d that night, and for four other nights, in those rocky
and almost impassable woods with which that country abounds, and
which seem devised for the security of the hunted. It was easy enough
to get food and forage, for we were well supplied with money. The
argument of gold was supplemented by another argument of death, if the
seller was disobliging; we had twenty good horse pistols, and their
united reasoning never failed to convince. From the first day until
the last but one of our flight, the weather was bad: torrents of rain,
wild winds roaring, nature in a tumult night and day. At last the air
grew soft, the sun shone, and on a heavenly August evening, after
passing through a country green with deep-embosoming woods, and with
sunny, verdant slopes and many trickling crystal waters, we came upon
a great mirror of a lake, with a fair, wooded island in the midst of
it; and that was our city of refuge--the lake and island of Uzmaiz.

CHAPTER IX

A CRIMSON MANTLE

I shall never forget the August evening when first we saw that island
of enchanted beauty in Lake Uzmaiz. The lake lay blue and still, with
an opaline sky, shot with gold, reflected in it. The green island,
fringed with trees, and with a small, half-ruined castle on a gentle
knoll in the middle, was mirrored in that fair expanse. There were two
towers of the castle left standing, and they gave upon a broad terrace
of which the escarpment was gone to soft decay, moss-grown and
beautiful. There was a little point of land, rock-fringed, against
which the water lapped like a mother crooning to her babe, and
opposite to it, a point on the mainland, grassy and bordered with
alder bushes. It was still and quiet and placid, like a dream of
peace. Over all, the declining sun shone golden, bathing the wooded
peaks afar with soft splendor. The beauty and the peacefulness of it
went to the heart of one. Oh, what loveliness there was in that lake,
that island, that darkly blue horizon, that sunset sky, glowing with
amethyst and pale green!

But there were beauties other than those of nature on the island. The
first I reckon to be our three hundred stout fellows, who owned as
much ragged valor as any three hundred soldiers in the world. They
were delighted to see Count Saxe, and each man had a kind of leathern
grin upon his countenance that was as satisfactory to us as beauty's
most bewitching smile. They had not lost a day in intrenching, and the
natural streng