A partial thaw, which had been setting in, made portions of the snow-covered road deep and heavy, but we soon left the French infantry far in our rear, though they continued to follow us double quick, determined to have a little shooting if possible, as they had enjoyed none since the day of Minden. We soon distanced them more than a mile, and ere long saw the tower of Freyenthal dotted with the red coats of our comrades, and with rather anxious eyes I measured the long slope that lay between us and the bridge, where we could see our working party, now that their mining task was over, sitting on the parapets in their shirt sleeves, and conversing. Near them, on horseback, was an officer, in whom, by his kevenhüller hat and scarlet feather, I had no difficulty in recognising Major Shirley. As we came on at a hand-gallop, we suddenly saw a commotion among our men at the bridge as they pointed towards the enemy. Then Shirley seemed to gesticulate violently, and order them to fall back, waving a match which he had snatched from one of them, and which was smoking in his hand. We saw him stoop from his saddle and fire the train! In a minute after this there was a roar in the still air; amid a cloud of dust and smoke the old bridge of the Lahn rose bodily aloft, almost in a solid mass, and then sank in foam and ruin among the blocks of melting ice that rolled over the cascade below. "Treachery!" cried Hob Elliot, shaking his clenched and gauntleted hand; "he has blown up the bridge and cut off our retreat!" In another moment we all reined up our breathless horses at the edge of the steep rocks, through which the swollen winter stream was roaring and boiling in its mad career towards the Rhine. "In the name of Heaven," I exclaimed, filled with anger and apprehension, "why has this been done? Rascals, who ordered this?--you have ruined us." "Major Shirley is alone to blame, sir, not we," replied a sergeant on the other side, saluting me as he spoke; and though the black stream that roared between us was only thirty yards broad, the nature of its banks and its force defied all attempts to cross by swimming. "It is most unfortunate, my dear Gauntlet," cried Shirley, with a bland and broader smile than usual on his face--"most unfortunate affair--the more so as the enemy are coming rapidly on." "But, sirrah, what in the world tempted you to commit this act of folly?" I demanded, furiously.