"Ye hae dune weel, my young birkie," said he; "ah, pikes and pistols! Let them come, and we will show Count Carlstein that we care as little for Austrians as our forefathers did for Rome, despite that lying loon, Hegisippus. Hallo, provant master! serve the lads round wi a quaigh fu' o' brandy; and let us all drink '_Tir nan beann, nan glean, a' nan gnaisgeach!_' (the country of mountains, of valleys, and heroes,) for it may be the last drop many among us will taste in this world, and my mind misgives me that we'll no get muckle in the next. Let the pipers blow fire into our hearts, while Balcomie's company pile their pikes, and stand by the bastions to work the cannon!" CHAPTER XVIII. HOW OUR OLD SCOTTISH BLADES POMMELED THE IMPERIALISTS. As we had secured, sunk, or destroyed, all the boats and other craft on the Elbe, the Imperialists had no other means of crossing but passing, at push of pike, the long stone bridge which spanned the river by its strong and stately arches; and as the whole line of it, and the approaches thereto, were liable to be raked by the cannon and musketry of the sconce, they made immediate preparations to gain the latter by assault. There were not less than ten thousand men approaching to force this passage, which our five hundred Highlanders were left to defend. They were led by the great Count of Carlstein, whose name was only less familiar to us than that of Count Tilly. He was said to be a distinguished soldier of fortune, on whom the ambitious but generous Emperor had freely bestowed (that which did not belong to him) a Bohemian coronet, together with a free gift of that magnificent Castle of Carlstein, built by Charles IV., eight miles from Prague, and where the regalia of the conquered palatinate were kept. At length, then, we saw them, and were invested and surrounded by those haughty, proud, and ferocious soldiers of the Empire, to whom battle was a pastime, and human blood as water; the terror of the Protestants and scourge of Bohemia; those sons of rapine and outrage, steeped to the lips in the darkest crimes, yet flushed by the memory of a hundred victories. Numerous though they were, our little band of kilted clansmen stood to their arms undauntedly, feeling an honest confidence in their own valour, with a hatred of their enemies; for in the name of religion, with the cross of God on their standards and on their breasts, those Imperialists, wherever they had been victorious, at Fleura, at Bergen-op-Zoom, and after every field from Prague to that of Lütter, had committed such atrocities as would have made even the heart of a Nero recoil.