Weyman Stanley John
My Lady Rotha: A Romance

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She stopped abruptly, and her eyes grew wide. The Countess listening too, and catching the infection of her fear, heard a board creak below.

For a moment the two stood in the middle of the floor, gazing into one another's eyes. Then Marie, with a sudden movement, thrust my lady down on her pallet, and with the other hand put out the light.

They lay, scarcely daring to breathe, and heard Fraulein Anna grope her way in, and stand awhile, silent and listening, as if she found something suspicious in the extinction of the light. But the taper-it was a mere rushlight-had done this before, and Marie stirred so naturally, that Fraulein Max's doubts passed away. She put off her cloak quickly, and presently-but not, as it seemed to the Countess, until an hour had elapsed-they heard her begin to breathe regularly. A few minutes more and they had no doubt she slept. Then Marie touched my lady's arm, and the latter, rising softly, stole out of the room.

The adventure left the Countess's thoughts in a whirl. She hated double-dealing as much as any one, and she could scarcely contain herself before Fraulein Max. It was as much as she could do to wear a smooth face for an hour, until a chance occasion, which fortunately came early in the day, left her alone with Marie. Then she turned, almost fiercely, on the girl.

'What is this?' she said. 'What does it all mean? Himmel! Tell me! Tell me quickly!'

Marie Wort looked at her with tears in her eyes. 'You should be able to guess, my lady,' she said sadly. 'There is a traitor among us.'

'Fraulein Anna?'

Marie nodded. 'She is in his pay,' she said simply.

'His? The general's?'

'Yes,' Marie answered, speaking quickly, with her eyes on the door. 'She met him last night, and told him what you feel about him.'

The Countess drew a deep breath. Her face turned a shade paler. She sat up straight in her chair. 'All?' she said huskily.

Marie nodded.

'And he?'

'He said he would have an answer to-day. Then I left. I did not hear any more.'

The Countess sat for a minute as if turned to stone. Here was an end of putting off-of smiles, and pleasant words, and the little craftinesses which had hitherto served her. Stern necessity, hard fate were before her. She was of a high courage, but terror was fast mastering her, when Marie touched her on the arm.

'If you can put him off, until this evening,' the girl muttered, 'I think something may be done.'

'What?'

'Something. I do not know what,' the girl answered in a troubled tone.

The Countess rose suddenly. 'Ah! I would like to choke her!' she cried hoarsely. She stretched out her arms.

'Hush, hush, my lady!' Marie whispered. The Countess's violence frightened her. 'I think, if you can put him off until to-night, we may contrive something.'

'We? You and I?' my lady said in scorn. But as she looked at the other's pale, earnest face, her own softened, her tone changed. 'Well, it shall be as you wish,' she said, letting her arms drop. 'You are a better plotter than I am. But I fear Fraulein Cat, Fraulein Snake, Fraulein Fox will prove the best of all!'

Marie's frightened face showed that she thought this possible, but she said no more, and would give my lady no explanation, though the Countess pressed for it. It was decided in the end that the Countess should plead sudden illness, and use that pretext both to avoid Fraulein Max, and postpone her interview with the general until the evening.

He came at noon, and the Countess heard his horses pawing and fretting in the road, and she sat up in her darkened room with a white face. What if he would not accept the excuse? If he would see her? What if the moment had come in which his will and hers must decide the struggle? She rose and stood listening, as fierce in her beauty as any trapped savage creature. Her heartbeat wildly, her bosom heaved. But in a moment she heard the horses move away, and presently Marie came in to tell her that he would wait till evening.

'No longer?' the Countess asked, hiding her face in the pillow.

'Not an hour, he said,' Marie answered, indicating by a gesture that the door was open, and that Fraulein Max was listening. 'He was-different,' she whispered.

'How?' my lady muttered.

'He swore at me,' Marie answered in the same tone. 'And he spoke of you-somehow differently.'

The Countess laughed, but far from joyously. 'I suppose to-night-I must see him?' she said. She tried as she spoke to press herself more deeply into the pillows, as if she might escape that way. Her flesh crept, and she shivered though she was as hot as fire.

Once or twice in the hours which followed she was almost beside herself. Sometimes she prayed. More often she walked up and down the room like one in a fever. She did not know on what she was trusting, and she could have struck Marie when the girl, appealed to again and again, would explain nothing, and name no quarter from which help might come. All the afternoon the camp lay grilling in the sunshine, and in the shuttered room in the middle of it my lady suffered. Had the house lain by the river she might have tried to escape; but the camp girdled it on three sides, and on the fourth, where a swampy inlet guarded one flank of the village, a deep ditch as well as the morass forbade all passage.

She remained in her room until she heard the unwelcome sounds which told of the general's return. Then she came into the outer room, her eyes glittering, a red spot on either cheek, all pretence at an end. Her glance withered Fraulein Max, who sat blinking in a corner with a very evil conscience. And to Marie Wort, when the girl came near her on the pretence of adjusting her lace sleeves, she had only one word to say.

'You slut!' she hissed, her breath hot on the girl's cheek. 'If you fail me I will kill you. Begone out of my sight!'

The child, excited before, broke down at that, and, bursting into a fit of weeping, ran out. Her sobs were still in the air when General Tzerclas entered.

The Countess's face was flushed, and her bearing, full of passion and defiance, must have warned him what to expect, if he felt any doubt before. The sun was just setting, the room growing dusk. He stood awhile, after saluting her, in doubt how he should come to the point, or in admiration; for her scorn and anger only increased her beauty and his feeling for her. At length he pointed lightly to the women, who kept their places by the door.

'Is it your wish, fair cousin,' he said slowly, 'that I should speak before these, or will you see me alone?'

'Your spy, that cat there,' my lady answered, carried away by her temper, 'may go! The women will stay.'

Fraulein Max, singled out by that merciless finger, sprang forward, her face mottled with surprise and terror. For a second she hesitated. Then she rushed towards her friend, as if she would embrace her.

'Countess!' she cried. 'Rotha! Surely you are mad! You cannot think that I would-'

My lady turned, and in a flash struck her fiercely on the cheek with her open hand. 'Liar!' she cried; 'go to your master, you whipped hound!'

The Dutch woman recoiled with a cry of pain, and sobbing wildly went back to her place. The general laughed harshly.

'You hold with me, sweetheart,' he said. 'Discipline before everything. But you have not my patience.'

She looked at him-angry with him, angry with herself, her hand to her bosom-but she did not answer.

'For you must allow,' he continued-his tone and his eyes still bantered her-'that I have been patient. I have been like a man athirst in the desert; but I have waited day after day, until now I can wait no longer, sweetheart.'

'So you tamper with my-with that woman!' she said scornfully.

The general shrugged his shoulders and laughed grimly. 'Why not?' he said. 'What are waiting-women and the like made for, if not to be bribed-or slapped?'

She hated him for that sly hit-if never before; but she controlled herself. She would throw the burden on him.

He read the thought, and it led him to change his tone. There was a gloomy fire in his eyes, and smouldering passion in his voice, when he spoke again.

'Well, Countess,' he said, 'I am here for your answer.'

'To what?'

'To the question I asked you some time ago,' he rejoined, dwelling on her with sullen eyes. 'I asked you to be my wife. Your answer?'

'Prythee!' she said proudly, 'this is a strange way of wooing.'

'It is not of my choice that I woo in company,' he answered, shrugging his shoulders. 'My answer; that is all I want-and you.'

'Then you shall have the first, and not the last,' she exclaimed on a sudden impulse. 'No, no-a hundred times no! If you do not see that by pressing me now,' she continued impetuously, 'when I am alone, friendless, and unprotected, you insult me, you should see it, and I do.'

For a moment there was silence. Then he laughed; but his voice, notwithstanding his mastery over it and in spite of that laugh, shook with rage and resentment. 'As I expected,' he said. 'I knew last night that you hated me. You have been playing a part throughout. You loathe me. Yes, madam, you may wince,' he continued bitterly, 'for you shall still be my wife; and when you are my wife we will talk of that.'

'Never!' she said, with a brave face; but her heart beat wildly, and a mist rose before her eyes.

He laughed. 'My legions are round me,' he said. 'Where are yours?'

'You are a gentleman,' she answered with an effort. 'You will let me go.'

'If I do not?'

'There are those who will know how to avenge me.'

He laughed again. 'I do not know them, Countess,' he said contemptuously. 'For Hesse Cassel, he has his hands full at Nuremberg, and will be likely, when Wallenstein has done with him, to need help himself. The King of Sweden-the brightest morning ends soonest in rain-and he will end at Nuremberg. Bernhard of Weimar, Leuchtenstein, all the fanatics fall with him. Only the banner of the Free Companies stands and waves ever the wider. Be advised,' he continued grimly. 'Bend, Countess, or I have the means to break you.'

'Never!' she said.

'So you say now,' he answered slowly. 'You will not say so in five minutes. If you care nothing for yourself, have a care for your friends.'

'You said I had none,' she retorted hoarsely.

'None that can help you,' he replied; 'some that you can help.'

She started and looked at him wildly, her lips apart, her eyes wide with hope, fear, expectation. What did he mean? What could he mean by this new turn? Ha!

She had her face towards the window, and dark as the room was growing-outside the light was failing fast-he read the thought in her eyes, and nodded.

'The Waldgrave?' he said lightly. 'Yes, he is alive, Countess, at present; and your steward also.'

'They are prisoners?' she whispered, her cheeks grown white.

'Prisoners; and under sentence of death.'

'Where?'

'In my camp.'

'Why?' she muttered. But alas! she knew; she knew already.

'They are hostages for your good behaviour,' he answered in his cold, mocking tone. 'If their principal satisfies me, good; they will go free. If not, they die-to-morrow.'

'To-morrow?' she gasped.

'To-morrow,' he answered ruthlessly. 'Now I think we understand one another.'

She threw up her hand suddenly, as if she were about to vent on him all the passions which consumed her-the terror, rage, and shame which swelled in her breast. But something in his gibing tone, something in the set lines of his figure-she could not see his face-checked her. She let her hand fall in a gesture of despair, and shrank into herself, shuddering. She looked at him as at a serpent-that fascinated her. At last she murmured-

'You will not dare. What have they done to you?'

'Nothing,' he answered. 'It is not their affair; it is yours.'

For a moment after that they stood confronting one another while the sound of the women sobbing in a corner, and the occasional jingle of a bridle outside, alone broke the silence. Behind her the room was dark; behind him, through the open windows, lay the road, glimmering pale through the dusk. Suddenly the door at her back opened, and a bright light flashed on his face. It was Marie Wort bringing in a lamp. No one spoke, and she set the lamp on the table, and going by him began to close the shutters. Still the Countess stood as if turned to stone, and he stood watching her.

'Where are they?' she moaned at last, though he had already told her.

'In the camp,' he said.

'Can I-can I see them?' she panted.

'Afterwards,' he answered, with the smile of a fiend; 'when you are my wife.'

That added the last straw. She took two steps to the table, and sitting down blindly, covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders began to tremble, her head sank lower and lower on the table. Her pride was gone.

'Heaven help us!' she whispered in a passion of grief. 'Heaven help us, for there is no help here!'

'That is better,' he said, eyeing her coldly. 'We shall soon come to terms now.'

In his exultation he went a step nearer to her. He was about to touch her-to lay his hand on her hair, believing his evil victory won, when suddenly two dark figures rose like shadows behind her chair. He recoiled, dropping his hand. In a moment a pistol barrel was thrust into his face. He fell back another step.

'One word and you are a dead man!' a stern voice hissed in his ear. Then he saw another barrel gleam in the lamplight, and he stood still.

'What is this?' he said, looking from one to the other, his voice trembling with rage.

'Justice!' the same speaker answered harshly. 'But stand still and be silent, and you shall have your life. Give the alarm, and you die, general, though we die the next minute. Sit down in that chair.'

He hesitated. But the two shining barrels converging on his head, the two grim faces behind them, were convincing; in a moment he obeyed.

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FLIGHT

One of the men-it was I-muttered something to Marie, and she snuffed the wick, and blew up the light. In a moment it filled the room, disclosing a strange medley of levelled weapons, startled faces, and flashing eyes. In one corner Fraulein Max and the two women cowered behind one another, trembling and staring. At the table sat my lady, with dull, dazed eyes, looking on, yet scarcely understanding what was happening. On either side of her stood Steve and I, covering the general with our pistols, while the Waldgrave, who was still too weak for much exertion, kept guard at the door.

Tzerclas was the first to speak. 'What is this foolery?' he said, scowling unutterable curses at us. 'What does this mean?'

'This!' I said, producing a piece of hide rope. 'We are going to tie you up. If you struggle, general, you die. If you submit, you live. That is all. Go to work, Steve.'

There was a gleam in Tzerclas' eye, which warned me to stand back and crook my finger. His face was black with fury, and for an instant I thought that he would spring upon us and dare all. But prudence and the pistols prevailed. With an evil look he sat still, and in a trice Steve had a loop round his arms and was binding him to the heavy chair.

I knew then that as far as he was concerned we were safe; and I turned to bid the women get cloaks and food, adjuring them to be quick, since every moment was precious.

'Bring nothing but cloaks and food and wine,' I said. 'We have to go a league on foot and can carry little.'

The Countess heard my words, and looked at me with growing comprehension. 'The Waldgrave?' she muttered. 'Is he here?'

He came forward from the door to speak to her; but when she saw him, and how pale and thin he was, with great hollows in his cheeks and his eyes grown too large for his face, she began to cry weakly, as any other woman might have cried, being overwrought. I bade Marie, who alone kept her wits, to bring her wine and make her take it; and in a minute she smiled at us, and would have thanked us.

'Wait!' I said bluntly, feeling a great horror upon me whenever I looked towards the general or caught his eye. 'You may have small cause to thank us. If we fail, Heaven and you forgive us, my lady, for this man will not. If we are retaken-'

'We will not be retaken!' she cried hardily. 'You have horses?'

'Five only,' I answered. 'They are all Steve could get, and they are a league away. We must go to them on foot. There are eight of us here, and young Jacob and Ernst are watching outside. Are all ready?'

My lady looked round; her eye fell on Fraulein Max, who with a little bundle in her arms had just re-entered and stood shivering by the door. The Dutch girl winced under her glance, and dropping her bundle, stooped hurriedly to pick it up.

'That woman does not go!' the Countess said suddenly.

I answered in a low tone that I thought she must.

'No!' my lady cried harshly-she could be cruel sometimes-'not with us. She does not belong to our party. Let her stay with her paymaster, and to-morrow he will doubtless reward her.'

What reward she was likely to get Fraulein Max knew well. She flung herself at my lady's feet in an agony of fear, and clutching her skirts, cried abjectly for mercy; she would carry, she would help, she would do anything, if she might go! Knowing that we dared not leave her since she would be certain to release the general as soon as our backs were turned, I was glad when Marie, whose heart was touched, joined her prayers to the culprit's and won a reluctant consent.

It has taken long to tell these things. They passed very quickly. I suppose not more than a quarter of an hour elapsed between our first appearance and this juncture, which saw us all standing in the lamplight, laden and ready to be gone; while the general glowered at us in sullen rage, and my lady, with a new thought in her mind, looked round in dismay.

She drew me aside. 'Martin,' she said, 'his orderly is waiting in the road with his horse. The moment we are gone he will shout to him.'

'We have provided for that,' I answered, nodding. Then assuring myself by a last look round that all were ready, I gave the word. 'Now, Steve!' I said sharply.

In a twinkling he flung over the general's head a small sack doubled inwards. We heard a stifled oath and a cry of rage. The bars of the strong chair creaked as our prisoner struggled, and for a moment it seemed as if the knots would barely hold. But the work had been well done, and in less than half a minute Steve had secured the sack to the chair-back. It was as good as a gag, and safer. Then we took up the chair between us, and lifting it into the back room, put it down and locked the door upon our captive.

As we turned from it Steve looked at me. 'If he catches us after this, Master Martin,' he said, 'it won't be an easy death we shall die!'

'Heaven forbid!' I muttered. 'Let us be off!'

He gave the word and we stole out into the darkness at the back of the house, Steve, who had surveyed the ground, going first. My lady followed him; then came the Waldgrave; after him the two women and Fraulein Max, with Jacob and Ernst; last of all, Marie and I. It was no time for love-making, but as we all stood a minute in the night, while Steve listened, I drew Marie's little figure to me and kissed her pale face again and again; and she clung to me, trembling, her eyes shining into mine. Then she put me away bravely; but I took her bundle, and with full hearts we followed the others across the field at the back and through the ditch.

That passed, we found ourselves on the edge of the village, with the lights of the camp forming five-sixths of a circle round us. In one direction only, where the swamp and creek fringed the place, a dark gap broke the ring of twinkling fires. Towards this gap Steve led the way, and we, a silent line of gliding figures, followed him. The moon had not yet risen. The gloom was such that I could barely make out the third figure before me; and though all manner of noises-the chorus of a song, the voice of a scolding hag, even the rattle of dice on a drumhead-came clearly to my ears, and we seemed to be enclosed on all sides, the darkness proved an effectual shield. We met no one, and five minutes after leaving the house, reached the bank of the little creek I have mentioned.

Here we paused and waited, a group of huddled figures, while Steve groped about for a plank he had hidden. Before us lay the stream, behind us the camp. At any moment the alarm might be raised. I pictured the outcry, the sudden flickering of lights, the galloping this way and that, the discovery. And then, thank Heaven! Steve found his plank, and in the work of passing the women over I forgot my fears. The darkness, the peril-for the water on the nearer side was deep-the nervous haste of some, and the terror of others, made the task no easy one. I was hot as fire and wet to the waist before it was over, and we all stood ankle-deep in the ooze which formed the farther bank.

Alas! our troubles were only beginning. Through this ooze we had to wade for a mile or more, sometimes in doubt, always in darkness; now plashing into pools, now stumbling over a submerged log, often up to our knees in mud and water. The frogs croaked round us, the bog moaned and gurgled; in the depth of the marsh the bitterns boomed mournfully. If we stood a moment we sank. It was a horrible time; and the more horrible, as through it all we had only to turn to see the camp lights behind us, a poor half-mile or so away.

None but desperate men could have exposed women to such a labour; nor could any but women without hope and at their wit's end have accomplished it. As it was, Fraulein Max, who never ceased to whimper, twice sank down and would go no farther, and we had to pluck her up roughly and force her on. My lady's women, who wept in their misery, were little better. Wet to the waist, draggled, and worn out by the clinging slime and the reek of the marsh, they were kept moving only with difficulty; so that, but for Steve's giant strength and my lady's courage, I think we should have stayed there till daylight, and been caught like birds limed on a bough.

As it was, we plunged and strove for more than an hour in that place, the dark sky above us, the quaking bog below, the women's weeping in our ears. Then, at last, when I had almost given up hope, we struggled out one by one upon the road, and stood panting and shaking, astonished to find solid ground under our feet. We had still two miles to walk, but on dry soil; and though at another time the task might have seemed to the women full of adventure and arduous, it failed to frighten them after what we had gone through. Steve took Fraulein Anna, and I one of the women. My lady and the Waldgrave went hand in hand; the one giving, I fancy, as much help as the other. For Marie, her small, white face was a beacon of hope in the darkness. In the marsh she had never failed or fainted. On the road the tears came into my eyes for pity and love and admiration.

At length Steve bade us stand, and leaving us in the way, plunged into the denser blackness of a thicket, which lay between it and the river. I heard him parting the branches before him, and stumbling and swearing, until presently the sounds died away in the distance, and we remained shivering and waiting. What if the horses were gone? What if they had strayed from the place where he had tethered them early in the day, or some one had found and removed them? The thought threw me into a cold sweat.

Then I heard him coming back, and I caught the ring of iron hoofs. He had them! I breathed again. In a moment he emerged, and behind him a string of shadows-five horses tied head and tail.

'Quick!' he muttered. He had been long enough alone to grow nervous. 'We are two hours gone, and if they have not yet discovered him they must soon! It is a short start, and half of us on foot!'

No one answered, but in a moment we had the Waldgrave, my lady, Fraulein, and one of the women mounted. Then we put up Marie, who was no heavier than a feather, and the lighter of the women on the remaining horse; and Steve hurrying beside the leader, and I, Ernst, and Jacob bringing up the rear, we were well on the road within two minutes of the appearance of the horses. Those who rode had only sacking for saddles and loops of rope for stirrups; but no one complained. Even Fraulein Max began to recover herself, and to dwell more upon the peril of capture than on aching legs and chafed knees.

The road was good, and we made, as far as I could judge, about six miles in the first hour. This placed us nine miles from the camp; the time, a little after midnight. At this point the clouds, which had aided us so far by increasing the darkness of the night, fell in a great storm of rain, that, hissing on the road and among the trees, in a few minutes drenched us to the skin. But no one complained. Steve muttered that it would make it the more difficult to track us; and for another hour we plodded on gallantly. Then our leader called a halt, and we stood listening.

The rain had left the sky lighter. A waning moon, floating in a wrack of watery clouds to westward, shed a faint gleam on the landscape. To the right of us it disclosed a bare plain, rising gradually as it receded, and offering no cover. On our left, between us and the river, it was different. Here a wilderness of osiers-a grey willow swamp that in the moonlight shimmered like the best Utrecht-stretched as far as we could see. The road where we stood rose a few feet above it, so that our eyes were on a level with the highest shoots; but a hundred yards farther on the road sank a little. We could see the water standing on the track in pools, and glimmering palely.

'This is the place,' Steve muttered. 'It will be dawn in another hour. What do you think, Master Martin?'

'That we had better get off the road,' I answered. 'Take it they found him at midnight; the orderly's patience would scarcely last longer. Then, if they started after us a quarter of an hour later, they should be here in another twenty minutes.'

'It is an aguey place,' he said doubtfully.

'It will suit us better than the camp,' I answered.

No one else expressed an opinion, and Steve, taking my lady's rein, led her horse on until he came to the hollow part of the road. Here the moonlight disclosed a kind of water-lane, running away between the osiers, at right angles from the road. Steve turned into it, leading my lady's horse, and in a moment was wading a foot deep in water. The Waldgrave followed, then the women. I came last, with Marie's rein in my hand. We kept down the lane about one hundred and fifty paces, the horses snorting and moving unwillingly, and the water growing ever deeper. Then Steve turned out of it, and began to advance, but more cautiously, parallel with the road.

We had waded about as far in this direction, sidling between the stumps and stools as well as we could, when he came again to a stand and passed back the word for me. I waded on, and joined him. The osiers, which were interspersed here and there with great willows, rose above our heads and shut out the moonlight. The water gurgled black about our knees. Each step might lead us into a hole, or we might trip over the roots of the osiers. It was impossible to see a foot before us, or anything above us save the still, black rods and the grey sky.

'It should be in this direction,' Steve said, with an accent of doubt. 'But I cannot see. We shall have the horses down.'

'Let me go first,' I said.

'We must not separate,' he answered hastily.

'No, no,' I said, my teeth beginning to chatter. 'But are you sure that there is an eyot here?'

'I did not go to it,' he answered, scratching his head. 'But I saw a clump of willows rising well above the level, and they looked to me as if they grew on dry land.'

He stood a moment irresolutely, first one and then another of the horses shaking itself till the women could scarcely keep their seats.

'Why do we not go on?' my lady asked in a low voice.

'Because Steve is not sure of the place, my lady,' I said. 'And it is almost impossible to move, it is so dark, and the osiers grow so closely. I doubt we should have waited until daylight.'

'Then we should have run the risk of being intercepted,' she answered feverishly. 'Are you very wet?'

'No,' I said, though my feet were growing numb, 'not very. I see what we must do. One of us must climb into a willow and look out.'

We had passed a small one not long before. I plashed my way back to it, along the line of shivering women, and, pulling myself heavily into the branches, managed to scramble up a few feet. The tree swayed under my weight, but it bore me.

The first dawn was whitening the sky and casting a faint, reflected light on the glistening sea of osiers, that seemed to my eyes-for I was not high enough to look beyond it-to stretch far and away on every side. Here and there a large willow, rising in a round, dark clump, stood out above the level; and in one place, about a hundred paces away on the riverside of us, a group of these formed a shadowy mound. I marked the spot, and dropped gently into the water.

'I have found it,' I said. 'I will go first, and do you bring my lady, Steve. And mind the stumps. It will be rough work.'

It was rough work. We had to wind in and out, leading and coaxing the frightened horses, that again and again stumbled to their knees. Every minute I feared that we should find the way impassable or meet with a mishap. But in time, going very patiently, we made out the willows in front of us. Then the water grew more shallow, and this gave the animals courage. Twenty steps farther, and we passed into the shadow of the trees. A last struggle, and, plunging one by one up the muddy bank, we stood panting on the eyot.

It was such a place as only despair could choose for a refuge. In shape like the back of some large submerged beast, it lay in length about forty paces, in breadth half as many. The highest point was a poor foot above the water. Seven great willows took up half the space; it was as much as our horses, sinking in the moist mud to the fetlock, could do to find standing-room on the remainder. Coarse grass and reeds covered it; and the flotsam of the last flood whitened the trunks of the willows, and hung in squalid wisps from their lower branches.