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XXVIII. PREPARES THE GROUND 232 XXIX. ORBIT AND FOCUS 239 XXX. LOVE AND A LOCKSMITH 249 XXXI. AN ASSIGNATION 256 XXXII. PASTOR RAD AGAIN 263 XXXIII. THE PASTOR'S PILGRIMAGE 270 XXXIV. LUTHERAN AND JESUIT 278 XXXV. AN EMBASSY FOR STEPHANIE 286 XXXVI. A RECONNAISSANCE 293 XXXVII. THE DEFENCE OF THE LECH 301 XXXVIII. A SURPRISE AT RATISBON 307 XXXIX. THE CLOUDS AND SERGEANT BLICK 314 XL. RIDE, RIDE TOGETHER 320 XLI. A LATE ARRIVAL AT NICHOLAS KRAFT'S 329 XLII. IN THE ABBEY CHURCH 336

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[1]

THE MERCENARY:

A TALE OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

CHAPTER I.

IN SEARCH OF BOOTY.

It was the evening of the second day of the sack of Magdeburg. Nigel Charteris, soldier of fortune by profession and in rank captain of musketeers, sought a certain house in the Kloster Strasse, if haply it were still standing.

It troubled the captain little that Magdeburg should be sacked. He was of the Catholic faith. And Magdeburg had proved herself malignantly Protestant. She had flouted the Edict of Restitution. The Emperor Ferdinand II., Habsburger by race, Catholic to the marrow, had proclaimed that the possessions, wrenched from the grasp of the Catholics a hundred years before by the Lutherans and Calvinists, should be restored to Catholic hands, that the mass bell should tinkle in every chancel, and all be as if that pestilent monk, that Junker Georg of the Wartburg, had never been. Rome had bided her time, as Rome can always bide her time, and seize her opportunity. The Emperor found himself with a right good flail and a stout husbandman, Count Tilly, to wield it. The husbandman with his flail had arrived before the threshing-floors of Magdeburg in bleak March. It had taken him to jocund May to force an entrance, and then the threshing and the winnowing began.

It was a question if the house in the Kloster Strasse still stood, for even before the turbulent entry of the Emperor's troops fires had broken out, and still burned furiously. It was a city of shards and carcases. Here and there streets still stood, as a patch of corn stands, left for to-morrow's cutting, amid the prone swathes. Nigel wondered if he would be able to recognise the street that he had left as the dawn broke that morning.

"This is the street, Captain. The spire's had a shake!" said Sergeant Blick.

Nigel nodded, and strode over the stones, and the sheet-lead, and the broken images of stone and of human flesh that lay in his path. But for the loss of its church-tower the street was still passably whole. Clambering over the barrier of ruins, a half company of musketeers followed in loose order, expectant of more plunder. All day they had spent in camp, and were now let out for their share in the ruthless harvesting. There was method too in their captain's gleaning.

He halted his men, and addressed Sergeant Blick in the tone of a man used to command and accustomed to be obeyed.

"Now, Sergeant, you and two men come with me. The rest may help themselves in this street. It is now seven o'clock. At nine they will fall in, and march back to camp. No throat-cutting! No drunkenness! And no mishandling of women!"

Sergeant Blick wheeled about, marched three paces to the front, and repeated the orders in a fine sonorous voice. By way of making them more intelligible, he called his men "drunken pigs" and "little calves" and "blunderheads," and added a few very personal admonitions to the more wilfully or weakly inclined of the flock. Then he wheeled about again, his two picked men followed, and Nigel, in front of the three, marched up the street till he came to a tall house which stood with projecting upper storeys and an almost magisterial aspect amid its smaller fellows.

The massive door yielded to a push, admitting them to a stone-paved hall, on either side of which there were some very meagrely furnished rooms, and behind it kitchens, larders, and servants' quarters equally bare. Nothing of potable or eatable was to be seen. Nor was there a single kitchen wench.

Having made this reconnaissance, Nigel mounted the wide open staircase with Sergeant Blick at his heels, and the two musketeers, two steps behind, to preserve the distance prescribed by the sergeant's rank.

They halted at the first landing. From behind the first door came the stifled cry of a woman, and a dull sound of a