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And all hurrying, jostling, crawling southwards. It seemed to me that the world was marching southwards; that if we went on we must fall in at the end of this with every one we knew. And the thought comforted me.

Steve put it into words after his fashion. 'It must be a big place we are going to,' he said, about noon of the second day, 'or who is to eat all this? And do you mark, Master Martin? We meet no one coming back. All go south. This place Nuremberg that they talk of must be worth seeing.'

'It should be,' I said.

And after that the excitement of the march began to take hold of me. I began to think and wonder, and look forward, with an eagerness I did not understand, to the issues of this.

We lay a night at Bamberg, where the crowd and confusion and the stress of people were so great that Steve would have it we had come to Nuremberg. And certainly I had never known such a hurly-burly, nor heard of it except at the great fair at Dantzic. The night after we lay at Erlangen, which we found fortified, trenched, and guarded, with troops lying in the square, and the streets turned into stables. From that place to Nuremberg was a matter of ten miles only; but the press was so great on the road that it took us a good part of the day to ride from one to the other. In the open country on either side of the way strong bodies of horse and foot were disposed. It seemed to me that here was already an army and a camp.

But when late in the afternoon we entered Nuremberg itself, and viewed the traffic in the streets, and the endless lines of gabled houses, the splendid mansions and bridges, the climbing roofs and turrets and spires of this, the greatest city in Germany, then we thought little of all we had seen before. Here thousands upon thousands rubbed shoulders in the streets; here continuous boats turned the river into solid land. Here we were told were baked every day a hundred thousand loaves of bread; and I saw with my own eyes a list of a hundred and thirty-eight bakehouses. The roar of the ways, choked with soldiers and citizens, the babel of strange tongues, the clamour of bells and trumpets, deafened us. The constant crowding and pushing and halting turned our heads. I forgot my grief and my hope too. Who but a madman would look to find a single face where thousands gazed from the windows? or could deem himself important with this swarming, teeming hive before him? Steve stared stupidly about him; I rode dazed and perplexed. The troopers laughed at us, or promised us greater things when we should see the Swedish Lager outside the town, and Wallenstein's great camp arrayed against it. But I noticed that even they, as we drew nearer to the heart of the city, fell silent at times, and looked at one another, surprised at the great influx of people and the shifting scenes which the streets presented.

For myself and Steve and the men, we were as good as nought. A house in the Ritter-Strasse was assigned to my lady for her quarters-no one could lodge in the city without the leave of the magistrates; and we were glad to get into it and cool our dizzy heads, and look at one another. Count Hugo stayed awhile, standing with my lady and the Waldgrave in one of the great oriels that overlooked the street. But a mounted messenger, sent on from the Town House, summoned him, and he took horse again for the camp. I do not know what we should have done without him at entering. The soldiers, who crowded the streets, showed scant respect for names, and would as soon have jostled my lady as a citizen's wife; but wherever he came hats were doffed and voices lowered, and in the greatest press a way was made for him as by magic.

For that night we had seen enough. I thought we had seen all, or that nothing in my life would ever surprise me again. But next day my lady went up to the Burg on the hill in the middle of the city to look abroad, and took Steve and myself with her. And then I found that I had not seen the half. The city, all roofs and spires and bridges, girt with a wall of seventy towers, roared beneath us; and that I had expected. But outside the wall I now saw a second city of huts and tents, with a great earthwork about it, and bastions and demilunes and picquets posted.

This was the Swedish Lager. It lay principally to the south of the city proper, though on all sides it encircled it more or less. They told me that there lay in it about forty thousand soldiers and twenty thousand horses, and twenty thousand camp followers; but the number was constantly increasing, death and disease notwithstanding, so that it presently stood as high as sixty thousand fighting men and half as many followers, to say nothing of the garrison that lay in the city, or the troops posted to guard the approaches. It seemed to me, gazing over that mighty multitude from the top of the hill, that nothing could resist such a force; and I looked abroad with curiosity for the enemy.

I expected to view his army cheek by jowl with us; and I was disappointed when I saw beyond our camp to southward, where I was told he lay, only a clear plain with the little river Rednitz flowing through it. This plain was a league and more in width, and it was empty of men. Beyond it rose a black wooded ridge, very steep and hairy.

My lady explained that Wallenstein's army lay along this ridge-seventy thousand men, and forty thousand horses, and Wallenstein himself. His camp we heard was eight miles round, the front guarded by a line of cannon, and taking in whole villages and castles. And now I looked again I saw the smoke hang among the trees. They whispered in Nuremberg that no man in that army took pay; that all served for booty; and that the troopers that sacked Magdeburg and followed Tilly were, beside these, gentle and kindly men.

'God help us!' my lady cried fervently. 'God help this great city! God help the North! Never was such a battle fought as must be fought here!'

We went down very much sobered, filled with awe and wonder and great thoughts, the dullest of us feeling the air heavy with portents, the more clerkly considering of Armageddon and the Last Fight. Briefly-for thirteen years the Emperor and the Papists had hustled and harried the Protestants; had dragooned Donauwörth, and held down Bohemia, and plundered the Palatinate, and crushed the King of Denmark, and wherever there was a weak Protestant state had pressed sorely on it. Then one short year before I stood on the Burg above the Pegnitz, the Protestant king had come out of the North like a thunderbolt, had shattered in a month the Papist armies, had run like a devouring fire down the Priests' Lane, rushed over Bohemia, shaken the Emperor on his throne!

But could he maintain himself? That was now to be seen. To the Emperor's help had come all who loved the old system, and would have it that the south was Germany; all who wished to chain men's minds and saw their profit in the shadow of the imperial throne; all who lived by license and plunder, and reckoned a mass to-day against a murder to-morrow. All these had come, from the great Duke of Friedland grasping at empire, to the meanest freebooter with peasant's blood on his hands and in his veins; and there they lay opposite us, impregnably placed on the Burgstall, waiting patiently until famine and the sword should weaken the fair city, and enable them to plunge their vulture's talons into its vitals.

No wonder that in Nuremberg the citizens could be distinguished from the soldiers by their careworn faces; or that many a man stood morning and evening to gaze at the carved and lofty front of his house-by St. Sebald's or behind the new Cathedral-and wondered how long the fire would spare it. The magistrates who had staked all-their own and the city's-on this cast, went about with stern, grave faces and feared almost to meet the public eye. With a doubled population, with a huge army to feed, with order to keep, with houses and wives and daughters of their own to protect, with sack and storm looming luridly in the future, who had cares like theirs?

One man only, and him I saw as we went home from the Burg. It was near the foot of the Burg hill, where the strasse meets three other ways. At that time Count Tilly's crooked, dwarfish figure and pale horse's face, and the great hat and boots which seemed to swallow him up, were fresh in my mind; and sometimes I had wondered whether this other great commander were like him. Well, I was to know; for through the crowd at the junction of these four roads, while we stood waiting to pass, there came a man on a white horse, followed by half a score of others on horseback; and in a moment I knew from the shouting and the way women thrust papers into his hands that we saw the King of Sweden.

He wore a plain buff coat and a grey flapped hat with a feather; a tall man and rather bulky, his face massive and fleshy, with a close moustache trimmed to a point and a small tuft on his chin. His aspect was grave; he looked about him with a calm eye, and the shouting did not seem to move him. They told me that it was Baner, the Swedish General, who rode with him, and our Bernard of Weimar who followed. But my eye fell more quickly on Count Leuchtenstein, who rode after, with the great Chancellor Oxenstierna; in him, in his steady gaze and serene brow and wholesome strength, I traced the nearest likeness to the king.

And so I first saw the great Gustavus Adolphus. It was said that he would at times fall into fits of Berserk rage, and that in the field he was another man, keen as his sword, swift as fire, pitiless to those who flinched, among the foremost in the charge, a very thunderbolt of war. But as I saw him taking papers from women's hands at the end of the Burg Strasse, he had rather the air of a quiet, worthy prince-of Coburg or Darmstadt, it might be, – no dresser and no brawler; nor would any one, to see him then, have thought that this was the lion of the north who had dashed the pride of Pappenheim and flung aside the firebrands of the south. Or that even now he had on his shoulders the burden of two great nations and the fate of a million of men.

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

After this it fared with us as it fares at last with the driftwood that chance or the woodman's axe has given to a forest stream in Heritzburg. After rippling over the shallows and shooting giddily down slopes-or perchance lying cooped for days in some dark bend, until the splash of the otter or the spring freshet has sent it dancing on in sunshine and shadow-it reaches at last the Werra. It floats out on the bosom of the great stream, and no longer tossed and chafed by each tiny pebble, feels the force of wind and stream-the great forces of the world. The banks recede from sight, and one of a million atoms, it is borne on gently and irresistibly, whither it does not know. So it was with us. From the day we fell in with Count Leuchtenstein and set our faces towards Nuremberg, and in a greater degree after we reached that city, we embarked on a wider current of adventure, a fuller and less selfish life. If we had still our own cares and griefs, hopes and perils-as must be the case, I suppose, until we die-we had other common ones which we shared with tens of thousands, rich and poor, gentle and simple. We had to dread sack and storm; we prayed for relief and safety in company with all who rose and lay down within the walls. When a hundred waggons of corn slipped through the Croats and came in, or Duke Bernard of Weimar beat up a corner of the Burgstall and gave Wallenstein a bad night, we ran out into the streets to tell and hear the news. Similarly, when tidings came that Tzerclas with his two thousand ruffians had burned the King of Sweden's colours, put on green sashes, and marched into the enemy's camp, we were not alone in our gloomy anticipations. We still had our private adventures, and I am going to tell them. But besides these, it should be remembered that we ran the risks, and rose every morning fresh to the fears, of Nuremberg. When bread rose to ten, to fifteen, to twenty times its normal price; when the city, where many died every day of famine, plague, and wounds, began to groan and heave in its misery; when through all the country round the peasants crawled and died among the dead; when Wallenstein, that dark man, heedless of the fearful mortality in his own camp, still sat implacable on the heights and refused all the king's invitations to battle, we grew pale and gloomy, stern-eyed and thin-cheeked with the rest. We dreamed of Magdeburg as they did; and as the hot August days passed slowly over the starving city and still no end appeared, but only with each day some addition of misery, we felt our hearts sink in unison with theirs.

And we had to share, not their lot only, but their labours. We had not been in the town twenty-four hours before Steve, Jacob, and Ernst were enrolled in the town militia; to me, either out of respect to my lady, or on account of my stature, a commission as lieutenant was granted. We drilled every morning from six o'clock until eight in the fields outside the New Gate; the others went again at sunset to practise their weapons, but I was exempt from this drill, that the women might not be left alone. At all times we had our appointed rendezvous in case of alarm or assault. The Swedish veterans strolled out of the camp and stood to laugh at our clumsiness. But the excellent order which prevailed among them made them favourites, and we let them laugh, and laughed again.

The Waldgrave, who had long had Duke Bernard's promise, received a regiment of horse, so that he lay in the camp and should have been a contented man, since his strength had come back to him. But to my surprise he showed signs of lukewarmness. He seemed little interested in the service, and was often at my lady's house in the Ritter Strasse, when he would have been better at his post. At first I set this down to his passion for my lady, and it seemed excusable; but within a week I stood convinced that this no longer troubled him. He paid scant attention to her, but would sit for hours looking moodily into the street. And I-and not I alone-began to watch him closely.

I soon found that Count Hugo was right. The once gallant and splendid young fellow was a changed man. He was still comely and a brave figure, but the spirit in him was quenched. He was nervous, absent, irritable. His eyes had a wild look; on strangers he made an unfavourable impression. Doubtless, though his wounds had healed, there remained some subtle injury that spoiled the man; and often I caught my lady looking at him sadly, and knew that I was not the only one with cause for mourning.

But how strange he was we did not know until a certain day, when my lady and I were engaged together over some accounts. It was evening, and the three men were away drilling. The house was very quiet. Suddenly he flung in upon us with a great noise, his colour high, his eyes glittering. His first action was to throw his feathered hat on one chair, and himself into another.

'I've seen him!' he said. 'Himmel! he is a clever fellow. He will worst you, cousin, yet-see if he does not. Oh, he is a clever one!'

'Who?' my lady said, looking at him in some displeasure.

'Who? Tzerclas, to be sure!' he answered, chuckling.

'You have seen him!' she exclaimed, rising.

'Of course I have!' he answered. 'And you will see him too, one of these days.'

My lady looked at me, frowning. But I shook my head. He was not drunk.

'Where?' she asked, after a pause. 'Where did you see him, Rupert?'

'In the street-where you see other men,' he answered, chuckling again. 'He should not be there, but who is to keep him out? He is too clever. He will get his way in the end, see if he does not!'

'Rupert!' my lady cried in wrathful amazement, 'to hear you, one would suppose you admired him.'

'So I do,' he replied coolly. 'Why not? He has all the wits of the family. He is as cunning as the devil. Take a hint, cousin; put yourself on the right side. He will win in the end!' And the Waldgrave rose restlessly from his chair, and, going to the window, began to whistle.

My lady came swiftly to me, and it grieved me to see the pain and woe in her face.

'Is he mad?' she muttered.

I shook my head.

'Do you think he has really seen him?' she whispered. We both stood with our eyes on him.

'I fear so, my lady,' I said with reluctance.

'But it would cost him his life,' she muttered eagerly, 'if he were found here!'

'He is a bold man,' I answered.

'Ah! so was he-once,' she replied in a peculiar tone, and she pointed stealthily to the unconscious man in the window. 'A month ago he would have taken him by the throat anywhere. What has come to him?'

'God knows,' I answered reverently. 'Grant only he may do us no harm!'

He turned round at that, humming gaily, and went out, seeming almost unconscious of our presence; and I made as light of the matter to my lady as I could. But Tzerclas in the city, the Waldgrave mad, or at any rate not sane, and last, but not least, the strange light in which the latter chose to regard the former, were circumstances I could not easily digest. They filled me with uneasy fears and surmises. I began to perambulate the crowd, seeking furtively for a face; and was entirely determined what I would do if I found it. The town was full, as all besieged cities are, of rumours of spies and treachery, and of reported overtures made now to the city behind the back of the army, and now to the army to betray the city. A single word of denunciation, and Tzerclas' life would not be worth three minutes' purchase-a rope and the nearest butcher's hook would end it. My mind was made up to say the word.

I suppose I had been going about in this state of vigilance three days or more, when something, but not the thing I sought, rewarded it. At the time I was on my way back from morning drill. It was a little after eight, and the streets and the people wore an air bright, yet haggard. Night, with its perils, was over; day, with its privations, lay before us. My mind was on the common fortunes, but I suppose my eyes were mechanically doing their work, for on a sudden I saw something at a window, took perhaps half a step, and stopped as if I had been shot.

I had seen Marie's face! Nay, I still saw it, while a man might count two. Then it was gone. And I stood gasping.

I suppose I stood so for half a minute, waiting, with the blood racing from my heart to my head, and every pulse in my body beating. But she did not reappear. The door of the house did not open. Nothing happened.

Yet I had certainly seen her; for I remembered particulars-the expression of her face, the surprise that had leapt into her eyes as they met mine, the opening of the lips in an exclamation.

And still I stood gazing at the window and nothing happened.

At last I came to myself, and I scanned the house. It was a large house of four stories, three gables in width. The upper stories jutted out; the beams on which they rested were finely carved, the gables were finished off with rich, wooden pinnacles. In each story, the lowest excepted, were three long, low windows of the common Nuremberg type, and the whole had a substantial and reputable air.

The window at which I had seen Marie was farthest from the door, on the first floor. To go to the door I had to lose sight of it, and perhaps for that reason I stood the longer. At last I went and knocked, and waited in a fever for some one to come. The street was a thoroughfare. There were a number of people passing. I thought that all the town would go by before a dragging foot at last sounded inside, and the great nail-studded door was opened on the chain. A stout, red-faced woman showed herself in the aperture.

'What is it?' she asked.

'You have a girl in this house, named Marie Wort,' I answered breathlessly. 'I saw her a moment ago at the window. I know her, and I wish to speak to her.'

The woman's little eyes dwelt on me stolidly for a space. Then she made as if she would shut the door. 'For shame!' she said spitefully. 'We have no girls here. Begone with you!'

But I put my foot against the door. 'Whose house is this?' I said.

'Herr Krapp's,' she answered crustily.

'Is he at home?'

'No, he is not,' she retorted; 'and if he were, we have no baggages here.' And again she tried to shut the door, but I prevented her.

'Where is he?' I asked sternly.

'He is at morning drill, if you must know,' she snapped; 'and his two sons. Now, will you let me shut my door? Or must I cry out?'

'Nonsense, mother!' I said. 'Who is in the house besides yourself?'

'What is that to you?' she replied, breathing short.

'I have told you,' I said, trying to control my anger. 'I-'

But, quick as lightning, the door slammed to and cut me short. I had thoughtlessly moved my foot. I heard the woman chuckle and go slipshod down the passage, and though I knocked again in a rage, the door remained closed.

I fell back and looked at the house. An elderly man in a grave, sober dress was passing, among others, and I caught his eye.

'Whose house is that?' I asked him.

'Herr Krapp's,' he answered.

'I am a stranger,' I said. 'Is he a man of substance?'

The person I addressed smiled. 'He is a member of the Council of Safety,' he said dryly. 'His brother is prefect of this ward. But here is Herr Krapp. Doubtless he has been at St. Sebald's drilling.'

I thanked him, and made but two steps to Herr Krapp's side. He was the other's twin-elderly, soberly dressed, his only distinction a sword and pistol in his girdle and a white shoulder sash.

'Herr Krapp?' I said.

'The same,' he answered, eying me gravely.

'I am the Countess of Heritzburg's steward,' I said. I began to see the need of explanation. 'Doubtless you have heard that she is in the city?'

'Certainly,' he answered. 'In the Ritter Strasse.'

'Yes,' I replied. 'A fortnight ago she missed a young woman, one of her attendants. She was lost in a night adventure,' I continued, my throat dry and husky. 'A few minutes ago I saw her looking from one of your windows.'

'From one of my windows?' he exclaimed in a tone of surprise.

'Yes,' I said stiffly.

He opened his eyes wide. 'Here?' he said. He pointed to his house.

I nodded.

'Impossible!' he replied, shutting his lips suddenly. 'Quite impossible, my friend. My household consists of my two sons and myself. We have a housekeeper only, and two lads. I have no young women in the house.'

'Yet I saw her face, Herr Krapp, at your window,' I answered obstinately.

'Wait,' he said; 'I will ask.'

But when the old housekeeper came she had only the same tale to tell. She was alone. No young woman had crossed the threshold for a week past. There was no other woman there, young or old.

'You will have it that I have a young man in the house next!' she grumbled, shooting scorn at me.

'I can assure you that there is no one here,' Herr Krapp said civilly. 'Dorcas has been with me many years, and I can trust her. Still if you like you can walk through the rooms.'

But I hesitated to do that. The man's manner evidenced his sincerity, and in face of it my belief wavered. Fancy, I began to think, had played me a trick. It was no great wonder if the features which were often before me in my dreams, and sometimes painted themselves on the darkness while I lay wakeful, had for once taken shape in the daylight, and so vividly as to deceive me. I apologised. I said what was proper, and, with a heavy sigh, went from the door.

Ay, and with bent head. The passing crowd and the sunshine and the distant music of drum and trumpet grated on me. For there was yet another explanation. And I feared that Marie was dead.

I was still brooding sadly over the matter when I reached home. Steve met me at the door, but, feeling in no mood for small talk just then, I would have passed him by and gone in, if he had not stopped me.

'I have a message for you, lieutenant,' he said.

'What is it?' I asked without curiosity.

'A little boy gave it to me at the door,' he answered. 'I was to ask you to be in the street opposite Herr Krapp's half an hour after sunset this evening.'

I gasped. 'Herr Krapp's!' I exclaimed.

Steve nodded, looking at me queerly. 'Yes; do you know him?' he said.

'I do now,' I muttered, gulping down my amazement. But my face was as red as fire, the blood drummed in my ears. I had to turn away to hide my emotion. 'What was the boy like?' I asked.

But it seemed that the lad had made off the moment he had done his errand, and Steve had not noticed him particularly. 'I called after him to know who sent him,' he added, 'but he had gone too far.'

I nodded and mumbled something, and went on into the house. Perhaps I was still a little sore on my girl's account, and resented the easy way in which she had dropped out of others' lives. At any rate, my instinct was to keep the thing to myself. The face at the window, and then this strange assignation, could have only one meaning; but, good or bad, it was for me. And I hugged myself on it, and said nothing even to my lady.

The day seemed long, but at length the evening came, and when the men had gone to drill and the house was quiet, I slipped out. The streets were full at this hour of men passing to and fro to their drill-stations, and of women who had been out to see the camp, and were returning before the gates closed. The bells of many of the churches were ringing; some had services. I had to push my way to reach Herr Krapp's house in time; but once there the crowd of passers served my purpose by screening me, as I loitered, from farther remark; while I took care, by posting myself in a doorway opposite the window, to make it easy for any one who expected me to find me.

And then I waited with my heart beating. The clocks were striking a half after seven when I took my place, and for a time I stood in a ferment of excitement, now staring with bated breath at the casement, where I had seen Marie, now scanning all the neighbouring doorways, and then again letting my eyes rove from window to window both of Krapp's house and the next one on either side. As the latter were built with many quaint oriels, and tiny dormers, and had lattices in side-nooks, where one least looked to find them, I was kept expecting and employed. I was never quite sure, look where I would, what eyes were upon me.

But little by little, as time passed and nothing happened, and the strollers all went by without accosting me, and no faces save strange ones showed at the windows, the heat of expectation left me. The chill of disappointment took its place. I began to doubt and fear. The clocks struck eight. The sun had been down an hour. Half that time I had been waiting.

To remain passive was no longer bearable, and sick of caution, I stepped out and began to walk up and down the street, courting rather than avoiding notice. The traffic was beginning to slacken. I could see farther and mark people at a distance; but still no one spoke to me, no one came to me. Here and there lights began to shine in the houses, on gleaming oak ceilings and carved mantels. The roofs were growing black against the paling sky. In nooks and corners it was dark. The half-hour sounded, and still I walked, fighting down doubt, clinging to hope.

But when another quarter had gone by, doubt became conviction. I had been fooled! Either some one who had seen me loitering at Krapp's in the morning and heard my tale had gone straight off, and played me this trick; or-Gott im Himmel! – or I had been lured here that I might be out of the way at home.

That thought, which should have entered my thick head an hour before, sped me from the street, as if it had been a very catapult. Before I reached the corner I was running; and I ran through street after street, sweating with fear. But quickly as I went, my thoughts outpaced me. My lady was alone save for her women. The men were drilling, the Waldgrave was in the camp. The crowded state of the streets at sunset, and the number of strangers who thronged the city favoured certain kinds of crime; in a great crowd, as in a great solitude, everything is possible.

I had this in my mind. Judge, then, of my horror, when, as I approached the Ritter Strasse, I became aware of a dull, roaring sound; and hastening to turn the corner, saw a large mob gathered in front of our house, and filling the street from wall to wall. The glare of torches shone on a thousand upturned faces, and flamed from a hundred casements. At the windows, on the roofs, peering over balconies and coping-stones and gables, and looking out of doorways were more faces, all red in the torchlight. And all the time as the smoking light rose and fell, the yelling, as it seemed to me, rose and fell with it-now swelling into a stern roar of exultation, now sinking into an ugly, snarling noise, above which a man might hear his neighbour speak.

I seized the first I came to-a man standing on the skirts of the mob, and rather looking on than taking part. 'What is it?' I said, shaking him roughly by the arm. 'What is the matter here?'

'Hallo!' he answered, starting as he turned to me. 'Is it you again, my friend?'

I had hit on Herr Krapp!' Yes!' I cried breathlessly. 'What is it? what is amiss?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'They are hanging a spy,' he answered. 'Nothing more. Irregular, but wholesome.'

I drew a deep breath. 'Is that all?' I said.

He eyed me curiously. 'To be sure,' he said. 'What did you think it was?'

'I feared that there might be something wrong at my lady's,' I said, beginning to get my breath again. 'I left her alone at sunset. And when I saw this crowd before the house I-I could almost have cut off my hand. Thank God, I was mistaken!'

He looked at me again and seemed to reflect a moment. Then he said, 'You have not found the young woman you were seeking?'

I shook my head.

'Well, it occurred to me afterwards-but at which window did you see her?'

'At a window on the first floor; the farthest from the door,' I answered.