A Jacobite Exile<br />Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelf by G. A. Henty (christmas read aloud txt) 📗

could not attempt the journey to the frontier. I am, however, gaining strength, and, as soon as I am quite recovered, I shall take the first opportunity of leaving the men I am with, and making for the Swedish camp. Please forward this news by a sure hand to Count Piper, and express my sorrow that my mission has not been completed, although, indeed, I do not think that my further stay at Warsaw would have been any great service, for it is clear that the great majority of the traders will not move in the matter until the Swedes advance, and, from their point of view, it is not to their interest to do so.

"I know but little of the men I am with at present, beyond the fact that they are bandits, nor can I say whether they are disbanded soldiers, or criminals who have escaped from justice; but at any rate they show me no ill will. I have no doubt I shall be able to get on fairly with them, until I am able to make my escape. I wish I had poor Stanislas with me. Only one of the men here speaks Swedish, and he does not know very much of the language. I cannot say, at present, whether the twenty men here are the whole of the band, or whether they are only a portion of it. Nor do I know whether the men subsist by plundering the peasants, or venture on more serious crimes. Thanking you for your great kindness during my stay at Warsaw, I remain, yours gratefully--

"Charlie Carstairs."

While he was occupied in writing this letter, an animated conversation was going on between the bandits. Charlie gathered that this related to their future operations, but more than this he could not learn. In a postscript to the letter, he requested Allan Ramsay to hand over to the bearer some of the clothes left in his lodgings, and to pay him for his trouble.

"As to the money I left in your hands, I do not think it worth while for you to send it. However much these men may consider me a comrade, I have not sufficient faith in their honesty to believe that money would reach me safely; but, if you send me a suit of clothes, two or three gold pieces might be wrapped up in a piece of cloth and shoved into the toe of a shoe. The parcel must be a small one, or there would be little chance of the man carrying it far. I will ask him, however, to bring me a sword, if you will buy one for me, and my pistols."

He folded up the letter and gave it to the captain. There was no means of fastening it, but this mattered little, because, being written in English, there was no chance of its being read. The captain handed it to one of the men, with instructions for its delivery. The messenger started at once. The others, after remaining a short time in the hut, set out through the forest.

After an hour's walking, Charlie was unable to go further. The captain, seeing this, ordered four of the men to stop with him, and to follow the next morning. As soon as he had gone on with the rest of the band, the men set about collecting sticks and making a fire. Charlie, who was utterly exhausted, threw himself on the ground, and was not long before he fell sound asleep.

When he awoke, the shades of evening were already falling, and the men were sitting over the fire, roasting a portion of a goat, one of a flock they had fallen in with in the wood, where large numbers roamed about in a semi-wild state.

The man who could speak Swedish was one of those who had remained with him, and, from him, he learnt that the present headquarters of the band were some six miles farther away. This distance was performed next morning, frequent halts being made to enable him to sit down and rest; and it was not till five hours after the start that they arrived.

Overgrown as it now was, with trees and undergrowth, he could see that a village once stood there. It must, however, have been abandoned a very long time, as trees of considerable size grew among the low walls and piles of stones that marked where cottages had stood. The place occupied by the brigands had, in former times, been a castellated building of some strength, standing on a knoll in the middle of the village, which had probably been inhabited by the retainers of its owner. Part of the wall had fallen, but a large arched room, that had doubtless been the banqueting hall of the castle, remained almost intact, and here the brigands had established themselves. Several fires burned on the flagged floors, the smoke finding its way out through holes and crevices in the roof. Some fifty men were gathered round these, and were occupied in cooking their midday meal.

"I am glad to see that you have arrived," the captain said, coming across to Charlie. "I expected you two hours ago, and intended, as soon as we had finished our meal, to send out another four men to meet you and help to carry you in."

"Thank you," Charlie said. "It is not the men's fault we are late, but the last part of the way we came on very slowly. I was getting so exhausted that I had to stop every few hundred yards."

"Well, you had better eat something, and then lie down for a sleep. Meat is plentiful with us, for there are thousands of goats in the forest, and occasionally we get a deer or wild boar. If we had but bread and wine we should live like nobles. Our supplies, however, are low at present, and we shall have to make an expedition, tomorrow or next day, to replenish them."

Charlie ate a few mouthfuls of meat, and then lay down and slept, for some hours, on a bed of leaves. He was awoke by loud and excited talking among the men, and learnt from Honred that one of the men, who had been left on watch at the mouth of the path by which he had entered the forest, had just brought in the news that a party of a hundred infantry, led by the Jew, had arrived with a cart. In this the body of Ben Soloman had been sent off, while the troops had established themselves in the little clearing round the hut.

"This comes of letting that Jew escape," the captain said. "No doubt he told the story his own way, and the Jewish traders went to the governor and asked that troops should be sent to root us out. Well, they are far enough away at present, and I have sent off to have their movements watched. It is a good nine miles, from here to the hut, and they may look for a week before they find this place, unless that rascally Jew has heard of it from the woodman, or they get hold of the fellow himself, though I should think they will hardly do that. I fancy he has some cause of quarrel with the authorities, and will not put himself in the way of being questioned closely, if he can help it."

The next morning when Charlie awoke, two men were standing beside him. His eyes first fell on the one who had been to the town, and who held a large bundle in his hand. Then he turned his eyes to the other, and gave an exclamation of pleasure, as he saw that it was Stanislas. He looked pale and weak, and was evidently just recovering from a severe illness.

"Why, Stanislas!" he exclaimed. "This is a pleasure, indeed. I never for a moment dreamt of seeing you. I heard from the Jew who guarded me that you got away, but I was afraid that you had been badly wounded. Why, my brave fellow, what brings you here?"

"I have come to be with your honour," the man said. "It was, of course, my duty to be by your side. I was very ill for a week, for I had half a dozen wounds, but I managed, after the assailants left me, to crawl back to Mr. Ramsay's to tell him what had happened. I don't remember much about the next few days. Since then I have been mending rapidly. None of the wounds were very serious, and it was more loss of blood, than anything else, that ailed me. Mr. Ramsay searched high and low for you, and we had all given you up for dead, till a few hours before this man arrived with your letter.

"We heard you had killed Ben Soloman. I had a long talk with your messenger, who received a handsome present from Mr. Ramsay, and he agreed to conduct me here, upon my solemn promise that, if the captain would not receive me, I would not give any information, on my return, as to the whereabouts of the band. Mr. Ramsay hired a light cart, and that brought us yesterday far into the forest. We camped there, and I had not more than a couple of miles to walk to get here this morning."

"Have you seen the captain?" Charlie asked eagerly.

"Yes. I was stopped by some sentries, a quarter of a mile away, and was kept there while my guide came on and got permission of the captain for me to be brought in. When I met him, I had no great difficulty in persuading him to let me stop, for Mr. Ramsay had given me fifty rix-dollars to give him; and so, your honour, here I am, and here is a letter from Mr. Ramsay himself."

"I cannot tell you how glad I am to have you, Stanislas. I am getting better, but I am so weak that I took five hours, yesterday, to get six miles. Now I have got you to talk to, I shall pick up strength faster than I have been doing, for it has been very dull work having no one who could understand me. There is only one man here who understands a word of Swedish."

"We will soon get you round, sir, never fear. I have brought with me four casks of wine. They were left at the place where the cart stopped last night, but the captain has sent off men already to bring them in. You will be all the better for a suit of clean clothes."

"That I shall. It is a month now since I had a change, and my jerkin is all stained with blood. I want a wash more than anything; for there was no water near the hut, and the charcoal burner used to bring in a small keg from a spring he passed on his way to his work. That was enough for drinking, but not enough for washing--a matter which never seemed to have entered into his head, or that of the Jew, as being in the slightest degree necessary."

"There is a well just outside," Stanislas said. "I saw them drawing water in buckets as we came in. I suppose it was the well of this castle, in the old time."

"I will go and have a wash, and change my clothes the first thing," Charlie said. "Mr. Ramsay's letter will keep till after that."

They went out to the well together.

"So you heard the story, that I had killed Ben Soloman, before you left?"

"Yes; before your letter arrived, Mr. Ramsay sent for me, and told me a Jewish trader had just informed him that news had come that Ben Soloman had been murdered, and the deed had been done by the young Scotchman who had been with him. Mr. Ramsay did not believe the story in the slightest. He admitted that Ben Soloman might have been murdered, and even said frankly that, hated as he was, it was the most natural end for him to come to; but that you should have done so was, he said, absurd. In the first place, he did not think that you were alive; and in the second, it was far more probable that you had been murdered by Ben Soloman, than that he should have been murdered by you.

"However, even before your letter came, three or four hours later, there seemed no longer any doubt that you had killed the Jew. By that time, there was quite an uproar among his people. He was the leader of their community, and had dealings with so many nobles that his influence was great; and, although he was little liked, he was regarded as an important person, and his loss was a very heavy one to the Jewish community. A deputation went to the governor, and we heard that troops would be at once sent out