"There is no sconce at this end of the bridge, as at Boitzenburg," said Tilly; "it is fortunate! But it is of the utmost importance, in case the arches should be undermined, that we capture the guard without alarming the garrison in the castle. This can only be done by deceiving the sentinel; and if one of these prisoners will lead an armed party to the gorge of the bridge, and reply to the challenge, in his own barbarous language; on one hand I offer him a thousand pistoles, with free leave to enter any regiment in the Imperial service; and on the other, instant death, and such a burial as the wolf and raven give. Sir—officer! translate this to your fellow-prisoner," he added to me, with a terrible frown.
"Dreghorn," said I, after translating the request, "what answer shall we give him?"
"Tell the auld tyke, that we'll baith see him hanged first—yea, high as Haman, and that then we wadna do it!"
"Count Tilly!" I exclaimed: "is this the honour—this the faith of an Imperial soldier?"
"Faith!" he retorted, "and dost thou speak to me of faith? Did not a council of our church, more than two hundred years ago, declare that no faith should be kept with heretics?"
A cloud came over the faces of the Counts of Carlstein and Kœningheim.
"Generalissimo," said the former, "what is this you would do? Assassinate a poor soldier because he will not betray his comrades? What! is the cause of the Empire and of Catholicism fallen so low, that we must become bravoes and murderers?"
"Darest thou to dictate?" cried the little man grasping his baton tighter, while a dark gleam shot from his fiery eyes; "dost think that I who have never shown mercy to the Flemish and German followers of Luther and Calvin, will mince matters with this Presbyterian spawn of their worthy colleague, Knox? No—nor will I now, so help me God; and, by my part of paradise! may the boom of our cannon sound every where as the funeral knell of those accursed Protestants—this unshriven spawn of Scotland, of Denmark, and the devil. They are your countrymen, count—true, but remember that on the brows and on the banner of your nation are written the curse of heresy, and the crime of sacred blood—the blood of a cardinal-priest, and that blood is yet unrevenged!"
"Lord hae a care o' us! what a deevil o' a body—what a bull o' Bashan!" muttered Dandy, as Tilly spurted out his fury in crackjaw German, though he usually swore in Spanish.
"Will this fellow obey my orders, if you will not?" he asked, with increasing wrath.