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 to believe that this avenging force was led by the
ghosts of those who had been slain at New Brandenburg.
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