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.