"Grand Dieu!" exclaimed Debrasques, while all, including dragoons and those who attended to the led horses, looked on amazed. "It must be the city of Spires in flames. Who has done it-Turenne or De Bournonville, who commands against him?"
"Nay," said Andrew, "no city that, in flames, my lad. Rather a dozen-if there were so many around! No city, I say. See where the flames themselves fly up to the reddened sky; observe. They rise from all points ahead of us, and, in some cases, are miles apart. Debrasques," he added solemnly, "I have seen such as this before. It has been done here before, too, I know; Tilly did it fifty years ago, and-"
"What-what-what is it?" the boy asked, the two campaigns he had followed never having shown him aught of this nature.
"This. One of the two armies has withdrawn-it must be the Imperialists, since Turenne beat them at Sintzheim-the other is destroying the land, so that no more shall his enemy find shelter nor food enough for a grasshopper. That is what it means. Yet," he exclaimed, as now the flames and the dun-coloured smoke mounted more fiercely still into the crimsoned vault above, "it is horrible, awful! My God it is awful!"
As he spoke, there soon followed confirmation of his words. Down the poplar-fringed road along which they were proceeding, there came towards them in the night the sound of many horses' hoofs rushing madly, swiftly; and in an instant Andrew had warned Debrasques to draw aside his dragoons and followers. "We know not yet who or what they are," he said; "best stand aside and see."
On came the others even as the suggestion was followed, and-although in the gloom of the night that had closed in under the trees-they knew at once by the voice of the leader that they were of their own side. Then an officer, followed by two dozen soldiers, would almost have passed them when, beneath the poplars, he saw the headpieces of the dragoons and the glisten of their trappings, and, as he did so, he roared an order to his own men to halt, after which, amidst the rattle and clang of bridles and of scabbards against spurs and horses' flanks, he called out in French:
"Speak-what troops are those?" while, as he did so, Andrew felt Debrasques' hand clutch his arm convulsively-felt, too, that hand tremble on his sleeve.
"Answer him, answer him," he said, "or he may charge us. They are treble our number."
And from the Marquis's lips there came, in response to the demand, the words:
"A detachment of Listenai's dragoons and an English officer about to join the Marshal."
"Whose voice is that?" called back the other in a tone of astonishment.
"The voice of Valentin, Marquis Debrasques."
"Ha! I thought so. So you are here, are you? Well, I have no time to waste on you. Where are the dragoons of the 'King's' and 'Queen's' regiments?"
"Ahead of us," answered the deep voice of Andrew, he noticing that Debrasques seemed more and more agitated-indeed, almost now unable to speak.
"Then they have missed their way. They should have joined by now. Have, perhaps, branched off at Kaiserslautern." Then he gave an order to the Marquis. "Ride forward at once with your party and endeavour to find them, and, if you succeed, send them on at once to Spires. There is the devil's work doing to-night."
"What work?" asked Andrew.
"Our men have lost all control of themselves and are burning the villages for miles round, while the country people are massacring all those whom they can catch alone, or in twos and threes. There is one of our soldiers hanging head downwards on a tree not half a league from here, riddled with a score of bullets, and, they say, some are being burnt if surprised when by themselves. Forward at once and find the Dragoons-they are not, at least, heated to boiling point!" and, as he spoke, Andrew heard the thud of his heels against his horse's flank and saw him rush on, followed by his men. And in the last rays of daylight, aided by the glow of countless fires, he observed that he was hatless and wigless, and that, behind him, streamed a mass of long, red-brown hair.
"Devil's work indeed!" said Andrew, turning to his companion, and in that same light observing that the young man was pallid and his face twitching.
"Heart up, heart up, my boy!" he exclaimed. "The horrors of war must not unseat a soldier thus" – but the other interrupted him, muttering huskily:
"You did not see-not recognize?" and as he spoke the astonishment on his face was accompanied by a look of almost awestruck unbelief.
"Not see-not recognize! Why, whom should I see, or recognize? 'Fore heaven! what I heard was enough for me."
"That man," Debrasques stammered. "The leader. You did not recognize him?"
"Not I. Debrasques," turning his gaze upon him swiftly, "who is he?"
"Your-your-I mean, my cousin. The man whose picture hangs in our hall-"
"And his name is-what?"
CHAPTER VI
THE VICOMTE DE BOIS-VALLÉE
"Did he hear my question, or not?" asked Andrew of himself, as, leaving the baggage and its caretakers behind under the charge of two of the dragoons, they rode on swiftly in search of the "King's" and "Queen's" regiments which had been ahead of them all the way from Epernay, and which, since they had not kept in advance, must have branched off, as Debrasques' cousin had surmised, on the road to Kaiserslautern. "Did he hear it?"
It was impossible he should be able to answer his own question, for, even as he had asked that other one, "And his name is-what?" the Marquis had given his order to advance as well as another to those who were to remain with the baggage, and it was most probable that, in the rattle and clatter of their steeds' hoofs and their accoutrements, it had escaped the other's ears.
And now, as they again went forward-more swiftly than they had done as yet since quitting Paris-he knew that this was not the time for repeating his question. Moreover, had he not solemnly promised, all unasked though the promise had been by the Marquis, that never again would he mention his cousin? And, man of honour as he was, he knew that the promise bound him; that, even though his suspicions were growing hot and furious within him, he must be as dumb as he had vowed to be.
"Yet," he thought, "that cousin is evidently a man of mark and position in the army; soon I shall know if what my suspicions point to is the case. And then-well, there is time enough. At present our surroundings demand more than that which I seek to know and to unravel."
They did indeed! Since, as they advanced kilometre by kilometre, those surroundings became more awful. The sky was now one vast pall of fiery red stretching from horizon to horizon, yet spotted and blurred beneath in twenty different directions by dense, compact masses of flames enveloped in clouds of smoke-the flames and smoke of burning villages, homesteads, and châteaux. Also, the air rang with the sound of musket discharges, while shrieks were now and again borne to their ears by the soft wind that blew in their faces; rang with shouts and cries in French and German, and sometimes in English, and with the horribly piteous yells of horses shut in burning stables and forgotten.
Ere they had ridden a quarter of a league from where the officer who was Debrasques' cousin had passed them, they came across the body of the man he had spoken of, hanging, as he had described, head downwards from the branch of a tree, his body perforated by bullets that had evidently been fired into him after he had been strung up. That was undoubted, for beneath his head, which almost touched the ground, was a pool of blood that must have dripped from his wounds as he swung there, and which would not have been beneath him had he been shot ere hung; nor, it was certain, would he have been hung at all if already dead and no use as a living target.
"Your countryman," said Andrew to the Marquis, as they paused a moment to regard this awful spectacle. "See to his uniform-what it is I know not, except that it is not that which we wore in the old