er having been
there for a month I was on the point of marching, for the men were all
perfectly restored to health; and indeed I know I ought to have returned
sooner, seeing that the men were fit for service; but as I thought
you were still at Old Brandenburg, and could well dispense with our
services, I lingered on to the last. But just as I was about to march
the news came that a party of Imperialist horse, three hundred strong,
was about to attack Mansfeld, a place of whose existence I had never
heard; but hearing that its count was a staunch Protestant, and that the
inhabitants intended to make a stout defence, I thought that I could not
be doing wrong in the service of the king by marching to aid them, the
place being but twenty-four miles away across the hills. We got there in
time, and aided the townspeople to repulse the first assault. After two
days they brought up a reinforcement of four hundred infantry and some
cannon. As the place is a small one, with but about two hundred and
fifty fighting men of all ages, we deemed it impossible to defend the
town, and while they were breaching the walls fell back to the castle.
The Imperialists occupied it at sunset, and at night, leaving a party to
hold the castle, we sallied out from the other side, and marching round,
entered by the breaches, and, raising the Swedish war cry fell upon
the enemy, who were for the most part too drunk to offer any serious
resistance. We killed two hundred and fifty of them, and the rest fled
in terror, thinking they had the whole Swedish army upon them. The
next day I started on my march back here, and though we have not spared
speed, it seems that the Imperialists have arrived before us."

A burst of laughter and applause greeted the solution of the mystery.

"You have done well, sir," Munro said cordially, "and have rendered a
great service not only in the defeat of the Imperialists, but in its
consequences here, for the prisoner said that last night five thousand
men were marched away from Tilly's army to observe and make head against
this supposed Swedish force advancing from the east. When I have done
my meal I will go over to the king with the news, for his majesty is
greatly puzzled, especially as the prisoner declared that he himself had
seen the Scots of the Green Brigade in the van of the column, and had
heard the war cry, 'A Hepburn! A Hepburn!'

"Hepburn himself could make neither head nor tail of it, and was half
inclined