"Are you sure of the intelligence?" asked Algernon Grey, gravely.
"Quite," said the horseman, sharply; "do you doubt it, young gentleman?"
"Nay, wait till you get to the other side of the water, and then inquire farther," answered Algernon; "there is many a battle reported won, that is really lost--Good-day" and he rode on with Agnes, leaving the traveller in some doubt and consternation.
"We must lose no time, dear Agnes," he said; "but hasten on into the rear of the enemy's army ere this news spreads far. If we can reach Laun, I think we may escape suspicion as fugitives from Prague, and there are still some garrisons in that quarter which have not yet submitted to the Austrians."
But, as usual in all calculations of distances, the state of the roads was not reckoned. The day proved lowering and gloomy, the wind blew in sharp fierce gusts over the bare hilly ground between the Moldau and the Eger, and though the distance from the one point to the other is not thirty miles in a direct line, the sinuosities of an ill-made country road rendered it nearly double. At length as night was falling, Algernon Grey lifted his fair weary companion from her horse at the door of a small village inn, somewhat to the west of Teinitz, and gladly sat down with her by the fireside of the good widow hostess, who with her daughter were the only occupants of the house. The fare was scanty and simple, but there was a cheerful good humour in the manner with which it was served which rendered it palatable; and the inhabitants of a remote place, with neither fortress nor castle in the neighbourhood, seemed to know and care little about the war which had passed with its rude current at a distance from them. The woman, too, could speak German, and after having provided the weary travellers with all that her house could afford in the way of food, she threw her gray hood over her head, saying, with a cheerful laugh, to Agnes, "I am going out to search the village for eggs, and fowls, and meat; for it will snow before morning; and then we may not be able to get them."
Agnes gazed in Algernon's face with a look of apprehension; but he smiled gaily, replying to her look; "Let it snow if it will, dear Agnes. We shall then have an icy fortress for our defence, which no enemy will be in haste to pass. It will give us time for rest, and thought, and preparation."
The woman's prophecy proved true, for the next morning at daybreak the ground was covered with several feet of snow; and for three days the roads in the neighbourhood were impassable. They seemed to fly very quickly, however, to Agnes Herbert and Algernon Grey, though she felt her situation arrange. But her companion's gentle kindness deprived it of any painful feeling. The rich stores of his mind were all poured forth to cheer and to amuse her; and if they loved before the hour of their arrival there, oh how they loved when, on the fourth morning, they again set forth from the poor but comfortable shelter they had found!
The day was bright, and almost as warm as summer, they and their horses, too, were refreshed and cheered, and a long day's journey brought them close to the frontiers of the Upper Palatinate. Avoiding all large cities, they again rested for the night in a small town; and on the following day gladly passed the limits of Bohemia, never to return. The rest of their journey, as far as the banks of the Rhine, was performed without difficulty, though not without fatigue, remembered dangers made present security seem more sweet, the weather continued clear and fine, and they wandered for six days through mountains, and valleys and woods, almost as cheerfully as if in the first spring of young love they had gone forth together to view all that is fair and bright in the beautiful book of nature.
CHAPTER VI.
"Evil news, Oberntraut, evil news!" cried Colonel Herbert, as he sat in his tower at Heidelberg, with an open letter in his hand. "Anhalt has been defeated under the walls of Prague--totally defeated! How could it be otherwise? Fifty thousand trained Austrians and Bavarians against thirty-five thousand raw recruits--a mere mob of herds and citizens, and wild Transylvanian horse!"