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

by James Grant

Book the Ninth

CHAPTER IX.
THE SISTERS.

While I am thus disposed of at Eckernfiörd, it may not be out of place to relate the adventures of the fair sisters (on their being decoyed from Nyekiöbing), as I afterwards learned from them, and so far as I can remember.

In the course of this narrative, many a long forgotten scene and face have come back to my memory by pursuing a train of thought. At first, it was my intention to have related only the battles and sieges wherein our valiant Scots of the old invincible regiment of Strathnaver distinguished themselves; but I have been compelled to linger fondly over the past, and thus long buried thoughts and hopes; the sentiments of my earlier years, have come back to me in all their strength and freshness. Hence I can relate the faith and pride of Ernestine, and the love of poor Gabrielle—one man's knavery and another man's valour—as if the events of those stirring times had all occurred but yesterday.

On board the dogger which bore the sisters from Falster, were only Bandolo, his friend Bernhard, the amiable woodman of Korslack (who has been already introduced to the reader), and three sailors of Dantzig, to whom the craft belonged.

Bandolo was disguised as a well-fed Lutheran clergyman of Glückstadt, and Bernhard acted as his servant, and had knots of black riband, on each of his shoulders. He had brought to Ernestine a feigned message, that the count her father was dying of wounds in Holstein; although quite aware that, by the intrigues and jealousy of old Tilly, he had been summoned to Vienna by the Emperor, who—as it was currently reported—now viewed him with the utmost coldness. Bandolo had been despatched by Tilly towards Assens and Falster, to inquire into the number of the Danish forces, and the probable movements of their king; but hearing that the count's daughters were at Nyekiöbing, he immediately conceived the project of conveying them away; and as he considered that he had now amassed a sufficient sum to realise the dream of his ambition—a Hanoverian count-ship—he resolved to retire from public life, to repose upon his laurels, with the high-born bride whom, Tilly in his cynical and mischievous spirit, had urged him by all means to procure; for secretly the generalissimo owed the colonel-general of the cavalry a mortal grudge.

By a profitable speculation, Bandolo had sold the younger sister, Gabrielle, to Count Merodé for a thousand ducats; and, being highly pleased with his investment, that gentle commander—who had compelled a Holstein merchant to furnish the ducats under terror of musket-shot, and place them in his hands—was impatiently awaiting her arrival at the strong fortress of Fredricksort, on the gulf of Kiel in Danische-wald, the capital of which is Eckernfiörd. The castle was occupied by the soldiers of the count; who, by a despatch from Vienna, had been desired to constitute himself governor of all that district, the poor boors of which were nearly driven mad by the severity with which he exacted tribute.

Bandolo's dogger sailed towards Fehmarn, where he gave such information to Colonel Butler as enabled that officer to afford us a warm reception. The scout-master then bore away towards the coast of Danische-wald; but on both sides of the isle of Fehmarn he encountered such tremendous gales, that the whole thoughts and energies of himself and his accomplice were occupied by fears for their own safety; thus, without the sisters being disturbed by their attentions or insults, the dogger entered the gulf of Kiel, and anchored off the Wohlder shore.

Confined to the little cabin during this cold and dreary voyage of nearly a hundred and fifty miles, and being wholly occupied by anxiety to reach their father, the sisters had failed to observe the very remarkable conduct of their guardian, the Lutheran clergyman, and his valet, who seemed to be on the most familiar terms with each other; and who, when the wind blew, and the dogger dipped surging down into the trough of the angry sea, drank schnaps out of the same horn, and swore a few round oaths as emphatically as a couple of Merodeurs.

A large black doublet, well bombasted in front, white clerical bands, and black satin knee breeches, with a white wig and smoothly shaven chin, so completely metamorphosed Bandolo into a sleek oily clergyman, with a somewhat comical but leering eye, that his own mother would not have recognised the bravo she had brought into the world—that dreaded and avowed bravo, who was usually to be seen loitering like a bull-dog about the door of Tilly's tent, wearing a leather doublet, and a belt stuck full of poniards, a long lovelock, a rapier five feet in length, and a visage bloated by beer and excesses of every description.

Whatever strange ideas might have floated through his evil brain, or whatever promptings to mischief, the circumstance of these two beautiful girls being far out on the open ocean, and completely at the mercy of him and Bernhard, might have been suggested by his bad angel, thank Heaven! which sent the stormy wind to furrow up the deep, and roll the little bark upon its waters like a cork, their coward hearts were solely occupied by fears for their own safety—fears which every bottle of schnaps in the locker could not allay. Thus, without the least suspicion of the trick which had been played them, or the trap into which they had fallen, the sisters saw, from a window in the little cabin, the setting sun of the 20th of April reddening the shores of Holstein, as the dogger ran into the little gulf of Kiel.

Ernestine was pleased to perceive that Gabrielle had revived a little during this brief voyage. Either the separation from Ian, a transference to new scenes, or that all her thoughts were with her dying father, had produced this salutary effect; and she hoped that in time, this passion, which she deemed so degrading even to her impulsive nature, would soon be forgotten like a dream.

Instead of entering the harbour of any of the large towns, the dogger was anchored off a miserable little village, inhabited by poor people, who subsisted by dressing the skins of squirrels, which abound in that neighbourhood.

The first object of Bandolo was to separate the sisters, and, without creating any alarm, to exchange Gabrielle for the thousand ducats of Count Merodé, whose garrison of Fredricksort was but a few miles off. About sunset he presented himself in the cabin, and, with all the suavity of manner he could muster, requested that "the ladies would prepare for going shoreward."

During the short voyage they had seen but little of him; for, as I have already mentioned, the stormy weather had given him ample occupation elsewhere; and in truth, he was invariably awed into a state of unpleasant stupidity in their presence, and found himself almost unable to address them. This wretched man—this spy and assassin—steeped to the lips in a thousand secret crimes and dishonourable acts, found his blustering spirit and savage heart quail before the dignity of perfect innocence, and the angelic purity which pervaded the presence of Ernestine and Gabrielle.

Arrayed in his white wig, ample black doublet, white bands and Geneva cloak, like a Lutheran churchman, and wearing a broad velvet hat with a steeple-crown, an enormous pair of barnacles, and a silver-headed cane dangling at his dexter wrist, to increase the respectability of his appearance, Bandolo presented a hand to each of the sisters, and conducted them into the boat, by which they were rowed ashore. Bernard of Korslack, dressed in modest dark livery, carried the mails and saddlebags; but Ernestine remarked that there was one mail, which the worthy clergyman averred to be full of MS. sermons, but would scarcely trust out of his hand for a single moment, and which seemed to be very heavy, and his own peculiar care.

In fact, this mail afterwards proved to be filled with gold, and ample orders on the Imperial treasury, signed by Wallenstein, by Tilly, and Count Leslie of Balquhan, high chamberlain of the Empire—the dear-earned fruits of a long career of espionage and atrocity; and on the contents of that beloved mail, Bandolo (that human compound of avarice and cruelty), based all his ambitious hopes of future rank; for it contained the price of his expected county.

Now, when in the open boat, and when the bright flush of the setting sun shone along the rippling water, Ernestine for the first time remarked, with undefined uneasiness, the peculiar aspect of those who accompanied them. The countenance of the clergyman—he called himself Doctor, having taken degrees at Leyden—was somewhat livid, and marked by two or three unseemly scars; but he might have served as a chaplain in the army, or fought a few college duels. He had certainly a very remarkable expression of eye; and, whichever way Ernestine turned, it was fixed upon her in a manner that made her feel inexpressibly uncomfortable; but the moment her calm, steady, and inquiring glance met his, the reverend doctor turned abruptly, and gazed in another direction.

Bernhard, the valet, had a somewhat bloated countenance, and sleepy red eyes, like those of a sot; with a continual expression of suppressed merriment about them, as if he would gladly have indulged himself in a hoarse laugh, but dared not.

Gabrielle did not see these things; her mind was too intently occupied by the shore they were nearing; by the expectation of embracing her father; and by heartfelt satisfaction to exchange the miseries of the dingy little cabin for the comforts and confidence experienced on terra firma, to observe either the eyes or noses of those who were conducting her there.

"What is the name of this village, Herr?" asked Ernestine, as the boat ran alongside a little jetty built of large rough stones.

"I do not know, madam," replied Bandolo, adjusting his barnacles, and gazing intently at the half-dozen of red-tiled cottages occupied by the squirrel-curriers; "do you, Bernhard?'

"Nay, not I—how should I? I never was in Danische-wald before."

"Then do you know, how far it is from this to Fredricksort?"

"Where the count awaits you—ten miles—is it not so, Bernhard?"

Bernhard growled an assent.

"Ah, if we should be too late to reach my father!" said Gabrielle, clasping her hands; "and we have been so many hours in yonder little vessel."

"What is Fredricksort?" asked Ernestine.

"A castle of vast strength, lady."

"And what troops are with our father there?"

"I do not know, grafine," replied Bandolo; for he knew that to have mentioned Merodé and his Merodeurs might excite suspicion; "do you know, Bernhard?"

"Why, Herr Doctor," stammered the pretended valet; "I thought that you knew very well that the regiment of——"

"Carlstein—oh yes!" interrupted Bandolo just in time, but eyeing his valet savagely out of the corners of his barnacles; "how could I forget! yes, lady, the musketeers of Carlstein—none know them better than I do—occupy the fortress."

"Musketeers!" reiterated Ernestine; "our father's regiment is Cavalry!'

"To be sure—how could I forget—you blundering ass, Bernhard!—'Tis my valet who makes such mistakes; but here we are. Welcome to Wohlder, ladies!" said Bandolo, raising his hat, and with it his long white wig, a mistake by which he nearly discovered his black hair and face, by which Ernestine might have recognised the terrible familiar of Count Tilly, who had been pointed out to her on two occasions—once in Vienna, and once in the Imperial camp.

During this brief conversation, Bandolo had experienced all the uneasiness already described; and his admiration for the fine person of Ernestine combated with restraint and fear, which at times kindled a spark of rage in his heart, and made him almost hate her for possessing a power that awed him by a glance. Yet Ernestine was quite unconscious of possessing this power, and knew not that it was required.

Feeling, she knew not why, a sentiment of disdain for her conductors, she relapsed into silence, and permitted herself and Gabrielle to be led to a cottage, the poor occupants of which received them with the utmost respect. This was increased by the appearance of the leathern mails, and still more by a piece of gold, which Bandolo placed in the hand of the goodman of the cottage, requesting him to search the whole neighbourhood, and hire horses for Fredricksort, whither they were travelling on the service of the King of Denmark.

The husbonde replied, that "close by there was a farm, the goodman of which had been cruelly murdered last week by the Merodeurs in Fredricksort; and whose widow, he believed, would gladly lend the Herr her spouse's horses for a small consideration, as she and her children were starving, Count Merodé's men having made every thing march, from the haystacks in the yard to the eggs in the coop."

"Away then, boor, get these horses, and this shall be the happiest night of your life."

"What was the peasant saying, reverend sir?" asked the anxious Ernestine on the departure of the Jutelander, whose language she did not understand.

"Alas, Lady!" said Bandolo, seating himself with an air of dejection; "prepare yourself for melancholy intelligence. The poor count—ah me—well, what a world it is!"

"My father—what of my poor father?" asked both girls together, rushing to his side with their eyes full of tears.

"He is still lingering at Fredricksort, but life is scarcely expected for him; and the emperor has sent his own physician, Herr Blyster, to attend him."

"Oh! the dear, good emperor!" exclaimed Gabrielle, with sorrowful ardour.

"Herr Blyster!" mused Ernestine; "I did not think that was the name of the emperor's physician." Neither it was; but the name was the suggestion of Bandolo's own imagination, which sometimes was not a very happy one.

"Trust in the Lord, lady—trust in the Lord!" said he, turning up his eyes.

Gabrielle clung to her sister, and did nothing but weep. Bernhard stood behind them, making grimaces and grotesque contortions of visage at his reverend master, who one moment seemed inclined to laugh, and the next to swear, at a folly which might undo all, and perhaps prevent their obtaining peacefully the Count of Merodé's thousand ducats, of which Master Bernhard was to receive a good share—as Bandolo had promised faithfully; but without the least intention of giving him a stiver.

Darkness set in; the poor woman of the cottage lighted a solitary candle, and from her cupboard brought a glass of birch-wine for each of the ladies, and another of schnaps for the Herr and his valet.

Ernestine was just expressing to Gabrielle her impatience to be gone—her uneasiness to be in this unknown cottage at night, on an enemy's coast, with two strangers—for when in the dogger with the sailors, she did not feel herself so desolate—when the boor returned with the horses, two of which had side-saddles, and they all mounted hastily.

After securely buckling his beloved portmanteau to the crupper of his horse, after paying the peasant, and after carefully examining in the dark four small pistols and two poniards, which he carried under his clerical doublet, señor Bandolo whispered to Bernhard the project he wished to accomplish—the quiet separation of the sisters by a little piece of finesse, which he was certain they would never suspect or discover, until too late to retrieve themselves. It was simply this—

He had learned from the boor which couple of the four horses were the swiftest, and on them he mounted Bernhard and Gabrielle, instructing the former to spur on to the front, and wheel off by a certain bypath towards Fredricksort; while he, with the other sister, meant to ride slowly, and pursue a path quite different towards a certain cottage, which they both knew of in the wood of Eckernfiörd. There Bernhard was to meet them, and bring the ducats of Count Merodé—the price of Gabrielle.

"Now, ladies," said Bandolo, "are you good horsewomen?"

"Ernestine was the best at Vienna," said Gabrielle, whipping up her Holsteiner, which caracoled under her light weight.

"Gabrielle—Gabrielle!" exclaimed her eldest sister; "take care what you are about, madcap! You will unhorse yourself and me too. Will she not, reverend sir?"

"Now, ladies, we have ten miles of clear road before us, and the moon will soon rise. Let us start by pairs along this bridle road, and see which couple will first reach Fredricksort."

"Away—I shall be first with our dear father," said Gabrielle, anxious to keep in front, and giving a lash to her Holsteiner, which shot away at a headlong pace. Bernhard dashed on by her side, for he was a good horseman, having been a valet to Merodé at Vienna, where he had been scourged and dismissed for selling his master's cloaks and doublets.

Ernestine and Bandolo followed at full gallop; but as the road was narrow, the bravo contrived to incommode her horse and his own in such a manner, that their speed was considerably retarded. Bernhard and Gabrielle bore on at an uninterrupted pace, and, despite all the entreaties of Ernestine, disappeared into the darkness in front. This was the very thing Bandolo had hoped to accomplish.

"Do not be alarmed, grafine, they will not reach the fortress ten minutes before us," said he, quite enchanted by the sudden success of his scheme.

At last he and Ernestine passed on their right the narrow path which led towards the gulf of Kiel, and by which he knew that Bernhard and Gabrielle had struck off to the castle of Fredricksort; and far along the level way his quick and practised ear detected the tramp of their horses' hoofs. He passed it, and spurring on, slyly administered now and then a lash to the horse of Ernestine, urging it along a road which he knew conducted them straight to the place of rendezvous—the solitary cottage in the forest of Eckernfiörd.

Ernestine whipped and caressed her horse. Every pace the poor girl supposed was bringing her nearer and more near to the couch of her dying father.

CHAPTER X.
THE FOREST OF ECKERNFIÖRD.

Bandolo, who knew every foot of the way, avoided the villages and rode towards Eckernfiörd, which, from the landing-place, was double the distance he had mentioned to Ernestine as the space to be travelled. As she was too acute not to perceive this, after they had ridden without speaking for some miles in the dark (for there was no moon, and scarcely a star visible, as the clouds were coming up in heavy masses from the Baltic on their right), she made some inquiries about this fortress, where, as he had said, her father commanded, and how far it might yet be distant.

"It should be just beyond those trees, lady," replied the disguised spy.

"Should," retorted Ernestine in great displeasure; "are you not quite certain that it is?"

"How can one be certain of any thing in so dark a night? But trust in the Lord, lady—trust in the Lord!"

"Herr Doctor, you are very fond of repeating that tiresome phrase; but remember, sir, that at present I trust to you, and it seems that you are leading me towards a dense forest.

"Through that forest lies our way, grafine. I did not make the road. If I had, I should perhaps have taken it round by the shore of the haven; but, as it lies through the forest, we must pursue it, or remain where we are."

The narrow horse-path, which hitherto had been bordered only by smooth green meadows, divided by quickset hedges, now became gradually lost in that forest of tall trees which lies between Eckernfiörd and Kiel,* and so dense became the entwined branches and other obstructions incident to a wood growing in a state of nature, that their horses could scarcely move at times, and Bandolo now dispensed with his circular barnacles (a severe impediment to the vision of one who did not require them), and gazed around with all the air of a man who had completely lost himself.

* I know not whether the forest referred to by our cavalier is still extant. It was so in 1702. See "Travels in the retinue of the English Envoy, 1702"—printed at the Ship in St. Paul's churchyard, 1707.

"Now, sir," said the impatient Ernestine, "what a scrape you have brought me into! Separated from my sister, who cannot have come this way, else we should have found her in this labyrinth; and separated also from my dear father, who may die before I reach Fredricksort, and while we are fruitlessly wandering in this provoking wood; besides, there may be wild animals or robbers in it, and you are, of course, without arms."

"Heaven forbid, lady, I should ever trust to other weapons than those of the spirit. Maldicion—Maldicion de Dios!" he growled between his teeth; "if once I have her safe in the cottage of old Dame Krümpel, I will make her pay dearly for all the trouble her pride has cost me, and for having my face scratched in this rascally thicket."

"What did you say, Herr Doctor?"

"Only a prayer, that we may not meet with any robbers or wild animals, as you said—ha—ha!"

"Or broken soldiers."

"Or with Bandolo," he added.

"Count Tilly's spy?" said Ernestine; "'tis rumoured that he knows every foot of ground in Denmark, so I wish that we could meet with him; though he is a guilty wretch of whom even the Merodeurs speak with contempt and horror."

Bandolo uttered a low, ferocious laugh. Ruffian as he was, and callous to every sentiment of humanity, her words stung him to the soul; for there was something inexpressibly cutting in this hearty and undisguised contempt, as expressed by a beautiful woman. He writhed under it, and a savage glow of mingled triumph and revenge spread through his breast, as he exultingly contemplated the terror, the catastrophe, and the downfall that were awaiting her. His eagerness sharpened his faculties.

"I see a light—a spark—to our left. This way, lady," said he, seizing the bridle of her horse, and conducting her down a narrow track, where the pine trunks grew so close that there was scarcely room for steed and rider to pass between them; but in a few minutes they reached a small and rudely built cottage, which stood by the margin of a little tarn. It was the place where Bernhard was to rejoin Bandolo, and pay over the price of poor Gabrielle.

The bravo alighted from his saddle, and, fastening the bridles of both horses to the branch of a tree, threw open the cottage door, and led in Ernestine.

An oil lamp shed a faint light on the interior of this poor habitation, the furniture of which consisted of a table and couple of stools, of such rough construction that the bark yet adhered to the wood. Here and there a naked spar of the rough wooden roof came out of the obscurity in which dust, cobwebs, and darkness involved it; the floor was of hard-beaten clay. The cottage consisted of what we Scots call a but and a ben, or two apartments. One end of the outer was spanned by the rude lintel of a wide chimney, within which, and close to a few smouldering embers, an old hag, with hands like a kite's claws, sat on a block of wood, skinning squirrels and chattering over her work. She looked up, and Bandolo, as he expected, recognised Dame Krümpel, who, after her expulsion from Glückstadt by order of the puissant burgomaster, Herr Dubbelsteirn, had found her way to the eastern coast of the peninsula.

They greeted each other in a dialect of the German so guttural that Ernestine did not understand it. Then the old woman snatched up her lamp, and, holding it aloft, surveyed with her fierce eyes—which were keen and deep as two gimlet holes—the tall figure of Ernestine, who, on seeing this repulsive old woman approach with her shrivelled hands dyed in blood, shrunk back, and drew herself up to her full height, while a disdainful expression stole over her beautiful face, on which her broad Spanish hat and long black feather cast an impressive shadow.

Old Krümpel croaked and grinned as she set down her iron lamp, and quietly resumed her occupation.

Bandolo now brought in his heavy portmanteau, which he carefully deposited on the table; he then placed beside it two leathern bottles, which he took from his pockets, after securing the cottage-door.

"Be seated, madame—and here Krümpel, old hag! get us glasses, cups, or whatever you have; I long for a taste of schnaps, as doubtless the lady does for a drop of kirschwasser—for I have both."

"I beseech you, sir, to lose no time in procuring a guide," said Ernestine, whose heart was bursting with impatience, grief, and alarm.

"A guide—for where?"

"Fredricksort."

"Content yourself, my pretty one; what the devil would you do at Fredricksort?" he asked, abandoning all his assumed manner. "Surely one of you is quite enough among the rough Merodeurs."

Ernestine was petrified by this speech, and still more when the pretended clergyman threw aside his wig, revealing his coal black hair, and that long and peculiar lock by which he was generally known; and, opening his ample doublet, displayed below, his cases of poniards and pistols.

"Maldicion de Dios! ha, ha! what use is there in masquerading any longer? I am Bandolo, Madame Ernestine, and we may as well be friends at once; so give me a kiss to begin with, though I am one upon whom even the wild Merodeurs look with contempt and horror!"

He bluntly approached her, but paused; for the expression of her eyes arrested him, and he quailed before it—he, Bandolo!

Never did terror, anger, and aversion lend a brighter flash to more beautiful eyes than those of Ernestine; and their lofty gaze arrested the insolence of Bandolo, charming the steps of one whom the laws of neither God nor man could bind. He growled an oath and a laugh together; sat down and took a mouthful of schnaps. Ernestine turned anxiously towards the old woman; but that worthy appeared to have neither ears nor eyes for what was passing, and was tearing the skin from the body of a squirrel with the utmost unconcern.

Disdaining to say a word, Ernestine grasped her riding-rod, gave another fiery glance at Bandolo with her tearless eyes, and boldly prepared to retire. Seizing her arm, he forced her into a seat, and, placing his back against the door, burst into a shout of derisive laughter, which made her blood curdle.

The thought of Gabrielle, away, she knew not where, with this man's companion, filled her whole soul with alarm; and in that thought all sense of her own danger was swept away. Terror almost paralysed her, and she burst into tears.

Bandolo eyed her with a strange glance of mingled ferocity, perplexity, and admiration; for in every impulse—his anger, his avarice, and all his passions—this man was a mere animal. He took another draught of the strong schnaps, and warned her to take care what she was about, and what she did and said now; for she was alone with one who would not stand trifling—alone in the heart of a forest where no living thing could hear her outcries but the birds in their nests, or the foxes in their holes—that she was perfectly helpless, and beyond all rescue.

Alone—and with him! ........

CHAPTER XI.
ULRICK, COUNT OF MERODE.

Let us see how these two lovers conducted themselves towards the fair sisters whom they had entrapped;—the ruffian, who was laudably ambitious of becoming a count; and the count, who was in no way ashamed of being esteemed an accomplished ruffian.

At the narrow path indicated by Bandolo, his accomplice Bernhard had wheeled off towards the castle of Fredricksort, and its square outline, with little minarets at the angles, soon rose before the riders. High and sloping bastions faced with stone, surrounded by stockades and bristling with brass cannon, enclosed this stately castle, the lights of which were visible between the trees and plantations with which the fields were interspersed.

"My father—my father!" murmured Gabrielle, whipping on her horse; "but where is Ernestine? Ah, Heavens! I do not hear the hoofs of her horse, nor those of the doctor's nag. Ah me, if they should lose the way, and fall among Danes! Does your master know the country well?"

"Well? none know it better between the gulf of Lïïm and the Elbe; but now that we are arrived, I pray you to rein in your horse, lady, lest the sentinels fire on us."

They were now close to the fosse, the bridge of which was drawn up; beyond it, a deep archway yawned in the fortifications, and near it the figure of a soldier was dimly visible. He challenged in pure German.

In the same language Bernhard replied, and in her eagerness Gabrielle did so too. On hearing a woman's voice, there was a shout of laughter from the sentinels, and from several soldiers of the barrier-guard, who were loitering at the gate, and smoking their long German pipes. The bridge was lowered, and, as soon as the travellers had crossed, it was raised again; a lantern was brought from the guard-house, and Gabrielle found herself surrounded by soldiers—by Merodeurs!—or the Merodistas, as the Spaniards named them—a term now synonymous with one of the greatest of human crimes—for such was the atrocious character of the regiment of Merodé.

"Merodeurs!" said Gabrielle, shrinking back on seeing the ferocious visages, the ragged uniforms, and the rusty corslets of those who surrounded her, with their features seamed by scars, bloated by beer, and their eyes expressive of the most cruel and sinister thoughts that could animate the minds of men, hardened by civil crime, by the camp and the jail, the scourge and the fetter, the riddlings of Vienna, the scum of European wars—for murderers, deserters, and vagabonds of every description, readily found pay, plunder, and service in the ranks of Merodé—where they hardened each other afresh by their ferocious example. At times they quarrelled with each other on parade, and even when before the enemy, and exchanged a few slashes and shots in the colonel's presence. Their officers were all broken gamesters, hardened roués and high-born desperadoes; but the greatest and the worst was the count himself. Such was the battalion of Merodé; and never, perhaps, since an army was constituted, were a thousand such rascals assembled under baton, to surpass the cruelties of Nero, and disgrace the glorious profession of arms.

"Bernhard, your master told us that the castle was occupied by my father's regiment of horse."

But Master Bernhard did not hear Gabrielle's expostulating tone: for having recognised several old acquaintances of the Prison-house and Rasp-haus among the Merodeurs, he was engaged in a lively conversation, the slang terms of which made it totally incomprehensible to the startled girl, who had now some secret misgivings of betrayal and misfortunes to come. However, she dismounted without assistance, and addressing one whom, by his ample scarf and boots edged with lace, she recognised to be a sergeant, said,—

"Lead me immediately to the count—for it is most improper that I should loiter here."

"This way, then, madame," said the halberdier, with a bow which Gabrielle mistook for politeness, as she did not perceive how he winked to one soldier, thrust his tongue in his cheek to another, poked a third in the ribs, and set the whole guard laughing as he guided her into the body of the fortress; but she heard them saying—"Oho Kaspar! 'tis a girl who seeks the count."

"Der Teufel! ha! ha!"

"For so dainty a bird, what a taste she must have! Old Schwindler."

"I warrant me, Schwaschbückler, the count will scarcely have eyes even for so pretty a woman by this time."

"Ah, my Heavens!" sighed the poor girl, appalled by these brutal observations; "my poor father must indeed be dying, or discipline would never be so relaxed. And Ernestine—where is she loitering? Quick—quick, good sir! conduct me to the count."

The sergeant, who did not seem quite so bad as his comrades, led her straight towards a hall, the uproar proceeding from which made her poor little heart sink within her.

"Oh, if my misgivings become verified! It is impossible that my father can be in life," she thought; "if so, neither in camp nor quarters dare even the Merodeurs have been so outrageous and disorderly."

The hall was lighted, partly by flambeaux placed here and there irregularly, and partly by an enormous fire that blazed in the wide chimney, and was fed by doors and shutters, &c., brought from other parts of the edifice. The tapestry with which it was hung, and which represented the wars of Frederick II. with the Ditmarschen, was torn down in some places, leaving the bare wall exposed; in others, the fragments yet remaining were waving in the currents of air that floated through the vast apartment, and made the wavering flambeaux stream like yellow ribands.

At the long table nearly a dozen of Merodé's officers were seated at a debauch, which seemed to have lasted pretty long. All were richly, even magnificently dressed, and had their long curled hair and mustaches dressed to perfection. Their doublets, cloaks, and breeches were of the newest fashion, and of the finest Florence silk and Genoa velvet; and the enormous chains of pure gold which encircled their necks, and to which their crucifixes, miraculous medals, and jewelled poniards were attached, amply proved, that on the march they could help themselves to occasional trinkets as freely as their soldiers and camp-followers. Many of them were noble in feature and in bearing; but recklessness, defiance, debauchery, and crime were stamped heavily and ineffaceably on every brow, and in the lack-lustre expression of every drunken eye. Those who sat by the large table were absorbed in the chances of several games—(Post-and-pair, Tric Trac, and Ombre); their minds were wholly occupied, and they were watching the turns of fortune, with their bleared and bloodshot eyes fixed on those pieces of painted pasteboard, which had already cost one of their number his life; for on the floor there lay a cavalier, whose right hand yet grasped an unsheathed rapier. Gabrielle thought him intoxicated, but a cry almost escaped her on perceiving that he was ghastly, stiff, and dead; that his unclosed eyes were turned back within their sockets, and his long fair hair was clotted by blood. Near him sat the slayer in his shirt sleeves, binding up a thrust which he had recently received in the sword arm, and whistling the while with a grim expression on his sunburnt visage. It was evident that a brawl had interrupted the gambling—that one of their number had been slain; but so intent were the Merodeurs on their favourite amusement, that they had quietly resumed their play without even removing the corpse—a terrible illustration of their reckless ferocity and familiarity with outrage.

In the dark shadow which obscured the lower end of the hall Gabrielle passed unnoticed, and her light step was unheard. From thence the halberdier conducted her along several passages, and then stopped before a door, over which swung a lamp.

"In that chamber you will find the count," said he, pointing to the door.

"My father—my father!" said Gabrielle in a soft and almost breathless voice; "at last—at last—oh, my father!" she sprung forward, and, opening the door, entered the room—not, as she expected, to throw herself by the sick couch of her father, and to embrace him with all the gush of filial tenderness that welled up in her pure and joyous heart, but to find herself folded with ardour to the breast of a stranger.

CHAPTER XII.
PROVING THE MAXIM, THAT ADVANTAGE MAY BE TAKEN
IN LOVE AS WELL AS IN WAR.

It was some time before Gabrielle recovered from her astonishment and grief, or could fully realise all the terrors of her situation.

Merodé seated her in a chair, and closed the door. The apartment was very handsome, being completely hung with red Danish cloth, stamped over with rich silver flowers. A fire burned in an iron basket in the chimney, which was lined with gaudy Delft ware. In one corner stood a small bed, covered with green silk, brocaded with gold, and surmounted by plumes. The count's magnificently embossed helmet and cuirass hung on the knobs of one chair; his buff-coat, pistols, and rapier lay on another; and now, while the terrified Gabrielle is recovering her faculties, and surveying all these things by the light of a beautiful girandole, which occupied the centre of a small tripod table, let us take a view of the famous Ulrick.

He was about thirty-five years of age, above the middle height, and strongly made; handsome enough in face and figure to please any woman, but in his dark and devilish eye there was an expression which, while it fascinated with the fascination of fear, had that gloating expression, which the eye of an honest or honourable man never possesses.

His doublet of sky-blue velvet was completely covered with silver embroidery; his lace collar was a little awry, and stained with wine; his hair and mustaches were untrimmed, for he had just been awakened out of a sleep into which he had smoked himself two hours before, and his tasselled pipe still hung at a buttonhole of his doublet—the same honoured buttonhole at which he had suspended the diamond star of St. George of Carinthia. His cloak and breeches were also of sky-blue velvet, laced with silver; he wore white buff-boots and silver spurs; a white buff-belt and diamond hilted stiletto; a white satin scarf, with a cross and eagle embroidered at the ends of it. Having slept off his first drunken nap, there was a jaunty devil-may-care expression in his face, and he regarded the young girl with a smile full of desire and admiration.

"Count of Merodé," said she, abruptly; "is not my father with you here in Fredricksort?"

"No, Madame Gabrielle (you see I have not forgotten that name, nor the magic it once had for me), he is not. Thank Heaven! I am my own commanding-officer—at least none can have authority over me save your charming self; and I will consider it the duty and the glory of my life to obey you—to be your servant—your slave—your——"

As Merodé had all this kind of stuff off by rote, and by frequent repetition could have poured forth speeches which would fill three folio pages, Gabrielle cut him short by saying—

"I beseech you, sir, to tell me where my father is."

"I believe the old gentleman is with the Emperor at Vienna, where I hope they are both enjoying good health."

"Vienna! Impossible!"

"By the immortal Jove I swear to you that he is, unless—as report says—he is banished to his own castle of Giezar; for Ferdinand did not like the management of that piece of work at Oldenburg, and the escape of the count in the same ship with Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, whom he has sworn to hang (Duke and Elector though he be) over the gate of the Five Vowels at Vienna."*

* A gate of the palace, then inscribed A.E.I.O.U. meaning Austria est imperare orbi universo; i.e., "Austria is to govern the world."

"Ah, mercy! what will become of me? Oh, Ernestine, Ernestine! where are you? why are we separated? why am I here?"

"'Pon my soul, little one, by all this noise I could imagine that, like the old fellow Daniel, you had fallen into a den of lions, or among outrageous wolves, instead of a few lively young men, who can appreciate so well a pretty face. Adorable Gabrielle! I have never—never since we last saw each other at Vienna—had an opportunity of saying how much your beauty has taken possession of my whole thoughts. If I am stupid or timid just now, I pray attribute it to your presence here, which overwhelms me."

"Timidity!—I should think, my lord, you have very little of that, who have dared to entrap a daughter of Count Carlstein."

"Dared! Der Teufel! 'tis a word rarely addressed to a Merodista. (At that frightful word Gabrielle shuddered.) In love, as in war, we take all advantages; but, poor innocent! how can you be able to judge of a passion to which you must be a stranger? Yet be assured you will find love a more pleasant study than I found Latin at college; and, dearest Gabrielle, if I might be your preceptor——"

He placed both his hands on the fine figure of Gabrielle, and endeavoured to clasp her slender waist. The moment he touched her person, she drew herself up with loftiness and hauteur; her eye flashed and her cheek reddened, while a haughty indignation, which startled even Merodé, beamed on her beautiful brow.

"Der Teufel! but you are enchanting!" said Merodé, stepping back a space and surveying her with all the air of a profound connoisseur. "'Pon my soul, little one, I like you all the better for this display of temper; you shall see how friendly we shall be by and by. Believe me, I have not the least feeling of revenge for all the contempt with which you treated me at Vienna—not the least. Ah, by my life, what a charming pout!"

"I will leave this place, and go to my sister. Oh! Ernestine, where are you, and why are you not here to protect me?"

"She is in very good keeping by this time; and 'tis well, for she is a little bit of an Amazon," said Merodé, somewhat maliciously; for he knew right well that she was to become the prey of Bandolo.

"Count," said Gabrielle, clasping her poor little hands, and approaching with a trembling heart and imploring eyes; "by all the mercies of Heaven, I conjure you to tell me what you mean!"

"Delicious Gabrielle!" murmured the count, looking at her from side to side as one would do a fine horse; "why, I merely mean that she is safe among the Lutheran nuns of St. Kund at Kiel, where some of my fellows are very anxious to pay a visit."

"On your honour, count, you assure me of this?"

"On my soul I do!" replied Merodé, for that he considered of infinitely less importance.

Though thankful for the imaginary safety of her sister, Gabrielle, being overcome by the desolation and dangers of her position, sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands. Without touching her, Merodé hung over the chair, and gazed at the beautiful and harmonious outline of her young bust and curved shoulder; and thought, that although there was every chance of old Carlstein putting a bullet through his head, sans parley or ceremony, on the first opportunity, the pleasure he now experienced was well worth the risk to be run.

"Why so very sad?" said he, after a pause; "I don't comprehend it. Really I must have a rival, and that is the most troublesome animal a lover can have in his way. Now, pretty one, say—have I?"

"You have none here, at all events," sobbed Gabrielle, a little spitefully.

"Then I can have none any where else," replied the count, twirling his enormous Austrian mustache. "You charm me more and more! and has no man ever said that he loved you?"

Ian's stately figure seemed to rise at these words, and as the young maiden thought of her modest, her hopeless, and secret love, she could only weep.

Merodé uttered a deep sigh, which had its origin in art, rather than purity of passion; for that was a purity which the heart of Merodé never knew.

"Ah, Gabrielle, you do look seducing at this moment! Those dear white hands—and beautiful tears," he resumed, attempting to place an arm round her.

"For the love of Heaven, Count Merodé, do not touch me!" implored Gabrielle, in a voice so tender that he withdrew his arm, and stammered out—

"Der Teufel! Faith, I always thought that girls preferred a brisk and toying lover to a man who made long faces and long speeches. To-night I see that nothing can be achieved—not even the smallest caress. To-morrow we shall be better friends. 'Tis always thus with little ones like you. They make a devil of a fuss at first; and, from hating me alone, I have known twenty girls come at last to love the whole regiment, from right flank to left—positively! Pray, do not get into a passion with a poor Pickle like me, who fires off whatever ammunition comes first to hand; and so now I will leave you, and go to supper with my bon camarados in the hall. In these matter-of-fact days, my pretty one, love—however strong—cannot subsist without plenty to eat and drink," continued Merodé, rising and bowing, as he slowly retired towards the door. "We should grow sad if we did not drink; we should die if we did not eat. Now; were I a young damsel, I would always choose a lover who had a good appetite and loved his can of wine; for he that does so, is sure to be a strong and healthy fellow, with good sense, a good heart, and a good pair of sturdy legs; and what more would the most fastidious lady, even the Lady Margarethe of Skofgaard, or the Empress herself, require? What—you are still angry and perverse; and your father will have me broken alive upon the wheel, will he? No—no—I am sure he could never be such a hard-hearted old crocodile. But good-night, dearest Gabrielle; I will send you a companion—the best of many we have here in Fredricksort; but, until to-morrow, I will not trouble you again."

He retired, and closed the door.

For a time Gabrielle remained buried in the most tormenting thoughts, and shedding a torrent of tears.

Near the elegant couch already described, a door opened softly; but not so softly as to be unheard by Gabrielle. She turned with eyes expressive of alarm, and a lady stood before her.

It was the señora Prudentia—the Spanish dancer, whom Gabrielle had seen charming thousands in the theatre of Vienna; but whom, of course, she did not recognise in her Spanish costume, and with a face so pale—for excesses of many kinds had robbed the fair actress of many of her charms since she had made such a blockhead of me when in garrison at Glückstadt; but still she was beautiful, and her deep, dark, and magnificent eyes were fixed on Gabrielle, with a smile so lively and seducing that she was quite charmed. Rejoiced to see one of her own sex she sprang towards her, and said—

"Ah, madame, you will protect me, will you not?"

"Protect you from what—from whom? There is no danger here," said Prudentia, kissing the soft white cheek of Gabrielle, who threw herself into her arms. Her pretty foreign accent gave a girlish simplicity to all the señora said.

"Do not leave me, and I shall love you!" exclaimed Gabrielle.

"Upon my honour, child, you are beautiful!" said the dancer (who was her senior by a year or two), holding Gabrielle at arm's length, and surveying her timid face and fine figure;—"you are perfectly beautiful!"

"And so are you," said the poor little captive, with the most perfect innocence; "but you will be kind to me, will you not? Oh, yes I—for you have eyes just like my dear sister. And you will set me free?"

"Free—for what?" laughed the dancer; "is not one much better here?"

"In this frightful place! Are you the wife of Count Merodé? I hope you are not—I should be so sorry if one so pretty——"

"No, I am called the Señora Prudentia," replied the dancer with a loud laugh.

"Prudentia!" said Gabrielle, musing; "I have surely heard that name before. There was a dancer so called in Vienna—a Spaniard. Six months ago there was a brawl in her house, and an officer of Camargo's regiment was murdered. The woman had to fly."

"I have heard of it," replied Prudentia, who was the identical personage referred to, and had then around her graceful neck and tapered wrists the jewels given to her by the murdered man, who had fallen beneath her brother's poniard—a catastrophe which had banished her from Vienna for ever, though it was no blemish in the eyes of Merodé and his officers, to the female staff of whose regiment she had attached herself. "She was a countrywoman of mine—but a mere dancer," said Prudentia, with a toss of her pretty head; "we know that persons of that profession are all alike."

"It was very horrid—it was infamous!"

Prudentia gave the unconscious girl a spiteful glance from the corners of her dark eyes.

"Ah! madame, when shall I leave this place—when will you set me free?"

"Foolish child! it is for your own good you are brought here. The count is gallant, rich, generous, and will make up for the fortune your father is about to lose; for, although no one has been found murdered in his bedroom, he has fallen into disgrace with the Emperor. I am sure Merodé is very loveable. He will give you the most magnificent dresses—with flowers and diamonds for your hair, jewels and circlets for your neck and arms, a gilded caleche and six white horses with switching tails if you wish them, for in this place he has half the spoil of South Juteland."

"Oh, that I was out of it!" said Gabrielle, wringing her hands in bewilderment, and abandoning herself to the most violent grief. "Ernestine! Ernestine! why do you not come to me? I will be destroyed here. Madame, my father will give you all you have enumerated, and a thousand doubloons to boot, if you will set me free."

"I am not mistress here, any more than yourself," replied Prudentia, with a cold smile.

There was a pause, during which nothing was heard but the sobs of Gabrielle, and distant din of roistering in the hall, where Merodé and his officers were drinking and gambling like mad ruffians, as they were; and the roar of mingled laughter, with the clatter of drinking-horns, came on the currents of air through the long echoing corridors of the old Danish fortress.

"Oh!" moaned Gabrielle, covering her fine blue eyes with her hands; "I wish that some great illness would come and kill me."

"What a foolish wish!" retorted Prudentia; "upon my word, girl, I believe you are just what I was at your age—dying for a husband. But come with me to my room; by this time, Merodé, who with all his generosity is a mere sot at night—a regular borracho—will not trouble us until to-morrow——"

"But his comrades?"

"They dare not cast even an insolent glance upon the lady-friends of their commander—so come with me, and rest assured that, until morning at least, you are safe."

This was the truth. Gabrielle declined all refreshment, though offered every delicacy by Prudentia. She was permitted to pass that night unmolested; and, though she could not by any means be prevailed upon to undress, shared the sleeping-place of one from whose touch—had she known all—she would have shrunk as from contamination.

The Spanish danzador went through the ceremony (a somewhat useless one for her), of telling her beads before retiring to repose; but Gabrielle, who knelt by her side, clasped her little white hands, and, from her pure and virgin heart, addressed to Heaven one of those deep and voiceless prayers, which are all the more deep and fervent because the lips cannot utter them.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE WHITE POWDER.

While these little matters were occurring at his Danish majesty's castle of Fredricksort, Ernestine was still at the sequestered cottage in the wood; the old hag was yet skinning her squirrels in a corner of the chimney; the oil lamp was yet shedding its sickly gleam to the pale face of Ernestine, on the coal black hair, the rattlesnake eyes, and ferocious mouth of Bandolo, who had imbibed many a draught of schnaps, slightly tinctured with water. He was still awed by the presence of her he had dared to decoy by an artful story; thus his love affair had not made much progress.

Had Gabrielle fallen into the hands of Bandolo, she had been inevitably lost; for the extreme buoyancy and girlishness of her nature would have been totally overcome by terror. But Ernestine, with all her sweetness, retained that majestic calmness and admirable self-possession which dazzled and confounded this man of a hundred crimes. She awed him by her placid dignity—even as still waters awe us by their depth, more than the turbulent and shallow. Yet in her inmost heart Ernestine deplored with voiceless bitterness her irreparable folly, in committing herself without my advice to the guidance of a perfect stranger; though that stranger had presented himself at Falster as the count's accredited messenger. But now the danger which she was certain must beset Gabrielle, gave her a desperate courage.

"Heaven—blessed heaven!" said she, clasping her hands and raising her fine eyes; "hast thou abandoned me!"

"Por el Santo nombre de Dios!" cried the Spaniard, with a hoarse laugh; "what the d—l! do you think that Heaven cares about all your little piques and perversities. Heaven would indeed have plenty to do if it attended to all the nonsense of women. Have done with ha's and oh's, and listen to me. I remember a time when I was ass enough to starve and scourge myself in the forty days of Lent, to make up for my enormities during the Neapolitan carnival—but, faith! I am wiser now, and St. Mary——"

"Wretch, name her not!"

"Well, if I am such a rascal that your precious saints will not interest themselves in my affairs, I must just have recourse to the schnaps in the first place, and the devil in the second—ha! ha! What a hen-hearted fellow I am to sit here all night without having one kiss from you! Trumpery! I am turning a cowardly blunderbuss, like Bernhard; and now, when I think of it, I wonder why that schwindler tarries with my thousand ducats. Lady," continued this ogre, with a ghastly leer; "I am rich. In this mail are bills on the Imperial treasury, and gold to the value of a hundred thousand dollars—the fruits of many years of valour and industry."

"Murder and espionage."

"Call it what you will—call it what you will! With that sum I can purchase a county, either in Germany or Naples, and thou shalt share that county with me."

Ernestine almost uttered a scornful laugh.

"'Twill be a glorious revenge upon that haughty noble, who, when caprioling through the streets of Vienna with all his waving feathers and plates of polished steel, rode over me near the palace gate, and passed on without pity, because I was Bandolo—'twill be a glorious vengeance, I say, when this man, Rupert Count of Carlstein, Lord of Giezar and Kœningratz, has to greet me as his son-in-law—ha! ha!" He attempted to take in his the hand of Ernestine.

"For the sake of Heaven, do not sully me by your touch!"

"Beware, lest by haughty words and scornful glances you turn my softness to anger; my love to hatred; my persuasions to that violence which I may put in force when I choose; and thus, in grim earnest, sully the illustrious blood of Carlstein—ha! ha! Sully, I think, was the term you used, lady—as if the blood in one body was better, or purer, or more divine, than the blood in another."

Full of scorn and fear, Ernestine gazed at him as she would have gazed at a serpent. Anger and horror alternately rendered her silent and motionless. At times she could scarcely believe that all she saw and heard was real—that she was so completely in the power of this man, the touch of whose hand—that hand so often dipped in human blood—struck a chill through her. Was she really awake? Was it not all a hideous dream, from which she would awake to find herself by her sister's side, in their little bed-chamber at Nyekiöbing?

"Mercy on me!" she thought wildly; "to what a fate am I exposed! Here, without a hope, without a chance of escape, but by death—and not even by that, for I am without a poniard. Oh, wretch! would that I could find one, either for myself or for thee!"

Bandolo, who sat on the top of his precious mail, which he had placed upon a stool, swung his legs to and fro, laughed boisterously as the schnaps mounted to his brain; for she had uttered the last wish aloud.

"Bandolo—man—monster! what wrong have I ever done you, that you should persecute me thus?"

"You have not done any thing, but your father has. He rode me down in the streets of Vienna; and the man you love has, for he defeated and disgraced me at Glückstadt. He has stabbed and discovered me in various disguises; and, by robbing him of you, I rob him of that which he prizes more than his miserable life, which I could have taken by a pistol-shot at any time—ha! ha! So do not talk in that way again, my bride, or, zounds! I will come and kiss you."

Terrified by this threat, Ernestine remained silent for a time.

He uttered a succession of savage chuckles; then whistled a bolero, and resumed his swinging to and fro on the stool and his beloved portmanteau, eyeing his prisoner all the time as a cat does a mouse.

"Bandolo—Herr or Señor—for I know not by which to address you," said Ernestine; "you are said to love gold as a fish loves water, or flowers the sun."

"As flowers love water, or a fish the sun—what a fine simile! ha! ha!" said Bandolo, who was rapidly becoming tipsy; "Well—what if I do?"

"Conduct me to the nearest Austrian garrison, and I will see that you are paid a thousand ducats in gold."

"Bah!" said he; "I have just sold your sister for that very sum."

"My sister—my sister!" reiterated Ernestine in a breathless voice—"to whom?"

"The virtuous and honourable Count of Merodé."

At this cruel reply, the heart of Ernestine ceased to beat, and a palsy seemed to shake her beautiful form. A glazed expression stole over the ferocious eyes of Bandolo; they seemed to roll on vacancy, and the terror of Ernestine was redoubled.

"Gold—yes, gold!" he muttered; "when gold is spread before me, when a poniard is in my hand, I am mad! I am no longer myself! Something like a red curtain descends between me and the sun, bathing in redness all before my eyes. A hand passes over my heart—there is a whisper in my ears; it is destroy—destroy and be rich! Then I can see nothing before me, above me, and below me, but blood—red blood in pouring torrents, but spotted with sparkling stars; these stars are coins—they are gold—yellow gold—they are the price of my soul! Every deed I have done—every deed I am yet to do—even the murder of thee, perhaps, all beautiful as thou art—was written down ages before I was born, and they were all foretold to me by an old gitana of Arragon. Oh, yes! I remember that night in the wood near Almudevar. The wind was still, and the red sheet lightning was reddening the midnight sky, behind Huesca and the spire of San Lorenzo. We sat near the margin of the Gallego, and a thousand cork-trees hung their branches over its stupendous torrent, the roar of which shook the earth beneath our feet, yet not even the smallest of their leaves was stirring. I remember yet the solemn stillness of the wood, and roaring fury of the torrent, but I heard only the voice of the old gitana; and she foretold how, wading through a sea of crime, I should wed the daughter of a valiant noble, and die rich, powerful, feared, and respected; and the hour is at hand for accomplishing the first part of my destiny—for turning the first leaf in the great book of my fate. I am not drunk—Maldicion de Dios—no!" he continued, rolling his head from side to side; "do I speak like a man who is so?"

Ernestine turned anxiously and hopelessly to the old woman; but Dame Krümpel had fallen asleep by the dying embers, and lay half reclined against the fireplace, with a knife in one hand, and a half-skinned squirrel in the other; and while Bandolo had run on thus concerning the gitana, her prophecy and his fate, a sickness, the very sickness of intense fear, came over Ernestine. She bent her head upon her hand, but still continued to watch him between her white fingers. Suddenly the wretched cottage seemed to swim around her; and she felt herself sinking.

"Blessed Heaven!" she prayed, "preserve me from the deadly faintness that is coming over me!"

"The bottle of kirschwasser is rather nearer you than heaven," said Bandolo, pouring some of the cherry-wine into the two tin cups which were on the table. Ernestine, who thought it might revive and strengthen her for what she might have yet to encounter, made no objection; but while watching Bandolo between the pretty fingers which shaded her eyes, she perceived him hastily shake a little white powder into one of the cups! Instead of increasing her terror, this gave her a new and sudden courage, and she immediately conceived a bold and decisive project, for my brave Ernestine had a man's head with all her woman's heart.

She cared not whether the drugged cup contained merely a narcotic or a deadlier draught. In either case she knew that it was meant for her, with some terrible ulterior object—and that the cup was full of peril; hence she resolved that it should be drunk by Bandolo himself.

"Drink with me," said he; "you cannot refuse me that. To our better acquaintance, lady sweetheart—and to your better humour—ha! ha!"

Gathering all her energies, she uttered a shrill cry of alarm, and exclaimed—

"See—see—what is that at the window?"

Dame Krümpel sprang to her slipshod feet. Bandolo grasped a pistol, rushed to the lattice, and, pressing his nose against it, peered out into the darkness of the forest, and at that instant Ernestine set down her drugged cup of the kirschwasser, and took up his.

"No one is there—por el nombre de Dios, if there was!" growled Bandolo grinding his teeth as he uncocked his pistol, and for a moment became almost sobered; while the beldam in the corner snorted herself asleep again. "Hoity, toity, my poor little Tit—'tis only your perverse fancy! Come, drink with me; this cup of cherry-water will brace your nerves, and set all right in heart and head—it will, by the henckers! (I am half German, you see—even as you are half Spaniard;) ha! ha! Come, my bride—let us clink our cans and be merry."

With a pale and trembling hand Ernestine raised the cup in the old German fashion, clinked it side by side, above and below, with the drugged cup of the subtle but unconscious bravo, and then drained its contents. He gave her a long stare of triumph and derision; then burst into a loud laugh, and drank off his wine at one gulp.

He then set down the cup, and while continuing to look at Ernestine with a leering expression, broke into a German drinking song which he had heard among Tilly's Reitres, and, mingling with it scraps of a Spanish gipsy ballad, rolled his head from side to side with a wild expression of face, that increased every moment.

The song died away in quavering murmurs on his lips; once or twice he raised his hands, but they fell heavily by his side.

Then it seemed suddenly to flash upon his mind, the faculties of which were fast obscuring, that he had drunk of the wrong cup; and the smile of bitter triumph that curled the beautiful lip of Ernestine, and the wonder that sparkled in her haughty eyes, convinced him that it was so!

"Ah, traitress—that cry—you have outwitted me! I thought you had swallowed this drag—it now spreads a drowsy numbness over every limb. Traitress—ass that I am—I have fallen into my own trap—I have drugged myself—she will escape! Maldicion—de—de—Maldetto! By the henckers; I will put a ball through you—I will—I will!——"

Erecting himself on his feet, where he swayed to and fro like a figure on a pivot, he endeavoured to grasp Ernestine; but she started back.

At that moment his aspect was frightful.

Inflamed by passion and desire, ferocity and revenge, his features were alternately brightened by a wild leer, or contracted and savage. His eyes were glittering with that white ghastly glare which some Spanish eyes can alone assume; and, balancing himself on each leg alternately, he approached the bold but startled girl, while his hands wandered nervously among the weapons in his belt. Suddenly he fell prostrate, speechless, and almost unable to move; but his glaring eyes—still fixed on Ernestine—shewed that, though the drugged kirschwasser had fettered every limb, his senses had not yet left him.

"And this would have been my situation!" thought Ernestine, with a heart full of horror.

Stooping down, she deliberately, but not without a shudder, drew from his belt four pistols and threw away the priming, and took possession of his poniard, which she placed in her girdle—uttering a joyful laugh, for she knew that her moment for triumph had come. If Bandolo's eyes could have slain, at that crisis their glare would have immolated her. She was about to rush from the cottage when another thought occurred to her; and grasping the heavy portmanteau, which contained all Bandolo's vast amount of treasury bills and gold—that gold which the perpetration of a hundred complicated crimes had amassed and enabled him to hoard up, like the very blood of his heart—she shook it tauntingly before his fixed and frenzied eyes, and, rejoicing that she could thus rob the robber, issued from the cottage with the intention of throwing the ponderous mail into the first deep well she came to, that the price of blood might be lost to men for ever.

As she disappeared, a cry almost left the paralysed tongue of Bandolo, on seeing all the fruit of his crimes and avarice vanishing into smoke, together with the prophecy of the gitana and his hopes of a count's coronet; and as he sank lower and lower upon the clay floor, and the power of a narcotic that was to last for six-and-thirty hours spread over him, the tramp of a horse's hoofs receding into the distant paths of the wood, were the last sounds he heard; and they informed him, that his beautiful prisoner and his beloved gold were gone together.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE NUNS OF ST. KNUD.

Notwithstanding the wildness of her terror, Ernestine, who was a bold and expert horse woman, retained sufficient presence of mind to select her own nag, to give a glance at the saddle, and before mounting to throw the mail with all its contents into the deep tarn that lay before the cottage-door. Relieved of this encumbrance, and feeling that she had revenged herself, she dashed at full speed along the same path by which they had come; and though she frequently paused to listen, and cry aloud the name of her sister, in the hope that she might be in her vicinity, the echoes alone replied.

A torrent of tears again came to her relief; her hat flew off, and with all her loosened hair streaming behind her, in such a manner that it frequently became twisted among the branches of the trees, she urged on her horse by the unsparing use of the whip at the bridle-end. All the energy and courage that the presence of immediate danger had summoned, and which had enabled Ernestine to conduct herself so stoutly and so well throughout the trying events of the evening and night, were now passing away, and she could only weep and murmur the name of her sister.

She had left the wood far behind her, and was now in the open country, where all was still and solemn; and, as she had long since committed the bridle to the care of her horse, on recovering sufficiently she found that he had slackened his pace, and commenced cropping the long grass that grew by the wayside.

She looked around, and began to reflect on the many terrors and peculiarities of her situation.

The moon was waning, and its pale white disc was slowly sinking behind the flat shore of Eckernfiörd, and the long shadows of every tree and hedge were thrown far across the fallow and neglected fields. All was quiet and voiceless as a vast burial-ground. There was no house near. Without money, jewels, or friends, she was alone in a land where the rough, morose, and uncultivated boors were jealous of all strangers, and unmerciful to the straggling Imperialists, whom they slew without mercy wherever they met them. Her mind became filled with new alarms, and the poor girl knew not which way to turn for succour or for protection. Bandolo had spoken of having sold her sister to Merodé, who occupied Fredricksort. She shuddered at the idea of Merodé and his officers, but her first thought was to seek that fortress; then she paused. Should her sister really be there, she could only hope to achieve her freedom by being herself free. To visit Fredricksort might be to become also a prisoner; besides, bad as Merodé was, Gabrielle might be safer with him than she could have been with Bandolo. Where now were all their father's rank and power, when the debauched Merodé, and Tilly's ruffian follower, dared to commit the acts they had done? Her mind became a prey to the most bitter anguish. Then came other ideas; for as the white moon disappeared, and inky blackness stole over the darkened sea and level landscape, her German education brought many a strange and wild story to her memory, and made her tremble as she watched the quaint, fantastic shapes assumed by every object between her and the distant horizon, where, rising from a black and strongly defied outline, there shone a pallid flush of light, but silvery and uncertain, the last rays of the moon that had waned; and she was weak enough to fear that a swarm of little Trolds might surround her; for, unlike the beautiful and merry little fairies of our Scottish traditions, those of Denmark are impish, heavy, and ungainly gnomes, with hump-backs and long hook-noses, wearing grey doublets and conical red caps; but, as the land was moorish and level, she feared still more to meet with some of the Elk people, who are usually said to dwell in such places, and whose touch causes a wasting that ends in death.

While these thoughts crowded through her mind, and mingled with her more solid causes of grief and terror, she suddenly found herself beneath the walls of a high square building, surrounded by a number of copper beeches and tall poplars.

Not without some fear that it might prove the castle of Grön Jette, or King Waldemar the wild huntsman, and consequently that it might vanish at her touch, she approached the arched gateway and raised the knocker, which was of good substantial iron, and rang heavily. She knocked repeatedly without receiving any answer, and her heart beat with increased rapidity. After a time she heard the sound of voices within, and thanked Heaven to find them all belonging to females. One named Grethe was frequently summoned.

"Grethe! Grethe!—where are you, Grethe?"

Grethe, who proved to be the old portress of this edifice, which in former times had been a Catholic convent, dedicated to St. Knud, but was now an establishment of Lutheran nuns, opened the gate, and uttered a cry on beholding the pale face, the long black hair, the wild and disordered expression of Ernestine.

"An Elle woman!" she exclaimed; "an Elle woman from the moor!"

Half sinking with emotion and fatigue, Ernestine slipped from her saddle, and entered among the nuns, who received her with wonder and fear, but with kindness, on finding that she was a mortal like themselves, and neither an Elle woman nor one of the Stille Volk (the silent people), spirits who appear to give warning of approaching danger.

The kind Danish ladies (whose superior was a daughter of the old Baron Fœyœ) conveyed Ernestine into the parlour of the establishment, where they had all been assembling previous to morning prayers. Refreshments were brought, and her story heard. Notwithstanding that she was a daughter of one of those Imperialists who were carrying war and desolation to the heart of Denmark, she was treated with the most sisterly kindness.

The lady superior left nothing undone or unsaid to reassure Ernestine, and promised that with dawn every means should be taken to trace her sister. The Lutheran nuns did not conceal their satisfaction at having within their walls a daughter of the great Imperialist, Count Carlstein, colonel-general of the cavalry, fully believing that her presence would protect them from any of the unscrupulous Merodeurs, who occupied the castle of Fredricksort, a few miles distant.

These kind sisters did all in their power to comfort Ernestine; but every thing in their establishment excited her surprise, being so different from the Catholic convents of the empire. Instead of the long flowing robe, the wimple, veil, and hood, they wore the dress of the world, and had ample fardingales, with starched collars and bands, puffs, cuffs, ruffs, and all the newest fashions of France.

Ernestine expressed her astonishment at this, and said she could not believe them to be nuns in sober earnest.

"Why so, child?" retorted the Lady Fœyœ; "is it because we dress like other women of the present day, and do not make our piety to consist in the modish garments of a bygone age, like the religious of your empire?"

"I crave your pardon, mother," said Ernestine, gently; "but it seems so strange to me—and your vows——"

"Vow me no vows!" replied the lady; "we are all daughters of the best families in Denmark, and only remain here so long as we please, consequently we do not require vows to restrain our inclinations to evil."

Ernestine had no wish to offend the kind superior, by instituting comparisons between her establishment and those which she considered more perfect, and consequently remained silent.

She was three days with the nuns of St. Knud. As it was the rule of these Lutheran establishments that the sisters should sleep by pairs, Ernestine slept with one of them. Each couple had their little dormitory and working-room, where they made clothes for the poor, drew landscapes and pious pictures without number, representing the miracles of St. Knud, and the spiders spinning their webs over that hole in which he concealed himself from the Wends, who, deceived by the appearance of the gossamer web, believed there was no one within, and prosecuted their search elsewhere; others painted on velvet, or made flowers and ornaments for sale; in short, nothing could be more blameless and amiable than the tenor of their way.

They had a chapel, having a crucifix, altar, and candles, where the village curate gave them a sermon twice every week; though the crucifix and other et cetera are at variance with the catechism of Martin Luther, as printed at Kiöbenhafen in 1666.

The nun who shared her bed and apartment with Ernestine, was a very pretty and fair-haired girl, the youngest daughter of the old Count of Rantzau. Sister Gunhilda informed her, in that solemn confidence which the circumstance of being bed-fellows establishes at once between young girls, that she was only residing in this tiresome convent until the close of the weary war would permit the Baron Karl of Klosterfiörd to leave his troop of pistoliers for a few months and marry her; and no sooner did she ascertain that Ernestine had once seen her dear Karl, than she overwhelmed her with questions as to what he said and did; and whether his air was not noble, his voice the most pleasant, his mustaches the most captivating, and his figure the most handsome, she had ever met with.

To find nuns so impatient for marriage, and speaking of it quite as an occurrence of their everyday life, was a fresh source of wonder to poor Ernestine.

During the three days she was with them, no tidings could be learned of Gabrielle; for as the sentinels of Merodé at Fredricksort invariably shot every Dane who approached their posts, the boors were too wary to trust themselves within a mile of the Imperial quarters.

Another day would have found her despairing and inconsolable, had not an unexpected visitor arrived at the convent. This was no other than Father d'Eydel (or Daidle, which you please), the Jesuit, who had just made his escape from the uproar and carnage of Eckernfiörd, where he had been with the Imperial garrison, the story of whose destruction he related.

Ernestine received him almost with joy, and wept upon his hand; the Lutheran abbess and her ladies received him with hospitality and respect, though the good man certainly cut a very remarkable figure for a follower of St. Ignatius Loyola. He had escaped from Eckernfiörd just as he had sprung out of bed, i.e. in his shirt and drawers; and he had picked up and donned a drummer's doublet, which was covered with tawdry lace, and was too small for him. Thus his long and bony arms protruded far through the sleeves, while the short tails were dangling high up between his shoulders; and on his head was a broad plaited straw hat, such as the peasant women wore; and these garments, when his severely solemn face, and long lean figure, thrust into a pair of tight flannel drawers, are taken into account, made him much more comical than reverend in aspect. Even his own brother, the dominie, would not have recognised him. He had no sooner consoled Ernestine (who was his favourite), and recovered from his fatigue and general discomposure, than, without doffing the drummer's yellow doublet, with its tags of scarlet lace, he turned his grave grey eyes upon the Lady Fœyœ, and asked her if she was not ashamed of the frippery exhibited by the ladies of her establishment.

"I ask you, madame—for reverend mother I cannot call you—if all this pinning and unpinning, combing, and brushing, and other looking-glass work—this ado with corsets and carcanets, busks and boddices, bracelets and borders,—these partlets and friglets, kirtles and fardingales,—this concatenation of trumpery and trash, are becoming women who retire from the world as sisters of St. Knud? Alas! it was neither velvet nor satin, purple nor fine linen, that were worn in better times by the true sisters of that blessed saint, who gathered the rich harvest of conversion among the Danish isles, in those dark ages when, at the sound of his inspired voice, the vanities and atrocities of the Eleusynian rites fled and disappeared—when the fires of superstition were quenched, and the blood of the human sacrifice was dried on the stone of Odin, never to stain it more. Their garments were of sackcloth, their hoods and wimples the fruits of their own industry. But you, madame, and these around you—oh, get you gone! for all this frippery is enough to bring the vengeance of Heaven, if it does not bring the Merodeurs among you!"

He said a great deal more to the same purpose, and wound up his discourse by almost convincing the poor harmless women that they were thoroughly disreputable, and a mere society of sinners; but in the midst of his harangue Gunhilda of Rantzau whispered to Ernestine, that she was now convinced the convent was not a proper place for her, and more than ever wished that her dear Karl would come and take her away.

On questioning the Jesuit concerning the troops who had made the midnight attack on Eckernfiörd, he happened to mention to Ernestine our regiment of Strathnaver, having seen the tartans waving, and heard the pipes braying, as we defiled in close column through the main street to assail the great church. Filled by new fears and anxieties, Ernestine determined to seek the battalion, and discover me, if I had not fallen in the night attack, "which," as Father d'Eydel said, "was not improbable, for I saw the poor Scottish lads lying across each other on the causeway, like fish in a net."

Her new terrors were irrepressible. With daybreak she set out on horseback, riding on a pillion behind the priest, who was disguised as a layman, in a dress given to him by the Lady Fœyœ, who received in return a protection for all her establishment, written in strong terms, and running in the name of Count Tilly.

An hour's riding brought him and Ernestine to Eckernfiörd, where every thing bore terrible witness of the recent conflict; the burned and ruined houses; the church razed to its foundations; the streets strewed with wounded, with killed, and spotted by gouts of blood; with spent cannon-shot and exploded bombs; while the blackened wrecks of the storeship, lay half-burned and stranded on the sandy shore. Others had gone down at their anchors when the flames had reached the water edge. Thus the harbour, which yesterday had presented a fair and busy scene, was now desolate and empty, or covered with scorched timber and floating corpses.

It happened luckily that Angus Roy M'Alpine, with his company, guarded the gate which faces the road from Kiel; and he sent a Highland soldier to conduct Ernestine and the Jesuit to a house, where I and several others had been carried, for the purpose of being examined by the chirurgeon to the forces—the famous Dr. Alexander Pennicuik of that Ilk, who afterwards was chirurgeon-general to Sir John Banier in Germany.

I need not expatiate on the emotions of poor Ernestine, when she beheld me lying in a stupor of pain and exhaustion, on a little straw spread on the floor of this temporary hospital, with a plaid rolled up and placed under my head for a pillow, and a dead soldier on each side of me; for many a poor fellow expired of agony or loss of blood before their wounds could be attended to, in the bustle and excitement succeeding the desperate business of the night attack.

CHAPTER XV.
COMFORTS OF WAR.

Struck senseless by a piece of falling timber, as I have related, I lay in a state of blessed unconsciousness of the horrors and of the carnage around me; but I can still remember the gradual struggling back to life again, and a partial relapse into insensibility—a vibrating of the pendulum, as it were, between life and inanity, while many a strange vision floated around me.

My home came before me, and the pleasant voices of other days were in my ears, mingling with the hum of bees, and the rustling leaves of my native forests. I wept with joy to find my feet again on the purple heather—again on Scottish earth; but that joy was tinged with fear and doubt, lest the vision would pass away; for the distant and the present—the past and the future—were conflicting for place and coherence in my mind. I beheld my own home, and the roof beneath which my mother bore me into this world of sorrow; the morning sun seemed to redden the walls of the old grey tower, that rose above the woods of Scottish pine; its dun smoke was curling in the pure air of the mountains. Then methought I was at sea in a small shallop, and I felt the waters heaving beneath me. The Sutors of Cromartie, whose ivied fronts of rock—the home of the sea-bird—guard the Portus Salutis of the ancients, rose before me, with their bases wreathed in surf; mists came around me; the shore receded, and I felt myself alone on the ocean. Farther and farther the boat went seaward, and the shore diminished to a speck. I was feeble and unable to use hand or voice, and I felt that the moment was approaching when I would perish, and the waters close over me.

Then the current of the tide seemed to turn again; the boat was wafted slowly towards the shore; emotions of joy and pain arose within me; old voices came to my ear, and among them were the soft tones of Ernestine. I strove to speak, but my tongue was feeble and fettered; and I tried vainly to embrace her through the mist that enveloped us.

Her voice became more distinct—the shore was very close then; the visionary boat grounded; I felt her hands upon me, and awoke from a stupor, to find myself in the military hospital of Eckernfiörd, with Ernestine kneeling beside me, pale as death—pale as the dead soldiers near us; but bathing my temples with some cool and aromatic essence.

Now, I have no doubt that the imaginary shore from which I seemed to recede, and again approached, was this world; and that in reality my spirit hovered between time and eternity; for, as Doctor Pennicuik informed me afterwards, the contusion on my head, notwithstanding my bonnet of steel, was a very severe one, being upon the very place where I was struck before.

The dead, half stripped, with eyes unclosed and glazed, and with their coagulated blood forming black pools among the straw on which they lay, were stretched at intervals between the wounded and dying. One of the former was a muscular Highlander from the braes of Lochaber, whose breast was gored by three pike wounds; another, close by me also, was a handsome young chevalier of Montgomerie's French musketeers, whose head had been partially fractured by a spirole shot, and his brains were actually oozing over his eyes.

Father d'Eydel had taken off his masquerading doublet, tucked up his shirt sleeves, and like a thoroughly good, but somewhat long-legged and long-armed Samaritan, was dressing wounds and bruises, tying up cuts and slashes, distributing food, refreshments, clean shirts, and dry straw, with a celerity that made old Pennicuik of that Ilk, our chirurgeon-general, declare him well worth a dozen of doctors.

A bed being found for me in an adjacent house, Ian and Phadrig Mhor took me up between them, as if I had been a child, and conveyed me there. Being anxious to have some conversation with Ernestine, I would not permit them to undress me, but lay on the mattress in my doublet and kilt, with a plaid spread over me; and after kind old Sandy Pennicuik (afterwards chief Medico to the Scottish army which invaded England) had dressed my wound, the dear girl was permitted to visit me for a half hour, during which she gave me a brief sketch of her adventures; but, to avoid agitating me unnecessarily, concealed for the present the mystery which involved the fate of Gabrielle.

The half hour during which we were permitted to be alone, passed like a minute; and yet the excitement of it nearly put me into a fever. In fact, Pennicuik fully expected that it would do so; but believed, as he afterwards said, that if the interview was withheld, a fever from vexation might prove more fatal. We embraced each other repeatedly, with that full and impassioned tenderness which the dangers we had both encountered and escaped, and the separation we had endured, made more endearing to us than ever.

For a time we could do nothing but sigh and utter tender appellations, which would seem very droll even to lovers if transferred to paper; although, moreover, none but lovers could understand them.

"Ah! these wars are frightful!" said poor Ernestine, when she had related all her escapes, and heard all mine. "On one side, I tremble for the loss of my father; on the other, for the loss of you."

"But weep no more, Ernestine; a happy time is in store for us all."

"For such scenes as these—for this town with its shattered walls and corpse-strewn streets—you have left those quiet glens and silent hills, of which I have heard my poor father often speak with so much rapture and regret."

"Ay, Ernestine," said I; "but on those blue hills, where the mountain bee sucks the honey from the purple heath, and the white butterfly floats over the yellow broom bells; and in those green glens, where the hirsels graze and the sheep bleat by the whimpling burn, or the smoke of the sequestered cottage ascends through the summer woods—the din of war is often heard, and the gleds and corbies are summoned to a feast from the four winds of heaven. The cross of fire gleams across the country, flung from hand to hand; the war-pipe rings from the echoing rock; the beacon blazes on the muster-place, and the clink of arms with the fierce slogan rise among the lonely hills; tribe pours forth against tribe, with banners waving and pibroch yelling; the heather is in flames—the flocks are seized—the valley is strewn with dead—the cottage is sheeted with fire, and the green sod drenched with the blood of the inmates; for the world never saw quarrels more bitter than the hereditary feuds of our Scottish clans; and while the human heart and the human mind are constituted as they now are, there will be wars and crimes, the sack of cities, and the rush of armies; for men are but men, Ernestine, all the world over."

Three days we remained at Eckernfiörd, burying the dead, collecting provisions, curing the wounded, or embarking them for Zealand. Thanks to the skill of Dr. Pennicuik, and the sisterly attentions of Ernestine, I was able to attend parade on the evening of the fourth day; but I was so ghastly and pale, that one would have imagined all the experiments of the college of physicians had been tried upon me.

So M'Alpine told me, on seeing me almost staggering at the head of my company, and added, "On my honour, Rollo, I did not expect to see you again after hearing that you were wounded; for I thought our Danish doctors would soon do the rest."

"They are much obliged to you for your high opinion of their skill, Angus," said I; "but I have been under the hands, not of a Copenhagener, but a barber-chirurgeon, regularly graduated at King James' College, in the good town of Edinburgh—hence my rapid recovery, perhaps."

Ernestine had by this time informed me of the manner in which she believed Gabrielle had been betrayed into the hands of Merodé; and that she was only some ten or twelve miles distant from us, at Fredricksort on the gulf of Kiel. I would have given the world—had the world been mine—to have been permitted to march a wing of our stout Highland blades to overhaul Merodé in his quarters; but King Christian, who occupied, the house of the Herredsfoged of Wohlder, had other objects in view; and the result of various councils of war, which he, Ian, Count Montgomerie, the Baron Karl, and others, held there, soon became developed.

I may mention that a party under Phadrig Mhor was despatched to the cottage in the wood; but neither Bandolo nor dame Krümpel were found there. After burning it to the ground, they fished the tarn for the portmanteau, which I told them might be kept by the finders; and Gillian M'Bane, who when at home had been an expert pearl-fisher, after diving down once or twice, discovered its locality; the spoil was soon hooked out, and generously distributed by him fairly and equally among the privates of the regiment. It came to a handsome sum per man, and many of our musketeers wore silver buttons and silver-mounted sporrans to the end of their days.

Meanwhile the increasing preparations of the great Albrecht, Count of Wallenstein, who had been created Duke of Friedland, Sagan, Glogau, and Mechlenburg, General of the Baltic and Oceanic seas, compelled Christian IV. to exert himself without delay.

Entering fully into the ambitious views of his master, the Emperor, who, in making him Duke of Mechlenburg, had violated the laws and trampled upon the rights of the Germanic confederation, this great and warlike noble resolved to bend his whole energies to destroy the political independence of Germany, exterminate the heresy of Luther, and conquer Scandinavia. We heard that, for this gigantic project, he was rapidly building and equipping a flotilla of ships and gunboats at Rostock, Weimar, and other Hanse towns, which his Spanish fleet had seized.

Lavishing by thousands florins and ducats, the spoil of ravished kingdoms, on all sides among his reckless favourites and military followers, he led an army a hundred thousand strong across the Elbe, from whence it poured through Saxony and spread along the shores of the Baltic sea. Terror, extortion, outrage, and contribution, levied by beat of drum, at the sword's point, and the cannon's mouth, amassed to Wallenstein in seven years, the vast sum of sixty thousand millions of dollars!

Extolling his generosity, his soldiers adored him, while the ruined burghers and rifled boors viewed him with horror and aversion. Thus, amid wealth and rapine, conquest and desolation, splendour, dissipation, and crime, the great army of the Empire flourished, and rolled like a cloud of flame over Germany; while provinces became deserts, and their people perished by famine, by disease, and by the sword.

CHAPTER XVI.
BOMBARDMENT OF KIEL.

On being joined by a regiment of Dutch, under Colonel Dübbelstiern, brother of the burgomaster of Glückstadt, the expedition resolved upon by the council of war was against Kiel, where Count Kœningheim, lately Tilly's aide-de-camp, commanded. Knowing well the reputed bravery of the count, and, moreover, that, notwithstanding his Germanised name, he was our own countryman, we expected to encounter unusual difficulties and dangers in the performance of our duty.

Spring had passed and summer come again; the snows had melted; the woods were putting forth their bright green leaves, and the migratory storks had returned, from the unknown regions of the south, to their former nests under the cottage eaves, or on the steep old burgh gables and the older village spires.

At daybreak on the morning of the first of May, the whole of the king's small force embarked on board his vessels; the colonels of regiments, with their staffs and colours, were all on board the Anna Catharina; with my company, I accompanied Ian Dhu. Though we were at sea, and ploughing the waves of the Baltic, as we ran round Danische-walde our men did not forget to welcome the rising sun on that auspicious morning, by baking their Beltane bannocks in the old Highland fashion, and breaking them crosswise, with as much ceremony as if they were at home in the land of hills and valleys.

The sorrow and alarm of Ernestine were increased by the greater distance which was now to be placed between her and her sister, whom, from various reports that reached us, she firmly believed to be, as Bandolo had said, in the power of Merodé at Fredricksort. The good King Christian, to whom Ernestine was presented by Ian, did all in his power to console her.

"Madame," said he, among many other remarks, "it is useless now to regret that you so unwisely permitted your sister and yourself to be wiled away from the castle of the queen, my mother, at Nyekiöbing, by the cunning tale of a rascal. It is enough that you were so—that much evil has come of it—evil that we must undo. Necessity has seldom pity for women's tears—and war, never! Yet, though my necessities are sore, and that, with scarcely three thousand men, I am wandering like a pirate among my own Danish isles, while Wallenstein and Tilly, with one hundred and thirty thousand men, have marched along the Elbe, and through all Juteland, even to the Skagen Cape, I will endeavour to free your sister from Fredricksort, though I may lose all in the attempt. Rest assured of that, lady. A week will not pass until I have done something in the matter. By force of arms perhaps I cannot reach her; but in my desperate fortune, though valour may fail, craft and guile may ultimately succeed."

"Within a week!" thought Ernestine, who could only weep and murmur her thanks; for in a week rescue might come too late, and under such terrible circumstances it seemed an age.

Considering the nature of the expedition we were bent on—the bombardment of a town—I was somewhat inclined to have left Ernestine behind us; but where could she have been left with safety to herself? Besides, as the honest and soldier-like king (who enjoyed as a capital joke the story of her throwing Bandolo's portmanteau into the duck-pond) said, this aggrieved personage was slippery and subtle as the great serpent, ferocious as a tiger, and now, being deprived of his gold, would place no bounds to his revenge; "consequently," said he, "the safest place for our pretty Imperialist is under the pennon of Sir Nickelas Valdemar, and the hatches of the Anna Catharina." The consciousness that Christian judged correctly, alarmed me so much that I could scarcely trust her out of my sight; but he gallantly relinquished to her use the great cabin, and dined among us in the gun-room, on cold salted beef and Dantzig beer: for this brave monarch loved better the jovial commeradrie of military society, than the hollow pomp that surrounded him as a king. As we rounded the point of the Danische-walde, and the yards were braced up, to run us into the Kielerfiörd, the magazines were opened, the guns cast loose, and the signal to stand to arms and to quarters was given from the king's ship.

Ernestine was conveyed to a place of safety in the deep dark hold of the Anna Catharina, where a little berth had been hastily fitted up for her accommodation, and where she was attended by the wife of one of our musketeers, a red-cheeked Holsteiner. There the din of the approaching cannonade would be less heard, and there could be little danger of shot striking the hull so far beneath the water-line.

As the wind blew hard, and veered almost a-head, we carried Austrian colours to deceive the garrison while tacking frequently across that narrow fiörd; but the breeze changed twice, and, about sunset, we found ourselves abreast of the capital of Holstein, above the close steep roofs of which rose the square brick tower of its church, and the ramparts of that grim castle where the dukes of old resided, and on which, as well as on the university, we saw the white flag with the Imperial eagle unfurled; for, though our colours had misled Kœningheim, our manœuvres (after we came abreast of the town, and began to lie around it in the form of a half circle, as it occupies a peninsula) no longer deceived him as to our intentions.

The old town of Kiel, which covers what had anciently been an island, is yet completely separated from the land by the wet ditch of the castle, the base of which is in some places washed by the sea. A large suburb, called the New Town, interspersed by pleasant rows of trees, was then rising on the mainland, and was connected with the old by an ancient bridge, at the end of which was a drawbridge and gate, constantly guarded by a company of soldiers.

The walls of the strong and spacious castle became rapidly manned by musketeers in white buff-coats, and cannoniers in scarlet. Its eastern ramparts rose sheer from the salt water, along the margin of which, on the other side, lay the ducal garden, two hundred paces broad, and consisting of terraced walks rising above each other, beautifully arranged in the form of a labyrinth, and having in the centre a stone Triton, whose brass conch shot up a silver current of water high above the green shrubbery; but now, among those fair parterres and terraced walks, the cannon baskets were placed at intervals, and between the deep fascines the grim culverins peered forth to sweep the harbour mouth.

The bells of the great church, of the university, and of the castle, were tolling an alarm as we approached, for each of these edifices was occupied by Austrian troops; and the seven ships of the king (we had three large and four small frigates) had now taken up their positions crescent-wise on three sides of the insulated city, hauled down their false colours, and run up the Royal standard of Denmark to the masthead. Then a simultaneous cannonade was opened upon us from the castle and its terraced gardens.

Being strong and active, our Highlanders were of great service in working the ship-artillery, by running back and urging forward the carriages; while the more skilful Danes pointed the cannon with great success, and thus the fascine batteries in the garden were soon ruined, the guns dismounted, and their men driven for shelter into the castle.

Sparing the tower of the church and the university, the three great ships maintained an unsparing and indiscriminate cannonade on the town; for though the capital of the duchy, the seat of its trade and government, and containing the hotels of its principal nobles, Christian IV. was resolved at all hazards to dislodge the enemy, and more than once sent a redhot thirty-two pound ball at the Count of Rantzau's mansion, which had a number of wooden galleries around it, hoping by these to set the whole place on fire—but without effect.

The whole fleet and town were soon enveloped in smoke, and we could only direct our fire by seeing the vane of the church and the towers of the castle shining in the last flush of the sunset above this murky cloud. A hundred pieces of cannon, ranging from carthouns (48-pounders) to demi-culverins (9-pounders), were discharged by the fleet upon the town, from whence the garrison, the strength of which was very great, maintained a desperate cannonade, pouring in reply a shower of balls and missiles of every sort and size, shot from bombards and carthouns, fieldpieces, and iron slings. Their mortars and bombards (100 lb pieces) were loaded with stones, tiles, old jars, junks of iron and lead, nails and chains, which swept over our decks, and tore through the sails and rigging like a volley from a volcano. The whole conflict was maintained by great guns; hence the din was terrible. I believe there were not less than two hundred and forty pieces engaged on both sides. Strewed with killed and wounded men, some of whom were minus legs, arms, or heads, others cut in two, with their entrails shot away and twisted round the ragged and torn rigging, or wallowing in blood among the ruin of booms and boats, or splintered planks and shattered bulwarks, the main decks of the fleet presented the most frightful scene of carnage, smoke, and fire, united with the most infernal medley of appalling sounds—stern orders, bellowed in hoarse Danish through tin speaking-trumpets, shrieks, cries, and groans—the grating of the gun-carriages, the trampling of many feet, the crash of falling spars, the rattle of striking shot, and the hiss of those that swept over us into the water.

An immense number of our Highlanders were killed and wounded; of the foreigners I make no account. Torquil Gorm, our piper-major, who sat upon the capstan blowing Brattaich bhan clan Aoidh, was knocked off his perch by a twelve-pound shot, and only escaped death by a miracle. Lieutenants Stuart and Lumsden (Invergellie) were severely wounded, and Kildon and Culcraigie had each a brother—who was sergeant of their pikes—killed beside them.

Finding that nothing was to be made of Kiel—that his ships were becoming mere slaughter-houses and wrecks, which bled at every port and pore—the king, as it was too dark to see flags, hoisted a lantern at his foremast-head as a sign to cease firing. and drop down the fiörd before the wind. I cannot say that the order was obeyed with reluctance; and, favoured by a strong western breeze, the fleet rapidly bore away beyond reach of cannon shot, and lay to waiting for fresh orders.

Far out on the open fiörd, with the stillness of the midnight ocean round us, and no sound to break it but the cries that came from the wounded and the dying, there seemed something dull, monotonous, and deathlike in our vessels now; they were but floating charnel-houses. Some of the smaller were under masts, and the sides of all were perforated by round shot-holes, like the top of a pepper-caster. In others, the torn sails were flapping against the splintered masts, and the rigging hung in disorder. It was a sad scene of desolation, agony, and death, which in twenty minutes had succeeded the fury of the bombardment. I hastened to Ernestine, whom I found in a little nook of the hold, in a stupor of astonishment and terror, and unable to weep. I had only time to assure her of my perfect safety, when I heard a drum beating on the main deck, and Phadrig Mhor shouted down the hatchway, that the king required the presence of all the officers in the great cabin.

There I hastened, and found him with the Count de Montgomery, the colonels of the Scots, Danes, and Dutch, Ian, the Baron Karl, and other officers, many of whom had their heads and arms bandaged. The cabin bore sufficient token of the number of heavy shot that had passed through it; the ports were yet open, and the dead bodies of several seamen were still lying by the larboard guns, just where they had fallen.

"Cavaliers and comrades," said the king; "I wish to burn Kiel, that no shelter may remain there for the Austrians. One among you must undertake to do this for me, as I am less active than I was wont to be; but, as the duty is desperate, I will not select any of my allies. Let the Scots, French, Dutch, and Danish colonels cast lots for who shall have the honour of performing this arduous service, after which we shall all sail merrily, and land at Gottenburg."

It was at once assented to; we crowded round the table; lots were cast in Karl's helmet, and the duty fell to the Dutch, as the prize was drawn by old Dübbelstiern, whom the king desired to select a party for the service, and accordingly he chose his entire battalion. This was considered absurd; but whether it was that Herr Dübbelstiern was of opinion that he had seen quite enough of fighting for one night, or that it was the constitutional phlegm and slowness of the Dutch character which operated, I know not; but the impetuous king became enraged at their delay, and ordered lots to be cast again.

"Nay," said Ian nobly; "may it please your majesty to excuse me from drawing lots again, for I cannot condescend to do so twice. Give me but a hundred musketeers of my own regiment, and I will burn Kiel to your majesty's entire satisfaction."

"My company and I are at your service, Ian," said I, acting on the first impulse of the moment.

"It is gallantly offered," said the king; "a thousand thanks, my valiant Scots. Away then to your boats, for before the Dutch are under arms day will have broken."

In ten minutes my company were all in three large boats, sitting closely packed with their muskets between their knees; and with muffled oars we pulled softly towards the town. Our Highlanders roughly jeered the Dutch, desiring them to beat the Scots March, and keep up their courage thereby, as they were often glad to do in Flanders, when they wished to deceive and scare the enemy.*

* Here Munro corroborates our cavalier. "We that were officers met together in the Admirall Shipe, and agreed to command out the partie, and having cast lots it fell on the Dutch. They, suspecting the danger, delayed." Sergeant M'Leod of Captain Mackenzie's company "was killed," continues the colonel, "and twenty-two souldiers out of our regiment, that I commanded."—Expedition with the worthy Scots Regiment. Fol. 1637.

CHAPTER XVII.
A HORRIBLE ADVENTURE.

We were provided with several fireballs and pots of wild-fire, a combustible composition so called from its ready ignition, for the amiable purpose of burning Kiel, and were guided by the purser of Sir Nickelas Valdemar, who, in more peaceful times, had been a distiller of corn brandy, and was wont to attend the great annual fair in that town—the Kieler umschlag. We pulled softly over the darkened water. Ian sat in the stern of the leading boat, and between me and the dull sky I saw the eagle's wing that surmounted the cone of his steel bonnet, as he sat erect and towering above all his soldiers. His drawn sword, with its long Gaëlic motto—that old hereditary heirloom of his race, which was never a moment from his side—was in his hand. I have heard Ian assert that this ancient blade possessed the property of inspiring courage, like the Feadhan Dhu of the Clanchattan. "The sword of a brave man always stirs the heart to gallant deeds," he would say; "and this sword has been wielded by many generations of heroes."

Behind him, the Lochaber axe of Phadrig Mhor was glinting in the starlight; for wherever Ian was, there Phadrig was sure to be.

Though weakened, and by my recent bruises somewhat nervous and excitable, I thought I was rather rash in venturing on this desperate service; and now, when in the open boat, came the reflection of what would be Ernestine's desolation and grief, if I was knocked on the head as the reward of my restless ambition.

As we pulled shoreward the night became intensely dark, so much so that we feared, unless lights were burned, we should never be able to regain our ships.

All seemed quiet as we approached the town, and, save an occasional light glimmering in the vast masses of the old castle, there was no sign of life in the place; but we knew that Count Kœningheim had not less than 2000 men in garrison, and of their determination we had recently received the most ample proof.

Ian had observed that on the right flank of the town, along the gulf or haven, there lay a beautiful walk, bordered by several rows of lofty trees, which were now in full foliage, and would conceal our approach.

Where the boats grounded the beach was silent and still. The whole place seemed deserted. Not a leaf was stirring now, for even the western wind had died away, and we heard only the waves of the Kielerfiörd chafing on the bulwarks of the path, as we landed. Ian Dhu was the first who sprang ashore, and, with their muskets loaded, our men formed in file, and marched towards the town, the walls of which were about two hundred yards distant. Our service was a strange and desperate one; for the enemy had cavalry, whose patrols might have cut us off, and, if an alarm had been given, our boats must have run the gauntlet along the lower gun batteries before we could regain the fleet.

"However," said Ian, to whom I mentioned these probabilities; "our firepots will find them work enough, and enable us to get clear off."

Marching in silence, and halting once or twice to listen while shrouded by the bordering trees, we found ourselves near the strong postern gate, over which grinned a couple of forty-eight pounders; but our guide, the purser, who had been in the habit of conveying his barrels to the fair without the ceremony of showing them to the keepers or leviers of duty at the barriers, led us towards a small house that he knew of. This place proved to be deserted. He raised the flooring, and revealed to us a secret passage which led under the walls, and directly into the town.

I shall never forget the exciting emotions we experienced, when, after crawling through a hole, dark and dusty like an ancient drain, we issued from a small shed, under which it opened, into a gloomy and deserted street, where, with Phadrig Mhor, his chief, and six chosen Highlanders, I found myself within the walls and gates, the guards and cannon, of Kiel. The rest of our men, to the number of ninety-four, occupied the cottage without, ready to succour us or secure our retreat.

The storks uttered unearthly sounds, and flapped their wings over our heads. They appeared to be the only inhabitants in that part of the town; and from the postern already mentioned, a street opened westward in one unbroken line straight to the market place.

"What large building is that, Herr?" asked Ian, pointing with his sword to an edifice near us; "is it a church?"

"No," replied the purser, "it is the hall where the high Court of Appeal for the duchy sits; the enemy have turned it into a magazine for powder."

"Powder! then the high Court of Appeal shall sit there no more, Mein Herr; for we will blow it up."

"It is guarded—see, yonder is the sentinel, walking to and fro before the building," said the purser; but the soldier indicated could not discern us, as our men stood with their backs close to the houses, and under their shadow. "But as to blowing it up, Herr Schottlander, I beseech of you not to think of that," continued the purser, "for it will create an alarm, and totally prevent our escape. Let us content ourselves by placing these firepots with lighted matches in some of the empty houses, and then retiring the way we came."

"Dioul! but I think you are right, master purser," said Ian; "besides, Herr, when the town is on fire the magazine must blow up as a matter of course. Softly, then, comrades—this way," he added, to the six Highlanders, who had slung their muskets to enable them the better to bear the combustibles with which they were loaded.

At that moment we heard the Imperialist who guarded the front door of the Court of Appeal, challenge some one who approached his post.

A voice replied, and an officer muffled in a long mantle, wearing a broad hat and slouching feather, followed by three pikemen, passed down the centre of the street, to visit the guard at that postern gate which the purser's friendly cottage, with its smuggling trapdoor, had enabled us to avoid.

They passed us within half a pistol-shot, and then we could hear the rattle of arms as the sentinel at the gate turned out the guard, and the officer with his escort departed to visit some other post.

"Now, there is not a moment to be lost," said Ian; "let us fire these houses next the magazine, and then escape by yonder fox-hole."

It was done in less than five minutes.

We entered the empty houses, either by forcing the doors or removing the windows, but as softly as possible. Ian selected one, Phadrig a second, and I a third. We placed the firepots and wild-fire in the centre of the floors; heaped them over with straw and oiled chips of wood brought from the fleet; then we ignited the matches, and hurried back to the street.

The matches were supposed to burn gradually for five minutes, by which time we expected to be clear of Kiel, and on the high-road to our boats. Accompanied by Gillian M'Bane and Donald M'Vurich, I had just completed my preparations for giving at least one house a comfortable heating, and, firing the match, hastened out to the street, when we were met, face to face, by—whom? The Imperial officer and his three pikemen, returning leisurely from their rounds, and singing a carol to the tramp of their own feet.

Having accomplished our work sooner than Ian or his henchman, we were unfortunately the first in the street, and the Imperialists were confounded to find themselves confronted by three armed men in the Scottish garb. Our swords were ready, my two musketeers blew their matches, and the Austrian pikemen levelled their weapons to the charge.

"Fire and fagot! how came you here?" asked the officer, whose voice made me start; "yield, sirs, for I would not have you killed if I can save you."

"Count Kœningheim!" said I, recognising him; "back—back—give way; for we will die weapon in hand, but never yield. For the sake of Ernestine," I added, in a loud and earnest whisper, "let this be a drawn conflict—for if I am slain she will be without a protector."

"Villain!" he exclaimed, with fierce joy, "art thou the Captain Rollo?"

"The same, at your service, count," said I, as our blades were pressed hard against each other; "but why so bitter an epithet to a brother Scot, for such I should be, though under a different banner?"

"You have stolen the daughter of my friend from the court of the Danish queen, and for these many weeks past have conveyed her from ship to ship, and isle to isle—all to the severe prejudice of her honour."

"It is a villain's thought and a falsehood, which none but a villain could conceive," said I, furiously; "but she is your affianced wife, and——"

The count uttered a bitter laugh, then, trembling with passion, he rushed upon me like a cannon-ball, and gave me a succession of fierce thrusts, all of which I succeeded in parrying.

"My affianced wife—my affianced wife, indeed!" he continued, giving me another and another. "Oh, fool of fools! do you not know that, with all her beauty, I would not wed her if she had the Bohemian crown upon her brow, and the wealth of India at her feet?"

While this was passing, the purser had dived into his secret hole, and vanished like a ghost at cock-crow. Ian, the sergeant, and our other four soldiers, came to the appointed place, and found me fencing away like a sword-player with Kœningheim, whom they only knew to be an Imperialist. The three pikemen fled, believing the town to be in possession of the enemy; and Ian, who, like a true Highlander, would not permit the single combat to be interrupted, stood between us and the six musketeers (who continued ominously to blow their matches), and, leaning on his long sword, watched with a fierce but anxious eye every turn of the desperate game.

The red sparks flew in showers from the steel blades; we were both so expert, that not a scar was given or received on either side; but I was still so weak, that step by step I was driven back towards the Hall of Appeals. I called repeatedly to Ian, to Phadrig, and the soldiers, to regain the boats and leave me to my fate; but they still remained, although the blaze of the burning houses began to flash across the thoroughfare, and we heard the drums beating in every quarter, as the various guards at different points of the city rushed to their colours, and the whole garrison became alarmed.

It was a time of desperation!

Ian by one thrust of his long sword, Phadrig by one blow of his tremendous axe, or our musketeers by a single shot, could have ended the conflict and the life of Kœningheim together; but this the chivalry of Highland warfare would by no means permit. Thus the duel continued, the conflagration increased, and the long angry roll of the drums rang the call to arms in castle and cantonments, at the gates and all along the harbour. Every moment I felt assured that Kœningheim was becoming stronger than me. My sight became dim, and I was beaten backward until I found myself driven against a door at the corner of a lane. I staggered—it yielded; and then I fell headlong—not into a passage—but down into a deep, dark hole—a cellar or some such place.

The street, the wavering light that filled it, vanished from me in an instant, as I descended into total darkness.

At that moment I heard a confused discharge of muskets, and an awful explosion, with a roar and the sensation of every thing being convulsed below and around me, as if the earth were splitting into halves, and I knew that it was the stately Hall of Appeals which had been blown up like a house of cards.

I cannot describe the crash—the mighty torrent of united sounds—the rending asunder of massive walls—the bursting of arches, knitted together centuries ago—the cracking of oaken beams, amid a whirlwind of bricks and mortar, slates and rubbish, as the house under which I had fallen crumbled into ruin in a moment; and though I did not feel any thing crushing me down, I had the horrible conviction of being entombed beneath a mass of fallen masonry and timber.

My claymore was still in my hand; the earth was damp, and I lay upon it breathless, gasping, and almost stunned for a time. Then a drowsy sensation came over me, and for half an hour or so I seemed to be in a kind of waking dream.

CHAPTER XVIII.
SUFFOCATION—THE DARK PIT.

"Where the deuce am I?" was my first thought and exclamation on rallying my scattered energies.

I was painfully certain of entombment under a mountain of fallen masonry, which, for aught that I could foresee, might not in these times of trouble be removed for years. The air soon became close and oppressive. I began an examination of the trap into which I had fallen, by feeling all round me with outspread hands; for the darkness was as dense as if I had been shut up in a block of marble.

The ceiling—if it could be called so—was composed of beams of hard wood planked over, being evidently the floor of an apartment above; and by the dull, dead sound those planks returned, when striking on them with the hilt of my sword, I became convinced that the whole debris of a fallen house was heaped above me! Of this I was the more certain on discovering that the trapdoor, through which I had passed, was choked up by fragments of torn partitions, beams and stones, which I could grasp with my hands when standing upon a barrel over which I had stumbled in the dark. Around me were four stone walls, forming an area of about twenty feet by fifteen, and below me was the damp earth. I was undoubtedly buried alive in a cellar, from which escape seemed hopeless.

As this terrible conviction came home to my mind, the perspiration oozed from every pore, and a pang of agony entered my heart like a sharp poniard. My emotions cannot be described, and thoughts that were bitter and heart-rending came crowding upon me like a torrent.

Ernestine, whom I would never see more—whose voice I would never hear again—and whose dark eye would never turn to mine with its mild inquiring glance, or its glad and roguish smile, was left among rough soldiers and rougher sailors on board of Christian's wandering fleet, exposed to danger and perhaps to insult; for when I was dead to whom could she turn with confidence for protection? And Gabrielle, too! Gabrielle, whom I had hoped to free and restore to her, would now be left hopelessly the prisoner of Merodé, exposed to greater perils, and such as it was impossible to consider with calmness or contemplate with patience.

Doubtless brave Ian Dhu might protect Ernestine and free Gabrielle, even as I would have done; but, remembering the dangers that surrounded him only an hour ago, and the musket shots I had heard, it was more than probable that he and all who were with him had fallen in combat, and were now lying in the ruined street—perhaps not twenty yards from me. Whether he and Kœningheim too had escaped, or perished by the explosion, was all a mystery to me; but the former seemed next to an impossibility; and I pictured the anguish of Ernestine when morning stole into the dull and comfortless cabin of the Anna Catharina—when the bright sun came to gladden the grey waters—when the waves rolled in light, and Denmark's flat but wooded shores were sparkling in the sunny haze—when hour after hour would steal away, and when I did not come! What would be her emotions when the terrible truth was told her by some survivor of our Raid to Kiel?

The atmosphere of the place gradually became closer and more difficult to inhale; at times I thought this was fancy—at others, reality; but perhaps my nervous and excited state exaggerated the truth. I thought with horror of the pangs of hunger and thirst to be endured before I should die; my fate, ignominious and unhonoured; my unshared, solitary, and unimagined agonies—even my grave might never be known. My death might be mourned for while I was yet alive; for I calculated on living for many days yet to come.

Again and again all these thoughts, and others of home and my dear native country, recurred to me; again and again they returned, each time with renewed poignancy and bitterness, and the anticipation of dying there unknown, was as bad for a time as those of hunger and thirst. The vulgar fear of being devoured by rats was not the least of my torments; for of these vermin, I had born in me a powerful and unconquerable aversion.

The air seemed to grow stifling. I shouted with that loud hallo which, many a time and oft, I had sent far through the Highland deer forests; but my own voice sounded dull and faint, as it was returned upon my ear.

Overburdened by thought and anxiety, my heart became sick and weary; my head ached as the oppression of the atmosphere became greater; and I have no doubt that the effect of my recent wound—the contusion received at Eckernfiörd—greatly contributed to exaggerate all that the darkness, mystery, loneliness, and the anticipation of a most horrible death, could produce on an active imagination.

The Imperialists would think no more of me than of the last year's leaves; and the idea of their digging for me, even if Kœningheim escaped, seemed simply absurd.

I endeavoured to picture the slow agonies of a death by hunger and thirst, but shrunk from the task, and remembered to have heard my mother tell me, that when David Duke of Rothesay was found dead in the vault of Falkland-tower, in his hunger and madness he had gnawed and torn with his teeth the flesh from his left arm. Could I ever be reduced to such a state?

My bones might lie for ten, twenty, or even a hundred years, before discovery; and I thought grimly of the speculation they might excite, when some grave pathologist delivered his opinion, and when men spoke of the wars of other times—those wars of which their sires had spoken, and in which their grandsires fought; and I remembered the various instances of bones being brought to light under similar circumstances, and under my own observation, the vague mystery and fear with which these poor reliques of humanity were regarded by those who endeavoured in vain to conjecture the story that belonged to them; the crime perpetrated, or the wrong endured—the story that none could tell, and which would never be known until the last trumpet rent the earth to its centre.

I began to feel weak, helpless, and confused, and listened with agonised intensity to catch any sound, however distant; and then, as before, it seemed as if many a voice with which I was familiar came to me. My mind wandered, I imagined myself again on board the king's ship, and amid the smoke, carnage, and boom of the cannonade. Then came other ideas of strife—an imaginary conflict; Ian with his eagle's plume, red-bearded Angus M'Alpine, Kildon with his M'Kenzies, M'Coll of that Ilk, and all the gallant hearts of our regiment were by my side. I heard the yell of Torquil's pipe; I saw the tartans waving, the red musketry flashing as its echoes rolled over hill and valley; I saw the gleam of steel, and felt the glow of the bright warm sun of a summer noon, as it shone on the broad arena of a bloody battle. I brandished my sword—I shouted. Kœningheim was again before me; his steel rang on mine, and I was conscious that Bandolo, poniard in hand, was gliding near me like a serpent.

All this wild vision and its excitement evaporated, and I believe that I must have slept; for long after, on awakening once again to the horrors of that dark and living tomb, and worse than all to my own tormenting thoughts, I found myself lying on the damp ground.

Was it night or was it day on the upper earth? In that palpable darkness, no one could tell.

I listened, and heard my heart beating. At times I thought there came other sounds to me, in my loneliness. Once a horse's hoofs rang on the pavement; a dragoon had perhaps passed through an adjacent street. At another time I heard the faint note of a trumpet; and these sounds served but to increase my fretful eagerness to be free.

I do not think that I prayed aloud to Heaven to help me; but many a deep, pious, and fervent thought swelled my heart; and after a time I took courage, and searched my whole prison minutely again for some crack, joint, or cranny, by which a passage might be forced.

Around me the walls were as solid as stone could make them; above me were the oaken beams and jointed planks, rendered quite as solid and immovable by the superincumbent load of a fallen house.

I sat down again in despair. My head was still aching, and my breast was oppressed by the difficulty experienced in respiration; my weakness and helplessness increased; sensations of suffocation were coming on, and at length I lay on the earth in the belief that I was dying. My soul trembled at the terrible conviction that I was on the verge of eternity, and I endeavoured to pray, but my thoughts and words were all too incoherent for utterance.

Wild visions floated before me, with long blanks and pauses between; and during these blanks I now believe that I must have been insensible.

My tongue was parched and burning; then imaginary fountains of pure water gushed and sparkled in the sunshine, as they poured over cool and mossy rocks into deep and shady dells; in some instances, when I approached them, the water seemed to vanish, and the bare and arid rock alone remained; in others, I was bound and fettered hand and foot, unable to move, and saw the gurgling water winding between flowery borders into the shady recesses of a wooded dell. I stretched my hands towards it; but a mighty incubus weighed down my limbs, then the vision passed away, and I lay prostrate and gasping amid a dark, a moist, and noxious atmosphere.

Many hours must thus have passed away—not less, perhaps, than six-and-thirty. I imagined that Ernestine spoke to me from time to time, and I heard her voice coming as from a vast distance. She was laughing, and we were among summer fields where the yellow corn was waving; where the green trees rustled their heavy foliage in the warm breeze, and the glossy ravens were wheeling aloft into a blue and sunny sky.

Then I heard the sound of other voices, the clink of axes and grating of shovels; I thought that the hour of deliverance was at hand; that I was about to be dug out, and restored to the upper world, and I laughed with joy. The German soldiers were jesting and singing at their work, as they seemed to draw nearer and nearer to me.

Then I heard Kœningheim say that their labour was in vain, and might be relinquished, for by this time I must assuredly be dead—and I heard them retire! Methought I strove to shout, to let them hear that I still lived, but my tongue clove to the roof of my parched throat—my hard and baked lips refused their office, and the horror of the dream awoke me for an instant to the life I had been assured was gradually passing away from me.

Still the same darkness, the same solemn stillness, the same mysterious and horrible abandonment. I sank again; but the old vision returned with the clank of shovels and axes, the rattle of stones and crow-bars, with a laugh or an oath, as the German pioneers cleared away the rubbish, till their feet and implements sounded distinctly on the planks of oak. Oh! it was a delicious and a joyous dream!

Then all at once there burst upon my half-blinded eyes a stream of glorious sunlight, with the pure and refreshing air, as one pickaxe was inserted, and a plank torn up; then, but not till then, did I learn that it was no dream, but a dear reality, and that I was saved! I heard three or four soldiers drop after each other into the pit; strong hands were laid upon me, and I was lifted up from among the ruins; then a horn of Neckar wine was given me, for I was faint and trembling. I soon revived, but with the utmost difficulty retained my eyes open, after such a long immersion in Cimmerian gloom; and I was so feeble, that Kœningheim and one of his officers had to support me between them, as they conveyed me through the ruined street towards the castle of Kiel.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE CASTLE OF KIEL.

Fresh air and light, a little food and wine, with one night's sound sleep, completely restored me.

Partially undressed, and with a rich velvet mantle thrown over me, I was lying upon a beautiful bed, which, as I afterwards learned, was the couch of that valiant Duke of Holstein, Adolph, archbishop of Bremen, who overran the Ditmarsch, and compelled the proud Hamburgers do him homage. The four columns sustaining the canopy were of exquisitely carved oak; the canopy itself, and the coverlet, were of blue silk, brocaded with gold flowers; the former was surmounted by plumes of feathers, and was lined with white silk, fringed with silver within and gold without. It was too luxurious, and seemed like a beautiful toy, made only to be admired, or for a fairy to sleep in. The apartment was neither wainscoted nor tapestried, but was hung with matting of shining straw; the ceiling was composed of oak, the beams of which intersected each other, forming panels wherein had been recently emblazoned all the armorial bearings of Christian IV.; the variously coloured lions of Denmark, Sleswig, Norway, and Gothland; the golden dragon of Schonen; the paschal lamb of Juteland; the blue cavalier of Ditmarsch; the nettle leaves of Holstein; the cygnet of Stormar; the cross of Oldenburg, &c. &c.; the leopard, the crossed spears, and the crowned savages, wreathed and armed with clubs. Three windows of stained glass faced the gulf of Kiel; one of these had been broken by the passage of a cannon-shot, and fragments of the iron bars and brass wire which formed the latticed grating were visible beyond.

The whole furniture was in confusion; in some places mirrors were broken; in others, were pictures that bore strong traces of having received a passing slash from a sword.

I had just made a survey of all this by one glance, and throwing aside the mantle was about to rise, when Count Kœningheim, who had been writing in a recess of one of the windows—for the castle walls were of enormous thickness—approached, and bade me good-morning.

I gave my hand to this soldier of fortune, who, only a night or two ago, had expressed his rage at me for loving a woman whom he vowed not to marry even if she was a queen, with the wealth of India for her dowery.

"Well, my comrade," said he, after a few words of compliment and inquiry had passed; "Zounds! was not yonder blow-up a rough interruption of our tilting-match?"

"Your magazine of powder, was it not?"

"Twenty tons were stored up in the Hall of Appeal. On the night of the bombardment I had a saucisson laid, and the hall undermined, to blow up the whole in case of being obliged to abandon Kiel. Your partial conflagration fired the saucisson, and has cost the emperor more powder than he will probably commit to my care again—for some time at least."

"And my comrades—did they all escape?"

"All, save one. Favoured by the confusion, they vanished from the streets, and, regaining their boats, got clear off; but that secret entrance will not serve their purpose a second time."

"And he who did not escape?" said I.

"Is now hanging from yonder tower," said the count, opening one of the pointed windows, and showing me a prospect of the town, the chief feature of which was the great square tower of the church, with its lofty and tapering hexagonal spire, from the summit of which there dangled something like a crow. I could perceive it to be a human figure, but diminished by distance, and wavering in the sea breeze; it swung to and fro, now against the spire, and now a few feet from it in the air.

"Count Kœningheim," said I, turning with anxiety and indignation from this startling spectacle, "and have you—who, like myself, am a Scottish soldier of fortune—dared to hang one of my comrades?"

"If yonder Danish purser, whilome a distiller and smuggler, was one of your comrades, then I have indeed dared to do so."

"The poor man was only serving his king and his country."

"He has cost the Emperor twenty tons of good gunpowder—an unanswerable argument," replied the count, as he folded up his despatch and endorsed it to Tilly, whose troops were down somewhere about the mouth of the Elbe. "And did you really imagine, Captain Rollo, that I would have hanged one of our kindly Scots, as I hung yonder purser? Hawks dinna pyke oot hawks' een; and I assure you, that although we fight under different banners, I love the blue bonnet far too well to hang its wearer as a Danish scarecrow. In the devilish mood I was in on the night of the bombardment, I would have thought no more of slaying you—if able—than of taking this glass of wine; but after the affair was over—after I thought you fairly crushed to death—and a day or two had elapsed, it seemed a shame and a scandal to me that a brave Scot, with the tartan on his breast and the kilt above his knee, should lie uncoffined like a dog under a fallen house. I set the pioneers of Camargo to dig out your remains, and had fully resolved to inter them with all the honours of war in the great church of the good city of Kiel. We had not the most remote hope of finding you alive in the vault, like Holger Danske in that dungeon under Cronborg castle, where, as the legend says, he has sat for a thousand years with his armed knights around him."

"And where is the Danish fleet?"

"At the mouth of the gulf, where Christian has landed, and ordered your regiment of Highlanders to erect a strong sconce on the shore. But enough of these things at present. You will breakfast with me, and then we will talk of military business afterwards."

"Business," thought I; "that must mean my transmission as a prisoner of war into Central Germany!" He led me through various apartments to one, the princely magnificence of which excited my admiration. Kœningheim laughed at me, saying—

"Erelong, there may be no other hangings on these walls than such as the spider spins."

During breakfast he asked me many questions concerning Ernestine—casually, concerning her health and amusements, but all with kindness, and without the slightest tinge of jealousy. Though his friendship was sincere, it was evident that he did not love her. There was a riddle in this? The count, her father—old Rupert-with-the-Red-plume—was at Vienna, and was soon expected by the army to resume the command of his division. The poor man consequently still believed that his daughters were in perfect safety with the old Queen of Denmark.

"Then," said I, "neither you nor he are aware that Gabrielle has been abducted by Merodé?"

"Merodé—abducted!" stammered Kœningheim, as his sun-burnt cheek grew pale, and then flushed with anger; "do you tell me that Merodé has dared——"

As briefly as possible I related the dangers into which the sisters had fallen; the affair of Bandolo, and the retention of Gabrielle at Fredricksort.

The count thrust his breakfast from him.

"Fire and sword!" he exclaimed; "to know now that they have been in the Wohlder, within a few toises of my outposts, and I knew not of it! Oh! Captain Rollo, I love those girls as if they were my own sisters—for they are good, amiable, winning, and indeed most loveable; yet withal, and notwithstanding Carlstein's kind intentions, believe me I have no more idea of marriage than of flying in the air. Oh no! I shall never marry! I do not think that the world possesses a daughter of Eve who could tempt me to forsake the camp for her bower, or the head of my regiment for the poor pastime of dangling at her skirt. Fortunately, it is not far from this to Fredricksort, and Gabrielle shall be freed even if we must take the place by storm. Ten devils! to think she has been so long with such a man as Merodé!"

"Perhaps he is not so bad as rumour makes him. He may respect the high rank and perfect purity of Gabrielle."

"Respect—he, Merodé!" reiterated Kœningheim, with an angry laugh; "we might as well expect heaven and hell to change places, as to find one virtuous emotion in the heart of that ignoble soldier. The fool! he thinks that poor Carlstein is in hopeless disgrace, when at this very hour he may be travelling from Vienna with greater honours than any of us, save Wallenstein, have yet attained. Rest assured that I will free Gabrielle, and protect her until she is restored to her father or her sister. If Merodé will not yield her," continued Kœningheim, beginning to buckle on his cuirass and sword; "by Heaven! I will pistol him at the head of his regiment. I am not a man who stands on trifles, neither is Carlstein—old Rupert-with-the-Red-plume—as we Imperialists call him."

"You lads of the black eagle make small account of human life; and value blood no more than water."

"Blood!" he muttered, while continuing to arm himself; "the shedding of it under harness is but a matter of necessity, Yet, alas! Captain Rollo, by a fatal mischance, and in a moment of ungoverned passion, my disastrous hand has shed the blood of one whose fate hath cast a horror over my path in life. Wherever I have gone—in the camp and in the city, in the field and on the ocean, on the Scottish hills and on the German plains—that cloud has overhung me! With my own existence only, the cloud and the horror will pass away; but the memory of the deed I have done will never die in the peaceful spot which was blighted and cursed by its committal. I destroyed a life, to preserve and to defend which, I would have given my own a thousand times over, could such have been; but let me not recur to these old memories, for they madden and unman me!"

A dark shade had overspread the handsome face of Kœningheim—his eyes were saddened, and a spasm contracted his features; but, without remarking the bitterness of his emotion, I continued to assist him in accoutring, and also armed myself; for I had begun to entertain faint hopes of not being kept as a prisoner after all.

"Come, come, Kœningheim," said I; "you are not the only man who has slain a dear friend in a sudden quarrel."

"Friend!" he repeated, in a voice that made me start.

"No; when wine is in the head, and when the sword is in the hand, such things will happen," I continued, supposing that he referred to an unfortunate duel.

"Oh no!" said he mournfully; "such deeds as mine are done but seldom—yet, let me not think of it! Peace—solitude—at such times madden me. Action! action! that is the only relief. Come with me, then; let us ride for Fredricksort, and save Gabrielle from Merodé—the lamb from the wolf—the dove from the vulture."

We descended to the gate of Kiel, for the hope of liberty and of freeing Gabrielle restored me to fresh energy; and though Kœningheim expressed his doubts of my ability for exertion, I waived every objection, and, accompanied by four dragoons of the regiment de Wingarti, who wore black iron helmets and corslets, white buff coats with wide skirts edged by red cloth, jackboots, swords, musketoons and pistols, we set forth; and though scarcely able to keep on my saddle, by weakness resulting from recent mishaps at Eckernfiörd and Kiel, I was never behind Kœningheim by the length of my horse's head.

To be brief, after a hard ride round the shore of the gulf, and seeing every where the poor peasantry flying at our approach to moor, morass, and woodland, we reached the great fortress of Fredricksort, only to find it a pile of dismantled and blackened ruins; for in some of their wild excesses, Merodé's officers (on the very night we were bombarding Kiel) had set their quarters on fire. They were thus compelled to remove to a neighbouring village, from whence—by orders received direct from Wallenstein—they had marched no one knew whither; but by certain smoky indications at the horizon, we supposed their route lay towards Flensborg. Merodé had several ladies with him in caleches, and a number of other women, and a vast quantity of plunder, in waggons and on horses; thus his regiment marched off like a triumphal procession, singing in chorus, with all their drums beating and colours flying, and with crowds of camp followers mingling and shouting among their riotous and disorderly ranks.

Such was the account we received from the tall Jesuit, Father Ignatius, who had visited Fredricksort on the same good errand that had brought us from Kiel, and whom we met fortunately, in a narrow green lane (near the ruined castle), where the good man had dismounted from his mule, and taken off its bridle, that the animal might crop the herbage that grew by the wayside.

Accompanied by the Jesuit, we returned towards Kiel with the unpleasant conviction that our journey had been perfectly futile; and having a fresh source of anxiety in the doubt, whether Merodé had taken Gabrielle away with his ladies who occupied the carriages, or whether the poor girl had perished among the flames of the burning fortress.

"There were no less than six waggons crowded by soldiers' wives, all as drunk as liquor could make them," said Father Ignatius.

"'Tis fortunate for those ladies that the old Roman law, by which a husband could slay his wife if her breath indicated wine, no longer exists," said I.

"But those ammunition wives smelt only of schnaps and brandy," said the priest, turning up his eyes.