below a long high
wall which separated the town from the river, and, ere I had time to
decide what I should do first, a figure coming out of an archway caught
me by the hand, and I recognised my own major domo, my foster-brother.

"'I knew you would come back to me,' he said, 'if it was only as a pale
ghost; though I never believed you dead, and have watched here for you
night and day to stop you.'

"'Are the French in my castle, then?'

"'There are worse than the French there,' he said; 'worse than the
devil Bonaparte himself. Treason, treachery, adultery!'

"'Who has proved false?' I cried.

"'Your brother! False to his king, to his word, to yourself. He was in
correspondence with the French for six months past, and, now that he
believes you dead, he is living in sin with her who was to have been
your wife.'

"I did not cry out or faint, or anything of that sort. I only said, 'I
am going to the castle, Fritz,' and he came with me. My brother had
turned him out of the house when he usurped my property, but by a still
faithful domestic we were admitted, and I, knowing every secret passage
in my house, came shoeless from behind some arras, and stood before
them as they sat at supper. I was a ghastly sight. I had not shaved for
a fortnight, and my uniform hung in tatters from my body; round my head
was the same bloody white handkerchief with which I had bound up my
head at Jena. I was deadly pale from hunger, too; and from my entering
so silently they believed they had seen a ghost. My brother rose, and
stood pale and horrified, and Catherine fell fainting on the floor.
This was all my revenge, and ere my brother could speak, I was
gone--away to England, where I had money in the funds, accompanied by
my faithful Max, whom Mary Hawker's father buried in Drumston
churchyard.

"So in one day I lost a brother, a mistress, a castle, a king, and a
fatherland. I was a ruined, desperate man. And yet I lived to see old
Blucher with his dirty boots on the silken sofas at the Tuileries, and
to become as stout and merry a middle-aged man as any Prussian subject
in her young Majesty's dominions."

Chapter XXXI

HOW TOM TROUBRIDGE KEPT WATCH FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Human affairs are subject to such an infinite variety of changes and
complications, that any attempt to lay down particular rules for
individual action, under peculiar circumstances, must prove a failure.
Hence I consider proverbs, generally speaking, to be