"_Halte là_! Stand where you are," cried the corporal, "or, _nom d'un Pape_! I will shoot you down with my muzzle at your head. _Ah, sacre!--canaille--Rosbif!_" A wild beating of the heart; a dryness of the lips, which I strove to moisten with my tongue; a dull sense of stupor and alarm, all soon to end, come over me, when cocking their pieces they retired backward close to the thicket. After carefully examining their priming, they were in the act of raising the butts to their shoulder to take aim, when thinking that all was over with me in this world, I strove to call to memory a prayer, and something like a solemn invocation of God was forming on my lips, when both muskets exploded upwards in the air, and their reports rung far away on the frosty atmosphere, making me give an involuntary and spasmodic leap nearly a yard high. I looked, and lo! there were my corporal and his Teuton comrade lying prostrate in the snow, while a man of great stature, armed with a large cudgel, was brandishing it above them, and kicking them the while with uncommon vehemence and vigour. "Lie there, ye loons!" he exclaimed, in a dialect I had little difficulty in recognising even in that exciting moment; "I have gi'en you a Liddesdale cloure, and _you_ a Lockerbie lick on the chaffets--ye unco' vermin!" Then he proceeded to twirl his ponderous cudgel--a branch recently torn from a tree--round his head to dance among the snow and to sing-- "Wha daur meddle wi' me? Wha daur meddle wi' me? My name is wee Jock Elliot, So wha daur meddle wi' me?" On advancing, I found to my astonishment that my protector was my comrade, Big Hob Elliot of the Scots Greys! CHAPTER XV. THE DEAD HUSSAR. "'Ods, sir, the hand o' Providence is in this!" exclaimed Hob, capering among the snow with renewed joy, but rather clumsily in his heavy jack boots; "and so you are the puir Redcoat thae devils were gaun to butcher!" "How came you here, Hob?" I inquired in a somewhat agitated voice. "How came you here, yourself, sir? But we hae nae time for spiering; we'll tak' their muskets and awa' to some place o' safety." In a trice Hob tumbled the French corporal, who was just recovering, out of his crossbelts, and appropriating his cartridge-box, handed me one musket, while arming himself with the other. We then hastened at a smart pace round the thicket, leaving the two scoundrels, French and German, to rouse them as best they could, or to smother amid the snow, for Hob had dealt each a stunning blow on the head. As we hurried on, he told me briefly and hastily that he and nine other Scots Greys had been confined in a chamber of the outworks of Ysembourg, where they were packed as closely as ever Governor Holwell's unfortunate companions were in the Black Hole at Calcutta; but suffered from extreme cold in place of heat. It occurred to one who had been a stonemason, that the paved floor was hollow underneath, so this suggested the idea of attempting an escape.