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cart, and began repeating, 'Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott,' by
which I concluded that I had got into the company of a parson. With
the jolts of the waggon, and accidents of the journey, various more
exclamations and movements of the passengers showed what a motley
company we were. Every now and then a countryman would burst into
tears; a French voice would be heard to say, 'O mon Dieu!--mon
Dieu!' a couple more of the same nation were jabbering oaths and
chattering incessantly; and a certain allusion to his own and
everybody else's eyes, which came from a stalwart figure at the far
corner, told me that there was certainly an Englishman in our crew.

But I was spared soon the tedium and discomforts of the journey. In
spite of the clergyman's cushion, my head, which was throbbing with
pain, was brought abruptly in contact with the side of the waggon;
it began to bleed afresh: I became almost light-headed. I only
recollect having a draught of water here and there; once stopping at
a fortified town, where an officer counted us:--all the rest of the
journey was passed in a drowsy stupor, from which, when I awoke, I
found myself lying in a hospital bed, with a nun in a white hood
watching over me.

'They are in sad spiritual darkness,' said a voice from the bed next
to me, when the nun had finished her kind offices and retired: 'they
are in the night of error, and yet there is the light of faith in
those poor creatures.'

It was my comrade of the crimp waggon, his huge broad face looming
out from under a white nightcap, and ensconced in the bed beside.

'What! you there, Herr Pastor?' said I.

'Only a candidate, sir,' answered the white nightcap. 'But, praised
be Heaven! you have come to. You have had a wild time of it. You
have been talking in the English language (with which I am
acquainted) of Ireland, and a young lady, and Mick, and of another
young lady, and of a house on fire, and of the British Grenadiers,
concerning whom you sung us parts of a ballad, and of a number of
other matters appertaining, no doubt, to your personal history.'

'It has been a very strange one,' said I; 'and, perhaps, there is no
man in the world, of my birth, whose misfortunes can at all be
compared to mine.'

I do not object to own that I am disposed to brag of my birth and
other acquirements; for I have always found that if a man does not
give himself a good word, his friends will not do it for him.

'Well,' said my fellow-patient, 'I have no doubt yours is a strange
tale, and shall be glad to hear it anon; but at present you must not
be permitted to speak much, for your fever has been long, and your
exhaustion great.'

'Where are we?' I asked; and the candidate informed me that we were
in the bishopric and town of Fulda, at present occupied by Prince
Henry's troops. There had been a skirmish with an out-party of
French near the town, in which a shot entering the waggon, the poor
candidate had been wounded.

As the reader knows already my history, I will not take the trouble

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