of his Highness and the Infanta, and of contrasting it with their own misery.  Moreover, it had long been exciting much indignation in the ranks that veteran generals and colonels, in whom all men had confidence, had been in great numbers superseded in order to make place for court favourites, utterly without experience or talent.  Thus the veterans; murmuring in the wet trenches.  The archduke meanwhile, in his sullen retirement, brooded over a tragedy to follow the very successful comedy of his antagonist.

It was not long delayed.  The assault which had been postponed in the latter days of December was to be renewed before the end of the first week of the new year.  Vere, through scouts and deserters, was aware of the impending storm, and had made his arrangements in accordance with, the very minute information which he had thus received.  The reinforcements, so opportunely sent by the States, were not numerous —­only six hundred in all—­but they were an earnest of fresh comrades to follow.  Meantime they sufficed to fill the gaps in the ranks, and to enable Vere to keep possession of the external line of fortifications, including the all-important Porcupine.  Moreover, during the fictitious negotiations, while the general had thus been holding—­as he expressed it—­the wolf by both ears, the labor of repairing damages in dyke, moat, and wall had not been for an instant neglected.

The morning of the 7th January, 1602, opened with a vigorous cannonade from all the archduke’s batteries, east, west, and south.  Auditor Fleeting, counsellor and secretary of the city, aide-de-camp and right hand of the commander-in-chief, a grim, grizzled, leathern-faced man of fifty, steady under fire as a veteran arquebuseer, ready with his pen as a counting-house clerk, and as fertile in resource as the most experienced campaigner, was ever at the general’s side.  At his suggestion several houses had been demolished, to furnish materials in wood and iron to stop the gaps as soon as made.  Especially about the Sand Hill fort and the Porcupine a plentiful supply was collected, no time having been lost in throwing up stockades, palisades, and every other possible obstruction to the expected assailants.  Knowing perfectly well where the brunt of the battle was to be, Vere had placed his brother Sir Horace at the head of twelve picked companies of diverse nations in the Sand Hill.  Four of the very best companies of the garrison were stationed in the Porcupine, and ten more of the choicest in Fort Hell’s Mouth, under Colonel Meetkerke.  It must be recollected that the first of these three works was the key to the fortifications of the old or outer town.  The other two were very near it, and were the principal redoubts which defended the most exposed and vulnerable portion of the new town on the western side.  The Sand Hill, as its name imported, was the only existing relic within the city’s verge of the chain of downs once encircling the whole place.  It had however been cannonaded so steadily during the six months’ siege as to have become almost ironclad—­a mass of metal gradually accumulating from the enemy’s guns.  With the curtain extending from it towards east and west it protected the old town quite up to the little ancient brick church, one of the only two in Ostend.