114 CREPU; OR, *MS IT POSSIBLE?" 



In a few seconds, the shouts of his comrades and the glare of the 

 flambeaux waxed faint and dim, and the turn of a corner brought our 

 hero into obscurity, illumined only by occasional gleams of the moon, 

 which struggling in a rebel drift of tempestuous clouds, threw out a 

 beam now and then, as if asserting her prerogative to enlighten the 

 world. The imagination of the soldier — for such he appeared — was 

 apparently alive to all the glories of warlike enterprise ; words of mighty 

 import — of death and wounds and cannon's roar ; of attack and 

 slaughter, siege and sortie ; battle and ambuscade, broke from him at in- 

 tervals, and these were curiously intermixed with the fond phrases of a 

 floral enthusiast wandering through his flower beds. Roses, tulips, 

 peonies, anemonies, hyacinths — all the favourites of the parterre, with 

 their bright minions the butterflies, were apostrophised and verbally 

 transplanted to the field of carnage ; nor must we omit to state that 

 ejaculations of less warrantable purity, and more like the rude oaths of 

 the halbert, ever and anon varied the oratory of the speaker. In this 

 chequered mood he was zigzagging on, when a rough salutation manual, 

 on the shoulders, roused his belligerent propensities, and, foaming with 

 ire indescribable, he whirled out his bilboa, faced round, and with a 

 biting anathema, made a deadly lunge at his antagonist. The pass was 

 effectual, — ^hot blood gushed into the face of the soldier, a heavy 

 groan, and a heavier fall, succeeded the blow — then a bubbling sound, 

 and all was silent. The fumes of inebriation instantly fled from the 

 brain of the conqueror ; appalled at the consequence of his rashness, he 

 stood for a moment rooted to the very ground, his crimsoned blade in 

 his hand, and his hair bristling on his head like *' quills on the fretful 

 porcupine.'* Detection, arrest, a criminal process, judgment and execu- 

 tion — a scaffold, and all its sickening accompaniments, rushed before 

 him in momentary but hideous display. " San Jago, assist me V at 

 length uttered the unhappy soldier, throwing down his sword, and 

 stooping to take note of the dying man. One glance was sufficient, 

 he sprung back as if galvanised, poured out a hearty thanksgiving, 

 made a summerset in the air, took off his beaver, bent it double with de- 

 light, and, finally, kicked it into the kennel ; then, rushing up to the 

 victim who lay lifeless before him, he hastily unbuckled his buffalo belt, 

 fastened it securely round the feet, and, raising the corpse on his back, 

 tottered home as speedily as he could, dreading an encounter with the 

 watch. Alarm lent wings to his heels, and thus transformed him into a 

 modem Mercury ; the moon peeped out pryingly as he knocked with 

 subdued eagerness at the back gate of a fair house, on the outskirts of 

 the good city of Brussels : the baying of a dog at some distance re- 

 turned the demand, and while banning the tardiness of those within, 

 the soldier leaned his burthen upon a fence and proceeded to fan his 

 brow with his broad hat. His resting-place was a long slip of garden 

 ground, at the end of which, close to the trellised door-way of a quaint, 

 old, tall-chimneyed dwelling, he stood panting from the effects of his 

 flight. Narrow paths, neatly gravelled and bordered with close-clipped 

 edgings of box, intersected the place at right angles, a summer-house, 

 gilded and painted and surmounted with a fantastic weather cock, 

 stood in the centre ; and miniature plantations fenced in the spot, and 

 protected the flower plots from too boisterous a salute from the winds. 

 These small treasuries of Flora were disposed in bizarre fashion and 

 mathematical form, but they exhibited some of the rarest and costliest 

 roots that ever a Dutch bulb buyer gloated on with ecstacy. There were 

 tulips worth the Muscovite's diadem, and hyacinths, one individual of 

 which were cheap at the wealth of a "dynasty" of Burgomasters. 



