Outside Mynheer Van Ryck's house, a month or so later, there stood a coach upon which was placed a small amount of baggage. By its side, held by a groom who had some considerable difficulty in restraining its restlessness, a bright bay mare emitted great gusts from her nostrils and pawed the stones impatiently--a mare on the corners of whose saddle-cloth were stamped a crown, the letters "A.R." and a pair of cross swords, as was also the case with the holsters and the bridle-plate. After the fall of the Citadel, and before the French were allowed to march out on condition that they returned at once into France and separated, the whole place had been ransacked by the English troops, and amongst the horses found was one that, later, a mousquetaire said belonged to the English prisoner who should have been shot the day the Citadel fell. That prisoner, being now at liberty, was sent for by orders of General Ingoldsby, and, when the meeting between him and the animal was witnessed, there was no need for him to confirm the statement. For La Rose, on hearing Bevill's voice, created such a stampede among the other horses and rushed at him with such endearments--testified by nearly knocking him down with her head and then by rubbing her soft, velvet muzzle all over him as she whinnied loudly--that there and then before the English victors and French captives he vowed that never would he part from her. Now, therefore, she waited for him to come forth and mount her, so that he might ride by the coach that conveyed his wife to England. For, a fortnight since, in one of those churches of the Reformed Faith that had sprung up in every part of the Netherlands since the days of William the Liberator, Sylvia and Bevill had been made man and wife, my lord Marlborough's chaplain having performed the ceremony. And, though there were not many present to witness the bridal, they were mostly those amongst whom Bevill's lot had been cast since first he made the attempt to assist Sylvia to escape from Liége--an attempt that again and again he told himself had resulted only in failure, yet a failure that brought so fair and welcome a success in its train as that which now he experienced.