endure for ever; and when day dawned he repaired straight to a
Commissary (an official similar to our justice of the peace) and
declared upon oath "that he had slain M. d'Escombas in the Rue de
Tournon; but in a fair duel, sword in hand, in self-defence."

The Commissary deplored the circumstance, but accepted the
declaration, and perceiving that he was dreadfully agitated, gave him
some wine and water.

"And now, dear Isabelle," he muttered wildly, "you are free--but by
my hand--alas, by _my_ hand!"

"How, monsieur," exclaimed the Commissary, sharply, looking up from
his desk, and surveying the miserable Monjoy through his
spectacles--"what's this you say?"

Monjoy remained silent, but grew, if possible, paler.

"Hah! _mon Dieu_!" exclaimed the Commissary, changing colour; "I
remember now.  Is it true that you were a discarded lover of Madame,
when she was Mademoiselle du Platel, and a boarder with les dames de
Notre Dame de Charité on du réfuge de St. Michel, in the Rue de St.
Jacques?"

"Yes," moaned Monjoy; "it is too true."

"Detain M. Gervais Monjoy in custody; send for a surgeon; bring the
body of M. d'Escombas here, and let us have it examined," said the
other to his officials.

In less than an hour all this was done.

"How is this?" exclaimed the surgeon, the Commissary; and all
present; "there is a sword wound _in the back_, and the sword is
still remaining there!"

"He has been murdered!" said the Commissary, sternly.

"Dare you say so?" exclaimed Monjoy, with equal fury and indignation.

"In my official capacity, I may say anything," replied the
commissary, with a grimace--"to La Force with the prisoner!"

Within another hour Monjoy found himself in that formidable
prison--formerly the hotel of the Maréchal Duc de la Force--accused
of murder.  Maréchal de Contades was in disfavour at court; Maréchal
de Broglie was still in Germany, where the Seven Years' War was
raging as fiercely as ever; his aunt the Prioress was dead.  Thus
Monjoy had no friend in Paris, save _one_, for whom he dare not send;
so he remained in his vault, sunk in misery, and careless for the
future.

In this prison are detained until the day of trial those who are
accused of crimes.  It is a spacious edifice, divided into several
departments, and having eight courts, all watched and guarded well.

At last, in the extremity of his misery.  he sent for Isabelle, that
he might, to her at least, absolve himself from the crime of which he
was accused.  She came clad in deep mourning, and the meeting between
them was painful and affecting.  But as it was known that they had
been lovers in their youth, Paris was ready to believe the worst; and
as the sordid M. du Platel and d'Escombas' kinsman, the Governor of
the Conciergerie, cried "fire and sword" against them both, rumour
succeeded in having Madame accused of being "art and part" in her
husband's death.  So she was arrested, and committed to a separate
vault in La Force, one of the places named _les Secrets_ in that
formidable edifice, which is formed entirely of hewn stone and
enormous bars of iron, and in the construction of which neither wood
nor plaster are employed.

There they languished for many months without a trial, as it happened
that just about this time the chief court of justice in France, the
_Parlement de Paris_--without the full concurrence of which no
criminal can be arraigned--was removed, first to Pontoise and
thereafter to Soissons, on account of their severe proceedings
against the Archbishop of Paris, who (to repress the disorderly lives
of the people) had issued a pastoral letter "forbidding all priests
and curs to administer the sacrament to any one, no matter of what
rank, unless they could produce a certificate from their father
confessor"--a pastoral which gave great offence to the court of the
Most Christian king.

To be brief: when the Court ultimately assembled, poor Monjoy was
brought to trial, and on being put to torture admitted that he was
guilty of the murder in the Rue de Tournon, and consequently was
sentenced to be broken alive upon the wheel.

When asked who were his accomplices, amidst torments the most
excruciating, he persisted in affirming that he had none; that Madame
d'Escombas was guiltless and pure as when she left her convent.
French medical skill was brought to bear upon his quivering limbs,
and then, maddened by agony, he continued deliriously to acknowledge
himself guilty of the murder again and again; but on being questioned
for the last time concerning Madame d'Escombas, he accused her too!

On this the windlass of the rack was instantly relaxed, and he
fainted, with blood pouring from his mouth and nostrils.

When his keener agony was over, on his knees, before my old friend
Père Celestine (once curé of St. Solidore, and now coadjutor Bishop
of Paris), with tears of blood and agony the unhappy Monjoy retracted
all that had been wrung from him under torture; but it was too late.

On _his_ accusation and confession she too was tried, and sentenced
to death, and then both were committed to the Conciergerie du Palais,
and to the care of that grim governor, the kinsman of d'Escombas--he
of whom Monjoy had such an instinctive dread of old.

The entrance to this frightful old prison is by a low and narrow
door, over which might well be carved the well-known line from
Dante's "Inferno."

Isabelle was conducted to the greffe or female prison, by that sombre
vestibule which is lighted by lamps even at mid-day; but Monjoy was
thrust, bleeding and mangled, perspiring in every limb with recent
torture, into one of the old and dark dungeons of the Conciergerie,
from whence, after a time, they were both conveyed in a tumbril, and
clad in sackcloth, to the Place de Greve, where she was hanged by the
neck, and he, after making a pathetic declaration of her innocence,
underwent the dreadful death of being broken alive upon the wheel!

With his last breath he implored the executioner to see that a blue
ribbon, some gift of happier years, which he wore round his neck,
should be buried with him.

Such was the miserable fate of this young Frenchman who befriended me
so much at Ysembourg, and whom I last saw galloping gallantly along
the road from the old ruined schloss, with his epaulettes and gay
uniform glittering in the morning sunshine.

And now, with a pardon for this digression, I return to my own more
matter-of-fact story.

CHAPTER XII.

THE FROZEN FORD.

By a narrow path between leafless woods, I proceeded for two miles in
the direction indicated by Monjoy, and then saw before me the Lahn, a
stream which rises in the west of Germany, and, as any Gazetteer will
inform us, passes by the hill which is crowned by the castle of
Marburg, the old Bailiwick of Giessen, the walled town of Wetzlar,
and the city of Nassau (in which and in other places along its banks
we had garrisons or outposts), until it flows into the famous Rhine
near Upper Lahnstein.

That portion of the stream which I now approached, though broad, was
shallow and frozen hard.  Its banks were thickly fringed by willow
trees, amid which the morning mist was rolling lazily.  Here and
there some of those great masses of detached copper-coloured rock
which stud the scenery of Waldeck overhung the stream, and had their
bases crusted with frozen foam.

The region being high and hilly, and the season midwinter, the
atmosphere was intensely cold, yet I was dubious of the strength of
the ice, and feared that my horse, with its wounded off hind leg,
might flounder and fall if its hoofs pierced the covering of the
stream.  As this idea occurred to me I was about to dismount, and
hold the animal by the bridle, when the appearance of a well-bearded
human visage regarding me steadily from a cleft in the rocks, made me
pause with a hand on my holster-flap, a motion which made the person
instantly vanish.

The mist enveloping the willow-covered bank I had to traverse before
reaching the stream was dense, and curling up in the sunshine, and it
seemed to me that certain objects which at first resembled stumps of
trees suddenly took the form of men, clad in white coats, the uniform
of the French line; and, as the event proved, here were six men of
the Regiment de Bretagne, a foraging party suborned by Bourgneuf to
cut me off, and with them was the identical peasant whom Monjoy and I
had met near the ruins of the old schloss--Karl Karsseboom.

I had the marshal's signed passport, but feared to ride forward or
deliver it, and for a time remained unchallenged and irresolutely
watching those men whose white-clad figures amid the frosty mist and
tossing willows seemed indistinct and wavering, like Banquo's shadowy
line of kings, or the weird sisters in "Macbeth."

I waved aloft the paper given me by Bourgneuf, the immediate reply to
which was the levelling of four muskets; but three flashed in the
pan, the priming having probably become wet over night.  The bullet
from the fourth, however, knocked my grenadier cap awry.

I then shook a white handkerchief, and demanded a parley; but a fifth
and sixth musket flashed redly out of the white mist, making a
hundred reverberations amid the river's bed, and another bullet
grazed my left ear like a hot searing-iron.  I was full of fury now,
and while these would-be assassins were casting about and reloading,
I heard a voice shout clearly in French, and with a mocking laugh--

"_Peste_!   Arnaud de Pricorbin--_il ne sait pas distinguer une femme
d'une girouette!_"  (He knows not a woman from a weathercock--meaning
that he was a bad shot, and could hit neither.)

The brother of the executed Volontaire de Clermont was here, and had
preceded me to the ford; thus I was in peculiarly bad hands it would
appear.  Their six muskets were unserviceable as yet, so, spurring
furiously, I rushed sword in hand at the whole group, firing a pistol
and hurling it after the shot as I advanced.

Gored by the spurs, the poor old horse forgot his wound, and swept
through my adversaries, crashing among the frozen willows, reeds,
icicles, and rotten ice.  For a moment I saw six fierce, dark-visaged
fellows, with white coats, red epaulets, and black crossbelts, with
their muskets clubbed to beat me down.  By a backhanded stroke I
slashed one across the face; but at the same moment a bayonet pierced
my horse in the bowels, and he received a long wound that ripped open
his near hind flank; this was from the musket of the German forester,
who levelled it deliberately over a fragment of rock.

Maddened by pain and fury, the animal reared wildly back upon its
haunches, and then, instead of riding towards the ford, swerved
round, and treading some of our assailants under his hoofs, galloped
straight along a road which led towards Wildungen, in a direction
nearly opposite to that I wished to pursue.

Wild, terrified, and dying, with the bit clenched tightly between his
teeth, the horse was for a time quite unmanageable, and I had not
power to stop him, even if inclined to do so, which I certainly was
not, until beyond musket range of the discomfited rascals who guarded
the frozen ford.

In short, I was borne away by my wounded horse in a manner nearly
similar to that which had occurred after one of our skirmishes with
the French Hussars in Brittany.  I know not why it was, but I felt
more excited by this encounter than by the whole day at Minden, and
when riding on, seemed still to hear the report of the muskets, and
to see them flashing out of the mist before me.

Dropping blood and foam upon the snow with every bound, the poor
animal, covered with perspiration and enveloped in a steam induced by
the frosty air, carried me a few miles almost at racing speed.  This,
however, slacked suddenly, and on coming to a thicket where a spring
(the water of which had a warm or peculiar mineral property, as it
was quite unfrozen) flowed freely, I rode for nearly a mile up its
bed or course, so that if followed by Arnaud de Pricorbin and other
faithful Bretons of the Comte de Bourgneuf, the track of blood so
visible in the snow would be lost in the running stream.

Perceiving a sequestered cottage upon the slope of a hill, sheltered
by some great fir trees, I approached it, and was made welcome by the
occupants, who appeared to be only a poor woman and her blind
daughter; but they had no fear of me, as my uniform showed them--the
former at least--that I was one of those who had come to assist in
freeing Westphalia and Waldeck from those unscrupulous invaders, the
French.

With some difficulty I made them understand, by a broken jargon, that
we had been engaged in a skirmish, and that my horse had been
wounded.  It was placed in an outhouse or shed, where a cow was
munching some chopped straw and frozen turnips.  I removed the heavy
demi-pique saddle, bridle, and holsters, putting the remaining pistol
in my belt.  While doing so the poor animal, lying among the straw,
with its bowels protruding through the bayonet wound, whinnied and
rubbed its nose upon the sleeve of my red coat, as if recognising the
_colour_; and in that lonely place I felt as if I had lost my only
friend, when the old grey trooper died about two hours after.

I remember partaking with the poor cottager and her blind daughter of
a savoury dish of stewed hare, which had been netted by herself in
the adjacent fir thicket.  We had also a warm jug of mulled Wildungen
beer, making a repast for which I was both grateful and well
appetized, after the adventures of so cold a morning.  I ate and
drank to strengthen me for whatever might follow, as I was still in
the land of toil and danger; and for the same end I carefully
re-charged, primed, and flinted anew my solitary pistol, and then
slept for an hour or so by the peasant's fire of turf, wood, and
fir-cones.

By the devious course of the river it would appear that I was still
only a few miles from the Lahn; but I knew that if Arnaud de
Pricorbin escaped my scuffle with him and his comrades, it would be
duly reported to the Count that I was yet on the French side of the
stream; thus more ample means would be taken by him to guard it, and
to cut me off at any possible point elsewhere.

In the distance I could see the quaint old city of Wildungen, seated
between two snow-clad mountains, with the dun smoke of its winter
fires ascending into the clear, cold sky.  At one time I thought of
venturing there and endeavouring to procure a guide or escort from
any French officer who was in command; and either one or other the
Duke's passport would certainly have procured me; but whom might I
meet on the way? was the next idea.

The jealousy of Bourgneuf was so insane, and his whole proceedings
were so cruel and unwarrantable, that my heart boiled with rage
against him; and in this new cause for anger I forgot even Shirley,
whose jealousy in another matter had cast me into these toils by an
effort of cunning and poltroonery which I hoped one day to requite,
and amply too.

Resolving to wait until nightfall, and then set forth alone, I passed
the day at the cottage of the peasant woman, who urged me to await
the return of her husband, who had been absent all day with his gun
in search of a deer, and could guide me with certainty.

"What is he?" I inquired, carelessly.

"A forester of the Baron Von Freyenthal."

"Indeed!" said I, becoming suddenly interested.  "I met such a person
this morning.  Does he wear a fur cap and deerskin boots, and has he
a large black shaggy wolf dog?"

"Exactly, Mein Herr--you have met my husband Karl Karsseboom and his
dog Jager."

"If I meet him again!" thought I, with a hand on my pistol.

After this information, and the discovery of who was my landlord (ah!
if the fellow had returned when I was asleep!) I resolved to lose no
time in endeavouring to reach the ford of the Lahn at any risk.
Whoever was there, the night would favour me, and I was alike
forewarned and forearmed.

I studied closely the features of the country from the cottage
window, and repeatedly consulted a little pocket map of the
principality of Waldeck, which had been given to me by Gervais
Monjoy, two means of topographical knowledge that availed me little,
when, a few hours after, without encountering the amiable Karl
Karsseboom, I found myself on the rugged German highway alone,
bewildered, and floundering along in the dark in my military
jack-boots, with a heavy storm of snow drifting in my face, and the
stormy and frosty north wind, which was so keen and cold that at
times it well-nigh choked me.

CHAPTER XIII.

LAST OF THE EMERALD RING.

The snow-flakes were thick and blinding; the roadway became less and
less discernible as the white mantle of winter deepened; buried under
it, shrubs, tall weeds, and everything that could mark the borders of
the path, a very rough and occasionally steep one, disappeared, and I
wandered on wearily and at random without knowing in what direction.

There was no one abroad at such an hour and in such a season, and no
house was visible, for the district was wild and desolate, having
been severely devastated by the French foragers.

No sound came to the ear but the occasional hiss of the sharp hail
that mingled with the falling snow, rendering the winter blast more
chilly, choking, and biting, till the lungs became acutely pained,
and the heart throbbed wildly.

How far I struggled on inspiring that icy atmosphere I cannot say,
but nature was beginning to sink, and in my heart grew the fear of
being conquered altogether, and of perishing in the storm, when
happily a light that shone down what appeared to be a kind of ravine
or trench (I know not which with certainty, as the snow caused all
forms and features to blend) filled me with new strength, and
manfully I made towards it, keeping in the track or line it cast so
brightly towards me.

Ere long I could discover other lights that shone high above me in
the air; then all at once the outline of a great old schloss or
castle loomed through the snowy atmosphere, and the light which had
been my guide shone apparently from a window in the lower story of
the edifice.  This suggested ideas of robbers, for who has not heard
or read of German robbers and their haunts in ruined castles of the
Black Forest, or by the Rhine and Weser?  A French outpost perhaps!
Well, it mattered not; anything--even a few of the Volontaires de
Clermont were better hosts than the snow and Jack Frost in such a
night and in such a season.

Suddenly a cry escaped me, when, half-stifled in snow, I sank to the
armpits--yea, to the very neck, struggling and floundering like a
drowning man.  In fact, I had tumbled into the dry ditch of the
schloss, which was nearly filled with drifted snow, and across which
I scrambled with great difficulty towards the light.  Thrice I nearly
surrendered altogether, before, panting, breathless, and chilled to
the heart's core, I reached a kind of terrace, approached the window,
and peeped in.

Between tapestry hangings and white curtains of Mechlin lace, there
could be seen a cosy little room, lined with dark brown wainscot, the
varnished panels of which shone in the light of a cheerful fire.
Drapery also of Mechlin lace overhung an elegant bed, a handsome
mirror, and toilet-table, on which were placed four tall candles in
solid stands of mahogany and silver.

There were one or two ebony Dutch cabinets, on which stood rare Japan
canisters, quaint Chinese figures, an ormolu clock, and various
pretty _bijouterie_, and there reigned within a sense of warmth,
perfume, and comfort, that reached even to my chilly post without the
casement.

But now, through the large pattern of the Mechlin lace hangings, I
could discern two female figures near the fireplace; they were each
kneeling at a carved oak _prie-dieu_, saying their prayers and
warming themselves at the same time, thus combining their comfort
with their piety.  By her dress, and the contour of her head and
shoulders, one appeared to be a lady; the other an attendant.
Benumbed to agony, I felt dreamy, bewildered, and knew not what to
do; sleep seemed to be stealing over my senses.

What if all I saw was an illusion, and these two fair ones were but
Lurlies, like those who haunted the Lurliberg?  What if the whole
affair proved a dream, from which I should waken, if I ever woke at
all, to find myself amid the snow-clad ruins of some old haunted
schloss beside the Lahn?--for such is the plot of many a German story.

But when they rose from prayer I was quickly undeceived, and a cry
almost escaped me on recognising Jacqueline de Broglie and her pretty
attendant, the waggish Angelique!

Some minutes elapsed before I could sufficiently master my emotions
to enable me to observe them particularly.  Both seemed almost as
unchanged as when we were together in the old château, especially
Madame Tricot, the pretty piquante and black-eyed Bretonne.  (Ah, she
had soon tired of her M. Jacquot, who perhaps had given himself too
many airs on becoming coachman to the coadjutor Bishop of Paris.)
And she was here now with her former mistress (and mine too) in
Germany, the land of the Seven Years' War.

The soft and charming features, the dark hair and eyes of Jacqueline,
her air and manner, were all as I had seen them--not last, when
lying, as it would seem, lifeless in the forest, but as they had been
in our happier times.  She was beautiful as ever; but the slightest
symptom of dark down, like a shade, was visible at each corner of her
pretty mouth--a symptom not uncommon among Frenchwomen after their
twentieth year.

What was I to do now?  To advance was to run into the jaws of danger;
to retire was to perish amid the drifting snow, and already the very
marrow seemed frozen in my bones.  As she said something to
Angelique, a thrill passed through me at the sound of her voice;
something of my old love swelled up in my heart, and then pique
repressed it; she seemed so happy and so smiling!

Had she been compelled to marry Bourgneuf?  But, save her love, what
was there to tie her unto me after I had disappeared from the château?

Suddenly the window against which I pressed (till my nose, had it
been observed, must have presented a very livid aspect), and which
had not been bolted, parted in two leaves that opened inwards, and
heavily and awkwardly, with a shower of snow, I fell headlong into
the apartment, and almost at the feet of Jacqueline, who, with her
attendant, uttered a cry of terror; but both speedily recovered their
presence of mind.

"_Mon Dieu!_ what is this?--a drunken soldier!" exclaimed the first,
with great asperity.

"A mousquetaire rouge--_Grand Dieu!_ 'tis an Englishman!  We shall
all be murdered.  Help! help!" cried Madame Tricot, with new dismay.

"Jacqueline--Jacqueline! for Heaven's sake, hush!  Have you quite
forgotten me, Basil Gauntlet, and our pleasant days in old Bretagne?"
I exclaimed, in an excited and imploring tone.

Terror, surprise, and anything but real pleasure, filled the eyes of
Jacqueline us she recognised me.  She trembled, and held up her hands
as if to shield her averted face and keep me back; but this was
needless, as I never approached, but stood near the open window,
through which came the drifting snow and the night wind that waved
the hangings.

"Oh, Jacqueline!" said I, while an irrepressible emotion of
tenderness filled my heart, "how terrible was the time when last I
saw you stretched upon the earth in the forest of St. Aubin de
Cormier!--and why do you greet me so coldly now?"

"Monsieur," said Angelique, taking my hands kindly in hers, "she
greets you as people of the world greet those whom they are anxious
to forget."

"With a fearful and cold welcome, Angelique?"

"True, _mon ami_, it is so."

"Then I pray you to pardon this intrusion," said I, hurriedly; "in
seeking the British lines I have lost my way, and my life is beset by
other dangers than the winter storm.  Tell me where the Lahn lies,
and I shall go; but pity me, Jacqueline, for Heaven and my own heart
alone know how well I loved you."

There was a gratified smile on her lovely lip; a _smile_--and at such
a time--it went a long way to cure me of my folly.

"_O, mon pauvre Basil!_ and so it is really you?" said she, regarding
me with a certain vague interest sparkling in her fine dark eyes;
"but here, at this time of night," she continued with alarm--"and the
count--I expect him every moment!  You know that I am married, do you
not?  Get him away--away from here.  Oh, Angelique, where are your
brains?  Aid us, or he is lost, and I too, perhaps!"

"Lost, indeed!" I repeated, bitterly.

"Guillaume de Boisguiller, whom you found in that horrid English
prison-ship, told you all about my marriage, did he not?" said
Jacqueline, earnestly.

"Yes, madame."

"And you did not die of a broken heart?"

"Not at all, madame; I can assure you that broken hearts are articles
quite as rare among us in England as with you in France."

"Ah, indeed!" said she, smiling again.

"'Tis so," said I, with a laugh, which sounded strangely in my own
ears, and in which she joined, giving her shoulders the while a
little French shrug.

And this was the Jacqueline about whom I had sighed, raved, and wept!
So here was an extinction of love, and a great demolition of romance
at one fell blow.

"Tell me where the Lahn lies, madame, and I shall not trouble you
with my presence for a moment longer.  I am in constant danger of my
life, for your husband seeks to destroy me, and without a reason."

"_Grands Dieux!_" she exclaimed, with real alarm, "are you the
fugitive to secure whom Bourgneuf has dispatched men in so many
directions?"

"Yes, madame; so permit me to restore to you this emerald ring.  It
nearly cost me my life, and yet it won me my liberty yesterday at
Ysembourg."

"From whom?" she asked, hurriedly.

"Your gallant old father, the Duc de Broglie."

Then drawing her ring from my finger, I laid it on the toilet-table
with the air of Cromwell ordering the removal of "that bauble," the
mace.

"He has no less than three parties out to cut you off--one in the
direction of Hesse Cassel--one on the road to Wildungen--and a third
at the ford near Zuschen, under Arnaud de Pricorbin."

"The bridges----"

"Alas! are all destroyed, and though a plank might aid you in
crossing the one at Freyenthal, I heard him say that the Baron Konrad
watches all the riverside with his foresters to prevent your passage.
_Mon Dieu!_ what shall be done?"

"Let me forth into the night again," said I, turning; "anywhere is
better than here.  Adieu, madame, adieu, and for ever!"

"_Hola! mon bon Monsieur Gauntlet_; so we meet again, do we?"
exclaimed a familiar voice; and a cry escaped the women, when I found
myself confronted by the Count de Bourgneuf, who shrugged his
shoulders in the true French style, till his epaulettes touched his
ears, while a fierce, ironical, and almost diabolical smile spread
over his visage, and he ground his teeth.  "_Aha, mon garcon!_" he
continued, making me a series of mock bows, and then I perceived that
he had a cocked pistol dangling in each hand: "so I've caught you at
last, eh?"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE WHISPERED ORDER.

In his rage, Bourgneuf, with each ironical bow, shook from his
brigadier wig the white powder which he wore in great profusion.

The danger was imminent; peril menaced me in front and rear; the
winter storm without, and an absurdly jealous foe within.  I drew the
pistol from my belt; but, alas! the pan was open, and the snow, when
I fell into the ditch of the schloss, had replaced the priming.  It
was useless; however, as Bourgneuf was levelling his first weapon at
my head, I rushed upon him, struck up the muzzle with my left hand,
so that in exploding the ball pierced the ceiling.  With my
pistol-butt I struck the weapon from his other hand, and seized him
by the throat; but the room was almost immediately filled by soldiers
of the Regiment de Bretagne, who beat me down and disarmed me.

The count drew my sword from its scabbard, and contemptuously snapped
the blade under his foot, saying, "_Ha! pst-sacré coquin-pst!_" as I
was dragged into another apartment, and the door of the countess's
room was closed and locked upon her and her attendant, whose cries I
could hear ringing through the mansion; and as they seemed the
prelude to some deed of cruelty and violence, I felt that in hands so
unscrupulous I was helpless and completely lost.

However, I did not give in without a desperate struggle.  From Tom
Kirkton, who in his wilder days had practised at Marybone and
Hockly-in-the-Hole, I had picked up a little of the good old English
science of self-defence, so I struck out right and left, and knocked
over the crapauds like ninepins, till the butt-end of a musket laid
me on the field of battle, and for a time I thought all was over.

I was now rifled.  The two louis of kind Boisguiller were speedily
appropriated.  The pass of the Duc de Broglie and the little laced
handkerchief of Aurora, which I still preserved as a souvenir of my
only relative, were handed to the count.  He laughed at the first,
but the sight of the second transported him with a fury only equal to
that of the Moor on the loss of that important handkerchief which the
Egyptian to his mother gave, and which had "magic in the web of it."

"Count Bourgneuf," I exclaimed, resolutely, on recovering my breath,
for timidity, I found, would be of little avail here; "you have in
your hand the signed passport of the Duc de Broglie; how dare you
thus to violate it?"

"Dare--_parbleu!_ from whom did you receive it?"

"From yourself, in presence of M. Monjoy and the Chevalier de
Boisguiller."

"Signed, you say?"

"Yes--look at it."

"I _have_ looked; but it bears a signature Monseigneur de Broglie
would scarcely recognise, and which no French soldier is bound to
respect."

"A forgery!  Mean you to say that it is a forgery of yours?" I
exclaimed, furiously.

"Term it as you please," said he, tearing the paper to pieces; "'tis
thus that I respect it."

"The duke released me," I began, with some emotion of
alarm--"released me on parole, and complimented me----"

"Because you saved the life of his daughter from an outlaw--or
pretend that you did so."

"But you, her husband, M. le Comte----"

"Mean to put you to death as a spy, who remained as such in Bretagne
for several weeks, and who now as a prisoner seeks to escape, after
lurking behind the French lines, of which the river Lahn is the
present boundary."

"Say, rather," said I, with unwise bitterness, "that with a jealous
cowardice which has no parallel, you resolve to destroy me as one who
loved the countess before she had the misfortune to become your wife."

Enraged that this remark was made before the listening soldiers who
crowded all the room, Bourgneuf said, with an oath and a scornful
laugh--

"Ha!--think you so?"

"I both think and say so."

"What an intolerable world it would be if every man said all he
thought, as you do; but I will meet you with the sword if you choose."

"I will not fight with a would-be assassin."

"The pistol then," he continued, grinding his teeth.

"I will not fight with an assassin, even though he wear the uniform
of a colonel of the French Line," I replied, resolutely, though the
soldiers began to mutter angrily, and beat the floor with the butts
of their muskets.

"_Bah---pst! ce pistolet est en arrêt!_" said Bourgneuf, turning on
his heel with a sneer on his cruel lip, and this pet phrase of the
French soldiers (implying the "white feather") so enraged me, that I
could with pleasure have pistolled him on the spot.

Looking round for a man in whom he could trust, he selected a
corporal, a most sinister-looking fellow, whose nose was quite awry,
and whose shaggy eyebrows met over it in one.  To him he gave a
_whispered order_, and though my ear was painfully acute at such a
time, I could only detect the words, "distance--sound of firing might
not disturb--buried in the snow."

The man with the crooked nose and huge chevrons saluted his colonel,
and desired me to follow him, which I did immediately, conceiving
that my chances were always better with one man than with a score.
As we left the room a gleam of triumphant malice sparkled in the eyes
of Bourgneuf, and he gave me an ironical bow.

When _next_ I saw his face its expression was very different.

In the vestibule of the schloss, which was full of sleeping soldiers,
the corporal summoned a personage, in whom I recognised Karl
Karsseboom, in whose ear he repeated the order of the count, and
muttering curses at the trouble I caused them, these two worthies,
after carefully loading their muskets, desired me gruffly to follow
them, and leaving the schloss by a drawbridge which spanned the
snow-filled ditch, we set forth, on what errand I knew not.

The storm of wind and snow was over now.  Morning was at hand; the
stars shone clear and brilliantly, and so bright was the reflection
of the snow that every object could be discerned as distinctly as at
noon-day.  The silence was profound; even our foot-falls were muffled
in the white waste, from amid which the fir-trees stood up like
sheeted spectres.

I was weary and chilled, being without any muffling; my head was
giddy with the recent blow, and the keen frosty air affected me
severely.

I asked the corporal if they were conducting me to the ford of the
Lahn.

"Not quite so far," replied he, gruffly.

My unexpected interview with Jacqueline, her coolness, her general
bearing, had all bewildered me, and painfully wounded my self-esteem
and pride, crushing my old love, and creating an emotion that wavered
between wonder and--shall I term it so?--disgust.  She had proved so
cold-blooded, so--but enough of Jacqueline; let me to my story, or we
shall never make an end.

Again I asked my guides whither they were conveying me, and their
object?

"Beelzebub!" muttered the corporal; "how impatient you are.  You will
find out too soon, perhaps.  Karl, are we a mile from the schloss
yet?"

"Scarcely," grumbled Karsseboom, looking back.

I recalled the whispered order of Bourgneuf, and the terrible
conviction came upon me that I was to be conducted to the _distance_
of a mile or so, where the _sound of firing might not disturb_ the
countess--to be there shot and _buried in the snow_!

Thus did a keen sense of danger supply the wanting words.

What was I to do--unarmed, weak, weary, and powerless?  I could
grapple with neither of my guards without the risk of being shot by
the other; and to be led out thus--I, an officer on parole, a
prisoner of war, protected by the promise of the Duc de Broglie--led
out to be butchered by two unscrupulous ruffians, and without a
struggle--the thought was too dreadful for contemplation.

But such was the intended sequel to that night's adventures.

Halting close to a thicket about a mile distant from the schloss, the
irregular outline of which was clearly defined against the starry
sky, the corporal told me to "stand still, or march ten paces
forward, and then turn round."

"For what purpose?"

"You will soon see," replied Karsseboom, as he slapped the butt of
his musket with cool significance, and proceeded to kick, or scoop
with his feet, a long trench in the soft snow.

"You do not--you cannot mean to butcher me here?" said I, following
them closely.

"_Halte là_!  Stand where you are," cried the corporal, "or, _nom
d'un Pape_!  I will shoot you down with my muzzle at your head.  _Ah,
sacre!--canaille--Rosbif!_"

A wild beating of the heart; a dryness of the lips, which I strove to
moisten with my tongue; a dull sense of stupor and alarm, all soon to
end, come over me, when cocking their pieces they retired backward
close to the thicket.  After carefully examining their priming, they
were in the act of raising the butts to their shoulder to take aim,
when thinking that all was over with me in this world, I strove to
call to memory a prayer, and something like a solemn invocation of
God was forming on my lips, when both muskets exploded upwards in the
air, and their reports rung far away on the frosty atmosphere, making
me give an involuntary and spasmodic leap nearly a yard high.

I looked, and lo! there were my corporal and his Teuton comrade lying
prostrate in the snow, while a man of great stature, armed with a
large cudgel, was brandishing it above them, and kicking them the
while with uncommon vehemence and vigour.

"Lie there, ye loons!" he exclaimed, in a dialect I had little
difficulty in recognising even in that exciting moment; "I have gi'en
you a Liddesdale cloure, and _you_ a Lockerbie lick on the
chaffets--ye unco' vermin!"  Then he proceeded to twirl his ponderous
cudgel--a branch recently torn from a tree--round his head to dance
among the snow and to sing--

  "Wha daur meddle wi' me?
    Wha daur meddle wi' me?
  My name is wee Jock Elliot,
    So wha daur meddle wi' me?"

On advancing, I found to my astonishment that my protector was my
comrade, Big Hob Elliot of the Scots Greys!

CHAPTER XV.

THE DEAD HUSSAR.

"'Ods, sir, the hand o' Providence is in this!" exclaimed Hob,
capering among the snow with renewed joy, but rather clumsily in his
heavy jack boots; "and so you are the puir Redcoat thae devils were
gaun to butcher!"

"How came you here, Hob?" I inquired in a somewhat agitated voice.

"How came you here, yourself, sir?  But we hae nae time for spiering;
we'll tak' their muskets and awa' to some place o' safety."

In a trice Hob tumbled the French corporal, who was just recovering,
out of his crossbelts, and appropriating his cartridge-box, handed me
one musket, while arming himself with the other.  We then hastened at
a smart pace round the thicket, leaving the two scoundrels, French
and German, to rouse them as best they could, or to smother amid the
snow, for Hob had dealt each a stunning blow on the head.

As we hurried on, he told me briefly and hastily that he and nine
other Scots Greys had been confined in a chamber of the outworks of
Ysembourg, where they were packed as closely as ever Governor
Holwell's unfortunate companions were in the Black Hole at Calcutta;
but suffered from extreme cold in place of heat.  It occurred to one
who had been a stonemason, that the paved floor was hollow
underneath, so this suggested the idea of attempting an escape.

Hob had been left with his spurs on his heels, so with these he
proceeded to pick out the lime, and on raising a stone slab a vaulted
place was discovered below.  They resolved to explore it, and soon
found that it was a passage or gallery leading to the dry ditch of
the fortress, and lighted by a row of loopholes meant for enfilading
by musketry the ditch itself.

Two of these loopholes were rapidly beaten or torn into one by Hob's
powerful hands armed with a stone, and then the whole party crawled
through into the fosse undiscovered, and just as day was breaking.

The snow, which was falling fast, concealed all noise and kept the
sentinels within their boxes, so by expertly using their hands and
feet the fugitives crossed the ditch and clambered up the opposite
side; but there a wooden stockade of considerable height presented
itself, and while searching for an outlet they were fired on by a
sentinel from above, and at the same moment encountered an officer
going his rounds with an escort of the inlying picket.

An alarm was immediately given; a scuffle, in which the escort
opposed their bayonets to the unarmed men, ensued, and all were
retaken save Hob Elliot, whose vast strength and activity enabled him
to elude the levelled muskets, beat down two or three of the escort,
reach an open wicket, and escape into the obscurity of the snowy
morning.  He had wandered all the ensuing day without knowing which
way to turn, inspired only by the hope of reaching the Lahn, but a
skirmish which had been going on between the Light Dragoons of the
allies and the French Hussars had compelled him to lurk in woods and
thickets, as he feared being shot at by both alike; for in his
present plight and after all he had undergone, very little of poor
Hob's red coat remained, and of that the colour was somewhat dubious.
Besides he was worn out with fatigue, and now nearly dead of cold,
though his animal spirits bore bravely up against danger and
adversity.

It was during this crisis in his affairs that, while concealed in a
clump of trees, he had seen me conducted there by the two hirelings
of Bourgneuf, and but for him, at their hands I had assuredly
perished by a miserable and unknown death.

We had both narrowly escaped captivity and danger; but I knew that
three parties were yet out in pursuit of me, and that the ford was
still guarded; so we were still in a horrible dilemma.

Refreshment and a guide were necessary; but where were we to find
either?  Loading the captured muskets we trod hopefully on, till we
reached a cottage or small farmhouse, which to all appearance was
deserted, as no smoke ascended from the chimneys, no dog barked or
cock crew in the yard, the gate of which lay open or flat upon the
ground.

A skirmish between the French Dragoons and the Prussian Black Hussars
had evidently taken place close by this farm; for near it several
horses, still accoutred were lying dead among the deep snow, and in
some instances we saw spurred boots and ghastly white hands sticking
up through it.

When we opened the door and entered the lower apartment the reason of
the silence within it was at once accounted for, and we saw that
which at another time, and to folks less case-hardened than Hob and
I, would have been a very appalling spectacle.

The house had been pillaged and its usual occupants had fled; but on
the table of the principal room lay a dead body muffled in a scarlet
cloak, all save the feet (from which the boots had been stolen), and
stiffly white and cold they protruded beyond the scarlet covering.

In a corner lay a pile of regimental coats, caps, boots, shirts,
stockings, waist and shoulder-belts, all spotted, and in some
instances soaked with now frozen blood; and there, too, were broken
swords, bent bayonets, and wooden canteens piled up by those vile
strippers of the dead, who would no doubt return ere long for their
plunder, so this was no place for us to linger in.

A Prussian Hussar, in the black uniform laced with white of the
King's favourite regiment, lay in another corner almost without a
wound, yet quite dead, and in a pool of his own blood.  A sword-point
had grazed his left temple, severing the temporal artery, and he had
bled to death, thus his blanched aspect was ghastly in the extreme.

"Horrible!" said I, shuddering.

"Maist deevilish!" added my companion, "but I've kenned o' waur."

Urged I knew not by what motive, for on service the emotion of mere
_curiosity_ soon becomes extinct, I turned down the mantle of the
dead body which lay on the table, and then imagine my regret and
horror on tracing in the glazed eyes, the relaxed jaw, the livid but
handsome face, where the black moustache contrasted with its pallor,
the Chevalier de Boisguiller, the gay and heedless Frenchman, who now
lay stiff and cold in his rich Hussar uniform.  He had been shot
through the heart, and must have died instantly, as there was not
much blood about him, but a fearful expression of agony yet distorted
his features.

Hob at once recognised him, and said,

"He was a braw cheild, this Boygilly; but he has gane oot o' the
world noo, and I daursay the damned world will never miss him."

The poor fellow's sabretache lay by him, together with his braided
and tasselled Hussar pelisse and fur cap.  I opened the former, and
found it contained the two despatches from the Duc de Broglie to
Maréchal de Contades, for which he had waited at Ysembourg on the
night I left it--despatches now spotted by his own blood.  They
detailed some future operations that were to take place on the
heights of Corbach, and enclosed Monjoy's diagrams of parallels and
approaches before the castles of Marburg and Dillenburg, and all of
these I knew would prove of inestimable value to our leader, Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick.

I now conceived the idea of passing myself off for my poor friend,
whose character on this side of the Lahn was certainly a safer one
than my own.  I threw off my red coat, and put on his fur-trimmed
pelisse and Hussar cap, together with his belt and sabretache, with
its valuable papers.

Grim through this masquerading, Hob Elliot, who had been
investigating several cupboards, and overhauling some haversacks, in
which he found only a biscuit or two, laughed with stentorian lungs
when he saw me attired in French uniform.

Then he presented me with a biscuit, saying,

"'Ods, sir, we maun e'en feed oursels in this wilderness o' a place,
for the ravens are no' likely to do it."

To him I gave the scarlet cloak and a suitable forage cap, and after
vainly searching the house for anything it might contain in the shape
of more food or spirits, of which we stood much in need, we set out
about mid-day with a story framed to suit any French party we might
meet in our wanderings.

I knew poor Boisguiller so well that I could if necessary imitate his
voice and manner; and as we were much about the same height and
complexion, I had no fear of passing myself off successfully for the
chevalier.  Yet, if discovered, we now ran a terrible risk of being
hanged or shot as spies, or prisoners escaping, or it might be for
having slain the man whose uniform I wore and whose papers I carried.

We met no one to guide us, while proceeding in what we conceived, by
the gradual descent of the road and rivulets, to be the direction of
the Lahn, until just as the dusk of the short winter eve was closing
in, we saw a party of six French soldiers of the Line, muffled up in
their greatcoats, their muskets slung, their three-cornered hats
pulled well over their faces, and their hands thrust in their pockets
for warmth, coming leisurely towards us.

We had nothing for it now but to advance boldly and meet them, and
the reader may conceive that my emotions were far from soothing on
finding myself confronted by Arnaud de Pricorbin, and the same men
whom I had so recently met at the ford.

CHAPTER XVI.

ARNAUD DE PRICORBIN.

When about twenty paces distant they halted, and as the evening was
dusky cast about their muskets.  Then Arnaud cried with a loud voice,

"_Qui va là?_"

Hob Elliot very unwisely replied in his native tongue, and bade him
go to--it was not Heaven.  On this Pricorbin slapped the butt of his
musket and challenged again.

"_La France_," said I, in a very confident tone, and still continuing
to advance; "I am the Chevalier de Boisguiller, going towards
Freyenthal on special service."

"Boisguiller of the Hussars de la Reine?"

"_Oui, mon camarade_," said I, with a jaunty air.

"_Bon Dieu_!  M. le Chevalier on foot?"

"My horse was shot in a skirmish yesterday."

"_Tais-toi, nous serrons entendus, monsieur_," said Arnaud, in a
subdued voice, and presenting arms as I came close to him.

"_Pourquoi?_" said I, with affected impatience.

"Because the King of Prussia's Black Hussars are within musket shot
of us."

"Where?"

"Among yonder trees," said all the soldiers together in a whisper.

"It matters not to me," said I; "we go under _cartel_."

I now perceived that one of the six soldiers had his head and face
tied up with bloodstained handkerchiefs.

"And this big Gendarme?" inquired Arnaud, pointing to Hob Elliot.

"My guide from Ysembourg."

"Had he better not return with us?  Monsieur is close to the ford."

Instead of replying to this uncomfortable suggestion, I asked "Have
you found him you watched for?"

"The escaped prisoner?"

"_Diable_--yes."

"No, monsieur," he replied, with a malediction, in which the others,
especially he of the slashed visage, heartily joined, while stamping
their feet and blowing their fingers; "and so, after being
half-frozen, we have left the ford in despair."

"Well--in yonder cottage on the slope of the hill you will find him
lying dead, with his red coat beside him."

"_Tres bon!_--but I have some brandy here, M. le Chevalier," said
Arnaud, presenting his canteen.

"_A votre santé, mon camarade_," said I, drinking and handing the
vessel to Hob, who without the smallest compunction and with a leer
in his eye drained it to the last drop.  "Diable! 'tis a cold
night--I shaved off my moustache to avoid icicles; now, _camarade_,
the direct road to the ford?"

"Is this we are on, monsieur--a half-mile further will bring you to
it, but beware of the Hussars."

The deception was complete, and away they went double quick to the
dreary cottage on the hill.

Amid the darkness which had now set in, we reached the willow bushes
and scattered rocks at the ford, the scene of my late affair with its
watchers, and there a hoarse challenge in German rung through the
frosty air upon our right.  Then issuing from a thicket of pines, we
saw a patrol of twenty of those dark and sombre fellows, the King of
Prussia's Death's-head Hussars, riding slowly toward us.

They were all mounted (like our own corps) upon grey horses, their
uniform was black, trimmed with silver or white braid, and skulls and
cross-bones grimly adorned their caps, saddle-cloths and
accoutrements, It was commonly said that the Black Hussars neither
took nor gave quarter.  Of this I know not the truth; but under the
gallant and intrepid General Ziethen, they gained a glorious
reputation during the Seven Years' War.

I speedily made myself known to the officer in command.  He informed
me that my corps, which he knew well by its reputation, and by the
grey horses and grenadier caps of their riders, had suddenly left all
the villages of the Lahn and marched to Osnaburg (thirty-seven miles
from Minden) a town which Hob and I reached, after undergoing no
small degree of suffering and privation, about the beginning of
January; and happy were we when we saw the union-jack flying above
the fortress on the Petersburg, and our sentinels in their familiar
red coats at the gates.

Then indeed did we feel at home, and that night in Tom Kirkton's
quarters opposite the Dominican monastery, over a smoking rasher of
Westphalian bacon and a crown bowl of steaming brandy punch, I had
the pleasure of relating to old Colonel Preston and other
brother-officers all our adventures after my fashionable friend
Shirley had blown up the bridge of the Lahn.

One of the first persons I inquired for was this gallant major, who,
however, was elsewhere with the staff of Prince Ferdinand of
Brunswick; but I was determined to settle my little score with him on
the first suitable occasion.  We had a jovial reunion; many times was
the punchbowl replenished.  Tom Kirkton gave us his favourite ditty,
and then the old Colonel, in a voice somewhat cracked, struck up--

  "Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre, (and)
    _Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine!_"

chorussed all to the clank of glasses and drinking-horns.

My indignation was great on finding that not content with betraying
me into the hands of the enemy, Shirley, to blacken my professional
reputation, had forwarded to the Marquis of Granby, General of our
cavalry, a report to the effect, that "by culpable negligence Cornet
Gauntlet had delayed to recross the Lahn, and had _permitted_ himself
to be taken prisoner, thus _betraying_ into the hands of the enemy
ten men and ten horses of his Majesty's Scots Grey Dragoons."

The corps were so furious at this aspersion that they cast lots for
who should call him out; it fell on a Captain named Cunningham, who
sent at once a challenge, which the Major declined on the prudent
plea that "he could deal with the principal only," but worthy old
Colonel Preston, who had seen the whole affair from the tower of
Freyenthal, cleared me of all the imputations of Shirley, whom I
would have punished severely by horsewhip and pistol, had he not been
mortally wounded in a skirmish on the 10th of January, when he
expired in the hands of two soldiers who were carrying him to the
rear in his sash.

On the day after I reached Osnaburg, Tom Kirkton, with a Scotch smirk
in his face, handed me a letter addressed in a lady's small Italian
hand.

It proved to be a kind one from my cousin Aurora--"the little
usurper," as I named her; "the fair pretender," as she was styled by
Tom.

Well, thought I, amid the horrors of war and the bitterness of such a
wayward passion as that I cherished for the French girl, it _is_
something above all price to have a pure English heart to remember,
to pray for, and perhaps to love me, as this dear Aurora does at home.

In a postscript she sent her "best duty and kind regards to Major
Shirley of the Staff."

"Poor devil!" muttered Tom, who was shaving himself for parade, and
using the back of his watch as a mirror.

Having nothing else in the shape of uniform, I had to wear poor
Boisguiller's gay Hussar pelisse on parade and on duty for some days,
until our quartermaster supplied me with a sergeant's coat (minus its
chevrons, of course), a trooper's sword, pistols and accoutrements;
and in this motley guise I made my _début_ as Lieutenant of the Light
Troop (and served in it during the remainder of the campaign), for so
valuable were the despatches regarding the projected movements of the
French on the heights of Corbach and before the castles of Marburg
and Dillenburg, that for procuring them I had been appointed to a
Lieutenancy in the 2nd Dragoon Guards by Prince Ferdinand, and then
gazetted back into my own corps--the boys who were _second to none_,
and whom I had no desire to leave.

We moved soon after to Schledhausen.  There we remained until the
month of May, when we marched through a country covered with forests
to Fritzlar, a small town which belonged to the Elector of Mentz,
where we were brigaded with the 11th Light Dragoons under General
Elliot till the month of June, when the army again took the field.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE HEIGHTS OF CORBACH.

The allied British and Germans under Prince Ferdinand, though less
numerous than the troops under the Duc de Broglie, were in fine
fighting order, yet they prudently acted chiefly on the defensive.

The Duc de Broglie having quarrelled with the Comte de St. Germain
who commanded the army of the Rhine, generally failed to act in
concert with him, and thus saved the Prince from the, perhaps fatal,
hazard of meeting their united strength in another general action.
Prior to this quarrel (which ultimately compelled the Count to retire
from the service) the French arms had been very successful.

They had overrun the whole Landgraviate of Hesse, with their grand
army, leaving troops to blockade the castles of Marburg and
Dillenburg, the operations before which were successfully conducted
on the plans of Gervais Monjoy, while St. Germain marched through
Westphalia to form a junction with the Maréchal Duc, who, by the 10th
of July, had encamped on the heights of Corbach.

On hearing that his two castles had fallen into the hands of the
French, Prince Ferdinand, whom the papers I had found in the
sabretache of Boisguiller had fully informed of the intended movement
towards Corbach, commenced a retreat from Fritzlar towards the river
Dymel; and sent his son, the Hereditary Prince, with a strong
detachment towards Sachsenhausen where he meant to encamp.  Some
British troops, horse and foot, accompanied the young Prince on this
expedition, and of these our regiment unluckily formed a part.

We continued to advance without opposition until the 30th of the
month, when on coming in sight of the heights of Corbach and the
distant town of Ysembourg, we found a body of French troops formed in
order of battle and barring our march to Sachsenhausen.

Their strength seemed to be about ten battalions and fifteen
squadrons, so far as we could judge at first.

"Now who or what the devil may these be?" we asked of each other,
when we saw their arms shining in the sun, their colours waving in
the wind, and the long line of white coats, three ranks deep, appear
on the green mountain slope, where we had no idea of meeting any
troops at all.

"Oh," said several, especially the staff officers who were spurring
to and fro, in evident excitement; "'tis only the vanguard of the
Comte de St. Germain, whom we must drive in."

The order was instantly given for the infantry to attack, the cavalry
to support, and now began a brief but sharp, and to us very fatal
engagement.

It was the noon of a lovely summer day.

Near us the Itter was rolling a blue flood between the green
mountains, its banks fringed by light waving willows and dark wild
laurels; beyond an opening or pass in the mountains where some French
artillery were in position, we saw a fair and fertile plain, dotted
by poplar trees, stretching far away in the sunlight, and the quaint
old town of Corbach, with its ruddy walls and latticed windows that
glittered like plates of gold.

Our infantry began the affair with great spirit, and none stood to
their colours more bravely than our 51st Foot, Brudenel's old corps,
which was led by a gallant soldier, Lieutenant-Colonel Noel Fury.

The young Prince soon found that he had made a reckless mistake, and
was engaged with the united strength of the French army, and with no
vanguard or detached force, like his own!  It was too late to recede,
so madly we strove by bayonet and sabre to hew a passage towards
Sachsenhausen, but strove in vain, as De Broglie constantly poured
forward fresh supports; and although the main body of the allies
under old Prince Ferdinand was but a few miles in our rear, such was
the nature of the ground that they could yield us no assistance
whatever; so about two o'clock in the afternoon the trumpets sounded
from right to left a retreat which it became our duty to cover.

As we galloped in sections round the flank of the 51st, and just as
that regiment began to fall back from its line of dead and dying, I
saw a dreadful episode, caused by the French Artillery.

Thrown from a mortar, a cartouche fell amid their ranks, and, by its
explosion, in a single moment killed and wounded five officers and
sixty rank and file!  For the information of the non-military reader,
I may state that this deadly missile is a case of wood about three
inches thick at the bottom, bound about with marline, holding ten
iron balls, each a pound in weight, and four hundred musket-balls.
It had been fired from a howitzer on the rocks above the pass, and by
one of this dreadful shower of balls the young Prince was wounded in
the shoulder.

When the retreat began, several of the German regiments fell into
confusion, and the French were not slow in taking advantage of it.
The task of repelling them fell upon the Scots Greys, with the 1st or
King's and 3rd Dragoon Guards, and with enthusiastic cheers we
followed the young Prince in a succession of brilliant charges, which
drove the enemy back, enabling our unfortunate comrades in the
Infantry to make an almost undisturbed retreat.  I say almost, for
the French, who continued the pursuit till evening, brought up their
Flying Artillery, and in the dusk we could plainly see the fiery arcs
described by the shells, which the field mortars threw nearly at
random to the distance of a thousand yards.  So brightly burned the
fuses, that we could avoid the falling bombs by scattering,
dismounting, and throwing ourselves flat, as their exploding
splinters always rise at an angle of several degrees from the earth.

On this service, which saved our Infantry from entire capture, few
officers distinguished themselves more than Count Keilmansegge,
Colonel Preston, and Major Hill of our 1st Dragoon Guards.

Our corps lost but one man, who, with his horse, was killed by a
single cannon shot that passed between Sergeant Duff and me.

By another, the colonel of the 51st was slain.  I have elsewhere
mentioned two cases of presentiment, one of which was fatally
realized at the time, the other afterwards.  The leader of the 51st
was inspired by a crushing emotion of this kind on that day at
Corbach, and as the anecdote is little known, being related in the
long since forgotten memoirs of a Scottish officer who served under
him, I may quote it here.

"My old Lieutenant-Colonel, Noel Fury, was one of the slain.  It is
said by some that individuals may be visited by an undefined
presentiment or mental warning of their approaching fate, though such
ideas are treated by others as visionary and impossible.  I shall not
attempt to enter into a discussion which might lead me into the mazes
of metaphysical inquiry, but shall content myself with a simple
narrative of what I witnessed on the morning of this engagement.

"Colonel Fury was remarkable for the liveliness and gaiety of his
disposition, and his spirits, on an occasion like the present, when
about to enter into action, were uniformly observed to be unusually
elevated.  His habitual sprightliness and good humour made him a
general favourite in the regiment; besides, he was a man of
distinguished gallantry and an excellent officer.  Among other good
qualities, he paid especial attention to the filling of his canteen,
and on the morning in question he sat down under a tree, inviting
several of his brother officers to breakfast.

"For the _first time_ in his life, on the eve of an engagement, he
seemed pensive and dull, and on being rallied on the subject by some
of the gentlemen present--

"'I don't know how it is,' he answered, 'but I think I shall be
killed to-day.'

"The cannonade having just begun, he mounted his horse, and rode up
to the regiment, where he had been but a very short time when his
head was carried off by a cannon shot."

Our _total_ loss was five hundred men, and fifteen pieces of cannon.

We rejoined the main body of the allied army full of rage and disgust
at our discomfiture, and clamouring for an opportunity to encounter
the foe again; nor was it long before that opportunity came.

Among the papers found in the sabretache of Boisguiller, was one
which informed Prince Ferdinand of a proposed movement of the French
from Corbach towards Ziegenheim, and on this point he fixed his
attention.

Not many days after our last affair, tidings came that a body of the
French, commanded by Major General Glaubitz and Colonel Count
Bourgneuf, had advanced in that direction.

Immediately on hearing this, our leader directed the young hereditary
prince, who was eager and burning to wipe out the late disgrace, to
drive them back, and on this service he departed, with six battalions
of Hussars, the Scots Greys, 11th Light Dragoons, Luckner's Hussars,
and two brigades of Chasseurs.

In high spirits and full of ardour we marched on the 16th of July,
came suddenly upon the enemy at Emsdorff, attacked them with great
fury, slew a great number of all ranks, took the Major-General, all
the artillery and baggage, one hundred and twenty-seven officers and
two thousand two hundred soldiers prisoners.

Count Bourgneuf, however, contrived to make his escape, after a rough
hand-to-hand combat with Captain Cunningham of the Greys.

In this action, our 11th Light Dragoons, popularly known as Elliot's
Horse, charged no less than _five_ times, and broke through the enemy
at every charge; but in these achievements they lost a great number
of officers, men, and horses.  Here for the first time we found
ourselves opposed to a corps of Lancers, whose weapon was then
unknown in our army.  When Preston led us to the charge against them,
their tall lances, with red pennons streaming, were erect; but when
we were within three horses' length of them, a trumpet sounded, then
they lowered them all breast-high and waved their streamers, so that
many of our horses shied wildly; but we broke through them,
nevertheless, and the spear-heads once passed, all was over with the
Lancers.

On the 22nd of August, when we attacked the French rearguard at
Zierenberg, as it was commanded by Bourgneuf, and consisted of the
regiments of Bretagne and Clermont, I hoped for an opportunity of
meeting my personal enemy, but was disappointed; for although we
burst into the town, which is surrounded by a wall and has three
gates, and in columns of troops charged into the heart of the
disordered French, cutting them down right and left, I never saw the
Count, though, amid the fury and confusion of such a conflict, I must
have been more than once within pistol-shot of him.

Here we had five men and nine horses killed, Colonel Preston and
twenty men wounded; but now came the affair which, was known in the
army as the battle of Zierenberg, where I had once again an
opportunity of meeting my unscrupulous Frenchman face to face.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A NIGHT ATTACK.

We were encamped at Warburg, when, in September, we received orders
to hold ourselves in readiness to move on particular service, and at
an hour's notice--a troublesome communication, for we could scarcely
unharness by day or by night, and had to keep our horses almost
constantly saddled.  At last came instructions to march, about
nightfall, on a dull and gloomy evening, the 5th of September, when,
with two regiments of foot (Maxwell's and the famous old 20th), the
Inniskilling, and Bock's Hanoverian Dragoons, Bulow's Jagers, and one
hundred and fifty Highlanders, we left the camp with all our tents
standing to make a night attack upon the town of Zierenberg, which
had been reinforced, and where Bourgneuf still commanded.

The forces there consisted of the Volontaires de Clermont and the
regiments of Dauphiné and Bretagne--in all about three thousand men.
Luckily, we were furnished with the password for the 5th
September--_Artois_; it had been brought over by a deserter, who
proved to be no other than the rascal Arnaud de Pricorbin, who had
come into Warburg about noon, and thus betrayed his comrades, who
passed their time almost careless of security, and having but slender
guards and outposts.

The town, he informed us, was still a place of no strength; and,
though surrounded by a dry ditch, that was shallow, and the wall
within it was crumbling with age and decay.

Led by Colonel Preston, the Scots Greys were to head the attack.

As we marched, the dark and obscurity of the autumn evening deepened
on the scenery.  The duty was an exciting one, for the whole French
army was encamped at a short distance from the point of attack, and
we knew not the moment when we might find ourselves in a snare or
ambush; for the story of the deserter, as to the password, the real
strength of the force under Bourgneuf, and his dispositions for
defence, might all be a lure, though the fellow remained in the hands
of our quarter-guard as a hostage for the truth of his statements.

We crossed the river Dymel near the Hanse Town of Warburg, and saw
the brown chesnut-groves that border its banks, the clear stars, and
the crescent of the waning moon reflected in its current.

Ere long we saw the lights in Zierenberg and the fires of the French,
whole companies of whom were bivouacked in the streets of the little
town, where they made fuel of the furniture, the rafters, and floors
of such houses as shot or shell had previously made too ruinous for
occupation.

When within two miles of the place, the grenadiers of Maxwell, the
20th Regiment, and the little band of Highlanders, made a detour,
taking three separate routes, while we, the cavalry, took a fourth,
thus completely surrounding and cutting off those who were cantoned
in Zierenberg.

According to Pricorbin's information, which proved to be correct, a
regiment of French dragoons were bivouacked outside the town wall and
in front of the principal gate; and it was with them _we_ had first
to deal.  We continued to advance in silence, all orders being passed
in whispers, and thus not a sound broke the stillness of the night,
but the monotonous tramp of our horses' hoofs, the occasional rattle
of our accoutrements, the clatter of a steel scabbard or a chain
bridle, till, unluckily, some of our horses began to neigh, and we
could distinctly hear some of the French chargers responding, for the
air was calm, still, and clear.

"Push on--push on!" was now said by all; "the alarm is given, and we
have no time to lose!"

The moon, which occasionally gave out weird gleams of silver light
between the masses of dark cloud that floated slowly on the upper
currents of air, was now luckily enveloped, and all the scenery was
intensely dark.  Yet we could distinctly see the lights twinkling in
the town, and the glare of the night fires, which cast flashes of
lurid and wavering radiance upon the steep gables, the spire of a
church, and the undefined outlines of masses of building.  The French
could see nothing of us; but the neighing of our nags was sufficient
to give them all an _alerte_, consequently, when we came within four
hundred yards of the town gate, the whole regiment of horse were in
their saddles to receive whatever might be approaching.

We were advancing in close column of troops as the way was broad and
open.  The Inniskillings were in our rear; the light troop of ours
was in front of the whole, with Colonel Preston riding between
Douglas and me.

On the roadway, as we approached, we could see the black figure of a
single horseman posted.

"When he challenges, Gauntlet, reply in French," whispered the
Colonel; "say something to deceive him."

Preston had scarcely spoken, when the voice of the vidette rung out
clearly on the night--

"_Qui vive?_"

"Artois," I replied, while we all pressed forward at a trot.

"_A quel regiment?_" shouted the vidette, in great haste.

"Les Hussards de la Reine," said I, giving the name of Boisguiller's
well-known corps, which was in the camp at Corbach.

"_Très bien!_ replied the soldier, but the next moment he could hear
Preston's words of command, given sternly and low--

"Prepare to charge--_charge!_"

The Frenchman's carbine flashed redly through the gloom, almost in
our faces; the bullet whistled over our heads to the rear, where a
fearful cry told that it had found a fatal billet among the
Inniskillings; then wheeling round his horse, he galloped to the
rear, where his comrades were formed in column of squadrons.

Ere the echoes of his shot had died away on the night wind, we heard
the cheers of the 20th and the sound of the Highland bagpipe mingling
with the hoarse hurrah of Bulow's light troop, as the town was
assailed on three other points at once.  Then the opening musketry
flashed redly in various quarters, and the gleam of sudden fires shot
upward in the murky air.

Sword in hand we burst, with the weight and fury of a landslip, among
the French cavalry, and drove them back, not so much by dint of edge
or point, as by the sheer weight of our men and horses.  So sudden
was the shock, so irresistible our charge, that they scarcely made
any resistance, but were thrust pell-mell into the town, in the
narrow streets of which they were so intermingled with our men and
the Inniskillings that in many instances neither of us could use our
swords.  For some minutes, at this crisis, I found myself completely
isolated and wedged among the French, some of whom actually laughed
at the whole affair.

Captain Cunninghame, of our first troop, in consequence of a blow
which had penetrated the back of his grenadier cap, fell backward on
his horse's crupper insensible, but could fall no further so dense
was the living press around him; and thus he remained until the place
surrendered.

Colonel Preston, whose horse was possessed of great spirit and fire,
pressed far beyond any of us; but before he could reach the
town-gate, it sprang over the bridge with him into the ditch--where
the brave old boy remained up to his thighs in mud, swearing and
sputtering, but in safety, until we extricated him about daybreak.

Some of the houses being set on fire lit up by their lurid glare the
horrors of the night attack.  Taken completely by surprise, many of
the French were fighting in their shirts and breeches, and were
mingled in wild mêlée with the 20th and Highlanders, using their
bayonets and clubbed muskets, without time to load or fire, so
closely were they wedged together; but some who were in the houses
opened an indiscriminate fusilade on friends and foes.  This so
greatly exasperated the nimble Highlanders, that in several instances
they stormed these mansions, and with dirk and claymore slew without
mercy all within.

Every inch of ground was disputed by death and blood.  The yells,
cries, and hurrahs of the opposing combatants mingled with the clash
of weapons that glittered in the fires around them--fires that
reddened all the air; but the shouts of the French grew weaker as the
cheers of the British increased.

"Hurrah lor the Inniskillings!" cried we.

"Hurrah for the Scots Greys!" cried the Irish.

"Hurrah for Bulow's wild Jagers!" cried both regiments.

A French officer, minus hat, wig, and coat, was dragged roughly out
of a house by two furious Celts, who were jabbering and swearing in
their native Gaelic, as if they had not made up their minds whether
to kill or capture him, when he clung to my stirrup-leather, and
without attempting to use the sword in his hand, breathlessly
implored quarter.

I regarded his pale face with sudden and stern interest, for this
despairing suppliant was the commandant of the town, the Comte de
Bourgneuf.

I lost no time in disarming him, by snapping _his_ sword across my
saddle-bow, contemptuously as he had snapped mine, and desired the
Highlanders to keep him prisoner.  He was dragged away, and I never
saw him again.  It was enough; he had _recognised me_!

His whole force, being completely surrounded and hemmed in,
capitulated, but so many had perished in the attack that we brought
off only forty officers and four hundred rank and file, with the
colours of the regiments of Dauphiné and Bretagne, one of which I
captured in the count's quarters.  These trophies we lodged in the
camp at Warburg, after losing but few men in the whole affair.

It was on that night's duty that I _last_ saw powder burned in the
Seven Years' War.

Our infantry were encamped under canvas in the immediate vicinity of
Warburg, the quaint old German streets of which presented a lively
picture of campaigning life, for every house had been converted into
a barrack; soldiers in British or Hanoverian uniforms appeared at all
the windows, lounging, laughing, and smoking, or pipeclaying their
belts or gaiters.  Piles of muskets stood in long rows upon the
pavements.  Here and there a sentinel trod to and fro upon his post,
indicating the quarters of a colonel or where the colours of a
regiment were lodged.

In the church were stalled our horses, and there stable duty and
religious service went on together; for, as wounded men died every
day in our hands, one seldom passed without a body being laid before
the altar muffled in a cloak, greatcoat, or rug, prior to interment
in the trench outside the gates.

After our return from the night attack at Zierenberg, I slept
profoundly on the bare floor of my billet, which was in an empty
house.  I think one does generally sleep sound after enduring great
excitement or great calamity, for it is the _waking_ alone that
brings back the sense of grief or danger.  Prior to that came dreams,
and again I seemed to hear the bayonet and sabre clashing, the shouts
and the wild work of last night: but from these I was roused about
raid-day by Tom Kirkton, our adjutant, who as yet was still accoutred.

"Well, Gauntlet, old friend," said he, with a peculiar smile; "so you
and I are to part at last?"

"How--what do you mean, Tom?"

"You have been chosen by the Commander-in-chief, on Colonel Preston's
recommendation (a dear old fellow, isn't he?) to convey to London,
and to the king's own hand, his despatches and the colours taken last
night; and his orders say, you must start in an hour."

"And I am to proceed--"

"By our rear.  See, here is your route; by Arensburg to Wesel, and
thence down the Rhine to Nimeguen on the Waal; thence by boat to the
mouth of the West Scheldt, where some of our gun-brigs are sure to be
lying."

"Zounds!  Tom--a long and tiresome journey; alone too! and the money?"

"Old Blount, the Paymaster-General, furnishes that.  So come, rouse
thee, friend Basil--let us have a parting glass ere you go, my dear
boy."

There was an unmistakeable moisture and sad expression in Tom's clear
and usually merry eye as he spoke, for we had ever been the best of
friends and comrades.

Within an hour after this I had packed my valise, secured the French
colours and the Prince's despatches in a large saddlebag--had bade
adieu to our good old colonel,* to Tom Kirkton, Douglas, and others,
and departed with sincere regret.  Hob Elliot and many of the
Greys--braver good, honest fellows--accompanied me to the town gate,
and the farewell cheer they gave me as I passed through the Infantry
camp rings yet in my ear and in my heart, as it did then when I waved
my cap, and said "God bless you!"

* He died at Bath, in 1785, a Lieutenant-General, and still Colonel
of the Scots Greys.--_Regimental Record_, p. 127.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN LONDON AGAIN,

Before I reached England, some changes had taken place of which we
had as yet heard nothing in our camps and cantonments in Germany.

The king had died in October; his grandson had been proclaimed by the
title of George III., and already the Court was out of mourning, for
the new monarch had succeeded a father who had been hated by the late
king, and whom _he_ was never known to name or to speak of during the
whole of his long life; no one knows _why_, but so it is, that the
memory of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, was speedily committed to
oblivion.

After a narrow escape from a French privateer, I was landed by a
returned transport at Portsmouth, and travelled post to the English
metropolis, halting for a night at the Red Lion at Guildford, where
the landlord perfectly remembered the affair of the highwayman in the
chimney, and insisted on my sharing with him a crown bowl of punch in
the good old fashion, while I fought all my battles over again.

Next evening, without encountering a breakdown of the ricketty
vehicle, an overturn on the wretched roads, a masked highwayman, or
other adventure, I saw before me mighty London, with the double domes
and peristyles of Greenwich shining in the sun, and the old battered
fellows who had fought under Anson, Hawke, and Boscawen enjoying
their pipes on the terrace; then the glorious Thames, with its myriad
shipping, and the flags of all the world (France excepted) flying
over them; the vast façade of St. Paul's--the great square mass of
the Tower, which made me think of the jewels, the crown, the chains
and dungeons of tyrants long since gone to their account, and of that
long line of Norman and English kings whom we may still see there,
with their wax faces and dusty armour, ranged rank and file in the
Armoury.

Anon I was amid the roar and bustle of Fleet-street and the Strand,
and had passed under Temple Bar, whereon were still, white, bleached,
and bare, the skulls of those who perished for principle and their
king, though the brothers of some of them led the ranks of our
Scottish corps at Minden.

I put up at the King George in Pall Mall, where, for the first night
for many, many months, I could take mine ease in mine inn, and where
from the windows I could see the flaring links and flambeaux, the
sedans and coaches, of those who were proceeding to the theatres,
opera, balls, or elsewhere.

I thought of the time when I had been last in London, under such
different circumstances--when I had come with the despatch concerning
the French spies--I, a simple orderly dragoon--concerning that wretch
Hautois, before we sailed from Portsmouth for Brittany, and ages
seemed to have elapsed since then.

After all I had seen of war, I agreed to the full with my Lord
Clarendon, in all his views and remarks on the virtues and blessings
of peace.

At the George I felt myself apparently amid lavish luxury!  Yet even
carpets were almost unknown in English bedrooms during the early part
of George III.'s reign; but it seemed to me that a comfortable home,
a blazing sea-coal fire, soft hearthrugs, warm curtains, a smoking
dinner and singing tea-urn, a pretty English wife, with her true
domestic love (and a most becoming dress of course), to do the
honours of one's house and table, a tranquil life, and all that kind
of thing, were a thousand times better than pipeclay and glory, after
all; better than turning out by drumbeat or bugle-call in a dark
rainy morning, to march fasting, to shoot or be shot at; better than
to hear the winter sleet rattling on the wet tent, or to endure it in
the wetter bivouac; and so indeed thought I, Basil Gauntlet, when on
that night of December I tucked myself cosily in a warm bed at the
George in Pall Mall, and went off to sleep, with the "drowsy hum" of
London in my ears.

Next day I presented my credentials at the Horse Guards, obtained six
months' leave of absence, and was informed that there would be a
royal drawing-room at Kensington Palace in two days after; and the
commander-in-chief kindly added that he would arrange for my
presentation by his Grace the Duke of Argyle, who was full colonel of
my own Regiment, and was then in town.  So, for two days I was free
to roam about the streets in search of amusement.

Ignorant of London, I stumbled first into the wooden house in
Marylebonefields, and saw a couple of sword-players slashing each
other with rapiers on a platform to the sound of French horns and a
tenor drum; then followed a game at quarterstaff, while the boxes and
galleries were crowded by men of the first position, betting-book in
hand, sword at side, and the hat cocked knowingly over the right eye.
From these I rambled to Don Saltero's Museum, to see his stuffed
rhinoceroses, tigers, and monsters; thence to an auction in Cornhill,
where, among other effects of a bankrupt shipbroker, a young negro
woman was put up to sale, and bought by a Newmarket gentleman for
32_l_.

As a soldier I could not resist going to see the home battalions of
the Foot Guards exercised at the King's Mews, near Charing Cross.
Then I dined at a chocolate-house, summoned a chair, and was swung
off at a trot to the opera, where I heard one of Mr. Handel's
performances hissed down, as quite unequal to the "Beggar's Opera."

Next day I found a card waiting me at my hotel.  The Duke expected me
to dine with him on that day, if not otherwise engaged.

I found his Grace and the Duchess waiting to receive me with great
kindness and affability.

He was John Campbell of Mamore, who had lately succeeded to the
dukedom, after long service in Flanders and Germany; he was now a
Lieutenant-general, Governor of Limerick, and a Scottish
representative Peer; she was Mary, daughter of John, Lord Bellenden
of Auchinoule, a handsome and stately woman, but now well up in years.

He asked me many questions about the regiment, and inquired if "auld
Geordie Preston still adhered to his buff coat."  He also made a few
queries, but with reserve, about the Cavalry movements at Minden, and
the charges brought against Lord George Sackville.  On such matters
the gentle Duchess was silent; moreover, she always shrunk from
military matters, as she had never recovered the loss of her second
son, Lord Henry Campbell, who had been killed at the battle of
Lafeldt.

Perceiving how threadbare my fighting-jacket was--(it was the
sergeant's coat I had procured at Osnaburg)--I proposed to get a
court dress, or a new suit of regimentals for the presentation
to-morrow.

"Nay, nay," said the Duke; "come as you are--we shall drive to the
Palace in my coach, and believe me, the ladies will like you all the
better in your purple coat.  It looks like work--zounds! yes.  And,
by-the-by, if you want any franks for the North, or to hear a debate
in the Upper House, don't forget to command me."

CHAPTER XX.

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

A presentation at Court may be a very exciting thing to those who are
unused to such scenes; but to me, nothing whatever could prove a
source of excitement yet, for no man is more self-possessed, less
interested in a mere spectacle, or in whom the feeling of curiosity
is so dead, for a time at least, as one who has served a campaign or
two.

During the reign of the late king and the early part of his
successor's, drawing-rooms occurred very frequently, and royalty
presented itself to the nobility and gentry at least twice weekly;
but from various circumstances--perhaps the recent mourning, so
hastily laid aside--on this occasion the attendance was unusually
great, and when the carriage of the Duke, who wore the uniform of
Colonel of the Greys, with the star and dark green ribbon of the
Thistle, reached Kensington Palace-gate, we found it quite blocked up
by brilliant equipages, sedan chairs, and livery servants, having
huge cocked hats, long canes, and in some instances bouquets of
artificial flowers.

From the portico of the Palace to the presence chamber, the Yeomen of
the Guard, under Viscount Torrington, and the Gentlemen Pensioners,
under the Lord Berkeley of Stratton, lined all the corridors and
guarded the entrances, their showy uniforms contrasting powerfully
with my patched and war-worn suit of harness, which, sooth to say,
seemed odd enough, for my silver epaulettes were reduced to mere
tufts of black wire; my once crimson sash to dingy fritters, my
jack-boots were of no particular tint, and my spurs, like my
scabbard, were a mass of rust.

But I carried over my left arm the standards of the regiments of
Dauphiné and Bretagne; and they secured me some interest, in the eyes
of the ladies at least--the beauty and fashion of the first court in
the world--as they thronged past, in hoops and brocades, their fine
hair dredged with powder, and their soft cheeks obscured by rouge and
patches.

My grandfather had disinherited me; true!  I had nothing in the world
but my sword and my wretched pay as a sub; I was not the Lord of
Netherwood, moor and hill, hall and river; but I was Basil Gauntlet,
of Minden and Zierenberg--and they, at least, were something to be
heir to.

As we entered the gallery which leads to the black marble staircase,
two gentlemen, one of whom was dressed in scarlet richly embroidered
with gold, and who wore a very full perriwig--the other, who was
attired in a purple velvet suit corded with silver, and who had on a
sword of unusual length, and a bag wig, entered into conversation
with the Duke, who presented me to them as an officer of his regiment.

The first was the groom of the stole, the famous Earl of Bute, the
future premier, the foe of Wilkes and the London mob; the other was
my Lord Huntingdon, Master of the Horse, and both were pleased to say
many handsome things concerning our regiment and its services during
the war.  Moreover, the Lord Bute was pleased to manifest his
friendship for me, by presenting his snuff-box of light-blue sevres
china, which he always carried in the flap-pocket of his waistcoat.

The heat and crowd were great; many had already been presented, and
some were withdrawing as we passed slowly through several rooms of
the old summer palace, the walls of which were hung with rich
tapestry and ornamented by many pictures and busts on pedestals.
Among others, my Lord Bute and his Grace pointed out to me the Venus
of Titian and the Infant Saviour by Rubens, the dark Holbeins, some
works of Albert Durer, and the full-lengths of Orange William and
Mary Stuart, his queen--the former all nose and white wig, the latter
with a mass of frizzled locks and a very bare bosom; and so, by
gently pressing onward, we found ourselves in the presence-chamber,
amid all the glitter and splendour of the court.

At the further end, on a chair of state under a rich canopy of
crimson velvet, heavily laced, sat a fair-complexioned and
smooth-faced young man, of a mild but most undignified and somewhat
flabby aspect, who wore the uniform of the Foot Guards, with the
magnificent collar and order of the Garter sparkling on his breast,
and who had his powdered hair brushed back, queued, and simply tied
with a black ribbon.

"'Tis the king!" whispered the Duke of Argyle and my Lord Bute at the
same time.

I had never been in a palace or stood in such a presence before, and,
until now, had been more occupied by the beauty of the ladies and the
splendour of their jewels and dresses; but I felt a strange thrill in
my heart--_blasé_ as it was by the excitement of campaigning--when I
looked on the mild face of this same young king, who was then in his
twenty-third year, who had a threefold ball and treble sceptre to
wield, and who had declared it to be his proudest boast that he was
the FIRST of his race who had drawn breath on British soil, and that
he gloried in it!

Many presentations went forward before it came to my turn.  I saw
Carolina, Countess of Ancrum, a stately woman, in a dress of white
satin, superbly spangled with gold, and drawn up in festoons by cords
of gold, to display an under-petticoat of scarlet velvet, studded
with seed-pearls, advance towards the throne.  Her hair was powdered
white as snow, and tied over a cushion about five inches high.  With
a low courtesy she was presenting to his majesty, who bowed
graciously, a very graceful girl, whose back, unfortunately, was
towards us; but I could admire the wonderful fairness of her neck and
shoulders, over which some heavy ringlets fell from the high cushion
or pad, above which her golden hair, all undisguised by powder, was
dressed and tied with knots of scarlet ribbon.  Her dress was of
scarlet and white striped satin, embroidered with gold on all the
seams, and as they withdrew, courtesying backward--

"Gauntlet, 'tis our turn now," said the Duke, while he took me by the
left hand and led me forward to the steps of the throne, which were
covered with crimson cloth.

"Permit me," said he, "to present to your majesty Sir Basil Gauntlet,
of my regiment, the 2nd Dragoons--an officer who, by his personal
bravery, has contributed not a little to maintain their old historic
character of being _Second to None_.

"Good!--second to none--good, very good!" said the young king, bowing
very pleasantly, and presenting his hand, which I suppose I was
expected to kiss; but which, in my ignorance, I shook very cordially,
to the amusement of many fine lords and macaronies who stood by.  I
coloured, but said confidently--

"Commissioned by his Serene Highness Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick,
General of the allies, I have been sent from our camp at Warburg in
Westphalia, to lay at your majesty's feet these trophies, the
standards of the regiments of Dauphiné and Bretagne, captured in our
late attack on Zierenberg."

From my hands the king took the colours, which were of blue silk,
with the royal crown and cypher of France.  One bore the silver
fleurs-de-lys; the other the golden dolphin of Dauphiné in a field
ermine, and both exhibited the holes where many a bullet had passed.
He thanked me in a very handsome manner, while all the brilliant
groups which crowded that magnificent apartment drew near to observe
and to listen.

Something of my story, perhaps of my early misfortunes, my unmerited
wrong, and my enlistment, with a hundred fables tacked thereto, had
been buzzed or whispered about; thus I found many bright eyes and
well-powdered personages in fashionable pasteboard skirts regarding
me with well-bred interest.

"Good!" said the king, whose eloquence seldom overflowed; "this is
very good, and your services shall be duly appreciated.  Did you
serve at Minden?"

"I had the honour."

"In the cavalry?"

"Yes, sire--in the Scots Greys."

At those words, a gentleman in a brigadier wig and suit of grey,
corded with silver, turned abruptly and surveyed me with a louring
eye.  He was no other than my Lord George Sackville, who hated the
Scots--as he afterwards did the Americans--because ten of the sixteen
generals who found him guilty of misconduct at Minden were born north
of the Tweed; and so blindly did he hate that portion of Britain,
that for a time he was universally believed to be the author of
"Junius' Letters;" thus, at the mention of the Greys, 'tis no wonder
that he started as if a wasp had stung him.

The king gave the standards to my Lord Huntingdon, and bowed to us
again, as we now withdrew to make way for others.  In retiring, I
then perceived near the throne one who had good reason to remember
with gratitude and respect the uniform of a Scots Grey, the little
Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of York, whom Jack Charters had saved
from drowning when the man-o'-war's boat was smashed by a cannon shot
near Querqueville Point at Cherbourg.

I was mentioning this episode to the Duke of Argyle, who felt an
interest in everything that related to his regiment, when suddenly a
charming voice said, "Basil!" in my ear, a hand was laid softly and
timidly on my arm, two smiling blue eyes looked calmly into mine, and
I found before me the fair girl, she with the golden-hair, the
scarlet-striped dress and blue crape petticoat--my cousin, Aurora!

She now presented me to her chaperone, the Countess of Ancrum, who
had been Lady Caroline d'Arcy, only daughter of the Earl of
Holderness.  She in turn presented me to several ladies, who plied me
with the usual simple and silly questions about the war and certain
officers who were serving with the army, until Aurora passed her arm
through mine and we began to converse about ourselves.

Aurora was indeed very beautiful, and when I looked on her delicate
skin and brilliant English complexion, "how," thought I, "could I
ever admire a dark Frenchwoman, or any but a blue-eyed girl!"

"I was so proud when I saw you led forward to the king!" said Aurora,
"and to see you looking so well and gallant, Basil.  Do you know that
all the ladies here quite envy my cousinship?"

"Aurora, how you flatter!  One would think that you had been among
the French and not I."

"And what think you of the young king?"

"I am charmed by his condescension."

"Yet scandal says he is married to a pretty quakeress named Hannah
Lightfoot, though about to espouse the Princess of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz," whispered Aurora.  "What think you of that
forsooth?"

"I wish you would not say such things, cousin."

"Your loyalty is shocked, is it?  Well, I shall not whisper treason,
even in your ear," replied Aurora, who proceeded to point out several
persons to me, and to make remarks on them that were witty enough at
times.

"Who is that tall man with the blue ribbon?"

"He with the military stride, who seems to go right, left--right,
left, head up, and queue straight?"

"Yes," said I, laughing.

"That is the gallant old Earl of Crawford, who led the Scottish Horse
Guards in Flanders."

"And that dapper little man in the orange-coloured suit, whom he is
now presenting?"

"The Chevalier Chassegras de Lery, the _first_ of his Majesty's new
Canadian subjects that has appeared in London, where, I can assure
you, he is greatly run after.  He was wounded in the siege of Quebec,
and assisted to bury the Marquis of Montcalm.  But look you, cousin,
look!" continued Aurora, laughing and blushing behind her large
scarlet fan; "do you see that grim-looking old gentlewoman in green
brocade?"

"Whom a bishop is presenting--yes."

"The late king died in her arms.  She is the Countess of Yarmouth."

"Sophia de Walmoden!"

"Yes.  Listen!--she is returning thanks for her pension of 4000_l_.
per annum, for services rendered to his Majesty's royal grandfather.
For all his victories over the French the brave Sir Edward Hawke gets
exactly _half_ that sum."

With some interest I surveyed this old personage in paint, patches,
and brocade; she who had wrought poor Charters such mischief in his
youth when he was about eighteen, and she perhaps six and thirty.

But now the dusk was setting in; I missed his grace of Argyle, or
perhaps he thought his duty to me ended at the foot of the throne,
and it was an odd coincidence that Aurora also lost her chaperone,
Lady Ancrum; thus I had to escort her to the Palace-gate.

"You must come to Netherwood for the shooting, Basil," said she, as
we traversed the long corridors of the palace; "at the Hall I keep a
strange souvenir of you," she continued, laughing--"an old
blunderbuss--do you remember it?"

"No."

"You cannot have forgotten that night on Wandsworth Common, and the
old blunderbuss which so terrified John Trot?"

"How could I forget the first time I met you, Aurora!--but here is
your chair."

Two yeomen of the guard made way for us with their partisans; John
Trot was in attendance with cane and link, as I handed Aurora into
her sedan, hooped-petticoat, skirt, _toupée_ and all.

"While in London, Basil, remember that you make our house in
Piccadilly your home."

"_Our!_" thought I in perplexity, as two soft hands held mine during
this speech, and two blue eyes looked kindly into mine.  I was
becoming a timid fellow again, or I know not what privilege of
cousinship I might have claimed had we been elsewhere than amid that
crowd at Kensington Palace-gate.

"I live in Piccadilly with an old lady-friend, or rather, I should
say she lives with me--my companion, an officer's widow.  You will
lunch with us to-morrow--two is the hour, and we shall expect you.
Adieu."

She was borne off at a trot by her chairmen in the Gauntlet livery,
while I set out on foot to return to "mine inn," the King George the
Third, in Pall Mall.

CHAPTER XXI.

COUSIN AURORA.

I felt pleased and flattered by the whole events of the day;
especially by the beauty, the charming frankness of Aurora, and the
decided preference she showed for me; the more so that she was an
object of no little attraction to the powdered beaux who crowded the
court of the young king.  And to think that my poor red coat eclipsed
all their finery.

Betimes next day I had my hair dressed by a fashionable perruquier; I
took a promenade in Pall Mall, and left a card for a friend at
White's Chocolate House.  He was a brother of Douglas of ours, and
belonged to the Scots Foot Guards, but was absent recruiting in
Edinburgh.  About mid-day, I presented myself at my cousin's mansion,
old Sir Basil Gauntlet's town residence, in Piccadilly.  It was one
of the largest and best style of houses in that fashionable quarter.
Master John Trot appeared at the door in answer to my summons, and
opened it wide enough and with a sufficiently low bow, as I had
exchanged my old, weather-beaten and bloodstained fighting-jacket,
for a fashionable suit of French grey velvet, laced with silver.

I found Aurora in the drawing-room, with her companion, a pleasing
old gentlewoman in a towering _toupée_, high red-heeled shoes and
black lace mittens--Madam Blythe (as she was named in the old
Scoto-French fashion) a widow of the captain-lieutenant of Lord
Ancrum's dragoons, who had been killed in action, so the poor woman's
heart warmed towards me as a gentleman of the cloth.

After a few of the ordinary remarks about the weather, followed by a
few more about the ceremony of yesterday, luncheon was announced by
John Trot, and we descended by a splendid staircase, hung with
effigies of departed Gauntlets, depicted by Lely and Kneller, in wigs
and corslets, to the dining-room, past a line of servants in livery,
aiguiletted and covered with braid, like state trumpeters.

Over the carved marble mantelpiece hung a portrait of an old
gentleman, in a square-skirted coat, corded with gold, a voluminous
wig and wide riding-boots, in the act of grasping the reins of a roan
charger.

"'Tis dear old grandpapa's portrait, painted by Mr. Joshua Reynolds."
(He had not been knighted yet.)

"One of the most rising artists in London," added Madame Blythe, in
an explanatory tone.

"'Tis very like you, Basil," said Aurora, laying kindly on my
shoulders a plump white hand that glittered with turquoise and
diamond rings.

I did not feel flattered, as "dear old grandpapa's" Bardolph's snout
was somewhat like an over-ripe peach; but altogether, in his jolly
obesity he in no way resembled the old _ursa-major_ I had pictured
him--perhaps Mr. Reynolds flattered.  However, I could scarcely
refrain from frowning at it when Aurora did not observe me, and when
I thought of the will which he and old Nathan Wylie had concocted
between them; and then of the handsome legacy--one shilling sterling
coin of this realm--bequeathed to me when quartered at Portsmouth.

"My brother Tony--poor unfortunate Tony!--hangs opposite in his green
hunting dress--another of Mr. Reynolds' efforts," said Aurora.

"Ah, indeed!" said I, attending to my ham and chicken, and turning my
back upon the portraiture of Cousin Tony, who looked out of the
gilded frame very much as he did on that afternoon when he and his
grooms Dick and Tom laid their whips across my shoulders near
Netherwood Hall.

"What length of time do you mean to spend in London?" asked Aurora,
amid our desultory conversation.  "Your health, cousin, and welcome
home," she added, as John Trot filled my glass.

"I shall spend my six months' leave.  I have no friends to visit, and
nowhere to go, cousin, unless back to my regiment."

"Six months--delightful!  Now, Basil, with your figure and
pretensions, I am sure we shall find a charming if not a rich wife
for you.  Shall we not, Madame Blythe?"

"Thanks, Aurora.  A rich one I would need, with my poor sub's pay,"
said I, with a smile.

I glanced involuntarily round me, and the splendour and luxury, the
evidence of ample wealth--wealth of which I had cruelly been
deprived--galled and fretted me.  Furtive though the glance, it was
so expressive that Aurora coloured, and but said, smiling--

"What think you of the Lady Louisa Kerr, the Countess of Ancrum's
eldest daughter?  She spoke much about you, and was at the
drawing-room, in blue, flowered with silver."

"Nay, I have no idea of casting my eyes so high."

"Or so _far off_," added Madame Blythe, archly.

"Perhaps you have left your heart in Germany?"

"On the contrary, I have brought it back safe and sound, cousin.
More wine--thank you, yes."

"'Tis some of the last of dear old grandpapa's favourite port," said
Aurora, making a sign to Mr. Trot.

"But there is time enough yet for me to think of marrying, Aurora."

"Perhaps you agree with Shakespeare, that

  "'A young man married, is a man marrèd,'"

"Nay, dear cousin; I am not so ungallant; but _àpropos_ of
Shakespeare, shall we go to the play to-night?"

"In that I am your servant; but you shall dine with us; a drive in
the park, and then the play after."

Aurora was charming; and it was impossible not to be guided by her
wishes in everything.

At that time I was in excellent funds.  I had my pay as lieutenant of
dragoons (not that it was much, Heaven knows! to cut a figure upon);
but I had a good share of prize-money, and a share in brass guns
taken in the affairs of Emsdorff and Zierenberg, with a fair slice of
a military chest that found its way quietly, sans report, into the
pockets of the Scots Greys, all enabled me to take Aurora and Madame
Blythe to Vauxhall, Ranelagh, the tea-gardens, the opera, the play,
and always with a fair escort of flambeaux to dine with his Grace of
Argyle, or to a drum at my Lady Ancrum's; to turn a card at White's
when I felt so disposed, and to throw vails to those greedy
vultures--the servants--a folly at that time in excess.

As we issued from the house to the carriage for our drive in the
park, Aurora responded to the profound bow of a gentleman who rode
past.

"That is a young Irishman who was known about town as the Penniless
Adventurer," said she; "yet he wrote a charming book on 'The Sublime
and Beautiful.'"

"Edmund Burke," I exclaimed, looking after him with admiration; "is
that the great Edmund Burke?"

"Even so, with his hair all frizzed up.  How oddly he wears it," said
Aurora, as we seated ourselves, and Mr. Trot, after shutting the
door, perched himself on the footboard behind.

At night Drury Lane Theatre presented a scene of brilliance and
splendour to which I had long been unaccustomed.  Aurora was
exceedingly gay and sparkling with youth, beauty, and jewels--bowing
to people of good fashion in almost every box--always happy and with
considerable readiness of wit, remarking several turns of the play
and peculiarities of personages who were present, and in whom, she
thought, I might feel interested.

The first piece, I grieve, my prudish friends, to state was Howe's
tragedy of "The Fair Penitent," which drew tears from all the
brocaded dames in the boxes.

Mr. David Garrick, the manager, appeared as Lothario in a
full-bottomed perriwig, square-cut blue coat with buttons in size
like saucers, white rolled stockings and square toed shoes.  Mrs.
Pritchard was the frail Lavinia; and sarcastic old Macklin, who hated
the Scots so much, made up by pads and paint as a youth, played the
part of Horatio to the great admiration of the pit, and particularly
of one group, among whom Aurora pointed out to me a poet named
Churchill and Dr. Johnson the great Lexicographer.

Mr. Garrick's laughable farce of the "Lying Valet" followed.  A
sentinel of the Foot Guards, with bayonet fixed and musket
shouldered, stood at the end of the proscenium during the whole
performance, at the conclusion of which, the manager and pretty Mrs.
Pritchard, were called before the curtain amid a storm of applause.

At the door of the box-lobby we had some confusion; a hundred voices
were shouting "Chair! chair!--coach, coach!" at once, and an
irritable old gentleman with a very red face, drew his sword to clear
the way before his party of ladies.

"Who is this passionate personage?" I inquired.

"'Tis Admiral Forbes," said Madame Blythe, "the only Lord of the
Admiralty who _refused_ to sign poor Admiral Byng's death warrant."

"A Scotsman, like yourself, Basil," said Aurora smiling.

I escorted the ladies home to Piccadilly, and assisted them to alight
from their sedan chairs.  As the links were extinguished, and
Aurora's cheek was very near mine, I--but as it is wrong to kiss and
tell, I shall close this chapter, and with it my third day in London.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE LAST.

I found in Aurora an inexpressibly charming friend and companion;
thus at times, in my heart, and before my funds waxed low, I
completely forgave her for being the holder, the golden-haired
usurper of all that was mine by right of inheritance.

But there were other times when the old emotions of pique and
anger--the old memories of wrong inflicted, and of mortifications
endured by my parents and myself, blazed up within me, and made me
resolve to tear myself away from London and from the silken toils
that were netting round me, and vow to rejoin my regiment, which was
now at winter quarters at Barentrup, in Germany.

Still I hovered between Pall Mall and Piccadilly, and when we were
not at some place of amusement (whither we sometimes ventured
_without_ the matronage of Madame Blythe), Aurora's drawing-room was
my evening resort; for after dining at White's or at the George in
the Mall I always dropped in to take "a dish of tea," as the
Londoners phrased it, at that little _guéridon_, or tripod table,
with its oval teaboard of mahogany, its diminutive cups of eggshell
china, filled with that fragrant, and then expensive beverage, the
honours of which old Madame Blythe, in her hoop petticoat, black
mittens, and toupee, dispensed so gracefully.

So passed the time swiftly in amusements and gaiety.  My exchequer I
have said was waxing low.  My share in the value of his Most
Christian Majesty's brass guns and mortars had all vanished at
Vauxhall, Ranelagh, and elsewhere, and my leave of absence was
drawing to a close.  The latter tidings I communicated to Aurora, and
she seemed to be disturbed by them--so much so, that I felt quite
pleased and flattered by her affectionate friendship.  Had she wept I
would have been delighted.

How strange was this tie of cousinship!  Here was Aurora, one of the
loveliest girls in London (which, my good reader, is saying a good
deal), treating me like a friend--a brother; and she was nearer and
dearer to me than friend or sister could be, so far as regard and
propinquity went; yet withal, she was little more than a recent
acquaintance.

It was perilous work, those daily visits to Piccadilly, and yet so
pleasing; and so--and so the reader may begin to perceive the end of
all this; but not exactly how it came about.

I own that I fell in love with my beautiful cousin; so had many
others--among them Shirley; and I could pardon him now.

I am sure that dear old Madame Blythe, who loved me like a son, for
no better reason than that I was a lieutenant of dragoons, as her
husband had been in their lover-days, suspected what was going
forward.  She was discreet--oh, very discreet!  She never opened the
drawing-room door too suddenly if we were within, but always lingered
without and loudly issued an order to the cook, or to John Trot; or
dropped something noisily; called to her French poodle, or played
nervously with the door-handle, until Aurora and I laughed at her
policy or politeness, which you will.  However, when she entered, I
was generally to be found on the side of the room opposite to that
occupied by Aurora.

When in the dining-room, the sight of Sir Basil's portrait, and
Squire Tony's too, always roused my secret anger; thus, when Aurora
one day said to me playfully--

"Cousin Basil, what do you think Lady Ancrum tells me gossips say?"

"Don't know, really," replied I, briefly.

"That I am setting my cap at you!"

"Zounds! at a poor devil like me!" I exclaimed, almost gruffly.
"Nonsense, Aurora!  Besides, you don't wear a cap."

Aurora coloured, and her sweet face became clouded by my brusque
manner.

But her remark set me thinking seriously.  I had undergone some quiet
quizzing from Madame Blythe, who believed in her heart that we were
made for each other, and that no two young people could play a game
of picquet, ombre, or chess, or dance a minuet together, without
falling straightway in love; so this and my Lady Ancrum's gossip set
me, I say, to think angrily, and when in such a mood, Sir Basil's
insulting last will and testament, like the handwriting on the wall
at Belshazzar's feast, always seemed to flame before me.

I was conscious too that my cousinship and constant appearance in
public with Miss Gauntlet had scared away a score of danglers and
admirers, who being most of them mere macaronies, or "pretty
fellows," were weak enough to leave me entire possession of the
field.  One or two, indeed, threatened to invite me to breathe the
morning air at the back of Montague House, but somehow never put
their war-like threat into execution.

I loved Aurora dearly; but the regard I bore her was quite unlike the
wild and romantic passion with which the artful Jacqueline had so
suddenly inspired me, for it was based upon friendship and a
knowledge of each other--upon strong confidence and thorough esteem.
Could more than these four ingredients be wanted to make any marriage
happy?

It was not a passion likely to expend itself, and leave rosy little
Cupid's wings, bows, arrows and all, insolvent at the end of the
first year; yet withal, pride and a sense of injury rankled deeply in
my heart.

I had never told Aurora that I loved her, but she knew it well, and
that she loved me I was vain enough to believe; still the idea stung
me to the soul that gossips might say that I, the disinherited and
penniless cousin married the rich one to regain my lost patrimony.

"I shall not endure it," thought I, "and so shall pack my traps and
be off to the regiment!"

One evening I was seated alone by the library fire in Piccadilly,
full of loving, of angry, and of doubtful thoughts which tormented
me, when Aurora entered gently, and leaning over the back of my chair
placed her pretty hands over my forehead and eyes in sport.

"How you stare into the fire, Basil!  You will quite spoil your eyes.
What do you see there?"

"I am reflecting--thinking----"

"Of the fancied battles you see among the embers--the value of coals,
or what?" she asked, laughing.  "Now tell me, about what were your
precious thoughts?"

"They were of _you_, Aurora," said I, in a troubled voice, while
taking her dear hands in mine; "my leave of absence----"

"Again, that horrid leave--well, Basil?"

"Is nearly at an end, and I must quit London, rejoin, tear myself
from this," I replied, impetuously, and then added, with sudden
softness; "I love you, dear Aurora--you know well that I do; but
never shall it be said by the world that I married you for your
fortune--as----"

"The world!" said she, interrupting me, with an air of extreme
annoyance, while casting down her eyes and withdrawing her hands;
"but am I then so plain--so unattractive--that no one would marry for
anything else, save for this unlucky Netherwood--eh, cousin?" she
added, smiling with a charming air of coquetry.

"Oh, Aurora--I wish you could see into my heart!"

"And you love me?" said she, in a low and tremulous voice.

"Dearly--most dearly!"

"Then if I married you, cousin Basil," she resumed, looking smilingly
into my eyes, "might not the world say it was for your title?"

"Am I then so plain and unattractive," I was beginning, when she
playfully put her hand on my mouth; "Aurora, of the baronetcy I
cannot divest myself."

"But I can _divest_ myself of Netherwood," she exclaimed, and sprung
from my side with flashing eyes.  Then with tremulous hands she
unlocked an ebony cabinet, and after a rapid search, came to me with
a folded document, saying, "Look, Basil, do you know this
handwriting?"

"It is that of old Nathan Wylie, our grandfather's solicitor; I
should know it well."

"Then read this paper, which he prepared and drew up a few weeks ago,
at my especial request."

I perused it with astonishment!

It was what is legally or technically termed a "Disposition," by
which Aurora divested herself of Netherwood, lands, estate, and
everything, bestowing them upon me during her lifetime, with
remainder to me and my heirs at her decease.

I had learned enough of law during my residence with old Nathan
Wylie, the framer of this new document, to know how full, ample, and
generous it was, and while I rapidly scanned it from the preamble at
the beginning to the signature of Aurora at the end, she stood near
me with her cheeks flushing, her eyes full of tears, and her poor
little hands trembling.

"Oh, Aurora!" I exclaimed in bewilderment.

"Now cousin, do you believe me--now do you deem me sincere in
wishing, at every risk, to soothe your angry pride?" she asked, with
a shower of nervous tears.  "None can now say that you wedded me to
recover a lost patrimony, for yours it was, and is, most justly."

"Dearest Aurora, I would rather owe its restoration in another
fashion, but still, my beloved, to you.  Behold!" and I put the deed
in the fire, where it shrivelled and was consumed in a moment.

I had no more words for the occasion, but pressed Aurora to my
breast.  I felt that she was indeed my own--all my own; that we
should be all the world to each other, and that our future would be a
life of love.

My lips could not express the debt of joy and gratitude I owed to
this dear girl; but though silent, friend reader, they were not
perhaps idle.

Thus, without any tremendous effort of romance, but in the most
ordinary and matter-of-fact way in the world, my marriage came about
with cousin Aurora.  She was to be my wife, and no Frenchwoman, after
all.

And now, leaving Aurora and Madame Blythe deep in all the mystery of
paduasoy skirts, calimanco petticoats, satin sacques, solitaires and
négligées, head-cushions and red-heeled shoes, furbelows and
flounces, bracelets, neckets, étui and appendages, long stomachers,
clocked stockings, and other things which I need not enumerate--in
short, arranging the full wardrobe of a wealthy and beautiful bride,
while I depart to arrange all about the special licence and extended
leave (taking the Horse Guards _en route_), I shall bid my friend,
the reader, who has accompanied me to this happy conclusion, for a
time, perhaps, a kind adieu.

THE END.

  LONDON:
  SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
  COVENT GARDEN.