Rising amid the coppice, on a knoll, I found the chapel of St. Nicolas--a plain but sturdy old Gothic structure, the low round arches, zigzag ornaments, and grimly-grotesque carvings of which declared it to be coeval, perhaps, with Charles, Lord of Lower Lorraine. It contained an altar and shrine of St. Nicolas, before both of which some oil-lamps, that were nightly lit by the old canonesses of a neighbouring establishment, were burning and sputtering in the currents of air. I unbitted and stabled my charger, relaxed his saddle-girths, and left him in one of the stalls built near the porch for the horses of visitors. Entering, I shut the door, rolled my cloak round me, and with my sword, pistols, and a flask of good brandy, endeavoured to make myself at ease, after dropping a few coins into the visitors' box, lest I might depart with the shades of night and forget all about it on the morrow. I then composed myself to sleep on a bench at the lower end of the chapel. The altar lamps flickered and flared in the currents of wind; but, as my eye become accustomed to their feeble light, the features of the chapel grew gradually clearer to my eye, and many a stone visage that was hideously grotesque, seemed to laugh and wink to me, from the carved corbeilles of the roof, and the massive bosses that clasped the interlacings of the groined arches. St. Nicolas, with a halo of gilded iron round his head, stood quaintly out in bold relief from the painted wall on one side; on the other, framed in marble, shone a large sheet of polished copper, whereon was written a complete history of the battle fought before the walls of Nanci in 1475 by Charles the Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, who, with the flower of his followers, was there slain by the soldiers of René, Duke of Lorraine. On this plate were graven the names and armorial bearings of all the Burgundian knights who perished with Duke Charles; and the list closed by a request that the pious reader would pray for their souls, as their bodies were all interred in this chapel of St. Nicolas. There were certainly more pleasant places wherein to pass a night than that old chapel, with all its buried dead and gloomy associations of desperation and defeat; but Scot though I was, and deeply imbued, moreover, by that superstition which few of my countrymen are without, I thought not of the hacked helmets and knightly bones that lay beneath me, or of the chances of spectral appearances, as the mid-mirk hour of the night approached--as the air waxed colder and the altar lights grew dim--I thought only of my own wayward fate; of the strange passages of my life during the last few years; of the dangers I had escaped and those I might yet encounter; of Louise, whom I loved so well--who loved me in return, but from whom I seemed hopelessly separated for ever.