"Thus passed a few minutes of agonising suspense; Ludwig writhed in his fetters; a secret voice whispered to him, that could he burst them he yet might be saved, but they resisted his utmost efforts. Then he again heard loud voices, which gradually approached accompanied by hurried footsteps. On a sudden a rough hand tore the cloth from his eyes. "Thunderstruck, he gazed around. Three men with long beards, whom he at once recognised as Russian peasants, stood before him, staring at him with a mixture of scorn and wonder. On the ground lay several muskets and the bodies of two French soldiers. Ludwig saw himself in the power of his enemies, whom a strange chance had converted into his deliverers." Beaucaire and St Luces were also in the hands of the Russians, in whose unfriendly care we for the present leave both them and Ludwig, to recur, at a future day, to this interesting romance. THE BLUE DRAGOON;[16] A STORY OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, FROM THE CRIMINAL RECORDS OF HOLLAND. [16] The following singular story of circumstantial evidence is compressed from a collection of criminal trials, published at Amsterdam under the title "Oorkonden uit de Gedenkschriften van het Strafregt, en uit die der menschlyke Mishappen; te Amsterdam. By J. C. Van Kersleren, 1820." Notwithstanding the somewhat romantic complexion of the incidents, it has been included as genuine in the recent German collection, _Der Neue Pitaval_. 7 Band. In the town of M----, in Holland, there lived, towards the close of the last century, an elderly widow, Madame Andrecht. She inhabited a house of her own, in company with her maid-servant, who was nearly of the same age. She was in prosperous circumstances; but, being in delicate health and paralysed on one side, she had few visitors, and seldom went abroad except to church or to visit the poor. Her chief recreation consisted in paying a visit in spring to her son, who was settled as a surgeon in a village a few miles off. On these occasions, fearing a return of a paralytic attack, she was invariably accompanied by her maid, and, during these visits, her own house was left locked up, but uninhabited and unwatched. On the 30th June 17--, the widow returning to M---- from one of these little excursions, found her house had been broken open in her absence, and that several valuable articles, with all her jewels and trinkets, had disappeared. Information was immediately given to the authorities, and a strict investigation of the circumstances took place without delay.