Presently three gentlemen came in and joined him at the table, where, the remains of supper being cleared away and fresh wine set down, they sat and played Skat, a game of cards which was then in great vogue among all the people of the eastern part of Germany, and had wiled away the tedium of many a long evening in camp for Nigel. With this and talk of Magdeburg a couple of hours passed pleasantly, and then the party broke up. Nigel was not sorry to be free to go to bed.
It was a room of comfortable aspect. The walls were hung with embossed leather in the Flemish manner; the bed was a wide and high four-poster, and the other furniture consisted of a great chest, a chair or two and some other necessaries. It looked out upon the courtyard of the palace, a large open space surrounded on four sides by piles of building. Nigel could dimly see so much. The rest he left till morning.
Having performed his devotions he stretched himself out upon the bed, drew up the heavy quilted counterpane and prepared to sleep.
But sleep was not to be wooed easily; for what was to happen on the morrow he could not foresee. The profound humiliation of having to confess in open audience to the Emperor the loss of his despatches was perhaps the most poignant of his anticipations. And this he had passed through so often in his mind already that he could not imagine that any worse pang than he had already experienced could arise out of the reality. From this his mind roved to the punishment that might be inflicted. He expected that some military penalty would be his lot, confinement perhaps for a time, the loss of his rank as captain. The worst would be dismissal from the Emperor's service; for like a true Scot he had learned to love his profession, and the service he had chosen had become that which commanded all his loyalty. As a soldier of fortune, who had fought with Wallenstein, he could make his way in any of the armies of Europe, but he was not by nature a mercenary. Dismissal would be the heaviest punishment of all. And then his thoughts, tired of dwelling on these painful themes, flew away to Erfurt and to Ottilie von Thüringen, that mysterious high-born lady whose history was entwined with his own and Wallenstein's.
