II.
"Stand firm, lads! we'll beat them yet," shouted a tall handsome man in the uniform of an Austrian Colonel, who was doing his best to keep his men steady in the crisis of one of the hardest battles of the Thirty Years' War.
Few of his old playmates would have recognized little Moritz von Arnheim in that bearded face and towering figure; but it was he nevertheless, and the soldiers who were pressing him so hard were men from the very part of Sweden where he had once spent his holidays.
"Forward, my Swedes!" roared a tremendous voice from the other side, and through the rolling smoke in front broke a long line of glittering pike-heads and stern faces, sweeping down upon them like a mighty sea. There was a crash and a terrible cry, and the Austrian ranks were rolled together like leaves before the wind.
Foremost among the Swedes, as they swept onward with a joyous cheer, was a big red-bearded man with the plumed hat of a General, whose face every Austrian leader already knew to his cost.
"Here's that fellow again," growled the Colonel. "He shan't escape this time, anyhow."
He discharged his pistol full at the General's broad breast, but the ball glanced off as if from a rock, and the next moment Colonel Von Arnheim and his horse were rolling in the dust together, under the very feet of the Swedish pikemen.
"Don't hurt him, on your lives!" roared the General. "Take him to my tent, and keep him safe till I come."
"Ha!" muttered the Colonel, "I ought to know that voice. A strange adventure, truly, if this be indeed he!"
But all his doubts were ended a few hours later when the Swedish General came striding into the tent, and holding out his huge brown hand, said, with a broad grin,
"Do you know me, friend Moritz?"
"John Banner, sure enough!" cried Von Arnheim, grasping the offered hand cordially. "Well, I see you're still 'the boy who can't be hurt,' for I'm certain I saw my bullet hit you right on the breast."
"Hitting's not killing," answered Banner, throwing open his uniform, and showing a breastplate of fine steel underneath. "I've had many a narrower escape than that since I climbed for the nest at Hornelen."
"Well, speaking for myself, I'm very glad you have escaped," said the Colonel; "but for the sake of Austria and the imperial flag, I rather wish that heap of straw hadn't been there."
Banner answered with a hearty laugh, and the two old comrades, thus strangely reunited, spent a very merry evening together.
A SCHOOL FOR YOUTHFUL PRISONERS IN MAZAS, PARIS.