“You will make a great leader some day if you do not get killed in one of these adventures, young sir.  Bravery seems to be a common gift of the men of your nation; but you seem to unite with it a surprising prudence and sagacity, and, moreover, this march of yours to Mansfeld shows that you do not fear taking responsibility, which is a high and rare quality.  You have done good service to the cause, and I thank you, and shall keep my eye upon you in the future.”

The next day Malcolm went round the camp, and was surprised at the extensive works which had been erected.  Strong ramparts and redoubts had been thrown up round it, faced with stone, and mounted with 150 pieces of cannon.  In the centre stood an inner entrenchment with earthworks and a deep fosse.  In this stood the tents of the king and those of his principal officers.  The Marquis of Hamilton had, Malcolm heard, arrived and gone.  He had lost on the march many of the soldiers he had enlisted in England, who had died from eating German bread, which was heavier, darker coloured, and more sour than that of their own country.  This, however, did not disagree with the Scotch, who were accustomed to black bread.

“I wonder,” Malcolm said to Nigel Graheme, “that when the king has in face of him a force so superior to his own he should have sent away on detached service the four splendid regiments which they say the marquis brought.”

“Well, the fact was,” Nigel said laughing, “Hamilton was altogether too grand for us here.  We all felt small and mean so long as he remained.  Gustavus himself, who is as simple in his tastes as any officer in the army, and who keeps up no ostentatious show, was thrown into the shade by his visitor.  Why, had he been the Emperor of Germany or the King of France he could not have made a braver show.  His table was equipped and furnished with magnificence; his carriages would have created a sensation in Paris; the liveries of his attendants were more splendid than the uniforms of generals; he had forty gentlemen as esquires and pages, and 200 yeomen, splendidly mounted and armed, rode with him as his bodyguard.

“Altogether he was oppressive; but the Hamiltons have ever been fond of show and finery.  So Gustavus has sent him and his troops away to guard the passages of the Oder and to cover our retreat should we be forced to fall back.”

Tilly, finding that the position of Gustavus was too strong to be forced, retired to Wolmirstadt, whence he summoned the Elector of Saxony to admit his army into his country, and either to disband the Saxon army or to unite it to his own.  Hitherto the elector had held aloof from Gustavus, whom he regarded with jealousy and dislike, and had stood by inactive although the slightest movement of his army would have saved Magdeburg.  To disband his troops, however, and to hand over his fortresses to Tilly, would be equivalent to giving up his dominions to the enemy; rather than do this he determined to join Gustavus, and having despatched Arnheim to treat with the King of Sweden for alliance, he sent a point blank refusal to Tilly.