About mid-day our surly corporal halted at a little farmhouse. The proprietor, proving to be a good Catholic, escaped shooting, and his house escaped the flames. Being an honest fellow, he made us—though prisoners—quite as welcome as the military ragamuffins who guarded us, and we all dined jovially together on fried bacon and Danish beer. Dandy Dreghorn ate voraciously to make up for the loss of his breakfast; and his applications to the "gudeman for anither slice o' the grumphie," and to the corporal for "anither cogue o' the yill," were incessant. A fair-haired and blue-eyed little girl (the daughter of our host) gazed at me with terror, from time to time, from behind her father's chair.
"Come hither, Wilhelmina," said he, with a broad laugh; "thou seest these Scottish soldiers have but one head, like ourselves—not two, as Father d'Eydel told thee."
I soon made a friend of this little lady, and hastened to assure her that I never had more than one head; I placed her on my knee, where she laughed and pulled my mustaches; while her little brother was peeping fearfully towards the end of my kilt, to see that forked tail which he understood all Protestants possessed.
Contrasted with the horrors of war, I envied the contentment that pervaded this good man's hearth; but the sentiments of repugnance to rapine and strife, became fainter the more often we are impressed; till at last they are worn out, like the rough thistles on our Scottish pennies, which obliterate as they are used. I can remember all the horror, the breathless shrinking, I felt on first seeing a poor fellow near me torn in two by a cannon-shot at Boitzenburg; but a time came when I could gaze without emotion at the sack of a city and the slaughter of a multitude. Curiosity and horror were then alike effaced; they had passed away, and callousness alone remained behind, till peace again restored the feelings to their proper tone. However, I sighed as I left the house of the German farmer, and resumed that weary march, the end of which I could not foresee.
On the road I was frequently accosted by Scots Imperialists, who spoke to me kindly, and expressed indignation to see me marched thus on foot, and fettered to a private soldier. In short, a general excitement on the subject soon prevailed among them; and, after Gordon's musketeers had passed me, Tilly's aide-de-camp, Count Kœningheim, came up with an order to relieve me from the ignominy I endured, and the fetter was transferred to poor Dandy's other hand. He stared meanwhile in blank astonishment at the count, who had addressed me in our pure native dialect.
"So you are a Scot, sir?" said I.
"Had I not been that," said he, "I had left you to wear your bracelet; but dinna think o' escape; for Tilly's a dour auld carle, and never tholes muckle."
"You have become so foreign in aspect and manner, that I never could have recognised in you a kindly Scot."
"But I am a kindly Scot!" he retorted with a sparkling eye. "At hame, in auld Glencairn and on the banks of the Urr, I am kent as Hab Cunningham o' the Boortree-haugh; but here I am Albert Count Kœningheim, your friend and countryman. You must sup wi' me to-night; I'll hae three or four mair—a' Scottish gentlemen, to join us in a glass, for puir auld Scotland's sake. But excuse me, sir—for I see Count Tilly requires me. He hates the Scots like death or the deil, but he canna do without me;" and, with his long plume streaming behind, this gay soldier galloped towards the head of the column of infantry.