pastor had been mounted on a horse of indifferent mettle, and rode as well as he was able behind the coach just in front of the rearguard. It was clear that he was not in a grateful frame of mind, notwithstanding his freedom. Nor had he any great reason to be, for was not the fall of this great city of Magdeburg, this stronghold of Protestantism, an open and visible sign of the hated Edict?

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE ROAD TO ERFURT.

Let your journeying be never so brief, it need not be tedious. The road was as flat from Magdeburg to Strassfurt, and that was twenty miles, as is the great plain that stretches from the Zuider Zee to Warsaw and on and on. There were undulations. It was not as flat as a backgammon board, nor had it a hill that would have made an old horse out of breath.

It was a sunshiny morning towards the end of May, and the sun rises early over the German lands in May, and shines hotly towards noon on the great plain. There was little or no shelter, but horses and men, even the pastor, though he came from the pine forests of Thüringen, thought little of the heat and the dust. To the men it was a holiday jaunt after the military turmoils of the past two months. To the pastor it was a return to his flock with a wallet full, not of indulgences like that of Johann Tetzel, the Dominican, of Luther's day, but of doings and sufferings. How he would be able to point his sermons with what he had seen and heard! How he would inflame the whole forest with it! The fires, the murders, the even blacker horrors of the sack of Magdeburg, should be caught up into the trumpet of his prophecy and belched forth in his own sonorous, if not altogether silvery voice, till every valley of Thüringen and every hamlet in the hills rang with the fame and the shame of the Edict. He conceived himself as a brand plucked from a literal burning. As he rode, innumerable texts rose to his remembrance; and pathways of thought, full of intricacies, opened out therefrom, till his head almost ached by reason of the fixity with which he gazed upon the hinder seat of the coach, while in his imagination he saw a mass of upturned faces on the hillside upturned to him. The beauty of the morning and the monotony or interest of the road were not for him.

Nor did they affect the Saxon maid-servant, who from her high perch behind the coach could see every now and then the steel caps of the troopers in front glancing in the sun, and, when she felt sure the Herr Pastor was not thinking about her, she twisted her stout body about and twisted her short neck till she could win a good satisfying look at the foremost couple of horsemen behind him. As for her companion, the high-born lady's tiring woman, the Saxon girl could make nothing of her. She belonged to the east, she said. The Saxon girl had once been to Dresden. Further east was a mystery of all manner of strange peoples. The woman spoke German, but she did not look German, and she did not chatter, an unhealthy sign to the mind of the Saxon girl. She had not a look for the troopers nor for the country-side. She was thinking of the little hoard of florins and kreuzers she had left in the hands of a respectable goldsmith before she set out on this ridiculous journey with the highly-born lady, who, subject to the god of greed, owned her body and soul. The writings relative to the hoard were in a little bag, which she wore in a secure place beneath her outward and visible garments. Every now and again she pinched the spot to make sure they were there: a fact the Saxon girl noticed, but forbore to question for the reason.

For the lady and the farmer's daughter the road had different messages. Both in their ways felt the loveliness of the morning and the welling up of Spring in the blood. To the lowlier-born a little farmstead with its yellowish clayed walls and great black beams, its thatch of many seasons' straw, spoke of men and women and babes and kine. Then she remembered, and called softly out of the window "Pastor Rad," and the pastor urged his horse beside her and said a few words, but soon dropped behind again. She could make nothing of him. He did not even ask after her wound.

And "dark Ottilie" of Thüringen? The beauty of the morning set her pulses thrilling, and chanted in her ears a song of freedom. She knew well that she was not free, that she was playing the rebel against all orthodoxy of courts and the rule of princes for their women-folk. She had but these few weeks essayed the game of freedom, which had already led her into strange accidents, but danger and Spring and pride made a heady mixture. She loved this flat open road because it was new to her, and led to strange little towns. "Did that stupid old General Tilly recognise her?" She asked herself the question, and answered that these old generals and statesmen were all full of craft and ruse, and it was impossible to say. Why, if he did, should he let her go? Then her thoughts evidently fell upon the Scot: and, since he showed no sign of coming to her of his own accord, she had the word passed to him. Nigel wheeled his horse and waited till the coach was abreast. The coach was high and he needed not to bend. He saluted and said—

"Madame?"

"What is the name of this place we make for?"

"Strassfurt!"

"Is it much farther?"

"A league or so, madame!"

"And then?"

"We shall dine and proceed to Aschersleben. Then, if you are not too fatigued, we shall go on to Sangershausen." Then he looked across to Elspeth and a look of friendliness came into his eyes. "How is your wound to-day, Fräulein?"

"Better! Much better, captain!" Elspeth had another access of blushes.

"Of a truth," said "dark Ottilie" to herself, "there must have been some passages between this gentleman and our pastor's niece;" and she herself began to observe him more closely, how well he sat his horse, what a figure he had, as gallant a soldier as she remembered to have seen.

"Captain!" She threw aside her haughtiness for a moment as she would have dropped a cloak when she had loosed the clasp. "Whence came you?"

"From Scotland, madame!"

"The country of Marie Stuart?"

"She was the grandmother of our present king, Charles!"

"And what brought you here?"

"A younger son's lack of fortune, and a taste for sword-play!"

"But surely at the English court!"

"There were already too many Scots, too many younger sons, and a king who had no taste for sword-play, madame!"

"They say the English ladies are rich and beautiful! Were there none who would keep a Scottish gentleman from crossing the seas to find a fortune, when she held one in her lap?"

"I would not have looked beyond her face, madame, and, wanting a fortune of my own, would never have looked her in the face to ask for hers."

"You are too proud, sir! And how long have you plied the trade of a soldier?"

"Since Wallenstein raised his army and fought with Mansfeld. Five years, madame!"

A strange rapt gleam came into her eyes at the name of Wallenstein.

"And the fortune?" she asked.

"My Lord Verulam in his book tells us 'if a man look sharply and attentively he shall see Fortune: for though she be blind yet she is not invisible,'" said the Scot. "I am still looking for her."

"It is a good saying: and your Lord Verulam plainly had a shrewd notion that Fortune walks abroad in petticoats as often as she hides herself in the treasure-house of a king."

Nigel Charteris looked into her face, wondering exactly what she meant by her commentary, and the dark eyes held a lurking demon of laughter somewhere about