If these Danes proved stanch to their fatherland, we had no fears for Denmark or its king. Our own history has shown us how, against greater powers than those of the Imperialists, Scotland has preserved her name, her nationality, and her liberty, amid the wars of long successive ages, since that remote time when her frontier formed the boundaries of the Roman empire on the west, and all who dwelt beyond were free. One sword drawn for freedom on the slope of the Grampians, has ever been worth a thousand in the ranks of the invader; for God will ever aid a people fighting for their liberties, and the land he has given them. We were sixty miles distant from the Baltic, and Tilly had actually pushed forward his advanced posts between us and its shore; yet we pressed on, and passed the whole distance in an incredibly short time; for we could usually march thirty miles a day, though our soldiers carried snapsacks or clothes-bags, like the Swedes. We saw nothing of the Imperialists but the smoke of burning villages, which rose at the verge of the flat horizon, and served frequently to indicate where their ravagers were at work; but they were so far off, that our men never once unstrapped the hammerstalls from their locks and matches. Two unpleasant affairs happened to me on this march. During a halt at Segeberg, where, for a few hours, we occupied the old castle which the Emperor Lothaire built to keep the Sclavonians in check, I remember having a serious quarrel with Mr. Amias Paulet, an English cavalier who had come to seek his fortune in these wars. While taking a glass of Würzburger together in a tavern, his name unfortunately led me to ask if he "was any relation to that Sir Amias Paulet, the infamous abettor of Elizabeth in her treachery to Mary, queen of Scots?" He bluntly told me that he was the younger son of the said Sir Amias, though a man well up in years; and thereafter spoke of our queen's memory in a manner which I, as a Scottish gentleman, considered insulting to myself. I threw my glove in his face, drew my sword, and required him "to retract;" but Gaffer Englishman, being a stout and brave fellow, declared that he "would see me in a warmer climate than Holstein before he would do so!" Upon this, I invited him to the parade before the castle gate, where the Danish guard came forth to see the sport, and enforce fair play. There, at the second pass, I ran him fairly through the lungs, and, with my sword at his throat, compelled him to retract, as a lesson in future to speak mercifully of the dead, and of injured women. I left him in charge of the castellan, without having time to see to his wound, for our piper blew the _gathering_ for the march in ten minutes after the rencontre; but he recovered, to die long afterwards, a prisoner--poor fellow!--in the hands of the Imperialists, at the castle of Dillingen, on the Danube. My next little affair was nothing less than burning the house of a contumacious boor about his ears.