'Halt!' I exclaimed: 'halt, and surrender!' 'In whose name?' demanded a gentleman, drawing a pistol from his holster. 'In the name of Louis of France and Navarre.' 'Perish thou and he together!' replied the other, firing his pistol full in my face; but, fortunately, I made my horse plunge, and so disturbed his aim that the ball whizzed harmlessly past me. 'Forward, messieurs,' he added; 'break through these marauders!' 'Advance,' I exclaimed; 'cut down all who resist.' 'France--France and Navarre!' shouted my troopers, as they fell on with sword and pistol. I heard the screams of women inside the huge lumbering coach, which was immediately stopped, for the traces were cut, the reins wrenched from the hands of the driver, and two of the horses were shot. A confused firing of pistols, and clashing of swords, with a vast display of kicking, spurring, and hallooing ensued in the moonlight; but in a trice the carriage was ours; three of the attendants were shot, and six, including the valets and driver were taken, dismounted, disarmed, and handed over to the musketeers, who freed the traces from the dead animals, and immediately put the wheels once more into motion; but now, in the direction of Lutzelstein. All this uproar and loss of life ensued, and was over, almost in the time I have taken to narrate it. The coach was very old-fashioned, being shaped like an enormous pie-dish, with an elliptical roof, surmounted by a coronet. It was so large that it might have passed for a small cottage on carved and gilded wheels. It was covered by heraldic and allegorical devices, stars, clouds, suns, moons, and elaborate gildings. It had three large glass windows on each side. Perceiving faces at them, and being anxious to learn who these important persons were, of whose progress towards the Rhine, Gordon had been apprised so far off as the trenches at Seltz, and for whose capture the lives of three human beings had been sacrificed, I cantered forward to one of the windows, as the enormous conveyance rumbled up the steep, rocky road, and knocked on the pane with my ungloved hand, in token of amity. It was opened, and a female face, fair as beauty and pale as terror could make it, looked at me imploringly, with eyes whose blue seemed unnaturally bright in the moonbeams, which edged with light the thick masses of her golden hair; and the sentences of apology and inquiry which I had been framing died away on my lips when I recognised the soft features, and heard the beloved voice of--Marie Louise of Lorraine! CHAPTER LXIX. HUSBAND AND WIFE. I checked my horse, and stricken to the soul, like one who had been guilty of a great crime, shrank to the rear of all my party; nor did I again approach her, till we had surmounted the ascent to Lutzelstein; till the coach had rumbled over the castle bridge, and halted in the inner court, where the loud and hearty voice of Lord Dundrennan in warm congratulation, recalled me to the task I had to perform.