been
discovered in any quarter. The most hopeful began to despond; and general
lamentations prevailed throughout Klosterheim.
    Suddenly, however, a dull sound arose within a quarter of a mile from the
city gate, as of some feeble attempt to blow a blast upon a trumpet. In five
minutes more a louder blast was sounded close to the gate. Questions were
joyfully put, and as joyfully answered. The usual precautions were rapidly gone
through: and, the officer of the watch being speedily satisfied as to the safety
of the measure, the gates were thrown open, and the unfortunate travellers,
exhausted by fatigue, hardships, and suffering of every description, were at
length admitted into the bosom of a friendly town.
    The spectacle was hideous which the long cavalcade exhibited as it wound up
the steep streets which led to the market-place. Waggons fractured and
splintered in every direction, upon which were stretched numbers of gallant
soldiers, with wounds hastily dressed, from which the blood had poured in
streams upon their gay habiliments; horses, whose limbs had been mangled by the
sabre; and coaches or caleches loaded with burthens of dead and dying; these
were amongst the objects which occupied the van in the line of march, as the
travellers defiled through Klosterheim. The vast variety of faces, dresses,
implements of war, or ensigns of rank, thrown together in the confusion of night
and retreat, illuminated at intervals by bright streams of light from torches or
candles in the streets, or at the windows of the houses, composed a picture
which resembled the chaos of a dream, rather than any ordinary spectacle of
human life.
    In the market-place the whole party were gradually assembled, and there it
was intended that they should receive the billets for their several quarters.
But such was the pressure of friends and relatives gathering from all
directions, to salute and welcome the objects of their affectionate anxiety, or
to inquire after their fate, - so tumultuous was the conflict of grief and joy
(and not seldom in the very same group), - that for a long time no authority
could control the violence of public feeling, or enforce the arrangements which
had been adopted for the night. Nor was it even easy to learn, where the
questions were put by so many voices at once, what had been the history of the
night. It was at length, however, collected, that they had been met and attacked
with great fury by Holkerstein, or a party acting under one of his lieutenants.
Their own march had been so warily conducted after nightfall that this attack
did not find them unprepared