A strange rapt gleam came into her eyes at the name of Wallenstein.
"And the fortune?" she asked.
"My Lord Verulam in his book tells us 'if a man look sharply and attentively he shall see Fortune: for though she be blind yet she is not invisible,'" said the Scot. "I am still looking for her."
"It is a good saying: and your Lord Verulam plainly had a shrewd notion that Fortune walks abroad in petticoats as often as she hides herself in the treasure-house of a king."
Nigel Charteris looked into her face, wondering exactly what she meant by her commentary, and the dark eyes held a lurking demon of laughter somewhere about them for an instant, but the mist came over the twin lakes and her face resumed its lofty repose.
They were not the only wayfarers: though the little groups were getting more and more infrequent. For the final attack on Magdeburg, which had let loose into its streets and places thousands of soldiery on plunder intent, careless of violence to women and to babes, had also opened its gates for the egress of fugitives. Those who had friends or relatives in the country made such haste as was possible in the deadly hubbub of the sack to steal out with their bare lives on to the roads and walk fast and far.
Many were the glances of hate at the troopers, and of wonder at Elspeth Reinheit, who was known to many as the "pastor's niece." As for the young pastor, the fugitives bowed or curtsied to him, and pitied him because they supposed him a prisoner; whereas they themselves possessed a precarious freedom, won out of the press of death that had confronted them in so many forms on the grisly days of the sack.
The pastor, buried in his indignation, and in his thoughts of stirring themes for congregations not yet assembled, sometimes acknowledged their salutations, sometimes missed seeing them. One question in the intervals of his professional wrath came into his mind every now and again, and he was indignant at the intrusion. It was this: What had happened that Elspeth should have had any dealings with Tilly's captain? He had seen how her eyes had sought the captain's, the eyes of an accursed Catholic, accursed in that his hands were imbrued, actually or vicariously, in the bloody wine-presses of the wrath of man, still more accursed that he had done what he had in furtherance of the policy of Rome. And Elspeth Reinheit, though not formally betrothed to him, Pastor Rad, was looked upon as his by others than himself or herself. How was it possible that the soldier and she could have met, and he the pastor and lover not know it? How could there be a look of understanding or of gentle inquiry pass from her to him to his own exclusion? It filled him with vague uneasiness. It hurt his pride of possession. It raised suspicion of her integrity.
No doubt Pastor Rad would have been still more surprised had he known that the highly-born sympathiser—he was not sure enough of her spiritual leanings to call her adherent,—Ottilie of Thüringen, was at this moment questioning Elspeth on that very matter.
"Dearest Elspeth, you have met yonder captain before yesterday? I am sure of it." She nodded towards his back as he trotted forward to the head of his men after the little conversation.