CHAPTER XXVI.

THE SCOUT; AND THE EFFECT OF A SNEEZE.

"Welcome, thou prince of spies, and my scoutmaster-general!" said Tilly in Spanish; "be seated, señor."

The scout removed his broad hat, let the folds of his cloak fall, and seated himself opposite the count with an air of fatigue.

"Have you collected much intelligence of the enemy's movements?" asked Tilly, drawing a large and well-filled purse from his girdle--a motion which made the eyes of the scout flash.

"I have, señor generalissimo," replied the stranger, in a voice which I recognised, and which made me start, for it was either that of the Hausmeister or the devil (a personage of equal merit). Then I heard the purse clink, as it was thrown by the count like a bone to a dog--and caught by the adroit hand of the spy.

"Then you can tell me of those Scots auxiliaries who were at Boitzenburg--quick, señor Bandolo!"

"Bandolo!" A new light broke upon me, and, applying my eye to the tapestry, I recognised the broad ruffian face, the cold fierce eyes and square mouth of my old acquaintance, Otto Roskilde--the Hausmeister of Glückstadt--whom I now discovered to be one and the same with that terrible Bandolo, of whom the Baron Karl had given us an account--the brother of Prudentia! His dress was somewhat different; but his false paunch and rotundity (assumed for disguise) were gone, and he stood revealed--a strong, wiry, and athletic ruffian--a bravo, with his long sable locks, and long daggers in his belt.

"The troops who were at Boitzenburg have retired down the Elbe. I tracked them to Lauenburg, in the castle of which their commander----"

"The commandante, _d'Umbar_?"

"Si, señor conde--left two companies, and marched with the remainder to Glückstadt, from whence he moved immediately to take possession of Rantzau's castle of Bredenburg."

"Who commands the two companies in the castle of Lauen?"

"A certain Major Wilson."

"Wilson--Wilson!" muttered Tilly, turning over the leaves of a memorandum book; "oh--here he is! a brave and determined cavalier--commanded five hundred of the Scottish auxiliary musketeers at the battle of Lütter, and captured a standard of Merodé's regiment. He will give us trouble, but we shall pay him a visit to-morrow. God's curse on these heretic Scots! for they meet us every where now, by the Rhine, the Elbe and the Oder. They lead all the troops in Northern Europe. What more hast thou heard?"

"That Major-general Slammersdorff is concentrating near Rapin a large force, which King Christian means to march into Silesia."

"Dost thou say so?"

"For vida del demonio--I do!"

"I should like to see this force in Silesia," said Tilly, with a quiet smile.

"Rittmaster Hume de Carrolside, with a troop of Scottish pistoliers, has arrived to reinforce Otto Louis, the rhine-grave."

"Scots again!" said Tilly, with a terrible smile, as he scratched his leg, which a Scottish musketeer had pierced by a bullet in the Hartz forest; "Maladetta! it is too much!--Ere-long we shall not have room to move between the Black Sea and the Baltic for this Protestant scum."

A mysterious sound was heard below the bed again; it sounded like the grunt of a pig, and Tilly raised his head to listen.

"Heaven keep Dreghorn awake!" thought I; "for if he sleeps and snores we are lost!"

"This old house is wonderfully full of rats," said Tilly; "well, have you heard any thing more?"

"Nothing, señor generalissimo, save that King Christian, by the erection of redoubts and turf sconces, is leaving nothing undone to secure every where the banks and the passage of the Elbe."

"The fool! when too late he will learn the power of the Empire."

"Your excellency is the greatest general under heaven; _vaya usted à los infernos_!" he added in a low voice, as he counted the gold pieces under the shade of the table. "Away to the infernal regions, for a beggarly old skinflint!"

"Go, my priceless Bandolo," said Tilly; "recross this muddy Elbe; become once more a Dane, a Dutchman, or a Holsteiner, for I know thou art a very Proteus, and spread every where the rumour that I am about to retire towards the Weser. I know that thou art faithful to the empire, Bandolo; though I have heard it said, that he who betrayeth one cause will betray another. The Count of Carlstein hath said to me more than once, that he considered the principle of secret intelligence as dishonourable. A chivalric fool! If a battle is gained, or a city won, what matters it whether or not the victors owe their success to force or fraud? No man is qualified to lead an army unless he is inclined to obtain tidings of the foe by every possible means that do not include open assassination or public dishonour."

Bandolo smiled.

"I have found thee invaluable, my good Bandolo, and would gladly yield thee some nobler recompense than that base gold, for which thou perillest life and soul every hour thou art beyond the Austrian lines."

"Señor generalissino, I will freely give back all the gold you have given me for three years past----"

"A goodly sum, Señor Bandolo!"

"Yea--I will do more; I will undertake to secure to you the passage of the Elbe if----"

"If what----" said Tilly, whose eyes glared with impatience.

"You will procure for me a wife, and this wife must be Ernestine, the Lady of Giezar, daughter of Count Rupert-with-the-red-plume."

This was said with the utmost confidence and deliberation; but the daring speech made the pulses of my heart to flutter.

"Devil take thee, blockhead," said Tilly, "for elating my heart so high, and then sinking it so low! For aught that old John de Tserclä cares, you may have all the women in the empire; but, friend, be assured you might as well look at the moon (what the deuce is shaking that tapestry so?) as this count's dark-eyed daughter. I have seen the dainty dame. Why, Bandolo, she would shrink from thy touch as from a toad. But I am neither her guardian nor her father, (thank Heaven!) and believe me, my poor presumptuous ragamuffin, you might as well raise your eyes to a princess of the House of Hapsburg, as a daughter of this proud soldier of Fortune. Maladetto! but you rate your services high."

"Because I rate them myself."

"The vilest rogue will always bring a goodly sum if sold at his own valuation," muttered Tilly, with one of his hideous smiles. I believe sincerely, that nothing would have afforded his cynical heart greater delight than to see the high-bred and accomplished Ernestine mated to the ruffian (if such a catastrophe were possible), from the very incongruity of such a union, and to humble the high military pride and boasted spotlessness of character possessed by the count, her father. "Bandolo," said he, gravely, "no more of this wild fantasy, which may hang thee, my prince of spies. Lady Ernestine is, I believe, to be the wife of my aide-de-camp, Count Kœningheim, poor man!"

"Hah!" muttered Bandolo, as his hand was covertly and almost involuntarily raised to the hilt of his murderous poniard.

"But there is no saying what we may achieve if your scheme for the passage of the Elbe is a good one," said Tilly, with a smile in his ferret eyes, as he rubbed his lean legs, which were cased in fustian breeches.

"I have learned (_how_, matters not, señor conde) that Rupert-with-the-red-plume has in his hands two Danish prisoners--Scots----"

"Mai hayas tu! Scots again!--hah--he told me not of _that_!"

"They were saved from the sconce at Boitzenburg."

"Yet I said that all there should die; and, had this order been obeyed, we should not now have to storm either the castle of Lauenburg or that of Bredenburg. Ah, those Presbyterians!" added Tilly, grinding his fangless jaws; "if I had but a few of them enveloped in pitch and sulphur, they would light our bivouac, even as the early Christians were made into candles to light the Roman circus. But quick--your scheme!" continued Tilly, while the supposed scraping of rats was again heard beneath the bed.

"Obtain these two Scots, and march them with the troops against Lauenberg. Approach in the night, and make one betray his comrades."

"How betray? thou laughest at me again, Bandolo, knowing well that these Scottish heretics are stubborn as their native rocks."

"Lead them within earshot of their sentinels, and then place a loaded pistol to the head of each."

"Good--I'll see to it!" grinned Tilly, with one of his horrible smiles, which might have frightened even the dead; "but where, in the name of good and evil, are the two Scots you speak of?"

At that moment, as the devil would have it, a tremendous sneeze was heard under the bed.

"Madre de Dios! there is some one concealed here!" exclaimed little Tilly, starting up with lire glaring in his eyes, as he unsheathed his long rapier. "Look under that bed, Bandolo, while I prick the tapestry."

Drawing his poniard, Bandolo raised the little curtain which surrounded the rails of the bed, on looking below which he was instantly grasped and dragged down by the strong hands of Dandy Dreghorn, who (rendered desperate by finding discovery inevitable, and knowing that we had but two assailants) encircled the bull-neck of the powerful Spanish ruffian with a tiger-like clutch, and rolled him on the floor, shouting--

"Strike in, Maister Rollo--strike in, for gudesake! Gie that auld wallydraigel in the breeks a jagg wi your dirk, while I pu' this ane through the heckle-pins!"

Taken completely by surprise, Bandolo was almost smothered by the dust under the bed, where he was so suddenly and ignominiously rolled. He struck furiously and at random with his poniard till the blade broke against the oak planks of the floor, down upon which Dandy pressed his throat until he was nearly strangled, vociferating all the time--

"I'll cheat the wuddy o' ye, that I will! Hech, ye damned tyke, think ye I'll ever lippen to a bodach that wore breeks!" Then he came forth panting and breathless.

Seeing that without one desperate venture all was over with us, I had rushed from my hiding-place, thrown down the table, extinguished the lights, closed with the frail, old Tilly, and escaping a pistol-shot, which he fired within a yard of my nose, wrested and tore away from his hand the long rapier with which he menaced me. Had I chosen, I could there have run it through his heart, and saved Denmark, yea, and Germany, from the Thirty Years' War; but he was an aged man, and I was not an assassin.

"Awa, sir--awa! Hide or rin, flee or soom--let us awa, or we'll tyne our lives!" cried Dreghorn, and we rushed from the dark apartment, to find the corridor and staircase crowded by Reitres and pikemen, with drawn swords, lighted torches, and stable lanterns; for the uproar and the pistol-shot had alarmed Tilly's guard of honour, and brought all the soldiers, like a swarm of hornets, to his rescue.

"Dreghorn--farewell to life," said I; "it is all over with us!"

"We've owre mony maisters noo," he groaned; "as the puddock said, whan ilka tuith o' the harrow gied him a tid."

Before this flood of armed men we retired backward into the darkened room, where Tilly was reclining breathlessly against a post of the bed, from beneath which Bandolo, with a savage and lacrymose visage, blackened and distorted by rage and strangulation, was already crawling forth.

We were about to be cut down without farther parley, when Tilly, remembering that I had spared his life, and Count Kœningheim, who hurried forward in his breeches and boots, minus vest and doublet, threw themselves between us and death, and saved us for a time.

"Withhold your hand, Bandolo--count, secure these villains!" said Tilly; "away with them to the quarter-guard, I will deal with them in the morning. Search this, and all the other apartments; double all the sentinels, for I fear me much there has been treachery."

We were immediately hurried away to a lower apartment, and handcuffed together.

On the way we passed old Spürrledter, who had been alarmed by the uproar, and appeared in his shirt, blowing the match of his carbine. On beholding us, he gaped with well-feigned astonishment, which we understood quite well, and thus neither compromised the count nor the old corporal, who, with horses for our flight, had been waiting in an adjacent thicket for three hours, as he afterwards told me; and further, that the moment Tilly was fairly in his own apartment, that he--the corporal--had come in search of us, and, being totally unable to account for our mysterious disappearance at a time so critical, had retired to bed in the stables, supposing that we had escaped without him.

Book the Fifth.