Sinking softly down among the long grass, and enveloping myself in my green plaid, I lay still and scarcely breathed, as they passed close by me, hewing at the bushes with their brandished swords, drunk, swearing, and intent on outrage. By the colour of their doublets I could perceive they were musketeers of the Count de Merodé's regiment--a band so infamous for cruelty, that in its members first originated the now familiar term marauders--from Merodeurs. Their colonel, a brutal and licentious noble, was afterwards slain by John de Wart, a colonel of irregular horse; but from his outrages, and those of his soldiers, in the capture of provinces and sack of towns, the name of Merodé will ever be remembered with abhorrence by the maids and mothers of Germany. Expecting nothing but instant death for the value of my accoutrements if discovered, I was happy to find that the ruffians passed me without observation, and bent their steps towards the adjacent village, between two green hedge-rows which concealed me from them; I then sprang up, threw my plaid across me, grasped my black-knife, and commenced my long and solitary journey towards Glückstadt. As I walked quickly away, the noise of pistol-shots and screams announced that the Merodeurs were committing some outrage upon the quiet and unoffending villagers; and by a blaze of light, that shot up between the trees, it was evident that several of the cottages had been set on fire. I was now in the territory of Saxe-Lauenburg; and, being aware that its duke, Rodolph Maximilian, served under Tilly as colonel of horse, and was one of the six brothers of that gallant House, all of whom fought in this war of aggression, I felt somewhat dubious as to my chances of escaping all the boors and peasants, his vassals, whom I was certain to meet before reaching the territory of Hamburg, over which I knew that King Christian claimed sovereignty as Count of Holstein. I suffered excessively from hunger and thirst; the excitement so recently undergone conduced greatly to increase the latter, and being aware that, if refreshment was not soon procured at all risks, the whole night would assuredly be passed without it, I resolved to put a bold face upon the matter, and, entering the first village I came to, knocked boldly at the door of a house, on the front of which swung a sign, bearing an eagle of a colour so undecided that it could not fail to please all the troops who, by chance or misfortune, might happen to march that way.