"Ha! ha! ha! Well, fool—you knew not, that while you made that precious bargain at the inn-door of Hesinge, I was seated among the branches of the Green-Tree above. Maldicion de Dios! but this is a meeting, as unexpected to me as it seems unwelcome to you, Camarada Bernhard!"
The Spaniard and the German glared at each other like two wild-cats, and Gabrielle felt as if she was about to die with terror, between them.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE CRAPE SCARF OF M'ALPINE.
While relating the adventures of Gabrielle, as I afterwards learned them, I must not lose sight of my own.
With sixty Highland soldiers, accompanied by Angus Roy M'Alpine, Kildon, and one or two other officers, I had formed a little bivouac at a small clump of trees, about three or four miles from the castle of Helnœs; there we waited anxiously the result of Bernhard's mission, and made many resolutions, if it failed, to bring on the whole regiment, and, though we had only twelve hours to spare, set the king's commands at naught, and—if Ian consented—take the Merodeurs by storm.
We lay in concealment near the thicket, and our advanced sentinels sat among the long grass beyond it, rolled up in their green plaids, and were quite invisible; for we made use of every precaution that Scottish warfare and Highland hunting made familiar to us, to approach Helnœs as near as possible without being seen.
Our Weywacht, as the Germans would call it, was made on a spot of the greenest turf; there we piled our loaded muskets; opened our havresacks, and every man who had been able to procure a bottle containing spirit of any kind, from Neckar down to plain Odenzee beer, produced it, and the quaighs of wood and horn were passed round from man to man without distinction, in the good old northern fashion; for the patriarchal system, and the acknowledged relationship of the lowest in station to the highest in rank, is one of the finest features in social Highland life. Every Gordon is the kinsman of Lord Huntly, and every Campbell is a cousin to Breadalbane and Macallum Mhor, as the humblest gilly is the kinsman of his chief.
Different from many a bivouac I have seen—where (like the camps of the Egyptians of Scotland, or the gitanos of Spain) it seemed to be little better than systematic vagabondizing in the cold and rain, with no covering but a blanket, nestling together for warmth—on this summer evening our halt near that fiörd, which is formed by the long narrow promontory of Helnœs, resembled a pleasure party.
We saw the sun set in the amber west, and the moon rise in all her silver glory; the soft night wind rustled the leaves above our heads, and bore on its breath that peculiar fragrance which night exhales from the teeming land and darkened sea. Afar off, several beacons of turf and wood were burning on distant promontories, to mark the shoals and sands; and, amid the summer haze, they gleamed on the trembling waters of the Belt like flickering ignes fatui.