came the list the Austrians had sent in of the prisoners
they had taken, and we were delighted to see your name in it;
though, as the Austrians have been so chary of late of exchanging
prisoners, we feared that we might not see you for some time.
However, remembering how you got out of Spielberg, we did not
despair of seeing you back in the spring.

"Thirza was especially confident. I believe she conceives you
capable of achieving impossibilities. However, you have justified
her faith in you.

"Supper will be served in a few minutes, and as no doubt your story
is, as usual, a long one, we will not begin it until we have
finished the meal. But tell us first, how were you captured?"

"I was riding through the mist to find the marshal; whom I had not
seen for two hours, as I was with the regiment that defended the
church at Hochkirch, and then cut its way out through the
Austrians. The mist was so thick that I could not see ten yards
ahead, and rode plump into an Austrian battalion. They fired a
volley that killed poor Turk, and before I could get on my feet I
was surrounded and taken prisoner--not a very heroic way, I must
admit."

"A much pleasanter way, though, than that of being badly wounded,
and so found on the field by the enemy," the countess said; "and
you were fortunate, indeed, in getting through that terrible battle
unhurt."

"I was, indeed, countess; but I would far rather have lost a limb
than my dear friend and relation, the marshal. I was allowed to
attend his funeral the next day. The Austrians paid him every
honour and, though I have mourned for him most deeply, I cannot but
feel that it was the death he would himself have chosen. He had
been ailing for some months, and had twice been obliged to leave
his command and rest. It would, in any case, probably have been his
last campaign; and after such a wonderfully adventurous life as he
had led, he would have felt being laid upon the shelf sorely."

"His elder brother--Earl Marischal in Scotland, is he not?--who has
been governor for some years at Neufchatel, is with the king at
Breslau, at present. They say the king was greatly affected at the
loss of the marshal who, since Schwerin's death, has been his most
trusted general."

"I have never seen the marshal's brother," Fergus said, "though I
know that they were greatly attached to each other. I hope that he
will be at Breslau when I get there. I shall go and report myself
to the king, after I ha