The Lion of the North: A Tale of the Times of Gustavus Adolphus by G. A. Henty (e reader pdf best .TXT) 📖

made up their minds that he had in some way fallen a victim to the peasants. The noncommissioned officers and men of his party had been severely reprimanded for leaving the village without finding him. In their defence they declared that they had searched every house and shed, and, having found no sign of him, or of any struggle having taken place, they supposed that he must have returned alone. But their excuses were not held to be valid, the idea of Malcolm having left his men without orders being so preposterous that it was held it should never have been entertained for a moment by them.

“I shall never be anxious about you again,” Nigel Graheme said, when Malcolm finished the narrative of his adventures to the officers of his regiment as they sat round the campfire on the evening when he rejoined them. “This is the third or fourth time that I have given you up for dead. Whatever happens in the future, I shall refuse to believe the possibility of any harm having come to you, and shall be sure that sooner or later you will walk quietly into camp with a fresh batch of adventures to tell us. Whoever of us may be doomed to lay our bones in this German soil, it will not be you. Some good fairy has distinctly taken charge of you, and there is no saying what brilliant destiny may await you.”

“But he must keep clear of the petticoats, Graheme,” Colonel Munro laughed; “evidently danger lurks for him there, and if he is caught napping again some Delilah will assuredly crop the hair of this young Samson of ours.”

“There was not much of Delilah in that fury who felled me with a mallet, colonel,” Malcolm laughed; “however, I will be careful in future, and will not give them a chance.”

“Ah! it may come in another form next time, Malcolm,” Munro said; “this time it was an old woman, next time it may be a young one. Beware, my boy! they are far the most dangerous, innocent though they may look.”

A laugh ran round the circle.

“Forewarned forearmed, colonel,” Malcolm said sturdily, “I will be on my guard against every female creature, young or old, in future. But I don't think that in this affair the woman has had much to boast about—she and her friends had best have left me alone.”

“That is so, Malcolm,” the colonel said warmly. “You have borne yourself well and bravely, and you have got an old head on those young shoulders of yours. You are as full of plans and stratagems as if you had been a campaigner for the last half century; and no man, even in the Green Brigade, no, not Hepburn himself, could have held that church tower more ably than you did. It will be a good tale to tell the king as we ride on the march tomorrow, for he loves a gallant deed, and the more so when there is prudence and good strategy as well as bravery. He has more than once asked if you have been getting into any new adventures, and seemed almost surprised when I told him that you were doing your duty with your company. He evidently regards it as your special mission to get into harebrained scrapes. He regards you, in fact, as a pedagogue might view the pickle of the school.”

There was a general laugh at Malcolm's expense.

“I don't know how it is I am always getting into scrapes,” the lad said half ruefully when the laugh subsided. “I am sure I don't want to get into them, colonel, and really I have never gone out of my way to do so, unless you call my march to help the Count of Mansfeld going out of my way. All the other things have come to me without any fault of my own.”

“Quite so, Graheme,” the colonel said smiling; “that's always the excuse of the boy who gets into scrapes. The question is, Why do these things always happen to you and to nobody else? If you can explain that your whole case is made out. But don't take it seriously, Malcolm,” he continued, seeing that the lad looked really crestfallen.

“You know I am only laughing, and there is not a man here, including myself, who does not envy you a little for the numerous adventures which have fallen to your lot, and for the courage and wisdom which you have shown in extricating yourself from them.”

“And now, please, will you tell me, colonel,” Malcolm said more cheerfully, “why we are turning our backs upon Ingolstadt and are marching away without taking it? I have been away for ten days, you know, and it is a mystery to me why we are leaving the only enemy between us and Vienna, after having beaten him so heartily a fortnight since, without making an effort to rout him thoroughly.”

“Maximilian's position is a very strong one, my lad, and covered as he is by the guns of Ingolstadt it would be even a harder task to dislodge him than it was to cross the Lech in his teeth. But you are wrong; his is not the only army which stands between us and Vienna. No sooner is old Tilly dead than a greater than Tilly appears to oppose us. Wallenstein is in the field again. It has been known that he has for some time been negotiating with the emperor, who has been imploring him to forgive the slight that was passed upon him before, and to again take the field.

“Wallenstein, knowing that the game was in his hands, and that the emperor must finally agree to any terms which he chose to dictate, has, while he has been negotiating, been collecting an army; and when the emperor finally agreed to his conditions, that he was at the conclusion of the peace to be assured a royal title and the fief of a sovereign state, he had an army ready to his hand, and is now on the point of entering Bohemia with 40,000 men.”

“What his plans may be we cannot yet say, but at any rate it would not do to be delaying here and leaving Germany open to Wallenstein to operate as he will. It was a stern day at Leipzig, but, mark my words, it will be sterner still when we meet Wallenstein; for, great captain as Tilly undoubtedly was, Wallenstein is far greater, and Europe will hold its breath when Gustavus and he, the two greatest captains of the age, meet in a pitched battle.”

At Munich the regiments of Munro and Spynie were quartered in the magnificent Electoral Palace, where they fared sumptuously and enjoyed not a little their comfortable quarters and the stores of old wines in the cellar. Sir John Hepburn was appointed military governor of Munich.

In the arsenal armour, arms, and clothing sufficient for 10,000 infantry were found, and a hundred and forty pieces of cannon were discovered buried beneath the floors of the palace. Their carriages were ready in the arsenal, and they were soon put in order for battle. For three weeks the army remained at Munich, Gustavus waiting to see what course Wallenstein was taking. The Imperialist general had entered Bohemia, had driven thence, with scarcely an effort, Arnheim and the Saxons, and formed a junction near Eger with the remnants of the army which had been beaten on the Lech; then, leaving a strong garrison in Ratisbon, he had marched on with an army of sixty thousand men.

He saw that his best plan to force Gustavus to loose his hold of Bavaria was to march on some important point lying between him and North Germany. He therefore selected a place which Gustavus could not abandon,