"Very well," said he coolly; "make some interest with an officer, and we may shoot you instead--forward, escort!" and we were marched to a small open shed, which stood under some large trees that grew near the river. Against one of these trees stood a ladder, and Bandolo, who on this occasion had constituted himself assistant to the provost-marshal, superintended the arrangement of certain cords, having ugly loops thereon, from the branches of the trees. My fellow prisoners were six Croats and two Germans. They were all tied with cords; the Croats sat on the ground in sullen silence, glaring at their guards from under their fur caps and savage elf-locks; the two Germans had smoked themselves into a state of dreamy indifference, and sat with their lack-lustre eyes fixed on the flowing river. Around us, the soldiers of the escort were quietly cleaning their arms, rubbing down their horses, and cooking their rations on a large fire (composed of tables, chairs, &c., taken from a neighbouring house), previous to marching. Though I could face death in any form when encountering him in the ranks, with the colours above and my comrades beside me, to die thus was a very different thing. To be left hanging like a dog or a thief from the branch of a tree (though the sergeant assured me "it was a most respectable gibbet")--I, a gentleman and soldier, in the manly garb of my native country--to die thus--and to die without a crime! The reflection was intolerable! But there was not one to whom I could apply for mercy or for succour. Count Carlstein had marched, and Kœningheim, had gone, no one knew whither. Devereux's Irishmen cared nothing for me. I was not their countryman; besides, I had not the means of communicating with them. As the day wore on, with an agony which cannot now be written, I watched the summer sun verging to the westward, and shedding along, the whole bosom of the Elbe its bright evening beams, throwing far across the river and its bordering meadows the lengthening shadows of every spire, and house, and tree; for as still, as glassy, and waveless as ever, the stream flowed on towards the German Sea--the same sea that washed the Scottish shore. The sun sank lower and lower; the days were then long, and the landscape was flat; yet it was within an hour of setting. Only an hour! .......