"The commandante, _d'Umbar_?" "Si, señor conde--left two companies, and marched with the remainder to Glückstadt, from whence he moved immediately to take possession of Rantzau's castle of Bredenburg." "Who commands the two companies in the castle of Lauen?" "A certain Major Wilson." "Wilson--Wilson!" muttered Tilly, turning over the leaves of a memorandum book; "oh--here he is! a brave and determined cavalier--commanded five hundred of the Scottish auxiliary musketeers at the battle of Lütter, and captured a standard of Merodé's regiment. He will give us trouble, but we shall pay him a visit to-morrow. God's curse on these heretic Scots! for they meet us every where now, by the Rhine, the Elbe and the Oder. They lead all the troops in Northern Europe. What more hast thou heard?" "That Major-general Slammersdorff is concentrating near Rapin a large force, which King Christian means to march into Silesia." "Dost thou say so?" "For vida del demonio--I do!" "I should like to see this force in Silesia," said Tilly, with a quiet smile. "Rittmaster Hume de Carrolside, with a troop of Scottish pistoliers, has arrived to reinforce Otto Louis, the rhine-grave." "Scots again!" said Tilly, with a terrible smile, as he scratched his leg, which a Scottish musketeer had pierced by a bullet in the Hartz forest; "Maladetta! it is too much!--Ere-long we shall not have room to move between the Black Sea and the Baltic for this Protestant scum." A mysterious sound was heard below the bed again; it sounded like the grunt of a pig, and Tilly raised his head to listen. "Heaven keep Dreghorn awake!" thought I; "for if he sleeps and snores we are lost!" "This old house is wonderfully full of rats," said Tilly; "well, have you heard any thing more?" "Nothing, señor generalissimo, save that King Christian, by the erection of redoubts and turf sconces, is leaving nothing undone to secure every where the banks and the passage of the Elbe." "The fool! when too late he will learn the power of the Empire." "Your excellency is the greatest general under heaven; _vaya usted à los infernos_!" he added in a low voice, as he counted the gold pieces under the shade of the table. "Away to the infernal regions, for a beggarly old skinflint!"