Volume 2 — XXX.

Peter, good fellow, has lost his all at dice.—Régnier.

THE regiment of musketeers from Munkholm was on the march through the narrow passes lying between Throndhjem and Skongen. Sometimes it moved along the brink of a torrent, and the long line of bayonets crept through the ravine like a huge serpent with glittering scales; sometimes it wound around a mountain, making it look like one of those triumphal columns about which curves an army of heroes in bronze.

The soldiers marched with trailing weapons and cloaks dragging in the dust, looking surly and tired, for these noble fellows are averse to anything but battle or inaction. The coarse banter and threadbare jests which delighted them but yesterday had lost their savor. The air was chill, the sky clouded. Nothing would raise a laugh in the ranks, unless one of the sutler-women should get an awkward tumble from her little Barbary horse, or a tin saucepan should happen to roll over the precipice and rebound from rock to rock.

To while away the monotony of the journey, Lieutenant Randmer, a young Danish baron, accosted old Captain Lory, who had risen from the ranks. The captain, moody and silent, moved with a heavy but confident step; the lieutenant, light and agile, played with a twig which he had plucked from the bushes that lined the read.

“Well, Captain, what ails you? You seem depressed.”

“And I should say I had good cause,” replied the old officer, without raising his eyes.

“Come, come, no regrets! Look at me. Am I depressed? And yet I would wager that I have quite as much cause as you.”

“I doubt it, Baron Randmer; I have lost all I possessed; I have lost everything I loved.”

“Captain Lory, our misfortunes are precisely the same. It is not a fortnight since Lieutenant Alberick won my castle and estate at a single deal of the cards. I am ruined; but am I the less gay?”

The captain answered in a very melancholy tone: “Lieutenant, you have only lost your castle; but I have lost my dog.”

At this answer the light-minded baron seemed uncertain whether to laugh or sympathize; but he said: “Be comforted, Captain. Only think, I, who have lost my castle—”

The captain broke in upon his words:—

“What of that? Besides, you may win back another castle.”

“And you may find another dog.”

The old man shook his head.

“I may find another dog, but I shall never find my poor Drake.”

He paused; great tears gathered in his eyes and rolled one by one down his hard, stern face.

“He was all I ever had to love,” he added; “I never knew my parents. God grant them peace, and my poor Drake too! Lieutenant Randmer, he saved my life in the Pomeranian war. I called him Drake in honor of the famous admiral. My good dog! He never changed, as did my fortunes. After the battle of Oholfen, the great General Schack patted him, and said: ‘You’ve a fine dog there, Sergeant Lory!’—for I was only a sergeant then.”

“Ah!” interrupted the young baron, slashing his switch, “how queer it must seem to be a sergeant.”

The old soldier of fortune did not hear him; he appeared to be talking to himself, and Randmer could only catch a word here and there.

“Poor Drake! After surviving so many breaches and trenches, to be drowned like a blind kitten in that confounded Throndhjem fjord! My poor dog! my trusty friend! You deserved to die on the field of battle, as I hope to do.”

“Come, come, Captain!” cried the lieutenant, “how can you be so despondent? We may get a chance to fight to-morrow.”

“Yes,” contemptuously answered the old captain, “with a pretty enemy!”

“What! do you despise those rascally miners, those devilish mountaineers?”

“Stone-cutters, highwaymen, fellows who don’t know the first rudiments of warfare! A fine set of blackguards to face a man like me, who has served in all the wars in Pomerania and Holstein, in the campaigns of Scania and Dalecarlia; who fought under the glorious General Schack and the brave Count Guldenlew!”

“But don’t you know,” interrupted Randmer, “that these fellows are led by a formidable chief,—a giant as big and as brutal as Goliath, a rascal who drinks nothing but human blood, a very Satan incarnate?”

“And who may he be?” asked the captain.

“Why, the famous Hans of Iceland!”

“Pooh! I’ll wager that this great general does not know how to shoulder a musket or handle a carbine properly.”

Randmer laughed.

“Yes, you may laugh,” continued the captain. “It will be very funny, no doubt, to cross swords with scurvy pickaxes, and pikes with pitchforks! Here are worthy foes indeed! My brave Drake would have scorned to snap at their heels!”

The captain was still giving free vent to his indignation, when he was interrupted by the arrival of an officer, who ran up to them all out of breath,—

“Captain Lory! my dear Randmer!”

“Well?” asked both at once.

“My friends, I am faint with horror! D’Ahlefeld, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld, the lord chancellor’s son! You know, my dear Randmer, that Frederic—such a dandy! such a fop!”

“Yes,” replied the young baron, “a great dandy! Still, at the last ball at Charlottenburg my costume was in much better taste than his. But what has happened to him?”

“I know whom you mean,” said Lory; “you mean Frederic d’Ahlefeld, lieutenant of Company Three. The men wear blue facings. He neglects his duty sadly.”

“You will not have to complain of him again, Captain Lory.”

“Why not?” said Randmer.

“He is garrisoned at Wahlstrom,” coldly added the old officer.

“Exactly,” said the new-comer; “the colonel has just received a message. Poor Frederic!”

“But what has happened? Captain Bollar, you alarm me.”

Old Lory added: “Nonsense! The popinjay was absent from roll-call, I suppose, and the captain has sent the lord chancellor’s son to prison: that is the misfortune which distresses you so sadly; I am sure it is.”

Bollar clapped him on the shoulder.

“Captain Lory, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld has been devoured alive.”

The two captains looked each other in the face; and Randmer, startled for an instant, suddenly burst out laughing.

“Oh, Captain Bollar, I see you are as fond of a joke as ever! But you can’t fool me in that way, I warn you.”

And the lieutenant, folding his arms, gave way to mirth, swearing that what amused him the most was to see how readily Lory swallowed all Bollar’s ridiculous stories. As for the story, he said it was a capital one; and it was a most clever idea to pretend that Frederic, who took such dainty, such absurd care of his complexion, had been swallowed raw.

“Randmer,” said Bollar, seriously, “you act like a fool. I tell you d’Ahlefeld is dead; I have it from the colonel,—dead!”

“Oh, how well you play your part!” rejoined the baron, still laughing; “what a funny fellow you are!”

Bollar shrugged his shoulders, and turned to old Lory, who quietly asked the particulars.

“Oh, yes, my dear Captain Bollar,” added the irrepressible mocker; “tell us who ate the poor devil. Did he serve as breakfast for a wolf, or supper for a bear?”

“The colonel,” said Bollar, “received a despatch just now, informing him, in the first place, that the Wahlstrom garrison is retreating toward us, driven back by a large party of rebels.”

Old Lory frowned.

“In the second place,” resumed Bollar, “that Lieutenant Frederic d’Ahlefeld, having gone into the mountains three days since to hunt, was captured near Arbar ruins by a monster, who carried him to his lair and there devoured him.”

At this, Lieutenant Randmer’s merriment increased.

“Oh, how our good Lory swallows your stories! That’s right; keep up a sober face, Bollar. You are wonderfully amusing; but you don’t tell us what this monster, this ogre, this vampire was, that carried off and ate up the lieutenant like a week-old kid!”

“I will not tell you,” impatiently answered Bollar; “but I will tell Lory, who is not such an incredulous fool. Lory, my dear fellow, the monster who drank Frederic’s blood was Hans of Iceland.”

“The leader of the rebels!” exclaimed the old officer.

“Well, Lory,” rejoined the scoffer, “do you think a man who handles his jaw so ably needs to know how to shoulder a musket?”

“Baron Randmer,” said Bollar, “you are very like d’Ahlefeld in character; beware lest you meet with the same fate.”

“I declare,” cried Randmer, “that Captain Bollar’s immovable gravity amuses me beyond expression.”

“And Lieutenant Randmer’s inexhaustible laughter alarms me more than I can say.”

At this moment a group of officers, engaged in eager conversation, approached our three speakers.

“Zounds!” cried Randmer, “I must amuse them with Bollar’s story.”

“Comrades,” he added, advancing to meet them; “have you heard the news? Poor Frederic d’Ahlefeld has been eaten alive by the barbarous Hans of Iceland.”

As he said these words, he could not repress a burst of laughter, which, to his great surprise, was received by the new-comers almost with shouts of indignation.

“What! can you laugh? I did not think, Randmer, that you would repeat such a dreadful piece of news so lightly. How can you laugh at such a misfortune?”

“What!” said Randmer, much confused, “is it really true?”

“Why, you just told us of it yourself!” was the general cry. “Don’t you believe your own words?”

“But I thought it was one of Bollar’s jokes.”

An old officer interposed.

“Such a joke would be in very bad taste; but unfortunately it is no joke. Baron Vœthaün, our colonel, has just received the sad news.”

“A fearful affair! It is really awful!” repeated a dozen voices.

“So we are to fight wolves and bears with human faces,” said one.

“We are to be shot down,” said another, “without knowing whence the bullet comes; we are to be picked off one by one, like birds in a cage.”

“D’Ahlefeld’s death,” said Bollar, in a solemn tone, “makes me shudder. Our regiment is unlucky. Dispolsen’s murder, that of those poor soldiers found dead at Cascadthymore, d’Ahlefeld’s awful fate,—here are three tragic events in a very short space of time.”

Young Baron Randmer, who had been silent, looked up.

“It is incredible,” said he; “Frederic, who danced so well!”

And after this weighty remark he relapsed into silence, while Captain Lory declared that he was greatly distressed at the young lieutenant’s death, and drew the attention of private Toric-Belfast to the fact that the brass clasp of his shoulder-belt was not so bright as usual.