ever tug leather more. But hark ye, questions must be answered. How if I am asked what should my daughter make here at such an onslaught?'

'What should half the women in Liege make here when they followed us to the castle?' said Peter; 'they had no other reason, sure, but that it was just the place in the world that they should not have come to. Our yungfrau Trudchen has come a little farther than the rest, that is all.'

'Admirably spoken,' said Quentin: 'only be bold, and take this gentleman's good council, noble Meinherr Pavillon, and, at no trouble to yourself, you will do the most worthy action since the days of Charlemagne. Here, sweet lady, wrap yourself close in this veil,' for many articles of female apparel lay scattered about the apartment; 'be but confident, and a few minutes will place you in freedom and safety. Noble sir,' he added, addressing Pavillon, 'set forward.'

'Hold hold hold a minute,' said Pavillon, 'my mind misgives me! This De la Marck is a fury — a perfect boar in his nature as in his name; what if the young lady be one of those of Croye? and what if he discover her, and be addicted to wrath?'

'And if I were one of those unfortunate women,' said Isabelle, again attempting to throw herself at his feet, 'could you for that reject me in this moment of despair? Oh, that I had been indeed your daughter, or the daughter of the poorest burgher!'

'Not so poor not so poor neither, young lady; we pay as we go,' said the citizen.

'Forgive me, noble sir,' again began the unfortunate maiden.

'Not noble, nor sir neither,' said the syndic; 'a plain burgher of Liege, that pays bills of exchange in ready guilders. But that is nothing to the purpose. Well, say you be a countess, I will protect you nevertheless.'

'You are bound to protect her, were she a duchess,' said Peter, 'having once passed your word.'

'Right, Peter, very right,' said the syndic; 'it is our old Low Dutch fashion, ein wort, ein mann; and now let us to this gear. We must take leave of this William de la Marck; and yet I know not, my mind misgives me when I think of him; and were it a ceremony which could be waived, I have no stomach to go through it.'

'Were you not better, since you have a force together, make for the gate and force the guard?' said Quentin.

But with united voice, Pavillon and his adviser exclaimed against the propriety of such an attack upon their ally's soldiers, with some hints concerning its rashness, which satisfied Quentin that it was not a risk to be hazarded with such associates. They resolved, therefore, to repair boldly to the great hall of the castle, where, as they understood, the Wild Boar of Ardennes held his feast, and demand free egress for the syndic of Liege and his company, a request too reasonable, as it seemed, to be denied. Still the good burgomaster groaned when he looked on his companions, and exclaimed to his faithful Peter, 'See what it is to have too bold and too tender a heart! Alas! Perkin, how much have courage and humanity cost me! and how much may I yet have to pay for my virtues before Heaven makes us free of this damned castle of Schonwaldt!'

As they crossed the courts, still strewed with the dying and dead, Quentin, while he supported Isabelle

through the scene of horrors, whispered to her courage and comfort, and reminded her that her safety depended entirely on her firmness and presence of mind.

'Not on mine- not on mine,' she said, 'but on yours

on yours only. O, if I but escape this fearful night, never shall I forget him who saved me! One favour more only let me implore at your hand, and I conjure you to grant it, by your mother's fame and your father's honour!'

'What is it you can ask that I could refuse?' said Quentin in a whisper.

'Plunge your dagger in my heart,' she said, 'rather than leave me captive in the hands of these monsters.' Quentin's only answer was a pressure of the young countess's hand, which seemed as if, but for terror, it would have returned the caress. And, leaning on her youthful protector, she entered the fearful hall, preceded by Pavillon and his lieutenant, and followed by a dozen of the kurschenschaft or skinner's trade, who attended as a guard of honour on the syndic.

As they approached the hall, the yells of acclamation and bursts of wild laughter, which proceeded from it, seemed rather to announce the revel of festive demons rejoicing after some accomplished triumph over the human race than of mortal beings who had succeeded in a bold design. An emphatic tone of mind, which despair alone could have inspired, supported the assumed courage of the Countess Isabelle; undaunted spirits, which rose with the extremity, maintained that of Durward; while Pavillon and his lieutenant made a virtue of necessity, and faced their fate like bears bound to a stake, which must necessarily stand the dangers of the course.

CHAPTER XXII

THE REVELLERS

Cade. Where's Dick, the butcher of Ashford?

Dick. Here, sir.

Cade. They fell before thee like sheep and oxen; and thou behavedst thyself as if thou hadst been in thine own slaughter-house.

King Henry VI, Part II.

THERE could hardly exist a more strange and horrible change than had taken place in the castle-hall of Schonwaldt since Quentin had partaken of the noontide meal there; and it was indeed one which painted, in the extremity of their dreadful features, the miseries of war more especially when waged by those most relentless of all agents, the mercenary soldiers of a barbarous age

men who, by habit and profession, had become familiarized with all that was cruel and bloody in the art of war, while they were devoid alike of patriotism and of the romantic spirit of chivalry.

Instead of the orderly, decent, and somewhat formal meal, at which civil and ecclesiastical officers had, a few hours before, sat mingled in the same apartment, where a light jest could only be uttered in a whisper, and where, even amid superfluity of feasting and of wine, there reigned a decorum which almost amounted to hypocrisy, there was now such a scene of wild and roaring debauchery as Satan himself, had he taken the chair as founder of the feast, could scarcely have improved.

At the head of the table sat, in the bishop's throne and state, which had been hastily brought thither from

his great council-chamber, the redoubted Boar of Ardennes himself, well deserving that dreaded name, in which he affected to delight, and which he did as much as he could think of to deserve. His head was unhelmeted, but he wore the rest of his ponderous and bright armour, which indeed he rarely laid aside. Over his shoulders hung a strong surcoat, made of the dressed skin of a huge wild boar, the hoofs being of solid silver and the tusks of the same. The skin of the head was so arranged that, drawn over the casque when the baron was armed, or over his bare head, in the fashion of a hood, as he often affected when the helmet was laid aside, and as he now wore it, the effect was that of a grinning, ghastly monster; and yet the countenance which it overshadowed scarce required such horrors to improve those which were natural to its ordinary expression.

The upper part of De la Marck's face, as nature had formed it, almost gave the lie to his character; for though his hair, when uncovered, resembled the rude and wild bristles of the hood he had drawn over it, yet an open, high, and manly forehead, broad ruddy cheeks, large, sparkling, light-coloured eyes, and a nose hooked like the beak of the eagle, promised something valiant and generous. But the effect of these more favourable traits was entirely overpowered by his habits of violence and insolence, which, joined to debauchery and intemperance, had stamped upon the features a character inconsistent with the rough gallantry which they would otherwise have exhibited. The former had, from habitual indulgence, swoln the muscles of the cheeks and those around the eyes, in particular the latter; evil practices