eagle's-wing," said Gabrielle, with a faint blush.

"I thank you for remembering me, though he in his vanity forgot me," said Ian laughing, as he stepped forward and saluted the ladies, while Phadrig Mhor, his tall henchman, remained a few paces behind; "but harkee, Philip, here hath Phadrig Mhor just learned from a fisherman, that the king is concentrating forces in Laaland to attack Pehmarn."

Ernestine gazed at him anxiously.

"He will certainly recall us. Our swords will rust and our tartans become moth-eaten in this mouldy old castle. Dioul! was it to guard an old woman that we came to Denmark?"

"Are you not very happy here, Herr Major?" asked Gabrielle timidly.

"Doubtless he is, madam," said Phadrig, who had picked up a little German in these wars; "but while we stay here, I will continue a sergeant. Dugald Mhor Mhic Alaster, Gillian M'Bane, and Dunachadh Mhor of Kilmalie, will all be mere musketeers; while our Scots lads in Sweden and Germanie are all becoming colonels of foot and rittniasters of horse. Huich!" he added, cutting a Highland caper, at which the girls laughed excessively; "Clanna nan Gaël an' guillan a chiele!"

"Right, Phadrig!" said Ian, with sparkling eyes, as he caught our sergeant's enthusiasm; "here's to our Highlandmen, shoulder to shoulder!" he added, drinking a handful of pure water which bubbled into a stone basin near him.

"I am weary of this place already—my sorrows be on it!" grumbled Phadrig.

"Discontented rogue!" said I; "thou wilt never be pleased, I fear. Have we not the best of Danish beef, of Rostock beer and German wine, with easy duty and dry quarters to boot?"

"Phadrig is a true Highlander," said Ian, giving his foster-brother a slap on the shoulder; "he snuffs the distant strife like the erne or gled. A true Highlander, M'Farquhar, thy sword is as ready for a foe, as thy purse for a friend. But away to our company, and in case the king summons us, look well to the hammer-stalls and collars of bandoliers; for orders may come to embark in an hour; and, if we unfurl our colours, Count Tilly must keep sure watch at Fehmarn." Phadrig retired, flinging up his bonnet as he went.

"It is to Fehmarn our father has gone," said Gabrielle, in a tremulous voice; "surely—I hope you will not go there."

"We must go where the king commands us; but fear not, lady, for your father, the count. He bears a charmed life; I could almost vow be was gefrorn, as the Germans and Walloons call it—bullet proof. But, come—I have brought some bread for you to feed the golden fish in yon old mossy basin," continued Ian, offering his hand to Gabrielle to lead her away; for he knew well that I wished to be alone with her sister, and a few days residence at Nyekiöbing had made a wonderful change in his sentiments regarding these two girls. I saw the colour mount to the fair brow of Gabrielle, and a smile of pleasure play on her rosy mouth as Ian led her away.

In the garden there was a pond or large basin, built of stone, and sunk in a thick carpet of rich moss and grass, surrounded by Gueldre rose-bushes; water filled it to the brim, and therein a few gold fish shot to and fro, and now and then a stray frog croaked or swam among the leaves that floated on its surface.

In this garden the great beeches and tall solemn poplars stood in rows, with black branches old and gnarled. Like the castle itself, the aspect of the garden was dreary and antique, for the hand of Time had passed over every thing; but when I sat beside Ernestine, all seemed to grow beautiful and bright; the scentless roses gave forth perfume; leaves covered the trees; the still stagnant bosom of the pond became limpid and sparkling, while the old castle walls shone redly and joyously, though the last flush of the west was dying upon their broad fagacle.

As Ian and Gabrielle retired, I drew nearer Ernestine, and for a moment saw the blood suffuse her face and white neck as she stooped over her needle, and my thoughts were beginning to be very much perplexed, when a fortunate incident gave a sudden—I may say glorious—turn to the conversation.

"What a very remarkable coat of arms!" said I.

"They are my arms of expectation," said she, looking up with a waggish smile.

"Your arms of—pardon me—but I do not understand."

"You know that I am half a Spaniard."

"And half a Scot," I added, placing a hand timidly upon her left shoulder.

"Well—it is the fashion in my mother's country to divide their shield per pale, thus—placing their paternal arms on the sinister side."

"On my honour, Ernestine, you are quite a little herald!"

"And leaving the dexter blank for those of——"

"Who—what?"

"Their future husband—whoever Heaven shall send; and these we call our 'arms of expectation.'"

Encouraged by her merry laugh, with a beating heart I took up a pencil which lay in her work-case, and traced upon the dexter side my own arms, three cinque foils within a border.

"Whose arms are these?" she asked, looking up with a timid expression in her eyes.

"The Rollos—they are mine! Oh, Ernestine!—do not be offended; but you are so proud, that I am positively quite afraid of you. My fathers have carried these emblems on their shields in many a battle—and by the side of Scotland's kings."

"Ah! good heavens!—what do I see—they are the same as ours! argent, three cinque foils or, is it? My father has them engraved on every thing at Vienna, from his banner to his saddle-bags."

"This is very remarkable; we may be related."

"Who can say that we are not?" continued Ernestine with a charming smile, while every moment her colour deepened; "my father bears an assumed name, and even we scarcely know him by any other than Rupert-with-the-Red-plume. His is a strange story! He quarrelled with his elder brother, the lord of his family, who concluded that he was born to misfortune because his mouth was not adapted to the capacity of a certain gigantic spoon, or heirloom, which, however, I do not understand; but to ask questions about it is sufficient to kindle his anger. He served in a Scottish ship of war as captain of arquebusses, and fought against the Spaniards and Portuguese. He was wrecked; and, after many and strange vicissitudes, found his way into the Imperial army, and, belying the old tradition of his house, won himself a coronet, and a fame that will die only with the history of Austria. His own name, written in a character which I do not understand, is traced here on a blank leaf of this old family missal."

I had listened to her as one transfixed by her words, and now, trembling with eagerness, I turned to the leaf of the Latin missal (a thick little volume, printed on vellum by Thomas Davidsone, "Printer to the King's Majestie of Scotland,") and read a single line in the old Gaëlic letter, which will make two when translated;—

"Helen, daughter of Iain MacAonghais, to her son Philip, on his tenth birthday, at the Tower of Craigrollo."

"This is the writing of my grandmother, the daughter of John, the son of Angus of Strathdee! She had been reared by her aunt, who was a nun in a Lowland convent, and, after the storm of the Reformation, had retired to her father's house, where she dwelt in the strictest seclusion, and practising every austerity and rule of her order, had reached a wondrous age, and, outliving all her contemporaries, died only a short time before my embarkation for Denmark. The Count of Carlstein is my long missing uncle, Philip—Oh, Ernestine, I am your cousin!"

I exclaimed all this with one breath; threw an arm around her, and kissed her forehead. A sudden light—a gleam of pleasure and astonishment—flashed in the eyes of Ernestine.

"My cousin!—you—are we cousins? Oh, it is impossible!"

"You are my dear cousin. Oh, Ernestine! my sweet little heart, how I shall love you!"

"Good Heaven—how strange! In one day I lose my father and find a kinsman!"

"Now, have I not a right to be your guardian—and Ian, too! And Gabrielle—oh, I must kiss that little fairy! Ian—Ian! Hallo!" I exclaimed, throwing my bonnet into the air; "M'Farquhar—come hither—we are all cousins!"

"It is a miracle!" said Ernestine.

"Believe me, dear Ernestine," said I, tenderly; "love works more miracles than all the saints in your Roman calendar."

CHAPTER III.
THE ROSE LEAVES.

This discovery was of great importance to me. It gave me a decided interest in the eyes of Ernestine; it afforded me, also, a decided right to be her guardian; and I felt that, with confidence, I could now state my hopes to the count—and to herself—for I was her kinsman, and, save Ian and her father, the only one she possessed in Germany or Denmark.

The long explanatory conversations Ian and I had with Ernestine and Gabrielle, afforded us the best opportunity for the most charming intimacy; and I was frequently amused when Ian, with true Celtic enthusiasm and pride, and moreover with very perplexing accuracy, traced for them their pedigree on his fingers; shewing how they were descended from Aonghais Dhu of the Clan Ivor, an irritable individual who was slain in a cearnach with the Clan Laiwe; leaving by a daughter of the Clan Chai, a son, Alaster Mhor Mhic Aonghais, who, with his six brothers, closed a turbulent life at the battle of Druim-na'-Coub; leaving a son, Duncan Mhic Alaster Mhor, Mhic Aongbais, by his wife, a daughter of M'Gillichattan Mhor, who had carried a foray once to the Clachnacuddan of Inverness, where he departed this life, in the good old Highland fashion, with a yard of cold iron in his body; and so on would Ian run for twenty generations, the patronymics increasing with each, until, among the barbarous names and guttural sobriquets, the sisters became lost in surprise. Like every Highlander, Ian carried about in his own memory the pedigree his ancestry up to the times of King Donald VI., and further back perhaps; and, if Ian's memory failed him, the memory—or perhaps invention—of his sergeant and foster-brother, never did; and so they would sit and trace back their progenitors until they became lost in the dark ages of Highland antiquity.

Ernestine heard all this mighty muster-roll with quiet astonishment, but Gabrielle with evident pleasure. She liked the society of Ian, in whom she discovered some resemblance to her father; and admired his blunt decisive manner, and that gallant and authoritative air which declared him the Celtic chief of a long descended line of free and roving warriors.

A few evenings after the discovery so fortunately made by means of that blessed old missal, we were seated near the same place, and Ernestine was feeding the golden fish with crumbs from her white hands, while Ian, Gabrielle, and the old Baron Fœyœ, were promenading on a terrace, where four brass cannon faced the Guldborg Sound. Again the sun was setting; its orb, glowing through the softening haze which floated over the woodlands of the isle, seemed to rest at the horizon; and again its fiery rays played on the glistening leaves of the tall poplars, that overtopped the old garden wall.

I was conversing with Ernestine, and thinking, as I hung over her, that I had never seen a more winning face, or graceful contour of head and neck; there was something antique and Roman in their beauty which made her seem divine, when viewed through that bright medium by which a lover sees every thing that appertains to his mistress. Since the discovery of our relationship our intimacy had greatly increased, and I had prevailed on her to accept from me a number of those pretty trifles which the taste and attention of men have invented to please and flatter women. My means for procuring these at the small Danish town of Nyekiöbing were very limited, and on the day in question I had just invested my last rixdollars* on the purchase of a ring, which, after some hesitation, she accepted.

* A rixdollar was worth about forty shillings Scots.

"It is very beautiful!" said she, smiling, as she placed it on a tiny finger of her dimpled hand; "and I will take it from you—as my cousin."

"Will you not receive it from me, dear Ernestine, as one who would fain be something more?"

"It is charming," she added, wholly occupied with her new ring) "and the manner in which you bestow a gift trebles its value. How I do wish, cousin Philip, that we had discovered our relationship before my father left us for the isle of Fehmarn!"

"I wish we had, dear Ernestine; for much anxiety would then have been spared me. Ere this, I would have known—my—my fate, perhaps."

"Philip—fate!"

"Ernestine, listen to me. You do not love the Count of Kœningheim—he whom your father has chosen?"

"Oh, no! poor Kœningheim. Though merry and lively at times, he is subject to the most frightful fits of sorrow and depression, as if some terrible and untellable secret preyed upon his soul. Besides, with all his assumed air of gallantry, he has in reality an aversion to women."

"An aversion!"

"At times unconquerable, when his dark hour, as he calls it, is upon him. Would you have thought this?"

"Never; and scarcely would I have believed it from other lips than yours."

"Love Kœningheim!" she continued; "oh, no!—I can love no one but my father and little Gabrielle—and you, for you have been so kind to her and to me."

"Thank you, Ernestine; my heart would have burst if you had omitted me in that small circle. Ah! if you knew—if you only knew——"

"What!" said she, timidly glancing at me.

"How fondly I love you, dear Ernestine! There, now, it is said—my secret is out. Will you pardon it—can you love me in return?"

After many a long and painful pause, which pen and paper cannot shew, the secret had burst from me; but Ernestine, who, with all her artlessness, expected some such avowal, made no reply, and continued to pluck the leaves of a Gueldre rose.

"You know not—you never can know, how deep this passion is, how long it has endured—since first we met at Luneburg, Ernestine!"

Leaf by leaf she still plucked on.

"Ernestine, dearest—do you hear me? that I love you. Oh! you know not how fondly—how well!"

The leaves still floated away on the wind.

I felt that the citadel was about to capitulate; that she trembled, for my hands had ventured to touch, and then encircle her waist. My whole heart seemed to vibrate.

"Ernestine—my own Ernestine!"

The last leaf fell to the ground.

She was pale as death, and her very eyelids were trembling; for in her breast love struggled with her provoking pride, but the plump little god soon bore all before him bravely.

I pressed my lips to her cheek, and felt assured that she—this proud and beautiful girl—was indeed mine, and that she loved me.

Between the high and the closely-clipped hedges of the old garden, we heard footsteps, as Ian and Gabrielle returned to us. I had quite forgot them, and so had Ernestine; but now she started away in confusion.

"I am going," said she; "I must go."

"And shall I not see you again to-night?"

"No; but a-good-night, dear Philip, and pleasant dreams to you," she added, in the old German fashion.

"Dear Ernestine, good-night then, and a thousand blessings attend you; for you have taken a load of my heart, and made me indeed most happy!"

We separated, and, anxious to avoid the intruders, and to muse alone for a time, I sprang over the terrace, where the brass culverins peered through the faded honeysuckle, and from thence I descended to the calm still shore of the Guldborg Sound.

CHAPTER IV.
WINTER QUARTERS—THE SECRET OF GABRIELLE.

Time rolled away; we did not, as Ian expected, go to Fehmarn. Winter stole on, and one day of snow was succeeded by another. The queen and court rode out in sledges, or on horses shod with jagged shoes; our soldiers vegetated like the weeds on the ramparts. The old queen told us endless stories of James VI. and of her daughter's marriage, and went regularly every Sunday to the church of Nyekiöbing, where worship was celebrated after the Lutheran fashion. There was a fine organ. After service, the preacher was wont to come out of the pulpit and enter the choir, where he muttered a prayer, after the fashion of a low mass, which used to make Lieutenant Lumsdaine, who was a stanch Presbyterian, twirl his mustaches, and own (though he thought the organ infinitely preferable to the bagpipe then used in his parish kirk of Invergellie) that Lutheranism, as practised in Denmark, was another name for Catholicism. After service, the queen usually rode back in state, seated upon a pillion behind the Baron Fœyœ.

In the evenings we had a little ball, and danced to the flute and tabor, or, at times, to the great war-pipe of Torquil Gorm, which shook the dust from the rafters of the hall. At times, the old queen told us legends of the Trolds, or of the imps that haunted the ancient church of Nyekiöbing.

Like every old building in the Danish isles, it had a nis (or brownie) attached to it. This spirit kept the seats clean and swept the aisles, arranged the cushions and dusted the pulpit. He was seldom seen at these duties, but was known to wear a green dress and conical red hat, which on the feast of St. Michael he regularly exchanged for a broad Spanish beaver, which overshadowed the whole of his squat figure. He was called the kirckegrim, and for his use a basin of groute was deposited every night in the vestry, by the wife of the beadle. Once this was omitted, and the spirit, in revenge, turned all her holiday garments into clouted rags. King Waldemar, the wild huntsman, was another source of many a legend, to which all the old queen's listeners gave implicit faith.

"Every night he rides across Laaland at this season," the queen would say, "and sweeps over the Möens-klint."

"I, myself, have heard him approaching," the Baron Fœyœ would add in corroboration; "once on St. John's night, when crossing the rocky ridges of the Möens-klint, I heard on the midnight wind a shouting and winding of horns, the barking of dogs, and the rushing sound of a mighty wind, coming up as from the waters of the Grön-sünd."

"And you knew the approach of Waldemar," said the old queen, all attention, as we drew our chairs closer round the glowing hearth—"of the wild huntsman?"

"My heart seemed frozen within me, and when the spirit passed before me, as the book of Job saith, 'the hair of my flesh stood up.' A storm of wind swept over the dark ridges of the Möens-klint, there was a gleam of lightning, and in the passing flash I saw the coal-black hounds of Waldemar, with long red tongues hanging out of their foam-covered mouths, as they ran snuffing and questing among the grass."

"And what aspect had Waldemar?" asked twenty voices in whispers.

"The aspect of a gigantic shadow, brandishing a hunting-sword; and his horse was but a shadow, for the stars shone through them both as they swept into the hollow, and I heard the clatter of farm-gates, the crackle of roofs, and the crash of chimneys, as the infernal train sped over Klintholun and vanished in the distance."

Told by the winter fire, while the night wind rumbled hollowly in the vast tunnelled chimney of the old castle hall, some of these wild legends were more impressive than any relation of mine can make them.

My company lay in winter quarters at the fort of Nyekiöbing for four months, during a most severe winter, in which (after having had the extremity of summer heat) we had to endure the extremity of cold. Over our cuirasses we wore doublets of fur or sheepskin, and my soldiers of course retained their tartan kilts, to the astonishment of the Danes, who were ignorant of the actual warmth and comfort of the Scottish garb; for one accustomed to it, feels less cold in his knees than other men do in their faces. The Guhlborg Sound was frozen over; even the Baltic was clothed with ice, which stood, as it seemed, in silent waves, and covered by long accumulated snow. All the adjacent isles, Möen, Nyord, and Bogöe, were covered with the same white mantle, and we travelled between them on sledges; but the cold was so much more severe than even the most hardy of our men were accustomed to, that I am sure they spent nearly all their pay in potent corn brandy.

All the courtiers were muffled to their noses in Russian sables; for though in summer they rather loved the French fashions, they were compelled in winter to resume the well-furred and more picturesque costume of the Danish isles.

Unmarked by any event, save the half-pagan festivities at Yule-tide, the four months glided pleasantly and joyously away; for a day never passed without some hours of it being spent in the society of Ernestine, and the more I knew of her, the more did I love her, for in her manner there was so much that was winning and charming. There was a piquant raciness and vivacity in her mode of expression that were very attractive, though her occasional bursts of pride and temper were a little perplexing; but the graces of mind I discovered in Ernestine, gave me cause to rejoice in the hour that I first became known to her. When I looked back to that moonlight night by the northern shore of the Elbe, where first I met the count near the gates of Glückstadt, conducting to him the little spy Prudentia, and where I received from him the gold chain to which so singular an interest attached, as having been the communion cup of Knox and Calvin, it seemed remarkable that now I should be so intimate with his daughters—the received lover of one—the acknowledged relation of both.

One can "make love" more readily, I think, in a foreign language than in ours. Every other tongue, even the Lowland Scottish, the Gaëlic and the Irish, teem with expressions of tenderness which the English language does not possess. Consequently the phrase, "How much I love you," could easily be said in German to Ernestine, or, in the language of her Spanish mother; it did not sound nearly so tremendous as in plain English.

Gabrielle was the only alloy to our happiness: she pined, became low-spirited, and longed incessantly to return to Vienna or to Luneburg—to see her father—to leave at least Nyekiöbing; and as the winter wore away, and spring drew near, this morbid melancholy increased. We thought the dreary view of the snow-clad isles and frozen sea, the leafless woods and black pine forests, rendered her spirits low and dulled her old vivacity; or that perhaps it was the grim castle, which certes was dreary enough, for it had served many generations of the house of Oldenburg—generations who had passed away like the casual inmates of an hostel, without their names being remembered in the place of their abode. The winter winds sighed through the doors, and waved the heavy tapestries, which depicted the loves of King Waldemar and Torve Lille, the little lady of the enchanted ring; while the melancholy cries of the horned owl were heard incessantly from the turrets of the weatherbeaten keep.

"I am not surprised that Gabrielle finds this old castle dull," said I one day to Ernestine; "but, for your presence here, I should have found it dreary enough too."

I observed that, whenever I spoke of Gabrielle's melancholy, the cheek of Ernestine reddened, and she changed the subject with an abruptness that evinced there was some secret in it; but what that secret was I could not divine.

Yule-tide passed; on Christmas-eve the queen ordered all the gates and doors to be thrown open, that there might remain nothing to obstruct the stormy career of the wild huntsman, if he came that way—but Waldemar never came.

The months of snow glided on, and the spring of 1628 approached; but in that solitary Danish isle we heard little of the war which the valiant and unfortunate king was fruitlessly maintaining by outfalls, boat excursions, sudden landings on the coast of Holstein and Juteland, and as sudden embarkations; always with severe loss to the small but brave force of Scottish and French infantry, which yet adhered to his desperate fortunes.

Vegetating at Nyekiöbing, we almost forgot that we were soldiers. Ian was so impatient to be gone, that he frequently vowed he would make an offer of his sword to Gustavus Adolphus, whose army was almost entirely led by Scottish officers, whom peace with England had compelled to court the smiles of fortune in a foreign camp, where many of them had risen to the rank of nobles; such as Spence of that Ilk, who became Count of Orcholm; Douglas of Whittinghame, who became Count of Schonengen; while the Laird of Dalserf and many others rose to be barons of Sweden and Finland.

The charming society of Ernestine had somewhat tempered in me, perhaps, that restless craving for glory and adventure which animates a true soldier of fortune. Thus I was perfectly content, and the winter months were passed in quiet happiness; for she had promised to unite her fortunes with mine when the war ceased, and her father's consent was obtained. When the war ceased! That, indeed, would have tried the patience of honest Job, for the great Thirty Years' war was only then in its infancy.

The poor old queen-dowager was so kind and good, so affable and motherly, and bore her diminished fortune with such philosophical equanimity of temper, that it was impossible not to love and respect her; but she prosed sometimes, and inflicted upon us interminable stories of Holger Danske, King Waldemar, and Lille Torve, and repeated the profound sayings of that pedantic blockhead, her son-in-law, the King of Scotland.*

* The pen has been drawn through this in the original. In 1694, Lord Molesworth gave an account of Denmark similar to that which follows. It proved so offensive to the Danes, that their king demanded, by his ambassador, the author's head, from King William of Orange.

During my residence at Nyekiöbing, I discovered why King Christian, the patron of poetry and the drama, employed so many Scots, Irish, German, and French soldiers of fortune to fight his battles; for, unlike the Holsteiners, the majority of his subjects had really lost much of their ancient bravery, and, being somewhat addicted to cheating, were, as usual with the false, full of mistrust of others. In short, they loved not to wage war, while they could get so many gallant Scots and Irishmen to wage it for them; but, oppressed by its consequences, poverty and poor fare were every where apparent. The slavish boors fed on roots, rye-bread, and salted fish; the burghers or citizens on lean flesh, stock-fish, bacon, and bad cheese. When the land is sold, the men, their wives and children who inhabit it, go with the freehold, like the trees and walls thereon. Their songs bore a strong resemblance to the old ballads sung by our Border harpers; and I have no doubt that many of those ancient lays which the Goths brought out of the East, and which Tacitus mentions in his account of the Germans, might be traced among our Scottish hills, where the wandering bards of other times have brought them from Denmark.

I found them great vaunters, too, those Danes. It was their frequent boast that they were the conquerors of England, and this is graven on the tombs of many of their kings. Thus at Roskilde, on the graves of Harold VII., of Sueno III., and others, they are always designated Rex Daciæ, Angliæ et Norvegiæ. Being Scots, we could not quarrel with these assumptions, as they did not concern us; the Baron Fœyœ in particular, when the schnaps or corn brandy were more potent than usual, was a vehement upholder of the ancient Danish glory, of which Ian was always somewhat sceptical.

"I assure you it is a fact, Herr Rollo," the baron would say, counting on his fingers; "we have defeated the Swedes in twenty-two pitched battles, and made them swear allegiance to four-and-twenty of our kings. We have overthrown the Norsemen in thirty-two battles. Russia has paid tribute to eight of our monarchs; we have conquered Ireland eight, and England ten times. Canute IV. conquered Livonia, and Helgo won Saxony by his sword; while Courland, Esthonia, and Prussia, have all, at various times, belonged to the Danish crown."

"Thank God, and the stout hearts of our fathers, these conquering Danes never found aught but their graves on Scottish ground!" Ian would retort with a grim look; "and you may see them yet, Herr Baron, on the battle-fields of Crail, Cru-dane, and Luncarty; but I marvel much that the descendants of these enterprising rovers, are unable to hold yonder poor peninsula of Juteland against the soldiers of Wallenstein, Tilly, and Merodé."

From our dreamy mode of passing the time, we were roused to our active military labours by the opening spring; and, from leading the quiet life of a very Dutchman, I was soon to become immersed in a succession of the most stirring incidents.

The season was that which at home in Britain we call spring; but in those northern isles of Denmark the snow lay thick upon the land, and with its dreary sheets the white field-ice covered all the Baltic and the Guldborg Sound; for that infallible authority who exists every where, the oldest inhabitant of Nyekiöbing, could not remember a season so cold or so severe. From my windows, which overlooked the Sound on one side, and the castle garden on the other, the view was intensely desolate and dreary.

The fortress was very old, and my chamber was hung with faded tapestry, representing the martyrdom of Erik Plogpenning, and his ghastly body gashed with fifty-six wounds; my bed was an immense antique four-poster of the most alarming dimensions, old perhaps as the days of Holger Danske, and completely shrouded by curtains of sombre blue velvet. A tall wardrobe and cabinet of walnut wood, a table and two chairs of oak, all curiously and somewhat barbarously carved, made up the furniture; while the stone fireplace was so capacious, that within it I could stand upright with my bonnet on. And so thick were the walls, that even at noonday, but a dim light straggled through the strongly barred and deeply embayed windows.

A mound—doubtless the barrow in which reposed the bones of some bold Cimbric warrior—lay under the castle wall. Therein as the Baron Fœyœ told me, dwelt a vast number of little Trolds, all clad in green dresses, with heavy ungainly persons, long noses, crooked backs, and red caps. He averred having seen them at a festival on St John's night; when the mound opened, its womb seemed full of light, and there, around a dead man's skeleton, were the little Trolds seen dancing, drinking fairy wine out of limpet shells, and keeping in thrall the wife of Heinrich Vüg (the Royal gateward), whom they had spirited away, and who had not the power to return to her spouse; though he frequently heard her wailing, when, in the calm summer evenings, he sat on the summit of the mound, smoking his long pipe, and reflecting that, all things considered, his bereavement was not so hard that it could not be borne patiently.

One evening in March, when the snow lay deep around the castle, and, except the woods of leafless beech, or here and there a clump of dark green pine, every thing was mantled over with it; I sat at one of my windows, which I had opened to see more clearly the prospect of the Sound, where many a ship lay frozen in, with her high poop and snow-mantled yards casting a long shadow on the expanse of ice.

I was buried in reverie; my mind was endeavouring to pierce the clouds that rested on the future; for though the progress of my love affair was indeed most fortunate, the chances of a happy conclusion were, as yet, distant and vague; and, of all things in this world, there is nothing I dislike more than suspense.

The sun was setting, and its cold yellow lustre fell upon a stone terrace immediately below my window; there, in a sheltered place, and well muffled up in dresses of warm red cloth, trimmed with ample furs of Muscovite sable, Ernestine sat with Gabrielle, conversing in low and earnest tones. They had been there for a considerable time, before a sudden exclamation of the first made me aware of their vicinity. I had not the least intention of listening, for I had too keen a sense of honour to do so, though we have known it to be the favourite resort of romancers and players, to make even their best bred cavaliers acquainted with what it was never intended they should know; but a burst of surprise and anguish from Ernestine, and its tenor, chained me to the spot, and, think of it what you will, I was compelled to remain and listen.

"Gabrielle! oh, Gabrielle! what is this you tell me? I will leave this place at all risks—we must—we shall! Nay, nay! talk not of danger or of difficulty; for we will launch a boat and put forth together, rather than expose you to this humiliating—this miserable infatuation!"

"Oh, spare me, dear sister!" urged the plaintive voice of Gabrielle.

"I do not reproach you, Gabrielle!" said Ernestine, affectionately drawing her sister's drooping head upon her breast, and embracing it with her arm.

"Ernestine, is it a sin to love?"

"Not as your spotless heart loves!" replied the elder sister, kissing her; while a bright smile of affection sparkled in her mild dark eyes.

"It must be—else whence this sense of mingled shame and mortification?"

"We shall leave this ill-omened island, Gabrielle. We must depart for Vienna—I have still money enough; but oh, what a distance to travel alone! Surely, we shall find some safe conductor, at least, to the opposite shore, where the Imperialists have garrisoned every town. At all risks, my poor little dove, I will free you from this danger; so dry your tears, Gabrielle, and weep no more."

But Gabrielle's tears fell faster.

"Oh, Ernestine! I should die of shame if I thought that any one save you had heard this avowal—this humiliating avowal—or knew my terrible secret!"

"That you love a heedless cavalier—ha, ha, Gabrielle!"

"Do not laugh. I would to Heaven, Ernestine, that I had never met this man—that we had remained at Luneburg, as our dear father wished. And his Moina—how he loves her! He often praises her to me, and without perceiving that every word is like a death stab. Happy Moina!"

Moina! I was thunderstruck. The gentle, the pining Gabrielle loved Ian Dhu, whose chivalric heart was faithfully devoted to another. This was the source of that secret sadness which had so much astonished and alarmed us. Innocent and guileless, her heart had guarded in its pure recesses this deep love, which sprang from a gratitude to her father's brave preserver. Sincerely I pitied Gabrielle, for I knew that her love was hopeless; and a thousand little expressions of eye, changes of voice and manner, which, in my pre-occupation with Ernestine, had passed unobserved at the time, now flashed upon my memory. Dear Gabrielle! I loved her like a younger sister, and felt alike hostile and indignant at this unknown Moina, who had rendered Ian so invulnerable to her many attractions.

"Ian will go home to his own mountains—those blue mountains he talks so much of; and he will marry—yes, Ernestine," continued Gabrielle, "he will marry this Moina. He cannot love me. Oh! I fear he would rather despise me if he knew how much I loved him."

"Despise!—you, the Count of Carlstein's daughter!" said her sister, whose eyes kindled.

"He saved our dear father's life," said Gabrielle, with a sad smile; "'twas that which first opened my heart unto him. He will marry that woman—and never have one thought for me, who love him so well; my memory will pass away like the last year's leaves. I hope she is good and beautiful—for he deserves a bride who is both. Yes—yes, dear Ernestine—let us leave this place; for I long for another still more solitary, where, unseen, I may give myself up to grief, and die."

"I have met men at Vienna who did not believe that a woman could love, my poor little lamb, Gabrielle!"

"Not love? How little they knew us! And who were they?"

"Wallenstein, the Duke of Friedland, was one—the Count Merodé another."

"Merodé—ah, frightful!" said Gabrielle with a shudder. "What could he know of love?"

"It was once said that he loved you, and that your rejection drove him to those excesses which have made him and his regiment a European proverb."

"He—the wretched libertine—who is said to have three wives shut up at his castle in the Black Forest of Thuringia! He—a horror to his own kinsman as to his enemies! How could you speak of him, Ernestine? oh, how unlike him whose image, as if by fascination, fills up my whole mind. Sister, I admire, not alone his handsome figure or fine military eye; but his bold and manly spirit, his free and gallant bearing. When we return to Vienna, I will go to a convent, sister; I think I have the vocation of which you once used to speak. It has left you, and come to me. My heart swells with pride when I see him, Ernestine. How his tall eagle's-plume overtops all others here! (I am sure I have got the vocation, sister.) He jests and laughs so kindly, and I jest in return, to hide the deadly secret that preys upon my spirit; for until she is beloved a woman cannot love. Oh, Ernestine—Ernestine! do not think me mad or immodest; but kiss me, dear sister, for I assure you I am neither; I am still your dear little sister—the same Gabrielle. How happy you must be to have some one who loves you! There are times when jestingly he kisses my hand because we are cousins; and, as his kinswoman, in his brave heart he loves me like a little sister. But, oh! he knows not the swell of passion excited by his voice, by his approach, by his touch, and how the kiss he prints in play upon my hand sinks into my inmost heart, and makes it tremulous with joy. But he passes away to others, and then the darkness, the gloom, and desolation again sink over me."

"It is an infatuation!"

"Kiss me, Ernestine—for you have been a mother to me since my poor mother died. Kiss me, dear sister, for I am indeed very miserable!"

It seemed as if the lofty spirit of Ernestine was stung by the strange avowal of poor Gabrielle, and she wept with her; but her tears were those of pride and mortification.

Lovers never dream that others can discern their passion; and thin though the disguise may be that usually veils it, so admirably had Gabrielle concealed her secret thoughts, that none could have suspected them, and honest Ian least of all.

Time rolled on, and the month of March was passing away.

Daily I could perceive how the secret I had heard was preying upon the mind of Gabrielle, and blanching her thin, wan cheek. She lived without hope—without a future to look forward to; and when Ian spoke with joy of his return home at the close of the war (now soon expected by a treaty of which a whisper reached us), I saw that his thoughtless words sunk like iron into the poor girl's soul.

She gradually subsided into a calm but profound state of melancholy, and begged to be removed from Nyekiöbing, that she might enter a German convent; but the sea around us was yet closed by the frozen waves of the field-ice. Ernestine and I could alone see into the depths of her heart; and even Ernestine knew not that I had overheard their secret.

As for Ian Dhu, I thought he was blind not to perceive, when he approached Gabrielle, how her blue eyes sparkled, how her fair cheek flushed, and then waxed deadly pale, while her voice trembled when she answered him; but about the middle of the month a courier came from the king requiring his presence at Assens, and he left us by the port of Skielbye, where the ice had partly left an open passage between the floes.

Ernestine was pleased to see him depart; but after that event the mild eyes of Gabrielle became more sad, and her cheek more blanched. Deep thoughts preyed like deathly weariness or an incurable sorrow upon her soul. It was the "worm in the bud."

Poor Gabrielle!—like a young flower deprived of sunshine and air, was withering away; and I feared the unhappy girl would die—though people never die of love.

But a crisis was at hand.

CHAPTER V.
THE DOGGER.

By the end of March a great and unexpected change came over the weather. The wind, which had long blown from the chill north, now came softly and mildly from the west, but still the atmosphere was cold; for though the vast field-ice floated away from, the Guldborg sound, and the dark blue water rolled freely between the isles, their shores were covered with a pure white mantle of deep and dazzling snow.

Hearing that an expedition led by Christian IV. was about to be made against the Imperialists, and that a king's ship had been seen off the coast, I rode one day beyond Skielbye towards the mouth of the Sound, to see her, as I looked anxiously for the return of Ian.

On leaving Ernestine, I thought she seemed more sad than usual, and that her voice trembled when I bade her adieu. This might all have been fancy; but I could not expel such fancies from my head, and again and again they recurred to me, as I spurred a stout Holstein troop-horse (which Baron Fœyœ had lent me) along the frozen beach.

I waited long at a small house near the seashore, watching a little dogger beating with her two sails to seaward against a head wind, and threading a devious passage between the fragments of ice that flecked the sea with white; and in the evening I had the satisfaction of seeing a large king's ship, with her white sails shining in the setting sun, and her decks evidently crowded by soldiers, standing up the bosom of the narrow Sound.

I remounted my trooper, which I received from a cottager, who was remarkably polite for a Danish boor, and who informed me that he was half a Scot, as his father had come over with Captain Michael Wemyss' Scottish band in the preceding century, to serve in the old Swedish war. But the peasants were frequently very insolent to us, as foreign soldiers; on many occasions our men had been maltreated, and in two instances our officers had been murdered. For these pranks we usually made the people pay dearly, by sending the slain man's nearest kinsmen under a sergeant to the immediate locality, where, if they failed to find and shoot the perpetrators, they burned the houses, and houghed the cattle by a gash of the skene-dhu, in the old Highland fashion.

On this evening I was involved in one of those quarrels, when returning through a village at the entrance of which the bailiff of Laaland had established a toll, for some reason best known to his worship. In consequence of the dilapidated condition of King Christian's exchequer, we had been without pay for three months; thus I was without a coin to satisfy the gate ward, who peremptorily demanded a Danish fourpenny piece (twelve of which make a rixdollar), and deliberately barred my progress with a halbert.

In vain did I tell this churlish boor that I was travelling on the king's service (which by the by was not quite the case), others sallied out from the adjacent houses variously armed; and it was evident that, unless I chose to share the fate of poor Ensign Ludovick Lamond, who had lately been cut to pieces by the boors at Rodbye, there was no time to be lost. Drawing my claymore, and putting spurs to my horse, I hewed the fellow's halbert in two by one blow, hurled him to the earth, and passed the toll-gate, narrowly escaping the discharge of five or six pistolettes which were fired at that moment from behind an evergreen hedge; the leaves of which were scattered about me by the bullets.

Intent on avenging this outrage; I galloped back to the castle of Nyekiöbing; but soon found that fate had prepared other work for me.

By that time the king's ship had just come to anchor abreast of the town; a boat which shot off her side had just reached the landing-place; an officer of Highlanders sprang upon the mole, and I recognised the outspread eagle's pinion of Ian's helmet, even before he approached me.

With two thousand five hundred musketeers and pikemen, the wreck of his army, King Christian required us to repair to Rodbye, whither he had commanded the scattered companies of the regiment to muster under Ian Dhu, our lieutenant-colonel; and as the rash prince was about to make a bold attack upon the cantonments of some of Wallenstein and Tilly's now united and mighty host, which occupied all the promontory of North and South Juteland, from the banks of the Elbe to the Skagen cape, my company was to embark without an hour's delay on board the Anna Catharina, the ship of Sir Nickelas Valdemar, who had already received the companies of Angus Roy M'Alpine, Munro of Culcraigie, and Sir Patrick Mackay, from Maribœ, in the centre of Laaland, and all the little detachments of ours which occupied the castles of the isles.

"Alas, for Ernestine!" thought I, when hurrying back to the castle of Nyekibing; "how joyous to me would these tidings once have been!"

I met one of her attendants (Juliane Vüg, the warder's daughter), and desired her to inform Lady Ernestine that I craved a moment's interview, to bid a long farewell.

The girl went to her apartments, and returned to me almost immediately, with an expression of astonishment and consternation impressed on her fair, florid, and otherwise stolid visage, but unable to articulate a syllable, save some trash about "the fate of her mother—and the Trolds."

"Juliane, have you lost your tongue?" said I. "Speak, girl—Ernestine is ill—ill, my God! and I am to sail in an hour!"

Regardless of all etiquette in the excitement of the moment, I rushed up-stairs to her chamber, and knocked. There was no reply. My heart beat violently as I entered; there was no one within, and every thing bore marked evidence of confusion, and a hurried departure. A wardrobe with its drawers stood open—ransacked and in disorder; a letter, addressed to me, lay upon the table.

My brain became giddy; Prudentia had left me just in the same manner; but I thought not of her then, as I snatched up the letter and tore it open.

"Forgive me, dearest Philip," it ran; "forgive me the step I have taken—to leave this island; it is a course I have long contemplated, but lacked the spirit to put in execution, until this day at noon, when a faithful messenger in a small vessel arrived from our father to say, that he is dying in Holstein, and cannot depart from this world in peace unless he beholds us once again. You know how he loves Gabrielle and me. Could we remain after a request so touching and so terrible? Beg the good queen to pardon us. Moreover, Gabrielle is ill; and I know that a change of scene alone can cure her. The vessel we sail with is a Dantzic dogger, with two large sails. Should you see her in the Sound, do say one prayer for us; and, until we meet again, farewell, dearest Philip, and believe me your own

"ERNESTINE."

"Nyekiöbing, March 28th."

I remembered the little craft I had seen tacking out of the Sound, and my heart sank as, with a feeling of bitterness and desolation, I descended to the castle-yard, where old Torquil Gorm, our pipe-major, was playing the gathering, strutting to and fro with his helmet on, and the long ribands streaming from his drones.

"Dioul! my kinsman—accoutre! accoutre!" exclaimed Ian, rushing after me with his cuirass half buckled; "hark to the gallant war-pipe! Mars and Bellona require new victims. And what do you think Heinrich Vug (the warder whose wife was carried off by the fairies) has just told me?"

"Oh, Ian, do not talk to me," said I; "my mind is a chaos! I am a fit companion only for madmen. But what did Heinrich tell you?"

"That our old friend Bandolo has been seen in the Sound by Fynböe the pilot, on board of a dogger with two large sails—the same we passed near Skeilbye."

"A dogger with two sails! Bandolo!—dost thou say so?" I exclaimed in a broken voice. My heart shrunk up at the words of Ian—a mountain seemed to fall upon me. "Ernestine in his power!" I staggered, and supported myself upon my claymore; the light seemed to leave my eyes.

Ernestine, in whom was centred all my hopes of the future—entwined with life itself—my happiness, my glory, and fortune, for she was all to me—and Gabrielle, too!—what might be her fate?

I knew that Bandolo had long fostered the most extravagant ambition—to become the purchaser of a county and coronet in some of those beggared states of Germany where such things were saleable; and Tilly's favour and the Imperial gold had made the bravo and scoutmaster rich as a Lombard Jew. I remembered the conversation between the wretch and his patron at Luneburg; and, if their father was really dying, trembled for the fate of the sisters.

I was stunned, benumbed, and had no sense save that a dreadful calamity—I knew not altogether what—had suddenly dissolved every tie between the world and me. Some time elapsed before Ian could understand me—that Ernestine and her sister had but too surely been decoyed away by a stratagem of the accomplished desperado.

All that passed on this evening appeared to me as a dream. Phadrig Mhor accoutred me; the parade, and inspection of locks and ammunition, the rattle of our drums as we marched under the old castle arch, and filed down to the landing-place; the tears of the kind old queen, who, in her goodness of heart, wept as the brave Highland band embarked on that desperate expedition, from which few—perhaps none—might ever return; all seemed parts of the same misty dream. Then came our reception onboard, the warm congratulations of our comrades, stout old Culcraigie, and Red M'Alpine, still wearing his scarf of crape; then the noisy supper in the gun-room, where salted beef, cold Russian tongue, and Holstein bacon, were washed down by many a brown flagon of German wine; then came the frolics and merriment—for, with the heedlessness of soldiers, my comrades forgot the hardships and dangers of the past year, and cared nothing for those that were to come. They spent that night in jovialty as our ship bore away for Rodbye.

I alone was mute, pale, downcast, and inexpressibly miserable.

I was at times in a state of absolute horror. I could not realize my separation from Ernestine; and if, when overcome by thought, sleep closed my eyes, it was but for a moment—her voice came to my ear, and I started and awoke.

CHAPTER VI.
THE CAPTURE OF BURG.

I did my duty well, but mechanically; for my mind was always wandering, and occupied by vague surmises, foreign from what passed around me.

Amid severe storms of frost and snow we came to anchor off Rodbye, and were joined by Kildon's company; thus the whole regiment now was under the command of Ian. With us were one battalion of the Lord Spynie's regiment of Scottish Lowlanders; the Baron Klosterfiörd's new troop of pistoliers (for Karl had escaped from the Imperialists); the Comte de Montgomerie's regiment of French Protestants, and a few slender companies of Danish pikes and musketeers, making barely in all three thousand men. With these the brave King Christian, regardless that he was but as a mouse attacking a lion, resolved to beat up the quarters of the invader at Fehmarn and elsewhere; and if he could not conquer, at least to harass and slay as many of the Imperialists as possible.

Storms of snow detained us a week; at last there was a fine day, when the air was clear, and the hoar-frost hung on the boughs of the leafless trees, and when the black ravens were seen floating above the snow in the sunbeams. This clear weather accompanied us into Fehmer-sund, a channel of deep water, about one mile broad, which separates the isle of Fehmarn from the coast of Holstein.

Looking upon this little place—the jointure of his wife-of-the-left-hand—as a key to the German empire, Christian had resolved on driving out the Imperialists; and at noon came to anchor off Burg, its capital, where we prepared to disembark under a fire of cannon and musketry from a regiment of Walloon infantry, who garrisoned the place.

Though early, in April, the day was bitterly cold; for the season was one of intense severity. The sky and the narrow Sound were both of the purest blue; but the whole island and the opposite coast lay buried under a thick mantle of snow. Here and there along the shore, we could perceive the deep tracks cut to denote the highways leading into the interior; the whole atmosphere glittered, and the breath of the soldiers froze on the cheek-plates of their helmets, or ascended in steamy vapour from the boats, which, with thirty musketeers of our regiment in each, made straight for the shore with drums beating and pipes playing.

I gazed earnestly at the low and level beach of Fehmarn, in the dim hope that Ernestine might have been conveyed there. My whole thoughts were of her, and I am sure Gabrielle was almost forgotten. Love, like grief, makes one very selfish at times. My recollections of that day are dreamy and indistinct. I was desperate, careless of life, and in that frame of mind which would have enabled me to confront a battalion of pikes as readily as I would have encountered a single man. I cared not a fig for what happened, and at the command of Ian Dhu, now our lieutenant-colonel, I gladly sprang into the first boat which, from the Anna Catharina, shot off for the shore.

Two men of my company (a M'Farquhar and a Mackay) fell overboard; but the cannon-balls from a flying battery on the shore, were ploughing the water about us, and we had not time to pick up the poor fellows. They called loudly for that succour which, in the hurry of that desperate moment, we were totally unable to yield; and, loaded by their iron trappings, accoutrements, and knapsacks, they sank like stones. What are the lives of two men, when those of thousands, perhaps, are hovering on the brink of eternity?

We landed under cover of a fire from our ships, which battered down the snow-clad houses of Burg to dislodge the Walloons. My company of M'Farquhars had the honour of first touching the ground. The kilted clansmen leaped into the half-frozen water—formed in line, and blew their matches as they advanced. Amid a storm of shot and forest of pikes, we fell on the Walloons with clubbed muskets, and after receiving and returning one volley drove them back.

"Who commands here in Fehmarn?" I asked of one poor fellow, a Walloon ensign, who had been shot through the side, and lay writhing on the ground.

He made no reply, but spat blood at me in his agony and animosity.

"Speak!" said I, holding my sword at his throat; "is it the Count of Carlstein?"

"No—it is Colonel Walter Butler."

"Then Ernestine is not here," thought I, hurrying after my men, who, on being reinforced by Spynie's Scots and Montgomerie's French, soon drove the Walloons pell-mell into the town, compelling them to leave their cannon behind. They had securely barricaded and loopholed Burg; and, as we knew their commander to be an Irishman, we prepared to encounter a resolute, and for us perhaps a disastrous defence. Landing his entire force, the king invested the place on all sides; and, perceiving that our ships cut off all succour by sea, Colonel Butler sent a drummer to crave a parley, which ended in his entire force marching out with the honours of war, their drums beating and colours flying, amid the yells and execrations of the boors, on whom they had committed innumerable ravages and outrages. From the beach, our boats in a few hours conveyed the whole safely over to the coast of Holstein.

Thus, with a slight loss, King Christian regained the whole island, and after collecting tribute from its capital, and the villages of Petersdorf and Puttgarten, and after tarrying there a few days to refresh, we prepared to reimbark, encouraged by the good success of our new campaign to make another essay upon the mainland of Holstein.

The house of the burgomaster was converted into a temporary hospital, and among the wounded who had been conveyed there, I recognised my former acquaintance, the Walloon ensign, and gave him a flask of corn brandy, apologising at the same time for the fright I had given him. He was now in better humour, and, being somewhat disposed for conversation, I asked him if he knew "the Count Tilly's confidant and scoutmaster, Bandolo, the Spanish bravo?"

"I have seen him a thousand times," he replied; "but you know not, cavalier, how we soldiers despise this cowardly truckler, who handles, but only in secret, the knife and the pistol. The day before you attacked us, he sailed into the Fehmer-sund with tidings of your coming, for which he received a hundred good dollars from Colonel Butler; hence our barricades at Burg, and our batteries on the beach."

"His vessel?" said I, turning breathlessly towards the Sound.

"A small dogger, with two sails, had on board only himself and three other men, I believe; but the fellow is bold as Ogier le Dane, or the devil himself."

"Were there any ladies with him!"

"Ladies with Bandolo!" repeated the Walloon, laughing, and then making a grimace as his wound twitched him; "why, cavalier, though the fellow is rich as Crœsus, the most degraded camp-follower would shudder at his touch. Rumour says that he is steeped to the lips in blood—the blood of assassinated men."

"And where is he now?" I asked, making a terrible effort to appear calm.

"I know not. As your ships entered the Sound on the east, he sailed out by the west, and is gone, I believe, towards Eckernfiörd, where a body of Tilly's troops are cantoned."

"Heaven be thanked!" thought I, leaving the poor officer on his bed of blood-stained straw; "it is on Eckernfiörd that we are next to bend our cannon."

As Fehmarn is a fertile island, we procured an ample store of the butter, cheese, and fresh provisions which the frugal inhabitants had been able to conceal from the Imperial marauders; and in lieu of their hose—now somewhat tattered—our Highlanders obtained some hundred pairs of soft stockings, which had been knitted by the wives and daughters of the boors.

We then re-embarked about the middle of April, minus our preacher or chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Zerubabbel Bang, who had the misfortune to fall in a duel. He and a lieutenant of Karl's pistoliers, having quarrelled about the burgomaster's daughter, a pretty little jungfrau with blue eyes and blooming complexion, came to high words, and from thence to hard blows with backsword and dagger, and our poor minister (an old fellow student of mine at the King's College in the Brave City) was fairly run through the body and slain.

Being a commissioned officer, and having the rank of major, we buried him under the dismantled batteries with military honours. The right wing of the regiment fired three volleys above the grave, and our drums beat the Point of War, while the shovels of the pioneers closed his last abode for ever.

CHAPTER VII.
ST. MARK'S DAY.

Agitated by emotions of no ordinary kind, on the evening of the 26th April I saw the broad harbour of Eckernfiörd open to receive our ships; for in that little town, the painted walls and church spire of which I could see shining afar off in the cold yellow light of a stormy setting sun, Ernestine might be in safety by her father's side, or perhaps with Bandolo.

I cannot describe all that I endured of anger, bitterness, impatience, and anxiety during these weeks of warfare and wandering among the Danish isles and Juteland coasts. Relief could only be found by plunging into the fierce tumult and excitement of strife. When that passed away, my agony and suspense returned with redoubled force.

Old superstition has made the 26th of April, St. Mark's day, an unlucky time for an expedition; and I have known more than one worthy crofter and bien bonnet-laird, near my father's tower at home, who dared not plough on St. Mark's day, lest a blight should destroy the fruit of their labour; neither would their wives churn or spin, lest the milk should become soured and the rock ravelled. King Christian knew little of such fancies of the olden time, and cared less for them; thus, after deceiving the enemy by standing off to the seaward, he returned again when the darkness set in, and ordered all to be in readiness for breaking the strong boom which closed the harbour mouth, and for obtaining the town by storm.

By a sudden change in the weather, the snow had almost entirely disappeared, and vegetation had fully commenced; but a cold and stormy wind swept over the darkened waters of the bay, a pitchy gloom enveloped the whole sky, and shrouded in obscurity the low, flat shore of South Juteland. Steadily and noiselessly our vessel stood towards the harbour mouth, a fire-ship leading the van to burst and destroy the boom, and to force a passage for us. We expected to be all engaged in an hour, and mustered in our arms and in silence on the decks of the three royal ships. We endeavoured in vain to discover the bearing of the shore. It seemed to be visible to King Christian alone; for that able and valiant monarch, being a mariner as well as a warrior, sheathed in his full armour, stood by the tiller, steering the fireship in person, and gazing into the gloom with his keen but solitary eye.

"Phadrig," said I to my sergeant; "look to it, and see that our company have all their matches and bandoliers in service order."

"I have anticipated your orders, and looked well to their arms and powder," he replied in his native Gaëlic; but there was an expression in the tall sergeant's dark face, visible below his steel cap, which startled me, apathetic even as I had now become to casual circumstances.

"How is this, Phadrig?" said I; "are you ill, my good man?"

"It is a dark night even for this kind of work, and the darker the better, perhaps," said he; "but of all others in the year, St. Mark's night is the least lucky, either for fighting or ferrying on. I will tell you a story. On this night, fifteen years ago, my father, Dunachadh Bane, and two men of our tribe, who had been sent on a mission from M'Farquhar to M'lan of Glencoe, quarrelled with some M'Donalds, whom they met on a creagh near Glen Etive and the Black Mountain. They fled by Keanlochleven. The night was dark as this; and like a well at the bottom of its steep, black hills, lay the deep but narrow waters of the Leven. It is said a spirit guards them—a dangerous, a shapeless, and revengeful spirit—whose form is concealed by a cloud, but whose voice is often heard before a storm, shrieking from among the rocks that overhang the lake. In the murky midnight they heard a wild cry tossed after them on the gusty wind, as they rushed down the steep Highland pass; again came the cry, and again loud, shrill, and wailing; now it seemed to come from the dark lake, now from the darker mountains, and now from the blasted pines that overhung the foaming stream which fed the narrow Leven. It curdled their hearts' blood and froze the marrow in their bones—for amid the starless gloom they could see a dark cloud floating over the bosom of the lake; but they were bold and desperate men, and heeding less this terrible warning than the arrows of the M'Donaids, they sprang down the side of the shelving mountain, and reached the still, black, solemn lake, the waters of which were partly frozen. A boat lay among the withered reeds; they leaped in—they put off with an exulting shout, and my father grasped the tiller.

"'Black be your end!' shouted a voice like thunder over their heads, and the Glencoe men heard it with terror, as they rushed to the shore of the Leven. 'Bu dubh a dhiol!'" said Phadrig, pausing; "yes—black indeed was my father's fate. The dark vapour descended between the steep hills, a torrent of wind tore up the bosom of the Leven, revealing its ghastly depths; the water rose in billows, and lashed the overhanging hills; again the shriek was heard, the cloud of the angry spirit swept away; but the boat had vanished, for it had been engulfed by the ebbing water. The M'Donalds fled, abandoning in their terror all the cattle they had taken in the creagh. Dunachadh Bane and his two companions had perished, unshriven and unassoiled; and long the priest of our tribe, James of Jerusalem, prayed for their souls in the old kirk of Strathdee. Now, Captain Rollo," continued Phadrig, in a low impressive voice, and while drawing closer to me; "ever as St. Mark's night returns, a boat with three men in it is seen to cross the Leven."

"Pshaw, Phadrig—can a stout fellow like you believe this?"

"Firmly as I believe the blessed gospels. Once I saw it myself."

"It must have been mere imagination," said I.

"It was not," said he; "the April night was cold and clear. To the sorrow of the poor, the season had been backward, and the snow-wreaths lay deep in glen and corrie. With no companion but my dog, I had come through the savage glen of Larochmhor, and round by the base of Ben Nevis, on whose peaks the snow seldom melts. I reached Keanlochleven. Though the month was April, the water lay at my feet a sheet of waveless ice. All was still as death, and my own shadow spread far before me over the wilderness of snow, for the moon was low at the end of the narrow vale. It hung there like a silver shield, broad, round, and full, between a cleft of the rugged mountains.

"I paused a moment to mutter a prayer, and look on the place where my father had perished. The lake lay at my feet, I have said; but I had no fear of the water spirit, for then the moon was bright. I had a good dram under my belt, and my claymore at my side. Suddenly, I perceived something moving across the frozen surface of the lake—three hundred feet below me; my dog uttered a howl, and crept close to my side. 'Blessed be Heaven!—am I blind!' I exclaimed, pressing a hand upon my eyes; 'am I blind, or dreaming?' A boat with three Highlanders in it passed before me—I knew they were Strathdee men by the cock of their bonnets—one steered, while two pulled the oars; and, like the shadow of a cloud, the boat and its rowers glided across the hard frozen surface of the Leven, slowly and noiselessly, until it disappeared under the dark shadow cast by the mountain side across the salt lake at its foot. A deathly chill came over me; my hair stood on end; for I knew that my father's spirit had passed before me.

"Since that hour, captain," said Phadrig, pressing his hand upon his brow; "I have never gone within twenty miles of Ben Nevis, nor would I for all the gold in the hill of Keir. I have gone round by the Braes of Rannoch, by the great desert and the Uisc Dhu, rather than pass the glen of the Leven. But how I crossed the mountains—how I came down the Devil's Staircase, and reached Glencoe (for I also was going on a mission from Ian Dhu to M'lan), the Lord alone knows; for of that dire April night—the night of St. Mark—I remember no more."

Phadrig had just finished this wild story when a blue light was burned low, almost under the counter of the fireship, as a warning to drop our anchors; and they were let go noiselessly, the rope-cables running through hauseholes deluged by buckets of grease, to prevent the sound alarming the enemy, whose batteries swept the boom and its vicinity.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRESHIP.

While our vessels hauled up their courses, and swung round with their heads to the wind, the fireship, favoured by the obscurity which concealed her, and by a north-east wind, with all her sails and studding-sails set, ran right towards the boom, which closed the narrow Strait; for the promontory on which the town stands closes in the extremity of the outer harbour, and divides it from the inner fiörd. The boom itself was an enormous log of Memel timber, to which a number of masts, yards, and spars were lashed. At each end strong cables secured it to the shore. Immediately within it lay a number of ships full of Imperial stores, and on board of these the crews must have kept but a sleepy watch that night, or the northern mist had blinded them.

The warlike Christian had seen the fireship, which was about a hundred and fifty tons of burden, constructed under his own eye; she was crammed to the hatches with combustibles, and fitted with grappling irons, to seize and destroy the boom and shipping. She was fitted up with troughs full of powder and melted pitch; these communicated with her fire-barrels and chambers for blowing open the ports, at which the flames were to be emitted. Her decks were sheeted over with powder, rosin, sulphur, tar, pitch, and grease. Her gunwale was surrounded by bavins of brushwood, having the bushends all laid outwards, forming a thick hedge, which was saturated in the same conglomeration of inflammable matter with which she was loaded from keel to hatches; and with which her whole rigging and masts, sails and running cordage, were thickly coated; while barrels of oil and tar, powder and other preparations, were piled upon her deck.

Through the dark gloom we discerned—or imagined we could discern—this floating magazine of destruction standing steadily on towards the boom, at a safe distance from which our ships had come to anchor. All the large boats were lowered, and noiselessly two thousand armed men, with the old blades of our own regiment leading the van, slowly and with well-muffled oars put off towards the shore.

Ian with my company—once his own—composed entirely of brave men of his own name and kindred, led the way. Red M'Alpine and Kildon followed in the next boat, with their companies; then came the remainder of our Highlanders in pinnaces; then the Danish musketeers of the King's regiment, and the French companies of the gallant Count de Montgomerie.

The boats grounded at a distance from the shore; there was a murmur of discontent among the French and Danes; but now, as at Fehmarn, our bold Scottish lads slung their muskets, sprang overboard, formed line in the water, and, grasping each others' hands, led the way towards the shore.

"Softly and quickly, comrades!" cried Ian Dhu, whose head, surmounted by the entire eagle's wing, towered above all others, as he advanced to the front with a colour in his hand; "we shall be at them with our pikes before helmets are buckled or matches blown."

At that moment the fireship blew up!

After firing the train with his own royal hand, King Christian had dropped into a small boat, and been pulled on board of the Anna Catharina, on the poop of which he stood anxiously watching the effect of his skill.

The fireship reached the boom, and running full tilt against it, was retained there by her grapnels; the lighted trains rushed through all parts of the ship, and in a moment the troughs, the decks, the rigging and the tarred sails, were enveloped in one vast pyramid of roaring flame, which shed a lurid glow on the waters around it, and the shore before us. Brighter and brighter it grew; we could see in the foreground the whole outline of Eckernfiörd, then esteemed the prettiest town in Juteland, with its high old German gables and wooden spire, the long rows of trees that shaded its streets, and surrounded the half circular harbour; the barricades which closed its avenues; the palisaded breastwork we had come to storm, and the long bridge with its Tollbooth bristling with cannon. Brighter yet and broader grew that sheet of wavering light, and tipped with it, as they rose and fell, the waves of the Baltic rolled like billows of liquid fire; the low flat shore on which they broke was bathed in alternate glows of yellow flame and dusky-red, as the various combustibles ignited in succession.

We saw the white froth amid which the vast boom was surging and chafing; we saw distinctly the masts, spars, and rigging of the storeships within; we saw the casements of the town—even the gilt vane on the church spire shone in this glorious but terrible flush of flame; while the hoarse drums beat to arms, and we heard the loud and sudden murmur, as from a crowd of startled men, arise within the town. The Imperialists rushed to their posts, and in three minutes their helmets were seen glittering in lines behind the barricades, for the town, from which all the inhabitants had fled, was but rudely and hastily fortified.

Like a volcano showering a million of burning brands over the whole fiörd, the fireship blew up with a shock which made the waters vibrate and lash the level shore, while the concussion was felt at the bottom of every ship in the fleet.

The great boom broke in two like a withered reed. A momentary silence followed; then, from the vast height to which they had been shot by the explosion, we heard the burning pieces fall hissing into the water. But their expiring blaze was almost immediately renewed by the storeships, which caught fire, and enabled the Danish vessels to cannonade the town, from the falling roofs of which the bricks and tiles flew in showers through the air, as the round shot boomed among them.

Having formed in the water in three columns, under the Count de Montgomerie, with the Highlanders in front, we advanced pell-mell to storm the graff and stockade which enclosed the town, on that side where a gate opened towards the road from Kiel; from these works the enemy opened a brisk fire on us. Ian Dhu, an officer as skilful as he was brave, sent Captain-lieutenant Sir Patrick Mackay, with fifty musketeers of his own company, into a lofty house, from the windows of which their fire swept the stockades in flank. Under cover of this we stormed them with comparative ease, throwing ourselves into the graff, officers and men, pikes, musketeers, and colours; we rushed from thence up the rough glacis, climbing with one hand and fighting with the other, though, by the storm of lead which rained upon our ranks, many a brave fellow was swept back into the slough of the ditch to die among its mud and slime.

Torn down or hewn to pieces in some places, surmounted in others, the palisades were won, and Ian Dhu, though bleeding from three wounds, had the honour first to place St Andrew's cross on the summit, and, with a wild yell of triumph, the hardy Highlanders closed up beneath it, and broad over their heads its blue silk folds were rustling in the midnight blast. In the deadly melée that ensued here, the Austrians were overmatched by our Scottish cavaliers, who used their long claymores with both hands, hewing down with the edge, while the former only gave point with their slender rapiers, which were much less effective. I found this particularly the case when encountering a gigantic Spanish officer (for there were three companies of Castilians in the town). He lunged at me incessantly; but parrying one terrible thrust with my claymore, after narrowly escaping being run through by a demi-lance, I overthrew the Don by a backhanded blow from my dirk.

Another Spanish cavalier, a tall and powerful man, wearing a burganet of bright steel, was disarmed by Phadrig Mhor, at whom he discharged his pistols after surrender.

"Yield—yield!" cried Phadrig in Gaëlic, "or I'll run a yard of my halbert into your haggis-bag!"

"Quartel, señor Valoroso!" exclaimed the Spaniard; but the prayer came too late; for by one blow of his Lochaber axe, Phadrig, who was not blessed with over much patience, sliced his head in two like a Swedish turnip, cutting him through bone and steel helmet to the neck.

The Imperialists now gave way from the gate of Kiel along the whole line of ramparts, and retired through the streets with great precipitation to the church, which they entered in confusion, and followed so closely by our soldiers, that many Highlanders entered with them, and were shot or taken. Save a hundred or so, who were killed as they retired through the streets, all reached the church, got in, barricadoed the doors, and from every part of the edifice opened a terrible fire upon us.

Montgomerie's Frenchmen assailed one flank, the king's Danish regiment another, and Ian led us to the assault of the great door; but for a time we failed to make any impression upon it. The night was bleak, dark, and exceedingly stormy; the wind shook our standards and rustled our lofty plumes, and we heard it (during the pauses of the musketry) howling through the louvre-boarded spire of the church, and the high gables of the old houses; but the pauses in the fusilade were few and far between. Through the windows and from behind the planks and benches with which they had barricaded them, four or five companies of Imperialists continued to fire upon us; and the bright red streaks of flame, as they burst forth incessantly above, below, and on every side, lighted up the quaint façade of the old church, the greater part of which was of wood. Every moment our bullets tore away large splinters. A company of Irishmen in the belfry made a terrible slaughter among my company, on whom they shot down in security without receiving a ball in return, for their position was too elevated for our muskets to reach them. Ian became greatly excited by the loss of so many of his soldiers and kinsmen.

"Count of Montgomerie!" he exclaimed; "let cannon be brought and the door blown in! My brave followers—the children of my father's people—shall not perish thus!"

"Dioul, my colonel!" added Kildon, whose company united its efforts with mine to burst open the door, before which the dead encumbered the steps three deep, and which resounded beneath our mingled blows like the head of a gigantic drum; "let us blow the d—d kirk up, and, by my father's hand, I will place the first stone of your cairn."

"May the ashes of these Spaniards be scattered on the waters!" added M'Alpine in the same forcible language, and staggering as a bullet grazed his helmet; "for, by the grey stone of M'Gregor! I believe they are the same men who so cruelly slew old Dunbar and five hundred of our gallant hearts at Bredenburg."

"Yea—after surrender, in cold blood," said Lumsdaine, my lieutenant, the sole survivor of that affair; "I know them by the fashion of their doublets—forward then—let us cut to pieces this kennel of blood-hounds!"

"Tullach Ard!" cried the Mackenzies of Kildon's company.

"Cairn na cuimhne!" added my men of Strathdee.

"Revenge! remember Dunbar and Bredenburg!" cried the whole battalion, with a wild Highland hurrah; and the soldiers redoubled their efforts, while the dying and dead fell fast on every side.

Suddenly there arose a cry of—

"The vaults—the church vaults are full of powder—five hundred barrels—Bredenburg! Bredenburg mercy! let us blow them up!"

This proved to be actually the case. Whether it was a mere speculation of our soldiers, or that they had been informed of the circumstances by some wounded Holsteiner (who had been compelled to serve the Austrians), I know not; but it was immediately acted upon.

Heedless of the leaden storm which was poured upon them, Phadrig Mhor, and a score of the brave fellows, rushed close to the walls of the church, beat down the bars of certain wooden gratings which admitted air to the vaults, and threw in five or six fireballs—engines formed of every combustible. These filled the whole basement story with a deluge of light, as they blazed, roared, and rolled about like flaming dragons; and to the eyes of a few revealed, in the very centre of the place, a goodly pile of wooden powder barrels.

"Retire—retire!" was the cry, and our men fell back on all sides, dragging with them several of the wounded, who were unable to crawl away; but we had scarcely retreated fifty paces down the main street, each side of which was bordered by stately beech-trees, when the earth shook beneath our feet, a blaze of yellow light filled the windows of the church, its broad roof of slates was shot into the air and rent asunder, to descend like rain upon the streets; a mighty column of fire poured upwards from the crater formed by the walls; I saw them gape and rend, in every direction; the taper spire shook like a willow wand, then crumbled and vanished with a crash. One half the edifice was blown into the air, the other half fell inwards. In an instant all became dark (save where the store-ships, half-burned to the water-edge, shed a sickly light upon the half-ruined town), and we heard a shower of stones, beams, slates, and materials of every kind, falling on the tops of the houses and into the street around us. With these came down many a scorched and shattered fragment of a human form; for at least five hundred men had, in one moment, been blown into eternity.

Among these were a hundred stout-hearted Irishmen of Butler's regiment.

Many of our men were severely injured by the debris of the explosion; after which I remember little more of that night, being struck senseless by a piece of falling timber.

I have a dim recollection of being borne away somewhere; and then of feeling the soft hands of a woman chafing mine, and pouring a cooling essence on my brow.

I thought of Ernestine; and then, as if that dear thought had conjured up her image and her presence, I seemed to hear her voice murmuring in my ear, as she wept and mourned bitterly.