The 'Scots Brigade,' and other tales

by James Grant

THE
'SCOTS BRIGADE'

AND OTHER TALES

BY

JAMES GRANT

AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMANCE OF WAR'

'The dying and dead strewed the breach at Meenen,
Where our brave Scottish blades met the troops of Turenne;
When cannon and firelock and musketoon played,
As often, elsewhere, on the old Scots Brigade!
Holland's Bulwark—in many a battle of yore—
From the woods of Brabant to the far Frisian shore;
Never Frenchman, nor Spaniard, nor German essayed
To withstand the hot charge of the old Scots Brigade!'
Camp Song.

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
NEW YORK: 9, LAFAYETTE PLACE
1882

CONTENTS.

THE SCOTS BRIGADE:
I. [THE LOVER]
II. [THE COLONEL-COMMANDANT]
III. [SWORD-PLAY]
IV. [DOLORES]
V. ['THE BULWARK OF HOLLAND']
VI. ['AT THE GOLDEN SUN]
VII. ['THE GENERAL'S SECRET]
VIII. ['THE RIDOTTO]
IX. ['THE ABDUCTORS]
X. ['THE FAIR WIDOW]
XI. ['OMNIA VINCIT AMOR]
XII. ['CONCLUSION]

['THE STORY OF THE CID RODRIGO OF BIVAR]

[THE BOY-GENERAL. THE STORY OF JEAN CAVALIER]

[THE BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ]

[THE VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD']

[A TALE OF THE RETREAT FROM CABUL]

[DICK STAPLES OF THE 'QUEEN'S OWN']

[THE STORY OF LIEUTENANT JAMES MOODY OF BARTON'S REGIMENT]

['OLD MINORCA;' OR, GENERAL MURRAY OF THE SCOTS FUSILIERS]

THE SCOTS BRIGADE.

THE SCOTS BRIGADE.

CHAPTER I.
THE LOVER.

'And you will not accompany me to call on these ladies, uncle?' said the young man persuasively.

'Certainly not, boy; do you take me for a fool—der Duyvel!' was the snappish rejoinder, as the General tossed his silver-mounted meerschaum on the table, and thrust his chair back on the polished oak floor, 'I have suspected you for some time past, and know, from old experience, that a young fellow in love is lost to the service and himself; among women he is as helpless as a rudderless ship among the thousand shoals of the Zuyder Zee! You are my heir, as you know, provided your conduct and obedience satisfy me. I am rich enough for both of us, and I had begun to hope that, like me, you would go through the world without the encumbrance of a wife. I shall not see you make a fool of yourself, without making an effort to save you. I shall give you a Beating Order, and send you to recruit for the Brigade in Scotland; or how would you like to roast on detachment at Guayana, or among the Dutch Isles in the Caribbean Sea?'

'Such a separation would be death to me, and to Dolores too.'

'Dol—what?' roared the General, grasping the knobs of his arm-chair and glaring at the speaker; 'how familiar we are, it seems! Where the devil did she get that absurd name?'

'From a Spanish ancestress, and with the name much of her beauty,' replied the younger man, who had a very pleasant voice and manner, which, if somewhat sad and soft, possessed the charm of cultured influences and refinement.

'Dolores—a very Donna Dulcinea, no doubt! Well, my young cock-o'-the-game, it is useless in me to repeat what you don't want to hear, and in you to say the same thing over and over again, as you have been doing for the last hour. So far as you and this—Dolores are concerned, my mind is made up—yes, by the henckers' horns!'

The speaker was no Dutchman, as his interjection might lead the reader to infer, but, like his nephew, a native of the northern portion of our isle, being Lieutenant-General John Kinloch, of Thominean in Fifeshire, Colonel-Commandant of the six battalions of the Scots Brigade, in the service of their High Mightinesses the States-General of Holland—a corps which boasted itself 'the Bulwark of the Republic'—a veteran of more than twenty years' hard service, though still in the flower of manhood.

His hair was powdered and queued, as was then the fashion; his handsome face was well bronzed by long exposure to the tropical sun, and his hands, which had never known gloves, contrasted in their brown hue with snow-white ruffles of the finest lace at the wide cuffs of his uniform coat.

His nose was straight; his mouth expressed firmness and decision, and his dark eyes, which were sparkling then with no small amount of anger, had somewhat shaggy brows that nearly met in one, and gave great character to his face.

His nephew, who stood near him, playing with the gold knot of his sword, and trying to deprecate his anger, was Lewis (or as he was generally called Lewie) Baronald of that Ilk in Lanarkshire (the only son of a baronet attainted after Culloden), and now a handsome young lieutenant in the Earl of Drumlanrig's Battalion of the Scots Brigade, in quarters, where we find him, at the Hague.

His face wore a droll expression just then, in spite of himself, as he knew that his uncle and patron was well known in the Brigade, and in Dutch society, as a misogynist—a genuine woman-hater, under the influence of some never-forgotten disappointment he had endured in early life, and who never omitted by the exertion of his advice, influence, or actual authority, to mar—if possible—the matrimonial views and wishes of the officers and men under his command.

When any of his brother officers would venture to express their surprise that one who was evidently so good-hearted and warm by nature, and who—though in all things a perfect soldier—was apparently fond of domestic life, should have omitted to share it with a help-mate, their remarks only invoked a torrent of grotesque invectives upon the sex, and put the General in such exceeding bad humour, that they were glad to beat a retreat and leave him to himself.

He had begun to perceive that for some time past, his nephew was abstracted in manner, that he absented himself from his quarters, was rather estranged from his comrades, and was almost neglectful of his military duties; and from rumours that reached him from the idlers and promenaders in the Voorhout and on the Vyverberg, the General was not long in discovering that a charming young girl was the cause of all this, and great was his wrath thereat. And when he found that Lewie Baronald's abstraction increased; that he caught him reading poetry instead of studying the 'Tactique et Discipline dc Prusse'; that he sighed sometimes involuntarily, and more than once had been caught inditing suspicious-looking little missives in the form of delicately folded, tinted and perfumed notes, he took him finally to task, and his indignation found vent, as it did on the present occasion.

'And you fell in with this girl——'

'When our battalion was sharing duty with the Dutch Guards at the Prince of Orange's palace in Amsterdam.'

'And how about her mother?' growled the General.

'She was very averse to my attendance on her daughter till——'

'Till when or what?' snapped the uncle.

'She asked me some questions concerning my name and family, and then suddenly I became quite a favourite.'

'All cunning—all cunning! But our name and our blood are as good as any in Holland, and better than some, I suppose; but every Scot has a pedigree, as King James was wont to say.'

And as General Kinloch spoke, the strong old Scottish accent, which then prevailed at the Bar and in the Pulpit at home (as it had done at Court in the preceding century), deepened with his excitement and irritation.

'And the mother is a widow, Drumlanrig tells me,' he continued; 'a widow who, I doubt not, loves her coffee with a glass of good curaçoa from De Pylsteeg at Amsterdam.'

'Indeed you mistake her, uncle,' replied the young man indignantly.

'Umph—egad—do I?'

'She often speaks to me of you, uncle.'

'Does she? I am greatly honoured.'

'Yes—and seems to know all about you, and your brilliant services to their Mightinesses the States, and so forth.'

'The devil she does! Well, she probably knows also that I never was a lady's man—a lady-killer, a buck, or a blood in my time; so my lady countess may spare her breath to cool her porridge. And who is this Countess van Renslaer? Her name sounds new to me.'

'She has but lately come to Holland.'

'From where?'

'England last, I believe; and none seem to take a higher place at the Court of the Prince of Orange; at the balls of the Grand Pensionary, and of the richest burgers in the Hague and Amsterdam.'

'Ouf! Well, I go to none of them—not even to Court, save once a year, to kiss the Prince's hand, and give in the Brigade Reports. She has a great retinue—keeps a stately coach and two sedans, I hear; and does this artful old—countess seem to tolerate the advances of a penniless sub like you, to her daughter?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Because she is interested in me,' replied Lewie Baronald, smiling.

'For what reason?'

'Her first lover had been one of the Scots Brigade, and her heart still warms to the uniform.'

The knitted brow of the General relaxed for a moment, and he said with a grim smile:

'Then there have been two fools at least in the Brigade, to my knowledge. And for this prize, Dolores—I have caught her absurd name, you perceive—have you no rivals—no competitors?'

The young man's brow grew very dark.

'Yes,' said he, after a pause.

'Many?'

'One chiefly.'

'Whom you fear??

'I fear no man that wears a sword, uncle! She has a cousin, called Maurice Morganstjern, whom I greatly distrust.'

'Grandson of that Morganstjern who was one of the assassins of the De Witts in the last century? Avoid the whole brood, I say! If you will not be guided by me, who have your interest at heart, consult your Colonel, Drumlanrig, on this matter, and hear what he will say.'

'The last man to consult on such a topic.'

'Why?'

'Like yourself, he shuns female society. He is a gloomy misanthrope, and one of a fated race.'

'Right: a curse fell on his house, for the duke's share in the Union of 1707. I thought your family troubles were at an end when you joined the Brigade; but, der Duyvel! they seem only beginning, with this Dolores. To me it appears that there are some families—in Scotland more especially—whom misfortune—fate—which you will—pursueth to utter destruction.'

'The fate of mine was their own choosing: it lay between prudence and loyalty, and ill would it have become my people to have wavered when the Royal Standard was unfurled in Glenfinnan.'

'Your father's views and mine were different in that matter,' said the General in a softer tone.

'Give me your hand. I do not despair of your favour for us yet.'

'Indeed!'

'Tyne heart, tyne all, as we say at home.'

'In old Scotland, yes—and before the enemy, that is well enough; but anent a woman—go—go—or I shall lose my temper again. Besides, Lewie, there is a cloud on the horizon—the political horizon, I mean—which, though as yet no bigger than a man's hand, may expand into a dark and mighty one of storm and bloodshed. A revolution is at hand in France, and a time is coming when we—the Scots Brigade—will have other work than love-making cut out for us, and we shall have to choose between casting our lot forever with the States-General or with his Majesty George III.; for there is not a tavern and not a caserne in Holland in which the matter is not debated keenly and hotly now.'

Though the steady opposition and hostility of his uncle and patron, on whom all his hopes depended, left the young man depressed in spirit and heavy in heart, and inspired by no small dread of separation from the object of his love, he quitted the General's house, and set forth to visit her.

CHAPTER II.
THE COLONEL-COMMANDANT.

The General refilled his glass and his meerschaum, and remained sunk in thought after the departure of his nephew, and more than once he sighed heavily, knit his brows, and shook his head.

He was not drinking schiedam with water, but good Farintosh whisky, kegs of which were regularly sent to him by a Scottish merchant from the Scotsch Dyk at Rotterdam—Farintosh which was then free from all Excise duty, and remained so till five years after the period of our story.

We have said that General Kinloch was a handsome man and in the flower of manhood; and a fine picture he would have made as he sat there, in his graceful old-fashioned uniform, with heavily-laced lapels and skirts, his hair powdered and queued, with a Khevenhüller hat (not unlike that of Napoleon I.) close by, adorned with a stiff upright feather and Dutch cockade, and his silk sash worn crossways in the old Scottish fashion.

The old Scottish officer who took a turn of service in France was jaunty in air, tone, and bearing, as Scott describes his Baron of Bradwardin to have been; but his countryman who served the States of Holland became, under the influence of his flat, stale and stolid surroundings, rather another style of man—equally brave and gallant in war, but less gallant in the ball-room or the boudoir—often grave, grim, and starched amid the influence of Dutch society and Presbyterianism.

It was only thirty-four years before that Culloden had been fought; and though his political sympathies were not with the exiled King James VIII., his mind was full of the bitter memories of that atrocious field left in every right-thinking Scottish heart; and his orphan nephew, Lewie Baronald, was the son of his only sister, one of those enthusiastic Jacobite ladies who kept guard at Edinburgh Cross with a drawn sword when the King was proclaimed, who danced at the famous Holyrood ball, and who, like more than one old lady in Scottish history and tradition, had never allowed her husband to kiss her, after the Prince did so, and after making his bed, when an exile and fugitive, with her own hands, had laid aside the sheets thereof to be a shroud for herself, in the true spirit of loyalty 'and that sublime devotion which the Saxon never knew.'

Long as he had been in Holland, the eyes of our Scot—accustomed as he had been to the grand mountain scenery of his native land—had never become accustomed to the utter monotony, flatness, and insipidity of the Dutch landscape, or to the brusqueness of the natives, their stolidity and general dulness of demeanour; but the pay was good, the quarters were comfortable, and—when not fighting—the service was easy enough. His sword was almost his inheritance, as the estate he inherited, Thominean, was drowned in debt; and their High Mightinesses the States-General were sure and generous paymasters.

Yet, times there were when he thought with the author of 'Vathek,' that there must have been a period when Holland was all water, 'and the ancestors of the present inhabitants fish. A certain oysterishness of eye and flabbiness of complexion are almost proof-sufficient of this aquatic descent; and pray tell me for what purpose are such galligaskins as the Dutch burthen themselves with contrived, but to tuck up a flouncing tail, and thus cloak the deformity of a dolphin-like termination.'

Reflecting angrily and sadly upon the recent conversation with his favourite, the General continued to smoke and gaze down the long vista of the quaint Dutch street, with its stiff rows of trees reflected downward in the canal that lay parallel with them, and its quaint gables on each of which, nearly, a stork was perched; the little mirrors projecting from the windows to enable the ladies within to see those who passed outside; the knockers tied up with pincushions and plaited lace to indicate that a 'goodwife was in the straw.'

There were women in the mobcaps, print-gowns, and gaudy satin aprons wore by all ranks alike; men in broad, round, conical hats, puckered jackets, and capacious breeches, now no longer to be seen but in very remote districts; an occasional dominie or clergyman in his court-like costume, ruff and cocked hat, passing homeward after having a pipe with some parishioner, or a dish of coffee with his vrouw.

There was the clatter of wooden shoes in the ill-paved street; the oil-lamps were beginning to glimmer like glow-worms, and were reflected in the slime of the canals; the drums and fifes of the Scots Brigade, in the adjacent caserne, were playing out the dying day, and sweetly stole upon the ambient evening the old air:

'Oh, the Lowlands o' Holland
Hae parted my love and me;'

but the General was in shadow-land, thinking of other times and long-vanished faces, and wondering when the guilders of their High Mightinesses, and the prize-money won from the French and Spaniards, would free his inheritance from all its wadsets and incumbrances, and he would be able to hang his sword, where still his father's hung, in the old dining-hall of Thominean.

He saw it in fancy, that old house of Thominean ('the hill of birds'), with its grey crow-stepped gables and conical pepper-box turrets of the days of James VI., overlooked by the green range of the lovely Ochills; and he laughed softly as he remembered how in boyhood there he had trembled at the thought of the tiny elves, who, on their festival nights, were alleged to make great noises under the green turf, opening and shutting large chests of gold, and clattering with goblets and copper kettles; and how still more did he tremble at the story of a mysterious mirror, in which occasionally the figure of a pale woman, clad in white, could be distinctly seen behind the reflection of the person who stood before the glass, and how it was said to have appeared therein on the night his beloved sister, the Lady Baronald, died, and left her only son penniless in the world.

Thus Lewie, in his boyhood, became a soldier. On an evening that he never forgot, there came marching bravely down the quaint High Street of Kinross a recruiting-party of the Scots Brigade, with ribbons fluttering, drawn swords gleaming, the shrill pipes and hoarse drums, making every lane and alley bordering on Loch Leven to re-echo 'The Lowlands o' Holland;' and halting in front of the Bruce Arms Inn, a portly sergeant, after a libation of Farintosh had been duly poured forth, harangued the gathered rustics. He invited 'all lads of spirit to join that battalion of the Scots Brigade, commanded by the noble and valiant Henry Douglas, Earl of Drumlanrig, under their High Mightinesses the States-General of Holland, to fight the frog-eating French and popish Spaniards; all who so entered to have complete new clothing, arms and accoutrements as became a gentleman and soldier, two guineas bounty, and a crown to drink to the health of their High Mightinesses, and to the confusion of their enemies!'

A loud hurrah and much brandishing of broadswords followed this invitation, and ere 'The Point of War' was fully beaten, Lewie Baronald had shaken hands with this Scottish Sergeant Kite, and had the Dutch cockade pinned on his blue bonnet by a cunning corporal, who showed him an old watch like a silver turnip, and worth half-a-crown, which he boldly alleged had been presented to him 'by his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange in person.'

His uncle's influence soon procured him 'a pair of colours,' as the phrase was then, for a commission; and he soon proved himself worthy of the distinction by the daring and courage he displayed, when the battalion of Drumlanrig was employed with other Dutch troops in 1774, at the Cape of Good Hope, in driving the natives from the Bokkeveld and Roggeveld, back into the deserts on the south-west coast of Africa; and since his return to Holland his name, the popularity of his regiment, his handsome face and figure, were equally passports to the best society in the Hague and at Amsterdam.

But now, it seemed to his uncle and patron, the Colonel-Commandant of the Brigade, that his prospects were on the point of being marred by this unlucky passion for the daughter of the Countess van Renslaer.

Kinloch's antipathy to women was well known in the Brigade, and it was a standing joke among the battalions, that once, when the coquettish wife of the Grand Pensionary of Amsterdam had lured him into a game of battledore and shuttlecock, and contrived to let the latter drop into her ample bosom, and pointing thereto, piteously besought the General to take it out, that he—obtuse as Uncle Toby with the Widow Wadman—deftly abstracted it with the tongs.

'The lad will succeed me in time, as Laird of Thominean,' he muttered, after a time; 'the forfeited baronetcy may be restored: so why shouldn't he marry because I—I—but better not! They are all alike—all alike, these women: so he will be safer with the left wing of Dundas's Battalion in the West Indies, than philandering here at the Hague.'

But even while giving utterance to his thoughts, his features relaxed: his irritation or annoyance seemed to abate as other thoughts stole into his mind, and a shade of melancholy came over his face; and resting his head upon his hands, he remained for a time in deep and apparently painful thought.

Then he rose slowly, and selecting a key from a small bunch, opened an elaborately-carved Dutch cabinet, and from a secret drawer thereof, curiously and ingeniously hidden by a movable lion's head, he drew forth the oval miniature of a young girl, and gazed upon it long, sorrowfully, and tenderly.

There was something quaint and childlike in the beauty of the girl depicted there, with a string of pearls round her white and slender throat. Her complexion was clear and pure, her expression innocent, with golden-brown hair, and golden-brown eyes that seemed to smile on him again as he gazed on them.

A hot tear started in the eyes of Kinloch, yet he bit his lip, and, as if angry with himself for the emotion that came over him, he closed the miniature-case with a sharp snap, and restored it to its place of concealment hurriedly, muttering:

'Fool that I was—fool that I am now! Heaven grant that this Dolores of Lewie's may not make the dupe of him that girl made of me! I must save him from himself. I shall write the Director-General of the Forces—Berbice or Essequibo it must be. Poor Lewie! I am loth to part with him; but, der Duyvel! he shall not be the victim of this old jade and her daughter.'

CHAPTER III.
SWORD-PLAY.

Full of conflicting thoughts Lewie Baronald, with a slower pace than usual, proceeded towards the residence of the Countess van Renslaer, and quitting the Lang Vourhout, he crossed the canal that encircles the whole Hague.

If compelled by his powerful uncle's eccentric opposition to act the laggard now, he might leave Dolores to be won by his rival Morganstjern! Such things have been, and may be again. His brain whirled and his heart sank at the thought; and even if he had the permission of the Director-General of Infantry accorded him, could he ask the brilliant Dolores to share his solitary room in the barracks—the Oranje Caserne—of the Scots Brigade?

The thought was full of folly and presumption. He was not quite aware of the full extent of the hostile—yet well-meant—design his uncle the General was forming, for an effectual separation between him and the object of his love. He had left her yesterday with the avowed intention of obtaining the sanction of the General, from whom he had a yearly allowance: and now that the sanction was withheld, he was in sore perplexity, for by the then rules of the Dutch service no officer could marry without the consent of his superior; and how was he to tell Dolores that this had been bluntly refused, and that even exile or foreign service menaced him?

While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he came suddenly upon Maurice Morganstjern; he was seated under one of the trees that bordered the canal near the Hooge Wal, and was leisurely polishing the blade of his rapier with his leather glove, while conversing with a friend.

He was rather a handsome but dissipated-looking young fellow, and had shifty eyes and a very sinister expression of face. He wore his sandy-coloured hair powdered and tied, a smart Nivernois hat (such hats were all the rage about 1780), small, and with the flaps fastened up to the brim with hooks and eyes; his costume was bright in colours and richly laced.

That of his companion was the reverse. He wore an old battered Khevenhüller hat; his shaggy hair was unpowdered; his ruffles were soiled and torn; his visage was bloated and his eyes bloodshot and watery, while a scar on his nose, covered by a piece of black court-plaster, did not add to the respectability of his appearance: and Lewie Baronald, who knew him to be the Heer van Schrekhorn, a noted bully, gamester, and frequenter of gambling-houses and estaminets, barely accorded him any recognition, though feeling himself compelled to present his hand to Maurice Morganstjern.

'How now, Mynheer—have you been fighting?' he inquired laughingly of the latter.

'No; only polishing some specks off my sword,' replied Morganstjern, with a smile on his thin lips, though there was none in his watery grey eyes; 'but apropos of fighting—do you affect that?'

'In a proper cause—yes,' replied Baronald, surprised by the question.

'And can cover yourself well?' continued Morganstjern, making a half-mock lunge which the other—with the quickness of lightning—parried by his sword which he instantly drew.

'I can cover myself, as you shall see,' he exclaimed; and they began to fence in jest apparently, while the Heer looked approvingly on, and said with a laugh and an oath:

'Now we shall see who is the better ruffler of the two.'

And the Heer, who bore Lewie no goodwill for the coldness of his demeanour and the general hauteur he manifested towards him, looked as if he would very much have relished to draw his old hanger and engage in the perilous sport too—for perilous it was, with keen-edged and sharply-pointed straight-bladed swords.

The Heer van Schrekhorn was everyway an odious fellow—a lover of the fair sex, of schiedam and cards; but one who always avowed openly that liking for a woman was one thing, but love for her was another—and certes he knew nothing about it.

He loudly and bluntly applauded his friend's fencing.

'Appel now!' he exclaimed; 'quick—disengage to that side again! contract your arm—quick—dart a thrust right forward now!'

At that moment, as if in obedience to the suggestion, the point of Morganstjern's sword struck the gilded regimental gorget of Baronald, which was adorned with the Lion Rampant of the Netherlands.

'The devil!' he exclaimed; 'do you aim at my throat?'

'All a mistake,' said Morganstjern, beginning to pant as he was pressed on in turn and driven back.

'Is this folly or fury—do you really wish to quarrel?' asked Lewie Baronald; but the other made no reply, though his eyes became inflamed, his colour deepened, his teeth were set and his brows knit; and though he laughed, the sound of his laughter was strange and unnatural.

This game at sharps was certainly jest with Baronald, though he little liked his opponent; but he soon became aware that the eyes of the latter seemed to become more bloodshot, that his cheek paled, his grasp grew firmer on his hilt; that his thrusts came quickly and fiercely—in short, that beyond all doubt, under cover of a little pretended sword-play, he had—murder in his heart!

They were rivals for the love of Dolores, yet Morganstjern had not the courage to challenge Baronald to a regular mortal duel. His bearing now, and the perilous thrust arrested by his gorget, were a warning to the latter of that which Morganstjern was now capable—killing him by design, without peril to himself, while he would affect that it was done by mere chance in rough jest; and had Baronald been run through the body, the Heer would have been ready to affirm and swear that it was all done by the merest accident.

Baronald felt his blood getting warm; he knew that duelling was sternly discouraged by the Dutch authorities; and that to kill the cousin of Dolores, even in self-defence, would preclude all chance of possessing her favour.

But a strong measure was absolutely necessary. Darting forward he suddenly locked-in—seized his adversary's sword-arm, by twining his left arm round it, thus closing his parade hilt to hilt, and disarmed him by literally wrenching his sword from his grasp.

Pale as death now, panting, and with eyes flashing fire, Morganstjern stood before the victor, who, presenting the captured sword by the blade, said, with a kind of smile:

'This rough play is being carried too far—here let it end.'

Hissing out some execration, Morganstjern took his sword by the hilt, and in the blind excesss of his fury would have plunged it into the breast of Baronald, but at the moment it was struck up by another sword, as two officers of the Scots Brigade, Francis, Lord Lindores, and the Master of Dumbarton, threw themselves between them.

'We do but jest, gentlemen,' said Morganstjern, lifting his hat and sheathing his sword.

'Is this true, Baronald?' asked Lord Lindores.

'Jest assuredly, so far as I am concerned,' replied Lewie.

'I must confess that the work looked remarkably like earnest, so far as your adversary was concerned,' remarked the Master of Dumbarton, with a look at Morganstjern which there was no mistaking; but the latter simply bowed, and saying:

'Gentlemen—your servant. I have the honour to bid you good evening.'

Then, accompanied by the Heer van Schrekhorn, he hastened away; leaving Baronald to explain the matter as he chose to his two brother-officers, who had some difficulty in making him really aware of the deadly risk he had run.

'He is gone like a man who has lost an hour and runs as if to overtake it,' said Lord Lindores. 'Now how came you, Lewie Baronald, to be fencing, even in jest, with rufflers such as these?'

Baronald could not explain that one of them was the cousin of Dolores.

'At the Kanongietery we have just parted with Van Otterbeck, the Minister of State. It is as well he did not accompany us and see that piece of folly, Baronald; it might have gone hard with you, as the Brigade is not greatly in favour just now,' said the Master of Dumbarton, who was James Douglas, grandson of the loyal and gallant Earl of that title, who was Colonel of the Royal Scots, and followed James VII. into exile.

He was tall, had a straight nose, the bold dark eyes of the Douglas race, and sunny brown hair tied behind with a black ribbon and rosette.

'True,' added Lord Lindores; 'and I begin to think the Brigade has had enough and to spare of Holland during these two hundred years past, fighting to defend lazy boors and greedy merchants, in a land of frowsy fogs and muddy canals; as Butler has it in "Hudibras:"

'"A land that rides at anchor, and is moored;
In which they do not live, but go aboard."'

These remarks referred to the growing discontent between the regiments of the Brigade and the States-General—matters to which we may have to refer elsewhere, and which led to the former abandoning the service of the latter for that of Great Britain.

And now Lewie Baronald, after thanking his friends for their intervention and advice, took the road to the residence of the Countess van Renslaer, whither, unknown to him, Morganstjern had preceded him, and was, at that very moment, engaged with Dolores.

CHAPTER IV.
DOLORES.

The villa occupied by the Countess van Renslaer stood a little distance from the Hague, on the Ryswick road, amid a large pleasure-garden in the old Dutch style, a marvel of prettiness, with its meandering walks, fantastically-cut parterres, box borders, pyramids of flower-pots, and tiny fish-pond where the carp and perch were often fed by the white hands of Dolores.

It had more than one rose-bowered zomerhuis hidden among the shrubbery, and admirably adapted for contemplation or flirtation. It was the month of May now, when the tulips and hyacinths, potted in jardinières full of light sand, were in all their beauty—flowers for which, in the days of the tulip-mania, a hundred florins had been paid for a single bulb.

Around, the country was intersected in every direction by canals and trees in long straight avenues, the level surface dotted with farms and summer-houses; an occasional steeple, the old castle where the famous Treaty of Ryswick was signed, and the sails of many windmills whirling slowly in the evening breeze, alone broke the flat monotony of the Dutch horizon.

In the deep recess of a window that opened to the garden sat Dolores, watching and expectant. But only that morning, after parade, Lewie Baronold had talked to her of love—his love and hers—in the recess of that window—talked so sweetly of his adoration of her own charming self. So Dolores had thought to sit there again, with eyes half closed and smiling lips, to think it all over once more, while fanning herself with one of the large fans of green silk then in fashion, while the Countess, her mother, had fallen asleep over 'Clélia,' one of Monsieur de Scudery's five-volume folio novels, in the drawing-room beyond.

Dolores was taller, more lithe and slender, than Dutch girls usually are, for she had in her veins the blood of more than one ancestor who had come with that scourge of the Low Countries, Ferdinand of Toledo, el castigador del Flamencas; hence her graceful figure, the stately carriage of her beautiful head, her rather aquiline and oval features, her dark hair, and the darker lashes that shaded her soft eyes that were 'like violets bathed in dew,' and hence her peculiar name of Dolores.

She had the bloom of Holland in her cheek, and the grace of Spain in her carriage and bearing. An exquisite costume of pale yellow silk became the brunette character of her beauty well; creamy lace fell away in folds from the snowy arms it revealed; perfume, brilliance, and softness were about her.

There was a step on the gravel; her colour deepened.

'Morganstjern—Cousin Maurice!' she muttered with a tone of annoyance, as he approached her with hat in hand.

Would this creature, so incomparably lovely and winning, ever belong to him, and lie in his bosom? he was thinking as he surveyed her; was she not rather drifting away from him, and would soon, unless he took strong and sure measures with yonder accursed Schottlander, be lost to him and his world for ever?

'Always becomingly dressed, Dolores,' said he, stooping over her; 'but this costume especially suits your style of loveliness.'

'You must not say such things to me,' she replied with some asperity.

'How—why?'

'I mean such pretty or complimentary things, Maurice Morganstjern; because if you do——'

'What then?'

'I shall think that I have forfeited your friendship.'

'Friendship!' said he gloomily; 'how long will you seem to misunderstand me?'

Try as she might, Dolores could not feel kindly or well disposed towards her cousin Morganstjern, and her replies to him always sounded cold and formal, or taunting even to herself; and the face that bent over her was, she knew, not a good one, but sinister, and expressive of a bad and evil spirit within.

And now, as a somewhat palpable hint that his conversation wearied or worried her, she took up her flageolet, and putting the ivory mouthpiece to her rosy lips, began to play a sweet little air, while his brow became darker, for this now obsolete instrument (which had silver stops like the old English flute) had been a gift of Lewie Baronald's, who, in the gallantry of the day, had inserted a copy of verses addressed to herself, and which, of course, would only be found when the instrument was unscrewed to discover what marred its use.

Anon she paused; Maurice Morganstjern then glanced towards the Countess, and perceiving that she still slept, drew nearer to Dolores, and lowering his voice, said:

'Can you not love me a little, cousin?'

'Not as you wish,' she replied.

'Why?'

The musical voice of Dolores broke into a soft little laugh as she fanned herself, and said:

'Simply because one cannot love two persons at once.'

'Meaning that you love this—this accursed Schottlander?' he hissed through his set teeth.

'Oh, Maurice! how can you be so rude as to speak thus of any visitor of mamma's!'

'Listen to me, Cousin Dolores,' he resumed, making a prodigious effort to be calm.

'Well,' asked the girl, with something of petulance.

'I am probably to be sent to Paris.'

'Indeed—for what purpose?'

'In the interests of the patriots here.'

'And against the Prince of Orange?'

'Yes—of course.'

'You are unwise to say this to me even, cousin.' said she, looking up now.

'But you, Dolores, are my second self.'

'What will you do when I go?'

'Much the same as I did before you honoured the Hague with your presence.'

'To me it seems that you care little whether you see me or not.'

'What then?—and it may be so. Cousin Maurice, you are always annoying me by love-making, or by scowling and taunting me about gentlemen visitors.'

'May I hope, however, that you will pay me the compliment of feeling my absence—of missing me a little?'

'That,' replied the provoking beauty, as an arch expression stole into her face, 'may depend upon what amuses or interests me. Oh, pardon me, Maurice—I am so rude!' she added, on perceiving the sombre fury expressed by his sinister face.

'Whatever you think, only say that you will be sorry when I go,' he urged.

'If you do go—which I don't believe—I will be sorry of course, Maurice,' she replied, as she saw the necessity of temporising a little; 'I am always so when I lose anyone or anything that has become familiar to me. Do you not remember how I wept when my poor Bologna spaniel died last year?'

'I do not expect you to weep for me. It would be too much for Maurice Morganstjern to expect to be raised to the level of your spaniel.'

'How sarcastic and unpleasant you are!' exclaimed Dolores, expectant of Lewie Baronald's arrival, and now half dreading that event. 'I wish you would be as faithful as that poor animal was, and as unselfish in your love.'

'Could you look into my heart, you would find but one word—one idea stamped there.'

'And that is——'

'"Dolores"—meaning sorrow and lamentation if you love me not.'

She laughed merrily again, and again the sombre look came into his face; so she dropped her fan and held out two small white hands as if to deprecate his wrath, for she had an energetic way with her, so he instantly caught them in his own.

She was quite occupied in trying to release them when a familiar rap was heard on the knocker of the street door, an enormous lion's head of brass, with a huge ring in its jaws.

'Oh, I keep your hands prisoners,' said he: 'pardon me,' he added, as he stooped and kissed them; and she had barely time to wrench them away when a liveried valet ushered in Lewie Baronald, and in spite of herself and the presence of her cousin she could not conceal the joy with which his presence inspired her.

'Welcome,' she said, and held forth her hand. Oh, what a hand he thought it—small, plump, and white—so slim and shapely!

There was neither shyness, coquetry, nor embarrassment in the girl's manner, for in their assured position with each other both she and her lover were long past anything of the kind; but the latter and her cousin bowed rather grimly to each other, and mutually muttered:

'Your servant—Mynheer.'

Lewie Baronald now crossed the polished floor of the drawing-room to greet the Countess, who rose to receive him, and who looked so young and so pretty that she might have passed for an elder sister of Dolores; and stooping low he kissed her hand, looking, as he did so, with his sword at his side under the stiff square skirt of his coat, and his hat under his arm, with his ruffles and cravat of fine lace, a model of those stately manners that lingered in Europe when George III. was King—in Scotland, perhaps, longer than anywhere else.

Of Morganstjern's privileges as a cousin, Lewie Baronald was never jealous in the least; but on this occasion, after the recent fencing-bout, the interview with his uncle, and the threat of service in the Dutch West Indies, his brow was rather cloudy, and he longed intensely to be with Dolores alone.

The rough sword-play that had been forced upon him, the risk he had run, and the treachery of Morganstjern, had certainly exasperated him; but courtesy to Dolores and the Countess made him dissemble, and he treated his rival and enemy, if rather coldly and haughtily, as if nothing remarkable had occurred between them, and the conversation became of a general kind. But Morganstjern, in the waspishness of his nature, could not help referring to the 'armed neutrality,' as it was termed, a vexed and then dangerous political subject for a Briton and a Hollander to discuss.

This was an alliance, offensive and defensive, which had been formed by some of the northern powers of Europe; and some violent disputes between Britain and the States-General, which seemed advancing to a direct rupture just then, caused the position of the Scots Brigade in their service to become somewhat peculiar and critical.

From the commencement of the disturbance with America, the Dutch had maintained a close correspondence with the revolted colonists, supplying them with all kinds of material and warlike stores; and after the interference of France and Spain, the selfishness and treachery of the Dutch became more glaring and apparent.

'The States-General of Holland are free, independent, and can do precisely as they choose,' said Morganstjern haughtily, in reply to some condemnatory remark of Lewie Baronald.

'Their Highnesses,' replied the latter calmly, 'have no right to leave their ports open to the King's rebels, in disregard of friendship and honour, and in defiance of the remonstrances of his ambassadors.'

'Permit me to dispute your right, as a soldier in the service of their Highnesses, to censure them.'

Baronald's nether lip quivered at this retort, and the Countess and Dolores exchanged glances of uneasiness; for politics had become so embittered by the American Squadron, which had recently captured H.M.'s ships Serapis and Scarborough, having taken them into the Texel, and when General Yorke claimed those ships and their crews, the Dutch refused to restore them, and soon after Commodore Fielding fired upon their squadron under Count Bylandt, and took him into Portsmouth; so war was looked for daily, while the Scots Brigade were yet serving under the Dutch colours.

'Do not let us think or speak of such things, Cousin Maurice,' said Dolores imploringly; 'I tremble at the idea of Britain invading us, if this sort of work goes on. What have we to do with her colonists and their quarrels?'

'Invade us, indeed!' said Morganstjern, with angry mockery; 'if our swords fail us we can open the sluices, as we did in the days of Louis XIV., and drown every man and mother's son!'

'But how should we escape ourselves?' asked the Countess.

'Good generalship would take care of that; and then how about your Scots Brigade?' asked Morganstjern, turning abruptly to Baronald.

'The Bulwark of Holland, we have never failed her yet,' replied the latter haughtily; 'but to draw the sword upon our own countrymen is certainly a matter for consideration.'

'In Holland, perhaps, but not in America.'

'Let this subject cease,' said the Countess imperatively, while fanning herself with an air of excessive annoyance; and now Morganstjern, beginning to find himself de trop, bowed himself out, and with vengeance gathering in his heart, withdrew to an estaminet, or tavern, where he knew that he would find his friend the Heer van Schrekhorn, and whither we may perhaps follow him.

To Lewie Baronald, who was naturally destitute of much personal vanity, it had hitherto seemed rather strange that the Countess had permitted his attentions to her daughter at all, though he was known to be the heir of his uncle; and now that he had all the joy of knowing himself to be her accepted lover, his soul trembled within him at the prospect of having to announce General Kinloch's utter hostility to the mother.

Lewie had more than once observed that the Countess always smiled, or laughed outright, when his uncle the General was spoken of, as if she considered him somewhat of a character—an excentrique.

'You have seen the General, I presume, since you were here last?' said she.

'Yes, madam,' replied Lewie, painfully colouring.

'And told him of your love for Dolores—of your engagement to her, in fact?'

'Yes, madam; he seems to have suspected it for some time past.'

'Suspected—that sounds unpleasant.'

Lewie played with the feather in his regimental hat, and his colour deepened, when the Countess said:

'Then he is coming to wait upon me, I presume?'

'Alas—no, madam.'

'Indeed—why?'

'He is averse to the society of ladies.'

'In fact, is a woman-hater, I have heard.'

Lewie smiled feebly, and felt himself in a foolish predicament; so the Countess spoke again.

'He had some disappointment in early life, I believe, and never got over it.'

'Yes, madam.'

'Poor fellow! and of Dolores——'

'He will not hear me speak with patience.'

'How grotesque!' exclaimed the Countess, laughing heartily.

'Ah, could he but see her!' exclaimed the young man, regarding the upturned face of her he loved with something of adoration.

'Your uncle the General is very cruel, Lewie,' said Dolores; 'he is a veritable ogre!'

'He is the king of good fellows, but——'

'But what?'

'He has never seen you.'

'And never shall,' she said petulantly, opening and shutting her fan.

'Nay, dearest Dolores, do not say so.'

'The ogre, or worse!' exclaimed the girl, with a pout on her sweet lips.

'Nay—no worse—only a man,' said the Countess, laughing excessively; 'he thinks of us only as women, but to be shunned—avoided—dreaded. It is very droll!'

And looking down, she played with the étui and appendages that hung from her girdle, her tiny watch with the judgment of Solomon embossed on its case; and as she did so, Lewie thought her hand as white and dimpled as that of Dolores.

To him it certainly seemed strange that the opposition of his uncle seemed only to provoke—not the pride or the indignation of the lively Countess—but her laughter and amusement.

'And if he gets me banished on foreign service to the Dutch West Indies!' he urged rather piteously.

'My poor Lewie,' said she, patting his cheek with her fan, 'I must see what can be done; meantime, we must be patient and wait. From all I have heard and know, an early disappointment at the hands of one he loved only too well, has shaken his faith in human goodness and integrity, and now he is soured, suspicious and sarcastic.'

'But only so far as women are concerned.'

'True; and I suppose he is like a French writer, who says that "of all serious things, marriage is the most ridiculous;" but men are not infallible, especially men like your uncle the General—errare humanum est. Let us be patient a little, and all will come right in the end.'

But Dolores and her lover would only sigh a little impatiently as her hand stole into his, and the twilight of evening deepened around them.

CHAPTER V.
'THE BULWARK OF HOLLAND.'

And now while the lovers are waiting in hope, while the General is 'nursing his wrath to keep it warm,' and determined upon their separation; and while Maurice Morganstjern is plotting what mischief he may work them, we shall briefly tell the story of the Scots Brigade, and how it came to be called 'the Bulwark of Holland.'

Lewie Baronald, his uncle the General, and all others belonging to the Scots Brigade, had a good right to be proud of doing so, as it had a glorious inheritance of military history, second only to that of the 1st Royal Scots; and though its memory should have been immortal, its records now lie rotting in a garret of the Town House of Amsterdam; and even in Scotland little is remembered of it, save its march:

'The Lowlands o' Holland
Hae parted my love and me.'

Yet the drums of that Brigade have stirred the echoes of every city and fortress between the mouths of the Ems in the stormy North Sea, and the oak forests of Luxembourg and the Ardennes; and between the ramparts of Ostend and the banks of the Maese and Rhine.

In 1570 the fame of Maurice, Prince of Nassau, drew to his standard many of those Scots whose swords were rendered idle by peace with England, and it was by their aid chiefly, that he drove out his Spanish invaders. Among those who took with them the bravest men of the Borders, were that Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh who exasperated Queen Elizabeth by storming the Castle of Carlisle; his son Walter, the first Earl of Buccleugh; Sir Henry Balfour of Burleigh; Preston of Gourton; Halkett of Pitfiran, and other commanders, named by Grose, Stewart, Hay, Douglas, Graham, and Hamilton.

These formed the original Scots Brigade in the army of Holland, and some of the battalions must have been kilted, as Famiano Strada, the Jesuit, states that at the battle of Mechlin they fought 'naked'—nudi pugnant Scoti multi.

In 1594, on the return of the States ambassadors, whither they had gone to congratulate James VI. on the birth of his son, they took back with them 1,500 recruits for the Brigade, which five years after fought valiantly in repelling the Spaniards at the siege of Bommel.

The year 1600 saw its soldiers cover themselves with glory at the great battle of the Downs, near Nieuport, and in the following year at the siege of Ostend, which lasted three years, and in which 100,000 men are said to have perished on both sides, and where so many of Spinola's bullets 'stuck in the sandhill bulwark that it became like a wall of iron, and dashed fresh bullets to pieces when they hit it;' and so great was the valour of the Brigade at the siege of Bois-le-Duc, that Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, styled it 'The Bulwark of the Republic.'

It consisted then of three battalions—those of Buccleugh, Scott, and Halkett.

The bestowal of some commissions on Dutch officers caused much discontent during the time of the Prince of Orange, afterwards William III., with whom (after being demanded by James VII. without effect in 1688) the Brigade came over to Britain for a time, and

served at the siege of Edinburgh Castle and the battle of Killiecrankie.

In 1747, by the slaughter at Val and the terrible siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, the Brigade was reduced to only 330 men, but the Hague Gazette records how they drove the French from street to street, and of all the glory won thus, the greatest fell to two lieutenants named Maclean, the sons of the Laird of Torloisk, who were complimented by Count Lowendhal, who commanded the enemy, by whom they were taken.

The men of the Brigade were ever good soldiers, yet strict and God-fearing Presbyterians, who would rather have had their peccadilloes known to a stern General like Kinloch, than to the regimental chaplain.

And it might be said of this Brigade, as it used to be said of the Scots Greys, that the members of it retained a kind of regimental dialect coeval with the days of its formation, when the language was rather different from the present Scotch; so, in the Irish brigades of France and Spain the strongest and purest old Irish was found to the last.

As a sequel to this brief account of the Brigade in Holland, we may sum up the story of its service in the British army—though that service was brilliant—in little more than a paragraph.

After a long and angry correspondence between the Governments of Holland and Britain, the Brigade—save some fifty officers who had formed ties in Holland, or elected to remain there—was transferred to the service of the latter, when a rupture took place between them at the time of the American War, and was taken to Edinburgh, clad in the Dutch uniform, and about 1794, it adopted the red coat, and there in George's Square, when drawn up under Generals Dundas and Kinloch, received its new colours at the hands of the Scottish Commander-in-Chief, when it was numbered as the 94th Regiment; and under these colours it fought gallantly at Seringapatam, winning the elephant as a badge; at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, and in all the battles of the Peninsular War, after which it was disbanded at Edinburgh in 1818.

Then another 94th was embodied five years afterwards, on which occasion, as we tell in our novel, 'The King's own Borderers,' 'the green standard of the old Brigade of immortal memory was borne through the streets from the Castle of Edinburgh by a soldier of the Black Watch,' thus identifying the new regiment with the old; but now even the number of the former has passed away, as under the new and helplessly defective army organisation scheme, it is muddled up with the 88th Regiment under a new name.

And now, having told what the 'Bulwark of Holland' was, we shall return to the fortunes of Lewie Baronald and his fiancée Dolores.

CHAPTER VI.
AT THE GOLDEN SUN.

'So—so! this Scottish adventurer stands between me and the girl I love; between me and my own flesh and blood; more than all, between me and the fortune of Dolores!' muttered Morganstjern—himself a penniless adventurer and knave to boot, as he strode through the streets with his left hand in the hilt of his sword and his right tightly clenched. 'I have a right to hate and dread him—the right to remove him, too, by fair means or foul!'

The latter were the only means he could think of, as he had a wholesome dread of Lewie Baronald's skill with his sword, and the bucks of the Scots Brigade were not wont to stand on trifles when they resorted to that weapon; and in this mood of mind he rejoined his friend the Heer van Schrekhorn, whom he found at an estaminet called the Gond Zon, or 'Golden Sun,' in a narrow and gloomy street near the Klooster Kerk.

There he found him seated in a quiet corner, smoking, drinking schiedam and water, while intently studying some profitable and useful gambling tricks with a pack of not overclean cards.

'I have just been trying some ruses or tricks at lansquenet,' said he, as the tapster brought fresh glasses and more liquor; 'it is the grandest of old gambling games, like those that are of French origin. Look here, to begin with: the cards being shuffled by the dealer, and cut by one of the party, two are dealt out and turned up on the left hand of the dealer, so; he then takes one and places a fourth, the réjouissance card, in the middle of the table, so. On this——'

'Enough of this, Van Schrekhorn,' said Morganstjern impatiently. 'I did not come here to be taught lansquenet,' he added, as he threw his sword, hat, and gloves on a side-table, and flung himself wearily into a chair.

'Oh—so you have just come from the house of la belle Dolores?'

'Yes,' replied the other with an imprecation.

'And left her well and happy, I hope?' said the Heer mockingly.

I left her with that fellow of the Scots Brigade.'

''Sdeath! the more fool you. Why not keep your ground? Were you not there before him?'

'Yes, and did my best to win her favour—even her mere regard.'

'In vain?'

'As usual. In fact, I think these two are affianced—or nearly so. I never so bestirred myself about a woman before,' said Morganstjern, as he drank at a draught a crystal goblet of schiedam and water, and refilled it.

'How is the Countess affected towards you?'

'But indifferently. Indeed, she only tolerates me as a kinsman, and, I suppose, has encouraged or permitted Baronald's addresses to her daughter, because he is the heir of General Kinloch, while I am heir to that only of which nothing can deprive me.'

'And that is?'

'A grave—six feet of earth,' replied Morganstjern, grinding his teeth unpleasantly.

'Come—you have always the guilders you win at roulette.'

'Because they are so won, there is the greater necessity that I should have those of my cousin Dolores.'

'Which also reminds me that you owe me a good sum of money—cash lent, and lost at play.'

'Why the devil remind me of that just now?' replied, or rather asked, Morganstjern, savagely; and then for a little time the two smoked moodily in silence.

The would-be lover of Dolores had long been subjected to a run of evil fortune at the gaming-table. 'So long as there is the beacon of hope,' says a writer, 'life is able to show up a gleam now and then of rose-colour; but when adverse circumstances render any change impossible, life becomes intolerable.' And to this verge of desperation had Maurice Morganstjern come.

It was a source of keen irritation to him, to find that his rival—favoured by the Countess—could be with Dolores daily, while he—her cousin—could only visit her at stated times; and that all the advances he made to her seemed utterly futile and hopeless now.

'Nearly penniless as I am, Schrekhorn,' said he; 'I might have waited patiently, but have never had a gleam of hope.'

'If you waited a hundred years, it would be all the same, while she is under the influence of this fellow's voice, eye, and society.'

'What would you have me do?'

'Remove him, or remove her!' replied Schrekhorn with a fierce Dutch oath.

'More easily said than done. With her money, by the henckers! how I should enjoy myself all day long and do nothing!'

'About all you ever cared to do,' rejoined his friend, who was rather disposed to treat him mockingly.

'Don't attempt to act my Mentor.'

'Why?'

'Because I should make but a sorry Telemachus.'

'Then it seems all a settled thing between them!'

'What?'

'How dull you are! Marriage?'

'Ach Gott! it looks like it.'

'Then you have been a trifle late of taking the field?'

'Nay,' replied Morganstjern, smoking his meerschaum with vicious energy. 'I was the first, but when this fellow Baronald came, I found myself instantly at a discount.'

'Jilted—eh?'

'Nay, I was never on such a footing with her that she could treat me so, because she was ever utterly indifferent.'

'Then it is too late for fair means now, but not for foul.'

Then, after a pause, the Heer said in his mocking tone;

'If money is your object, and you openly avow that it is so, why not propose to the mother, if the daughter won't have you? She is rich enough and certainly handsome enough, and only some fifteen years older than yourself. She is a widow, and all the world knows how easily widows are won. 'Sblood! cut in for her, and leave the girl to the Scot.'

Morganstjern thought for a minute, and then uttering one of his imprecations, added:

'No—no—NO! I shall be thwarted by no man!'

'Right!' exclaimed the other; 'I like this spirit—give me your hand.'

'This infernal Scots Brigade has married at the Hague and Amsterdam more than fifty Dutch girls within the last few years, and all of them rich.'

'Der Duyvel!'

'Many of them girls of the first rank.'

'Thousand duyvels!' said the Heer with a mocking laugh.

'Is it not enough that these Scots—the Bulwark of the Republic as they boast themselves——'

'And have done so since the old siege of Bois-le-Duc—well?' asked the Heer.

'Is it not enough, I say, that they should assume our glory in war, and win our guilders in peace, but they must carry off our prettiest girls too?'

'They do not assume your glory, but win their own,' said the Heer, who had some contempt for his companion; 'their guilders have been hardly won on many a Dutch and Flemish battlefield; and if the pretty girls of Haarlem and the Hague prefer them to Walloons, they are right.'

Morganstjern's brow grew black.

'I am no Walloon,' said he, huskily.

'I did not say so,' said Van Schrekhorn; then he added, 'I have some news for you, and a hint to make thereon. Dolores van Renslaer is to be at the ridotto given by the wife of the Sixe van Otterbeck, the Minister of State, on the night after next.'

'That I know, and of course this pestilent Scot will be there too.'

'No; on that night he is on duty at the Palace of the Prince of Orange.'

'Well—what about all this?'

'Listen,' said Van Schrekhorn, leaning forward on the table and lowering his voice almost to a whisper, while the colour in his bloated visage deepened, and an expression of intense cunning stole into his watery bloodshot eyes: 'let us carry her off as her sedan bears her from the ridotto!'

'To where?'

'Listen. I know a skipper whose ship is now in the Maese, and almost ready to sail for the coast of France. She is anchored off Maesluis now; let us once get her on board and the Hoek van Holland will soon be left astern, and the girl your own, unless you are a greater fool than I think you.'

Morganstjern made no immediate reply, so his tempter spoke again.

'Once on board that ship, her honour will be compromised, and marriage alone can restore it. Let her be once on board that ship with you, I say, and she cannot be so blind as not to see that she will have gone a great deal too far to draw back.'

'Right!' exclaimed Morganstjern, as a glance of triumph came into his eyes. 'I have a political mission to France, and it will be supposed that she has eloped with me, and befooled the Scot Baronald. With all her contempt and scorn of me, she little knows that her fate is to become my wife—my wife—mine! Once that, and then let her look to herself!' he added as a savage expression mingled with the triumph that sparkled in his shifty eyes, and he smote the table with his clenched hand.

'The distance from the Hague to Maesluis is only eleven miles—a few pipes, as the people say,' resumed Schrekhorn; 'my friend shall have a boat waiting us at a quiet spot among the willows that fringe the shore, near a deserted windmill on the river-bank; and then we shall take her on board. Once under hatches, her fate will soon be sealed.'

'How can I thank you?'

'By refunding what you owe me out of the guilders of Dolores,' replied the Heer, as he and Morganstjern shook hands again; but the latter became silent for a time.

He knew the Heer van Schrekhorn to be a rascal capable of committing any outrage, and also that he had personally a special grudge at Lewie Baronald. Dolores was beautiful. What if this scheme so speciously arranged, was one for his own behoof, to carry her off, leaving the onus of the abduction on the shoulders of him—Morganstjern—after passing a sword through his body among the willows near the old mill on the Maese.

But this grave suspicion was only a passing thought, and he thrust it aside.

'This may preclude your return for some time, and compromise you with the authorities,' said the Heer.

'Their reign will soon be over; and when a French army comes to the assistance of the Dutch patriots, the Prince of Orange may find himself a fugitive in England.'

'But we must be wary; not for all the gold and silver bars in the Bank of Amsterdam would I be in your shoes if we fail. The Burgomasters are worse than the devil to face, and we may find ourselves behind the grilles of the Gevangepoort or the Rasp-haus, as brawlers.'

'A thousand duyvels!—fail? don't think of it.'

Had Maurice Morganstjern known the intentions of General Kinloch towards his nephew, and the plans he had formed to separate him from Dolores, he might have patiently awaited the events of the next few days; but as he was ignorant of them, he and the malevolent Heer van Schrekhorn laid all their plans for the abduction of the girl with caution, confidence, and extreme deliberation, before they quitted the Golden Sun that night.

CHAPTER VII.
THE GENERAL'S SECRET.

Next day, when Lewie Baronald, apparelled in all his regimental bravery, was setting forth to visit Dolores, he was summoned by General Kinloch, who, after working himself up to a certain degree of sternness or firmness, real or assumed, for the occasion, said:

'Stay, young man, I pray you, as we must have some conversation together.'

Lewie took off his Khevenhüller hat, and fearing that some animadversions were coming, played a little irresolutely with its upright scarlet feather.

'Your name has gone in for foreign service, Lewie,' said the General.

'To whom, sir?'

'The Director-General of Infantry.'

'Sent by you, uncle?'

'Yes, sir, by me.'

'You might at least have consulted with me in this matter. How cruel of you, uncle, under all the circumstances!' exclaimed Lewie, with sudden bitterness and intense anger.

'You will come to think it kindness in time, boy; I seek but to save you from what I, in my time, underwent.'

'If I refuse to go?'

'Refuse, and compromise your honour and mine—yea, the honour of the Brigade itself! My dear Lewie, when you have lived in this world as long as I——'

'Why, uncle, you are only forty!'

'Not yet twice your age, certainly—well?'

'If detailed for the Colonies, anywhere, separation from Dolores will be the death of me!' exclaimed the young man passionately.

'No, it won't; nor of Dolores either. So you are very much in love with her?' asked the General with a scornful grin.

'God only knows how purely I love her!' exclaimed the nephew in a low concentrated voice.

'Nature is full of freaks, certainly!'

'How?'

'She has varied the annals of the old fighting line of the Baronalds of that Ilk, by having them varied by something else.'

'By what?'

'A moonstruck fool!'

'This is eccentricity combined with unwarrantable interference and military tyranny,' cried Lewie, as he stuck his hat on his head and drew himself haughtily up; then in a moment his mood changed, for he loved this kinsman to whom he owed so much, and he said with an air of dejection, 'How shall I ever tell Dolores of what you have done to us both? I cannot sail for the Cape or the Caribbean Isles, and leave her bound to me! I must release her from her promise, though I know that she would wait a lifetime for me.'

'Poor fool that you are, Lewie! Do you forget the adage, "Out of sight, out of mind"? You think that, like Penelope, she will wait your return in hope, in love, and all the rest of it? You may be like Ulysses, but never was there a Penelope among women.'

The General indulged in many more doubting and slighting remarks upon women, particularly on their faith and constancy; and while he was running on thus, grief struggled with rage and indignation for mastery in the heart of Lewie, which seemed to stand still at this sudden wrench, and the prospect of an abrupt and protracted separation from Dolores—a separation that might be for years—every moment of which would be an agonised heart-throb, it seemed to him then!

How hard, how cruel, that they should be thus separated, and forced to drink, as it were, of the bitter waters of Marah, because this stern soldier hated all women so grotesquely, as the Countess had said, viewing them all through the medium of one; while Lewie and Dolores were so young that all the world seemed too small to contain the measure of their joy, and now—now, thought was maddening!

He would resign, 'throw up his pair of colours,' as the phrase was then; but his uncle had compromised him, by sending in his name to the Director-General of Infantry!

Already in anticipation he imagined and rehearsed their parting; already he saw her tears, her blanched face, and heard himself entreating her not to forget him, while vowing himself to be true to her—each regarding the other mournfully and yearningly, hand clasped in hand, lip clinging to lip; then came the void of the departure; the seas to plough, and the years that were to come with all their doubts and longing.

It was too bad—too bad; he owed his uncle much—all in the world indeed; but this stroke—this harsh interference, ended all between them for ever!

Overwhelmed with dejection he cast himself into a chair; there the General regarded him wistfully, and placing a hand kindly on his shoulder, said:

'Lewie, shall I tell you of what once happened to me?'

But, full of his own terrible thoughts, Lewie made no reply.

'It may have been that evil followed me,' said the General, looking down, with a hand placed in the breast of his coat.

'Evil?' repeated Lewie.

'Yes. When a boy I shot in the wood of Thomineau the last crane that was ever seen in Scotland, and my old nurse predicted that a curse would follow me therefor; thus, I never see a crane on a house-top here that I don't remember her words. Now listen to what happened to me when I was on detachment in the Dutch West India Islands. I belonged then to the battalion of Charles Halkett Craigie, who six years ago died Lieutenant-Governor of Namur, and we garrisoned Fort Nassau, or New Amsterdam as it is called now. There,' continued the General, alternately and nervously toying with his sword-knot and shirt-frill, 'I was silly enough to fall in love with the daughter of a wealthy merchant, a Dutch girl, like your Dolores, with some of the old Castilian blood in her, though a lineal descendant of the great Dutch family of Van Peere, to whom, in 1678, Berbice was granted by the States-General as a perpetual and hereditary fief. She possessed great beauty, and what proved more attractive still, a hundred sweet and winning ways, with the art of saying pretty and even daring little things, that endeared her to all—to none more than me. I was a great ass, of course; but, heavens, what a coquette she was!'

'What was her name?' asked Lewie, with just the smallest amount of interest.

'Excuse me telling, as I have sworn never to utter it again; nor do I wish it to go down in the annals of our family. She wound herself round my heart; my soul, my existence, seemed to be hers. My love for her became a species of idolatry; but poverty tied my tongue, and I dared not speak of it, till one evening, which I shall never forget, the secret left me abruptly, drawn from me by herself. We were lingering in the garden of her father's villa near the Berbice river, and the stars were coming out, one by one, in the deep blue sky above us. The hour was beautiful—all that a lover could wish; and around us the atmosphere was fragrant with the perfume of flowers—among those wonders of the vegetable world—the gigantic water-lilies, each leaf of which is six feet in diameter. I was soon to leave for Holland on duty, and my heart was wrung at the prospect of a separation.

'I had her hand in mine: my secret was trembling on my lips; and gazing into her eyes which were of a golden-brown colour, like that of her hair, I said very softly:

'"If your eyes have at all times an expression so sweet, so beautiful and winning, what must they seem to the man who reads love in them—love for himself!"

'"Can you not read it now?" she asked in a low voice, as she cast her long lashes down.

'I uttered her name and drew her close to me, my heart beating wildly the while, in doubt whether this was one of the daring little speeches I spoke of.

'Taking her sweet little face between my hands, I kissed her eyes and forehead, on which she said, in her low cooing voice:

'"I wonder if you will ever think of me after you are gone?"

'"Darling, do you think there will ever be a day of my life when I will not think you! Oh, the thought of our parting is worse than death to me!"

('A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' thought Lewie, becoming fully interested now.)

'"We are jesting," said she; "do not say this."

'"There is no need to tell you that I love you," said I, "for you know that I do—dearly, fondly: that this love will last with life, end with death;" and much more rubbish I said to the same purpose, adding, "And you, if quite free, could you love me?"

'"I love you now; have I not admitted as much?"

'So it all came about in that way,' said the General; 'umph—what an ass I was! May you never live to be deceived as that girl deceived me! I thought our passion was mutual; and then perhaps she thought so too—all perfidious though she was!

'But how happy—how radiantly happy I was for a time, till a Dutch squadron came to anchor off the bar of the Berbice river, and in one of the lieutenants thereof she discovered, or said she discovered, a kinsman; and from that moment a blight fell upon me, and I discovered that she was variable as the wind. Her attentions seemed divided for a time; at last they were no longer given to me. Her smiles were for the stranger; she sang to him, played to him, and talked to him only. At home or abroad, riding or driving, or boating on the river, he was ever by her side when not on board his ship.

'What rage and mortification were in my heart! The rules of the service alone prevented me calling him to a terrible account, though indeed he was not to blame.

'When I attempted to reason or remonstrate with her, she laughed; then after a time became indignant. We parted in anger, and I felt fury and death in my heart when she tossed my engagement-ring at my feet.

'Once again we met, alone, and by the merest chance. How my pulses throbbed as our eyes met, and she coyly presented her hand, which I was craven enough, and fool enough, to fondle!

'"Oh, what have I done," said I, "that you should treat me thus? that you should tread my heart under your feet, and leave me to long years of sorrow and repining?"

'Then she laughed, and snatched her hand away, while once again my soul seemed to die within me.

'"Do you love this kinsman?" I asked her fiercely; and never till my last hour shall I forget her reply, or the almost cruel expression of her face.

'"Yes; I love him—love him with my whole heart, and as I never loved you!"

'Turning away, she left me—left me rooted to the spot. Yet she had some shame, or compunction, left in her after all; for next day came a would-be piteous letter of explanation, that she had given this lieutenant a promise to please her father when he was dying—her father who was his guardian; how she had never had the courage to tell me so at first; that she did not dream I loved her so much; that I must learn to forget her, though she would never forget me; and so—a thousand devils!—there was an end of it.

'A few weeks after I saw her marriage in the papers, to the Lieutenant—d—n his name—to her and her fortune of ever so many thousand guilders.

'I tore her farewell letter into minute fragments, and set to work to adopt her advice.'

'What was that?' asked Lewie.

'To forget her; and to do so I threw myself into my profession. I never looked upon her face again, and I thanked God when I heard our drums beating as we marched out of Fort Nassau, and when the accursed shore of the Berbice river faded into the evening sea! Now, Lewie, have I not the best of reasons for mistrusting women, and seeking to save you from the fangs of this little ogress—this Dolores?'

'Ah, you know not her of whom you speak thus!' exclaimed Lewie.

'Nor am I likely to do so. Shun her, nephew! a girl, doubtless, with a fair face, and a heart as black as Gehenna! Be firm, Lewie Baronald!—firmness is a great thing, as you will find when you come to be a general officer and as old as I am.'

Lewie had done his duty like a man and a soldier—like one worthy of the glorious old Brigade—among the savages in the old Cape War; but it was cruel, absurd, and, to use the Countess van Renslaer's phrase, 'grotesque,' that he should now be treated like a child, and in the most momentous matter of his life and happiness too!

'I was weak enough—idiot enough, to wish I might die, then and there, when that girl deceived me,' resumed his uncle bitterly; 'but I knew that I must live on and on; I was very young, and thought I might live for forty years with that pain in my heart at night and in the morning. It is twenty years since then, and though the pain is dead, I suppose, I cannot laugh at it yet, or the memory of Mercedes.'

'Mercedes! was that her name—Mercedes?'

'The devil—it has escaped me!'

'So that is the name which is not to go down in the annals of the family?'

'Precisely so.'

'But surely, dear uncle, after all these years, you must have forgiven her? Besides, she may be dead.'

'Dead to me, certainly! Forgiven her—well, perhaps I may have forgiven her; but what can make a mere mortal forget a wrong, a cruelty, or an injury?'

'Then you will not yield, but insist that I shall go abroad?'

'I will not yield an inch, and march you shall!' replied the General, as he turned on his heel and left him.

'My darling Dolores—the first and only love of my life!' exclaimed the young man passionately; 'how can he—how dare he—act thus towards us? But that I love him, I think, I may soon come to hate him!'

He rushed away in search of Dolores; but she and the Countess were from home. He was on duty at the Palace next day, and Dolores was to be at the ridotto; thus, ere they could meet, events were to transpire which were altogether beyond the conception of both.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE RIDOTTO.

The 'ridotto,' the Italian word then fashionable for an entertainment of music and dancing, at the huge old red-brick villa of the Heer van Otterbeck, Minister of State, in the vicinity of the Hague, was one of the gayest affairs of the season.

The Prince of Orange (whose son afterwards became King of the Netherlands) was not present, but all the rank, the wealth, and beauty of the Hague were represented; and among those present were many officers of the Scots Brigade, including the Earl of Drumlanrig, General Dundas, in after years the captor of the Cape of Good Hope; and there too was the Conservator of Scottish Privileges at Campvere, John Home, then the celebrated author of the nearly forgotten tragedy of 'Douglas.'

A band of the Dutch Guards furnished music on the lawn, and there dancing was in progress in the bright sunshine of the summer afternoon; and, in the fashion of the time, many of the guests were arrayed in what they deemed the costume of Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses.

People danced early in the evenings of the eighteenth century, and were abed about the time their descendants now begin to dress for a ball. Ices were unknown; no wine was dispensed, but the liveried servants of the Heervan Otterbeck regaled his guests on coffee, green tea, orange tea, and many kinds of cakes and confectionery in the intervals of the dancing, in which Dolores (all innocent and unaware of the plots in progress against her peace, even her honour and liberty—one of them born of avarice, wounded vanity, and foiled desire) indulged joyously and with all her heart.

For the information of the ladies of the present day we shall detail the dress worn by Dolores on that evening as described in the Hague Gazette, and they may imagine how charming she looked:

'Her body and train were silver tissue, with a broad silver fringe; her petticoat was white satin covered with the richest crape, embroidered with silver, fastened up with bunches of silver roses, tassels, and cords. Her pocket-holes were blonde, her stockings were blue, clocked with silver, and her hair was twisted and plaited in the most beautiful manner around a diamond comb.'

Seated under a tree, flushed with a recent dance, she was alternately playing with her fan and silver pomander ball, with a crowd of admirers about her, and looking alike pure and bright, with 'a skin as though she had been dieted on milk and roses.'

'No wonder it is, perhaps, that Lewie loves me,' thought the girl, as she looked at the reflection of her own sweet face in a little bit of oval mirror in the back of her huge Dutch fan; 'I am pretty!'

She might have said 'lovely,' and more than lovely; and then she smiled consciously at her own vanity.

Under the genial influence of her surroundings the heart of the girl was full of happiness, and had but one regret that Lewie Baronald was not there. Yet, she thought, 'to-morrow I shall see him—to-morrow be with my darling, who at this moment is thinking of me.'

And amid the brilliance of the scene, so rich in the variety of colour and costume, the strains of the music and beauty of the old Dutch pleasure-grounds, she almost longed to be alone, with the grass, the birds, the insects, and the flowers—alone in the sweet summer evening with the perfume of the roses, the jasmine, and the glorious honeysuckle around her.

On one hand, about a mile distant, was the Hague, with all its Gothic spires and pointed gables; on the other spread the landscape so usual in that country of cheese and butter—church-towers and wind-mills, bright farmhouses, long rows of willow-trees, their green foliage ruffling up white in the passing breeze; the grassy dykes and embankments, a long continuity of horizontal lines, which seemed so tame and insipid to the mountaineers of the Scots Brigade, and to all but the Dutch themselves.

Among the groups around her, Dolores, as usual now, heard the growing political quarrel between Great Britain and Holland openly and freely discussed, together with the consequent and too probable departure of the Scots Brigade from the latter for ever. That seemed almost a settled thing—a certainty, if the quarrel became an open one, and the probabilities wrung the girl's affectionate heart.

How would all this affect her lover and herself? Alas! she knew not that the doom of the former for foreign service was nearly a fixed thing now! And she was fated to receive her first mental shock that evening, all unwittingly, from the Earl of Drumlanrig, who drew near her, and with the stately manner of the time lifted his hat with one hand, and with the other touched her hand as he bowed over it.

The golden light of the setting sun fell full upon her hair, flecking its bronze with glorious tints, and giving her beauty a brilliance that, to the Earl's appreciative eye, was very striking.

'You look like one of Watteau's beauties, waiting to hear herself addressed in the language of Love,' said the old peer, smiling.

'Love has three languages, my lord,' observed Dolores.

'Three?'

'The pen, the tongue, and the eyes.'

'True; but I am too old to use any of these now,' said the Earl, shaking his powdered head.

'The evening is a lovely one,' observed Dolores, after a pause.

'And the landscape yonder, as it stretches away towards Delft, is wonderfully steeped in sunshine; and but for its flatness——' the Earl paused.

'Your Scottish eyes cannot forgive that,' said Dolores laughing, as she recalled some of Lewie Baronald's complaints on the same subject; 'but people cannot live on scenery.'

'So the great Samuel Johnson has written.'

'Who is he?' asked Dolores.

'A great lexicographer—a wonderful English savant—who believes in a ghost in London, yet discredited the late earthquake at Lisbon. I think I have seen you at the Vyverberg with Lewis Baronald of my battalion; he has the honour of being known to you.'

'He visits us,' replied Dolores, the flower-like tints of her sweet face growing brighter as the Earl spoke.

'He is a fine and handsome fellow, young Baronald; but it is strange that he should wish to quit the Hague when it possesses such peculiar attractions,' said the Earl markedly, and with a courteous bow.

'Quit the Hague!' repeated Dolores, as if she had not heard him aright.

'I do not know whether the desire to do so, has any connection with his uncle's scheme for the recapture or restitution to Holland of the Island of Goree, off the coast of Senegal, in defiance of the old Treaty of Nimeguen, which gave it to France, a scheme which will win him the favour of their Mightinesses; but young Baronald's name was sent, through me this morning, to the Director-General of Infantry, for instant foreign service.'

'Foreign service!' whispered Dolores, in an almost breathless voice, while her white throat gave a sharp nervous gasp, and her long lashes drooped over her beautiful eyes. 'Surely, my lord, this must be some mistake. Lewie—he had no desire to leave Holland, in any way—he dreaded nothing so much as the departure of the Brigade to Britain; and this—this——'

'No mistake, I assure you,' interrupted the Earl, all unaware of the astonishment he was exciting and the pain he was inflicting, and both of which he must have perceived had not the Heer van Otterbeck, fortunately for Dolores, approached at that moment, and tapping and proffering his Sèvres china snuff-box, 'buttonholed' him on the inevitable subjects, the quarrel between Britain and Holland, Paul Jones in the Texel, and Commodore Fielding's conduct in firing on the Dutch fleet in the Channel, which the Commodore did with hearty goodwill.

But for Dolores, the charms of the ridotto had vanished now; and in sore perturbation of spirit and anxiety of heart, she bade her host and hostess a hurried farewell, summoned her sedan, and took her departure homeward.

The lights, the music—the music of Lulli; the minuet de la cour, and the gaiety of the ridotto, faded away behind her as the heiress took the somewhat lonely road that led to the villa of her mother.

She was escorted to her sedan by an officer of the Brigade, a friend of Lewie's, who, as he closed the roof of it over her, thought that she looked like—as he vowed to some others—'a lovely queen in wax-work done up in a glass-case.'

CHAPTER IX.
THE ABDUCTORS.

What was this mystery concerning the movements and intentions of Lewie Baronald, on which the Earl of Drumlanrig had so abruptly but unconsciously thrown a light?

When last they met and parted, Lewie had given no hint of any desire for foreign service, and certainly, with the relations then existing between himself and her, it was the last thing to be thought of.

'Oh,' thought Dolores, 'that I were at home to consult mamma on this amazing subject!'

Her bearers seemed to crawl; she narrowly opened and shut her fan again and again in her impatience, and stamped her little foot on the floor of the sedan in her irritation and anxiety.

Yes! that horrid General—that odious uncle, the eccentric woman-hater, was no doubt at the bottom of it, and had thus resolved to separate Lewie from her, and hot tears started to her eyes at the thought.

Though in the immediate vicinity of the Hague, the road was as lonely as those who awaited her thereon could have wished. The blue dome of heaven, a dome studded with diamonds—each itself a world—was overhead; and steady and silvery was the light of the uprisen moon, above the far expanse of the level landscape.

Suddenly Dolores heard the sound of voices; there were threats on one hand and expostulation on the other. The sedan, with a violent jolt, was suddenly deposited on the ground, and its bearers were dashed aside, as she supposed, by foot-pads. Then a shriek of dismay escaped Dolores, when a man, whose face was half-concealed by a crape mask, threw up the roof of the sedan, opened the door and attempted to drag her out by the hand.

She saw another similarly masked, and a caleche, with a pair of horses, close by.

Never dreaming of outrage for a moment, she thought that she must be the victim of some extraordinary mistake, till she recognised the voice of Maurice Morganstjern, when her alarm and astonishment instantly changed to indignation.

'Maurice,' she exclaimed, 'for whom do you mistake me? What outrage is this?'

'No mistake at all, my pretty cousin; will you please to take your seat in this caleche?' he replied deliberately.

'For what purpose?'

'Time will show, beloved Dolores.'

'Loose my hand. I wish none of your fair words; they are ever hateful and unwelcome to my ear: more so than ever when you come thus—as you must be—intoxicated,' she added, believing this to be the case.

'Beware, cousin—beware! You know how I love you, and yet you spurn me. Come, Schrekhorn, and help me to lift her into the caleche. For all the past bitterness I shall have a sweet revenge; and, Dolores, you will learn to love me, when you will have none else in this world to cling to.'

On seeing the Heer van Schrekhorn, of whose character she had heard something, approach her, the girl looked wildly round in terror: the road was lonely; her home was at some distance, yet the lights in its windows were visible; but no help was nigh. She now perceived that nothing less than her forcible abduction was daringly intended; but what lay in the future beyond that, she could scarcely realise.

Her first fears returned with double force, for she knew the recklessness of the two men at whose mercy she found herself. How lovely and helpless she looked!

Ruffian and coward though he was, Maurice Morganstjern was a consummate egotist, and her continued indifference and contempt of him had deeply wounded his amour propre, and roused a spirit of revenge.

'It is useless to fight against Fate, Cousin Dolores; and Fate decrees that you are to be mine!' said he, firmly grasping her hand.

'Oh that I were a man!' exclaimed Dolores.

'For what purpose?'

'To strike you to the earth for your insolence and daring.'

'In that case I would not seek to carry you off; so, I thank Heaven that you are not a man, sweet cousin!' He placed his face close to hers, and lowering his voice, said through his clenched teeth: 'Listen to me, Dolores; you have, I fear, plighted yourself to the Scotsman Baronald in ignorance of yourself, and now I am here to rescue you from the death in life to which your girlish folly would doom you. I will soon teach you to forget that artful interloper, if you ever thought seriously about him, which I cannot believe, and our marriage will alter all your ideas.'

These references to her lover infuriated Dolores, who was a high-spirited girl; but he wound his arms round her despite all her efforts. With all her strength she kept him, however, at arms' length, exclaiming:

'I hate you—oh, how I hate you!'

'Cease this nonsense, cousin; a day is coming when you will love me as much as you may think you hate me now!'

'And what will cause the change?' she asked scornfully.

'Marriage.'

'Why waste time thus?' asked the Heer van Schrekhorn, who had not yet spoken, and who listened to all this with manifest impatience and uneasiness; 'we know not who may come upon us; so into the caleche with her at once!' he added with an oath.

''Sdeath, but she is as strong as I am!' exclaimed Morganstjern, as he strove to drag her from the sedan.

Her slender figure stood very erect, and with tiny hands she strove to free herself from his odious grasp; but the scorn, indignation, and passionate resentment that flashed in her dark eyes and curled her tender lips, now gave place to much of genuine fear of her assailants and how far their daring might carry them, especially when the Heer laid his brutal hands upon her; and uttering a wild cry she clung to the sedan, and without a resort to extreme violence would not be torn from it.

Meanwhile the driver of the caleche, who was in ignorance of the purpose his employers had in view, looked on somewhat scared, and was thinking of how he might, in the future, be handled by the Burgomaster or other authorities.

Dolores suddenly found her strength give way, and felt about to faint, when she heard a loud and wrathful exclamation as Morganstjern was dashed aside on one hand, Schrekhorn knocked down in a heap on the other, and there towered between her and them a tall military-looking man, wearing a Khevenhüller hat, and having a scarlet roquelaure wrapped round him.

The latter he instantly threw off, and drew his sword, on which the driver of the caleche whipped up his horses, and fled at full speed towards the Hague, leaving his employers to get out of the affair as they best could.

The first impulse of the two conspirators was to unsheath their swords also; but their second was to pause ere attempting to use them, as they recognised in their assailant an officer of the Scots Brigade, and one of high rank apparently by his gold aiguilette.

'Protect me, sir—save me!' implored Dolores.

'Scoundrels!' exclaimed the new-comer, waving in a circle round her his long straight sword, the blade of which glittered in the moonlight, and at sight of which Morganstjern fairly shrunk back; 'scoundrels, come on if you dare!'

'Accursed fool that I have been to delay as I did!' said Morganstjern.

'An accursed fool indeed!' rejoined the Heer furiously.

'Defend yourselves!' exclaimed the officer, attacking them both at once, and in a moment Morganstjern found his sword twisted out of his hand and flung high in the air by a circular parry, while the Heer was rendered defenceless by a thrust between the bones of his sword-arm, on which they both turned and fled, muttering curses loud and deep.

'Heaven sent you to my aid, sir, just in time,' said Dolores, bursting into tears now; 'another moment, and I should have fainted helplessly in their clutches.'

'These seemed no common brawlers—can you name them?' asked General Kinloch, for he it was, as he sheathed his sword, and lifted his Khevenhüller respectfully.

'I can name them; but would, as yet, rather be excused, sir.'

'Henckers! I should like to see both tied to the Gesteel Paul' (i.e., the whipping-post).

The General now found himself face to face, in the bright moonlight, with a young lady of more than ordinary beauty; but, when the expression of her eyes, her thick brown hair, defined eyelashes, and lovely lips reminded him, as he thought, of a face he had known long ago, and loved to look upon; and her voice, too, was so like the voice of that other, coming as it were out of the mists of memory, he grew cold and rigid in manner, as he said:

'I have no desire to penetrate your secret, young lady, if secret there is that leads you to conceal the names of these men.'

'I have no secrets, sir; but one of these assailants is my near kinsman—a cousin,' replied Dolores, a little haughtily.

'Then allow me to have the honour of escorting you home.'

'I thank you, sir; the gate is close by.'

Again the courteous officer lifted his hat, and held it in one hand, while he led Dolores to the iron gate, which led to the garden-path terminating at the door of the Countess's villa; and then bidding her farewell, he turned away, his good opinion of her by no means increased by her peculiar reticence as to the names of those from whose outrageous conduct he had saved her.

'Odd—very!' he muttered; 'but every woman is an enigma!'

As he was about to close the iron gate, something glittering on the gravelled path caught his eye, and it proved to be a bracelet of considerable value, which had become injured in the struggle between Dolores and her assailants, and thus no doubt dropped from her wrist.

'One of her vain gauds, of course,' muttered the General; 'yet why should she not wear such, as all other female tricksters do?—a pretty creature—a charming girl, in fact! But what the devil am I saying? with all her prettiness she is no doubt false as she is fair—Dead Sea fruit, in fact. I shall send her bauble by my servant to-morrow, and—but no—egad! I'll deliver it in person.'

Returning to the door of the villa, the General used the great knocker, with which—all unknown to him—the hand of his nephew Lewie Baronald was so familiar.

CHAPTER X.
THE FAIR WIDOW.

While waiting on the door-step he looked a little contemptuously at the female ornament, though it was suggestive of a slender and a pretty wrist; but suddenly the expression of his face changed. He had either seen that gold bracelet before, or one most strangely like it, with a similar circle of diamonds round a large emerald; it gave him some curious, angry and bitter thoughts.

'Mynheer, did you knock?' asked a servant, rousing him from his reverie; and the General then became aware that the door was open, and a flood of warm light was streaming from a chandelier through a stately entrance-hall beyond.

He made known his errand, asked for the young lady, and was ushered into the drawing-room, which at that moment was untenanted.

Then, as now, the Dutch drawing-room was deemed a kind of sanctum or state-room, entered but seldom, the chief glory of which is always its highly-polished floor; so much so, that in some parts of Holland the visitor is still obliged to take off his shoes, or be very careful how he cleans them before admittance is granted.

In the aspect of the mansion there was much that indicated a substantial account at the Bank of Amsterdam; but that was as nothing to General Kinloch: he never thought of it.

By the light of a large lamp, the General had only time to remark that on the walls hung some clever and brilliant flower-pieces by De Heem, Huysum, and others, when Dolores stood before him, still clad in the brilliant costume she had worn at the ridotto, and looking radiantly beautiful.

Though surprised by the visit, she was glad to see her preserver so soon again. Her heart was full of intense gratitude for the succour he had afforded her, and she felt conscious that in her confusion and perturbation of spirit she had not shown enough, or half enough, of gratitude to him; yet he had saved her from a fate that would have been worse than death.

With a low bow he tendered her the bracelet, with a few well-chosen words of explanation.

'Thank you, dear sir, a thousand times!' she exclaimed; 'it was mamma's, and its loss would have grieved me much. To whom am I indebted for all this kindness?'

'My name is Kinloch—General Kinloch, at your service, Colonel-Commandant of the Scots Brigade,' he replied with another profound old-fashioned bow.

Lewie's uncle—the terrible General—the ogre, as she had been wont to call and deem him! The breath of poor Dolores was quite taken away with surprise.

'Mamma is a widow,' said she after a pause; 'you must see her and receive her thanks. A widow and very beautiful,' she added in thought, with the hope that the Countess might win the favour of this grim soldier for Lewie and herself.

'A widow,' repeated the General, with an unmistakable grimace, and with ill-suppressed cynicism in his voice; 'oh, indeed!' and he thought with a writer who says, 'A widow smacks of the charnel-house; she either did love her husband, or she didn't; and in either case who would care to be his successor?'

The Countess at that moment entered the room and came forward with one of her brightest smiles; but suddenly she paused, and the smile faded out of her beautiful face. Kinloch returned her bow with a startled air, and to the acute eyes of Dolores it seemed that a recognition, that was no common one, took place between her mother and the General.

For a time—but a very little time—amid her terror and dismay at the attack made upon herself, Dolores had forgotten the Earl of Drumlanrig's startling intelligence about Lewie's departure for foreign service; but now the memory of it returned in full force, and she looked coldly and earnestly yet distrustfully upon the General as their mutual enemy.

'Mamma,' said she, 'this is the gentleman of whom I told you, and who saved me from my assailants.'

'My daughter is under the greatest of obligations to you—how can I thank you, General Kinloch?' added the Countess, presenting her hand, which he touched slightly, but with reluctance and hesitation.

'Mercedes,' said he; 'you recognise me, then!'

Both were agitated and pale; but the Countess was the first to recover herself.

'What—you know each other, and he even knows your name!' exclaimed Dolores with blank astonishment.

Finding a necessity for speaking, the Countess thanked him for the service so promptly and gallantly rendered to her daughter, and expressed no small indignation at the daring of Maurice Morganstjern and his abettor; but while she spoke the General listened to her as one in a dream, while the sorely puzzled Dolores looked wonderingly on.

The original of the miniature now concealed in a secret drawer of the Dutch cabinet before referred to, treasured for years through all his alleged misogyny, was again before him.

'It is long since we met,' said the Countess.

'And—parted,' replied the General, in a hard voice.

'You have attained high rank now.'

'I was but a lieutenant in Halkett-Craigie's Battalion, then,' said he pointedly.

'Sir, I pray you to be seated,' and he mechanically took the chair indicated by a motion of her pretty white hand; 'you are not much changed since—since——'

'And you are scarcely changed at all.'

In the lovely matron, in ripe and full womanhood, he had recognised her in a moment—the girl of the hidden miniature, the early love of his youth, Mercedes who had deceived him, who had well-nigh broken his heart and embittered his whole existence.

The golden-brown hair his hands had once loved to fondle and toy with, seemed now more golden than ever, as it was sprinkled a little with brown marchale, in the fashion of the day; but Dolores, in advance of it, wore her rich hair without any such doubtful accessory, and simply brushed backward over a low toupee that showed the contour of her low, broad, and beautiful forehead.

Twenty years had come and twenty years had gone since he last looked on them, yet in the eyes of Mercedes was the old subtle influence, in her voice the old subtle power; and he felt both so keenly—so intensely—that the thrill which passed through the heart of Kinloch amounted to—if we may use a paradox—a joyous pain!

Memories of the past time, by the Berbice river—memories sweet and sad and thrilling—were coming back with strange and curious force; the past returned, the present fled, and much that both had thought was long since dead, was reawakened within them.

'Mamma!' exclaimed Dolores, with irrepressible impatience and curiosity; 'you know General Kinloch! you have met before!'

'Yes, Dolores darling—my heart certainly tells me so,' replied the Countess, colouring deeply.

'Heart!' said the General; 'madame, the heart is an obsolete organ, in this our eighteenth century.'

'Perhaps it is too late in life to assume you can have any interest in me now; but if you will not, even once, take my hand kindly in yours, I shall think that it is not wounded love, but wounded pride, that inspires you still.'

The Countess spoke sweetly, and with one of her brightest and most caressing smiles.

He pressed her little hand for a moment; it was a mighty advance for the General to do so, but the touch sent a thrill to his heart, and he thought how absurdly young she looked to be the mother of Dolores!

'Good heavens!' that young lady was thinking, 'wonders will never cease.'

So the courteous gentleman, the brave Scottish soldier who had saved her—Lewie's terrible uncle—was her mother's early lover!

'The past is gone,' said the General gravely and sadly, and making an effort to withdraw, and yet staying nevertheless; 'so let us not tear open an old wound.'

'Pardon, and permit me to heal it, if I can,' said the Countess coquettishly, as she touched his bronzed hand with her lovely lips, and at this touch he trembled; so Dolores, saying something about taking off her ornaments, withdrew and left them, wonder and joy mingling in her heart together, while the General made an effort to appear indifferent, and to speak calmly, an effort in which he, eventually, signally failed.

'It is strange, madame,' said he; 'but I have lived so completely in camp and caserne, that I knew not that Mercedes—the Mercedes of other days, and the Countess van Renslaer, of whom my nephew speaks so much, were one and the same.'

'My husband, the Lieutenant——'

The General coughed, and said interrupting:

'Whom you preferred to poor John Kinloch of the Scots Brigade—well?'

'Died soon after succeeding to his title—a Flemish one—and I have been a widow since.'

'All these years?'

'All these years.'

Her long dark eyelashes flickered as she looked coyly at him, and then cast them down.

'I have never cared for another woman since that time,' said the General after a pause; 'and I never shall if I lived for—for—as long as the Brigade has been in Holland—and that is two hundred years.'

She laughed, but noiselessly; for she knew that when he began to talk thus, how his thoughts were wandering, and that he might, after all, begin to think that his future, for pleasure or pain, lay in the little white hands of the charming widow before him—of herself—the Mercedes of his early days by the Berbice river.

'As for the Count——' she began, but paused, for the General made a gesture of impatience, and playing with his sword-knot, said:

'Well, you married him, and not John Kinloch. You are a free woman now; would you like to take my heart in your toils again, Mercedes, to make sport of it after all these years?'

'Do not speak to me thus,' said she in her most seductive voice, as she touched his hand caressingly; 'I say too, after all these years, do not be so implacable. Ah! what must I think of you?'

'Think what you please.'

Again the long lashes flickered, and the snow-white eyelids drooped.

The General felt his position was becoming imperilled, that he 'was getting his flanks turned,' and so forth; and he rose to retire.

But the General resumed his seat, and began to look a little vacantly and helplessly about him.

CHAPTER XI.
OMNIA VINCIT AMOR.

'In the course of our lives it chances,' says a writer truly, 'that most of us influence directly or indirectly, in a greater or lesser degree, the lives of others; but, as a general rule, we do not recognise this influence until after the effect has taken place.'

The Commandant of the Scots Brigade was yet to realise this.

There was a strange tremor in the usually stout heart of the general now, for though, after the sudden recognition of his first and, sooth to say, only love, he had begun to school himself to meet her with calmness or indifference, as a new friend, or old acquaintance, he felt himself as wax in her hands; and that it was impossible, even after the lapse of all these years, to meet her unmoved, and to sit eye to eye, and listening to her voice—the voice that had thrilled his heart in the old time, and was thrilling it now again.

He took her hand in his, and she permitted him to retain it; but for the life of him he knew not what to say, or how to take up the thread of the old story; so she took the initiative.

'You were but a young lieutenant,' said she softly, 'when last we met.'

'And parted, as I said before.'

His reply conveyed a species of reproach, as he had much to forgive; yet it seemed that there was an almost unconscious appeal in this reference to the old tie that bound them together once, and that now, did not seem to have been so completely severed after all.

'To my dying day, Mercedes, I thought I should remember your farewell glance at me,' said he.

'Forget it now,' she replied softly.

'Can I do otherwise?' he asked, as he read the shy light in downcast eyes. 'But oh, Mercedes, if—if——'

'What?'

'But I must not think it now—if your sweet lips should be but tricking me again!'

'Oh, think not so!'

Round hers his hand closed once again, and with its clasp came the earnest of a promise that each would never fail the other again; and then a great brightness seemed suddenly to fall upon the hearts and lives of both.

'Oh face so loved in the past time!' said Kinloch, as he drew her towards him and kissed her fondly, to the growing amazement of Dolores, who was about to enter the room, but withdrew softly, her heart tremulous with joy, though laughing, as a young girl is sure to do, at what she deemed a pair of elderly lovers; and yet the General was barely in his fortieth year.

It seemed to her that his resentment against her sex in general, and against widows in particular, had evaporated very quickly!

The General had felt the cold coquetry of Mercedes in the past—her desertion of him—too keenly, not to be deeply stirred and to feel her influence now.

The old love that in his heart had never died, but had been curiously woven up with a species of hate, came to the surface once more, and the assurance of it was flattering to the still beautiful Mercedes. 'Love,' it is said, 'cannot be measured by time; it springs up like fungus in the night. It flourishes apace, and, like the wind, none know whence it cometh, or whither it goeth.'

'Could you care still for such a fogey as I have become?' asked the General in a low voice; 'care for me again, I mean?'

'I am not now the thoughtless girl you loved in the past time.'

'But you are the woman I love now—the girl I never forgot and never ceased to love!' he exclaimed, while surprised at his own impetuosity and fluency. 'Once, at least, in our lives heaven seems to open to all of us: it opened to me when I first knew and loved Mercedes; and now heaven seems to have come to me again!'

And now, to the memory of both, there came back the murmur of the Berbice river, with its giant water-lilies; the glorious moon and stars of the tropics, looking down on the grassy ramparts of Fort Nassau, the palisades and spires of New Amsterdam, and the love-scenes of the past time; and when Kinloch rose to depart, it was with the promise that he would return betimes on the morrow.

It would be rather difficult to describe the emotions of the whilom misogynist, as he turned on his homeward way.

Joy at being restored to Mercedes, and gratified vanity that he could yet inspire love, conflicted curiously with a dread that he had compromised his own dignity and his long-vaunted opinions of the sex by this sudden surrender—this yielding to her great beauty and her old influence over him.

What would Drumlanrig, Dundas, and other old chums of the Brigade think of him? and what would Lewie Baronald say?—poor Lewie, whom he had doomed to foreign service to save him, as he had phrased it, 'from the fangs of Dolores'!

He felt his brown cheek blush hotly at the thought.

'That must be amended,' he muttered; 'to-morrow I shall see the Director-General of Infantry.'

It was impossible for him to shut his eyes to the fact that Dolores was every way a desirable bride for Lewie; and that, apart from her being the daughter of his own first and only love, she was the lionne of the Hague, who was fêted and courted, whose toilettes were copied, whose sallies were retailed, and who was the central figure in society there.

At last he stood in his old familiar room, where hung more than one old tattered colour of the Brigade, riven by Spanish bullets and Walloon pikes. How much had passed—how great was the change in his thoughts, hopes, and intentions, since he had left it, but a few hours ago!

He scarcely thought himself the same John Kinloch, as he drew forth the miniature from its secret drawer in the old cabinet, and sat down to contemplate it with loving and tender thoughts, and literally to 'feast' his eyes, as the phrase is, on the face of her who, before she went to sleep that night, pressed her ripe coral lips to her own hand; and they sought the exact place where the General, ere leaving, had pressed his.

CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSION.

We have not much more to relate.

Maurice Morganstjern quitted the Hague suddenly, and betook him on his diplomatic mission, whatever it was, to Paris; and his compatriot the Heer van Schrekhorn thought it conducive to his personal safety to make himself scarce about the same time; so both were beyond the just vengeance of Lewie Baronald.

Great was the amazement of the latter when he found his uncle, the General, quite en famille at the villa of the Countess, and learned from Dolores something of what had transpired on the night of the ridotto, and of her perilous adventure.

It seemed simply incredible!

'How now, uncle, about the name of Mercedes?' he asked him laughingly.

'What about it?' asked the General testily, yet reddening like a great schoolboy.

'Is it to go down in the annals of our family?'

'I hope so.'

"And how about all the Dead Sea fruit, the blackness of Gehenna, your firmness, and all that?'

'Silence, you young dog!'

And merrily laughed Dolores as she ran her white fingers over the piano, and sang a verse of the song that had now become so familiar to her:

'The love that I have chosen
Is to my heart's content;
The salt sea will be frozen,
Before that I repent.
Repent it will I never,
Until the day I dee,
Though the Lowlands o' Holland
Have parted my love and me.'

'And your home is Scotland—the home to which you may take me, is it like this?' asked the Countess softly of the General, as they sat in the recess of a window; and from the question it may be safely gathered that events had progressed rapidly between them.

'Like this!' exclaimed the General; 'you must see it for yourself to know the difference,' he added, as his eye swept the dull, dead flat of the Dutch landscape—flat as the flattest part of England.

Then he laughed as he thought of Thominean overshadowed by the majestic Ochills, the deep glens of which, with their solemn shadows and silence, are calculated to fill the soul at times with a species of poetic or melancholy ecstasy; the grey precipices past which the river rushes to Loch Leven, and the old mansion on its rock—half chateau and half fortress—of which Mercedes would some day be chatelaine.

But soon after all this, a shock awaited the General, when an orderly dragoon placed in his hand a large official packet addressed to himself, and sealed with the official seal of the Dutch Republic.

It announced that which had long been expected, that their High Mightinesses the States-General had dispensed with the services of the Scots Brigade, and a day was named when it would embark on board a squadron of British ships for Scotland, and be placed, as so many of its officers now desired, at the disposal of his Britannic Majesty.

The General's heart gave a throb. He had ruthlessly been on the point of separating his nephew from Dolores; and here, perhaps, he might eventually be separated from the old love he had so recently found again!

But Mercedes placed her hand in his, in token that they would never separate in life again.

So the old Brigade, of gallant memory, was going home en masse at last—home to Scotland, with its mighty crop of laurels, gathered in the Lowlands of Holland, France, and Spain; home after two hundred years of foreign service, during which, as the Scottish commander-in-chief soon after told its soldiers in Edinburgh, they had captured in battle and siege many a standard, but never lost one.

The brilliant sun of a July evening was shining on the broad blue waters of the Maese, and the pale-green willow groves that fringe its banks; on the tossing sails of many a windmill far afield; on the red mansions and spires of Rotterdam, the great brick tower of St. Laurence, and the high gables of the Hoeg Straat; on the long line of the Boompjies with all their stately elms, when the old Scots Brigade, with the drums of all its battalions waking Dutch echoes for the last time to 'The Lowlands of Holland,' marched to the landing-place for embarkation, accompanied by vast crowds of sympathising, admiring, regretful, and kindly-hearted Dutch folk; for a thousand old historical, warlike, and, better than all, friendly ties and associations were, on that evening, to be severed for ever!

Before that day of embarkation came, two marriages, which created the deepest interest in the departing Brigade (which the brides accompanied), had been celebrated at the Schotsche Kirk of the Hague, by its pastor, the Reverend Ichabod Crane: on which occasion there were present the Burgomaster; Heer van Otterbeck, the Minister of State; and two or three of their Mightinesses of the States-General.

Need we say whose marriages these were?

THE STORY

OF THE

CID RODRIGO OF BIVAR.