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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lysbeth, by H. Rider Haggard
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lysbeth
+       A Tale Of The Dutch
+
+Author: H. Rider Haggard
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2006 [EBook #5754]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LYSBETH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers; Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+LYSBETH
+
+A Tale Of The Dutch
+
+
+By H. Rider Haggard
+
+
+First Published 1901.
+
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+In token of the earnest reverence of a man of a later generation for his
+character, and for that life work whereof we inherit the fruits to-day,
+this tale of the times he shaped is dedicated to the memory of one of
+the greatest and most noble-hearted beings that the world has known; the
+immortal William, called the Silent, of Nassau.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+There are, roughly, two ways of writing an historical romance--the first
+to choose some notable and leading characters of the time to be treated,
+and by the help of history attempt to picture them as they were; the
+other, to make a study of that time and history with the country in
+which it was enacted, and from it to deduce the necessary characters.
+
+In the case of "Lysbeth" the author has attempted this second method. By
+an example of the trials, adventures, and victories of a burgher family
+of the generation of Philip II. and William the Silent, he strives to
+set before readers of to-day something of the life of those who lived
+through perhaps the most fearful tyranny that the western world has
+known. How did they live, one wonders; how is it that they did not die
+of very terror, those of them who escaped the scaffold, the famine and
+the pestilence?
+
+This and another--Why were such things suffered to be?--seem problems
+worth consideration, especially by the young, who are so apt to take
+everything for granted, including their own religious freedom and
+personal security. How often, indeed, do any living folk give a grateful
+thought to the forefathers who won for us these advantages, and many
+others with them?
+
+The writer has sometimes heard travellers in the Netherlands express
+surprise that even in an age of almost universal decoration its noble
+churches are suffered to remain smeared with melancholy whitewash. Could
+they look backward through the centuries and behold with the mind's eye
+certain scenes that have taken place within these very temples and
+about their walls, they would marvel no longer. Here we are beginning
+to forget the smart at the price of which we bought deliverance from
+the bitter yoke of priest and king, but yonder the sword bit deeper
+and smote more often. Perhaps that is why in Holland they still love
+whitewash, which to them may be a symbol, a perpetual protest; and
+remembering stories that have been handed down as heirlooms to this day,
+frown at the sight of even the most modest sacerdotal vestment. Those
+who are acquainted with the facts of their history and deliverance will
+scarcely wonder at the prejudice.
+
+
+
+
+
+LYSBETH
+
+A TALE OF THE DUTCH
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE FIRST
+
+THE SOWING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE WOLF AND THE BADGER
+
+The time was in or about the year 1544, when the Emperor Charles V.
+ruled the Netherlands, and our scene the city of Leyden.
+
+Any one who has visited this pleasant town knows that it lies in the
+midst of wide, flat meadows, and is intersected by many canals filled
+with Rhine water. But now, as it was winter, near to Christmas indeed,
+the meadows and the quaint gabled roofs of the city lay buried beneath
+a dazzling sheet of snow, while, instead of boats and barges, skaters
+glided up and down the frozen surface of the canals, which were swept
+for their convenience. Outside the walls of the town, not far from the
+Morsch poort, or gate, the surface of the broad moat which surrounded
+them presented a sight as gay as it was charming. Just here one of
+the branches of the Rhine ran into this moat, and down it came the
+pleasure-seekers in sledges, on skates, or afoot. They were dressed,
+most of them, in their best attire, for the day was a holiday set apart
+for a kind of skating carnival, with sleighing matches, such games as
+curling, and other amusements.
+
+Among these merry folk might have been seen a young lady of two or three
+and twenty years of age, dressed in a coat of dark green cloth trimmed
+with fur, and close-fitting at the waist. This coat opened in front,
+showing a broidered woollen skirt, but over the bust it was tightly
+buttoned and surmounted by a stiff ruff of Brussels lace. Upon her head
+she wore a high-crowned beaver hat, to which the nodding ostrich feather
+was fastened by a jewelled ornament of sufficient value to show that she
+was a person of some means. In fact, this lady was the only child of a
+sea captain and shipowner named Carolus van Hout, who, whilst still a
+middle-aged man, had died about a year before, leaving her heiress to a
+very considerable fortune. This circumstance, with the added advantages
+of a very pretty face, in which were set two deep and thoughtful grey
+eyes, and a figure more graceful than was common among the Netherlander
+women, caused Lysbeth van Hout to be much sought after and admired,
+especially by the marriageable bachelors of Leyden.
+
+On this occasion, however, she was unescorted except by a serving woman
+somewhat older than herself, a native of Brussels, Greta by name, who in
+appearance was as attractive as in manner she was suspiciously discreet.
+
+As Lysbeth skated down the canal towards the moat many of the good
+burghers of Leyden took off their caps to her, especially the young
+burghers, one or two of whom had hopes that she would choose them to be
+her cavalier for this day's fete. Some of the elders, also, asked her
+if she would care to join their parties, thinking that, as she was
+an orphan without near male relations, she might be glad of their
+protection in times when it was wise for beautiful young women to be
+protected. With this excuse and that, however, she escaped from them
+all, for Lysbeth had already made her own arrangements.
+
+At that date there was living in Leyden a young man of four or five and
+twenty, named Dirk van Goorl, a distant cousin of her own. Dirk was a
+native of the little town of Alkmaar, and the second son of one of its
+leading citizens, a brass founder by trade. As in the natural course of
+events the Alkmaar business would descend to his elder brother, their
+father appointed him to a Leyden firm, in which, after eight or nine
+years of hard work, he had become a junior partner. While he was still
+living, Lysbeth's father had taken a liking to the lad, with the result
+that he grew intimate at the house which, from the first, was open
+to him as a kinsman. After the death of Carolus van Hout, Dirk had
+continued to visit there, especially on Sundays, when he was duly and
+ceremoniously received by Lysbeth's aunt, a childless widow named Clara
+van Ziel, who acted as her guardian. Thus, by degrees, favoured with
+such ample opportunity, a strong affection had sprung up between these
+two young people, although as yet they were not affianced, nor indeed
+had either of them said a word of open love to the other.
+
+This abstinence may seem strange, but some explanation of their
+self-restraint was to be found in Dirk's character. In mind he was
+patient, very deliberate in forming his purposes, and very sure in
+carrying them out. He felt impulses like other men, but he did not
+give way to them. For two years or more he had loved Lysbeth, but being
+somewhat slow at reading the ways of women he was not quite certain
+that she loved him, and above everything on earth he dreaded a rebuff.
+Moreover he knew her to be an heiress, and as his own means were still
+humble, and his expectations from his father small, he did not feel
+justified in asking her in marriage until his position was more assured.
+Had the Captain Carolus still been living the case would have been
+different, for then he could have gone to him. But he was dead, and
+Dirk's fine and sensitive nature recoiled from the thought that it might
+be said of him that he had taken advantage of the inexperience of a
+kinswoman in order to win her fortune. Also deep down in his mind he had
+a sincerer and quite secret reason for reticence, whereof more in its
+proper place.
+
+Thus matters stood between these two. To-day, however, though only with
+diffidence and after some encouragement from the lady, he had asked
+leave to be his cousin's cavalier at the ice fete, and when she
+consented, readily enough, appointed the moat as their place of meeting.
+This was somewhat less than Lysbeth expected, for she wished his escort
+through the town. But, when she hinted as much, Dirk explained that he
+would not be able to leave the works before three o'clock, as the metal
+for a large bell had been run into the casting, and he must watch it
+while it cooled.
+
+So, followed only by her maid, Greta, Lysbeth glided lightly as a bird
+down the ice path on to the moat, and across it, through the narrow
+cut, to the frozen mere beyond, where the sports were to be held and the
+races run. There the scene was very beautiful.
+
+Behind her lay the roofs of Leyden, pointed, picturesque, and covered
+with sheets of snow, while above them towered the bulk of the two great
+churches of St. Peter and St. Pancras, and standing on a mound known as
+the Burg, the round tower which is supposed to have been built by the
+Romans. In front stretched the flat expanse of white meadows, broken
+here and there by windmills with narrow waists and thin tall sails, and
+in the distance, by the church towers of other towns and villages.
+
+Immediately before her, in strange contrast to this lifeless landscape,
+lay the peopled mere, fringed around with dead reeds standing so still
+in the frosty air that they might have been painted things. On this mere
+half the population of Leyden seemed to be gathered; at least there were
+thousands of them, shouting, laughing, and skimming to and fro in their
+bright garments like flocks of gay-plumaged birds. Among them, drawn
+by horses with bells tied to their harness, glided many sledges of
+wickerwork and wood mounted upon iron runners, their fore-ends fashioned
+to quaint shapes, such as the heads of dogs or bulls, or Tritons. Then
+there were vendors of cakes and sweetmeats, vendors of spirits also, who
+did a good trade on this cold day. Beggars too were numerous, and among
+them deformities, who, nowadays, would be hidden in charitable homes,
+slid about in wooden boxes, which they pushed along with crutches.
+Lastly many loafers had gathered there with stools for fine ladies to
+sit on while the skates were bound to their pretty feet, and chapmen
+with these articles for sale and straps wherewith to fasten them. To
+complete the picture the huge red ball of the sun was sinking to the
+west, and opposite to it the pale full moon began already to gather
+light and life.
+
+The scene seemed so charming and so happy that Lysbeth, who was young,
+and now that she had recovered from the shock of her beloved father's
+death, light-hearted, ceased her forward movement and poised herself
+upon her skates to watch it for a space. While she stood thus a little
+apart, a woman came towards her from the throng, not as though she were
+seeking her, but aimlessly, much as a child's toy-boat is driven by
+light, contrary winds upon the summer surface of a pond.
+
+She was a remarkable-looking woman of about thirty-five years of age,
+tall and bony in make, with deep-set eyes, light grey of colour, that
+seemed now to flash fiercely and now to waver, as though in memory of
+some great dread. From beneath a coarse woollen cap a wisp of grizzled
+hair fell across the forehead, where it lay like the forelock of
+a horse. Indeed, the high cheekbones, scarred as though by burns,
+wide-spread nostrils and prominent white teeth, whence the lips had
+strangely sunk away, gave the whole countenance a more or less equine
+look which this falling lock seemed to heighten. For the rest the woman
+was poorly and not too plentifully clad in a gown of black woollen, torn
+and stained as though with long use and journeys, while on her feet she
+wore wooden clogs, to which were strapped skates that were not fellows,
+one being much longer than the other.
+
+Opposite to Lysbeth this strange, gaunt person stopped, contemplating
+her with a dreamy eye. Presently she seemed to recognise her, for she
+said in a quick, low voice, the voice of one who lives in terror of
+being overheard:--
+
+"That's a pretty dress of yours, Van Hout's daughter. Oh, yes, I know
+you; your father used to play with me when I was a child, and once he
+kissed me on the ice at just such a fete as this. Think of it! Kissed
+me, Martha the Mare," and she laughed hoarsely, and went on: "Yes,
+well-warmed and well-fed, and, without doubt, waiting for a gallant to
+kiss you"; here she turned and waved her hand towards the people--"all
+well-warmed and well-fed, and all with lovers and husbands and children
+to kiss. But I tell you, Van Hout's daughter, as I have dared to creep
+from my hiding hole in the great lake to tell all of them who will
+listen, that unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard, a day shall come
+when the folk of Leyden must perish by thousands of hunger behind
+those walls. Yes, yes, unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard and his
+Inquisition. Oh, I know him, I know him, for did they not make me carry
+my own husband to the stake upon my back? And have you heard why, Van
+Hout's daughter? Because what I had suffered in their torture-dens had
+made my face--yes, mine that once was so beautiful--like the face of a
+horse, and they said that 'a horse ought to be ridden.'"
+
+Now, while this poor excited creature, one of a whole class of such
+people who in those sad days might be found wandering about the
+Netherlands crazy with their griefs and sufferings, and living only for
+revenge, poured out these broken sentences, Lysbeth, terrified, shrank
+back before her. As she shrank the other followed, till presently
+Lysbeth saw her expression of rage and hate change to one of terror. In
+another instant, muttering something about a request for alms which she
+did not wait to receive, the woman had wheeled round and fled away as
+fast as her skates would carry her--which was very fast indeed.
+
+Turning about to find what had frightened her, Lysbeth saw standing on
+the bank of the mere, so close that she must have overheard every word,
+but behind the screen of a leafless bush, a tall, forbidding-looking
+woman, who held in her hand some broidered caps which apparently she was
+offering for sale. These caps she began to slowly fold up and place one
+by one in a hide satchel that was hung about her shoulders. All this
+while she was watching Lysbeth with her keen black eyes, except when
+from time to time she took them off her to follow the flight of that
+person who had called herself the Mare.
+
+"You keep ill company, lady," said the cap-seller in a harsh voice.
+
+"It was none of my seeking," answered Lysbeth, astonished into making a
+reply.
+
+"So much the better for you, lady, although she seemed to know you and
+to know also that you would listen to her song. Unless my eyes deceived
+me, which is not often, that woman is an evil-doer and a worker of magic
+like her dead husband Van Muyden; a heretic, a blasphemer of the Holy
+Church, a traitor to our Lord the Emperor, and one," she added with a
+snarl, "with a price upon her head that before night will, I hope, be
+in Black Meg's pocket." Then, walking with long firm steps towards a fat
+man who seemed to be waiting for her, the tall, black-eyed pedlar passed
+with him into the throng, where Lysbeth lost sight of them.
+
+Lysbeth watched them go, and shivered. To her knowledge she had never
+seen this woman before, but she knew enough of the times they lived in
+to be sure that she was a spy of the priests. Already there were such
+creatures moving about in every gathering, yes, and in many a private
+place, who were paid to obtain evidence against suspected heretics.
+Whether they won it by fair means or by foul mattered not, provided
+they could find something, and it need be little indeed, to justify the
+Inquisition in getting to its work.
+
+As for the other woman, the Mare, doubtless she was one of those wicked
+outcasts, accursed by God and man, who were called heretics; people who
+said dreadful things about the Pope and the Church and God's priests,
+having been misled and stirred up thereto by a certain fiend in human
+form named Luther. Lysbeth shuddered at the thought and crossed herself,
+for in those days she was an excellent Catholic. Yet the wanderer said
+that she had known her father, so that she must be as well born as
+herself--and then that dreadful story--no, she could not bear to think
+of it. But of course heretics deserved all these things; of that there
+could be no doubt whatever, for had not her father confessor told her
+that thus alone might their souls be saved from the grasp of the Evil
+One?
+
+The thought was comforting, still Lysbeth felt upset, and not a little
+rejoiced when she saw Dirk van Goorl skating towards her accompanied by
+another young man, also a cousin of her own on her mother's side who
+was destined in days to come to earn himself an immortal renown--young
+Pieter van de Werff. The two took off their bonnets to her, Dirk van
+Goorl revealing in the act a head of fair hair beneath which his steady
+blue eyes shone in a rather thick-set, self-contained face. Lysbeth's
+temper, always somewhat quick, was ruffled, and she showed it in her
+manner.
+
+"I thought, cousins, that we were to meet at three, and the kirk clock
+yonder has just chimed half-past," she said, addressing them both, but
+looking--not too sweetly--at Dirk van Goorl.
+
+"That's right, cousin," answered Pieter, a pleasant-faced and alert
+young man, "look at _him_, scold _him_, for he is to blame. Ever since a
+quarter past two have I--I who must drive a sledge in the great race and
+am backed to win--been waiting outside that factory in the snow, but,
+upon my honour, he did not appear until seven minutes since. Yes, we
+have done the whole distance in seven minutes, and I call that very good
+skating."
+
+"I thought as much," said Lysbeth. "Dirk can only keep an appointment
+with a church bell or a stadhuis chandelier."
+
+"It was not my fault," broke in Dirk in his slow voice; "I have my
+business to attend. I promised to wait until the metal had cooled
+sufficiently, and hot bronze takes no account of ice-parties and sledge
+races."
+
+"So I suppose that you stopped to blow on it, cousin. Well, the result
+is that, being quite unescorted, I have been obliged to listen to things
+which I did not wish to hear."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Dirk, taking fire at once.
+
+Then she told them something of what the woman who called herself the
+Mare had said to her, adding, "Doubtless the poor creature is a heretic
+and deserves all that has happened to her. But it is dreadfully sad, and
+I came here to enjoy myself, not to be sad."
+
+Between the two young men there passed a glance which was full of
+meaning. But it was Dirk who spoke. The other, more cautious, remained
+silent.
+
+"Why do you say that, Cousin Lysbeth?" he asked in a new voice, a voice
+thick and eager. "Why do you say that she deserves all that can happen
+to her? I have heard of this poor creature who is called Mother Martha,
+or the Mare, although I have never seen her myself. She was noble-born,
+much better born than any of us three, and very fair--once they called
+her the Lily of Brussels--when she was the Vrouw van Muyden, and she has
+suffered dreadfully, for one reason only, because she and hers did not
+worship God as you worship Him."
+
+"As we worship Him," broke in Van de Werff with a cough.
+
+"No," answered Dirk sullenly, "as our Cousin Lysbeth van Hout worships
+Him. For that reason only they killed her husband and her little son,
+and drove her mad, so that she lives among the reeds of the Haarlemer
+Meer like a beast in its den; yes, they, the Spaniards and their Spanish
+priests, as I daresay that they will kill us also."
+
+"Don't you think that it is getting rather cold standing here?"
+interrupted Pieter van de Werff before she could answer. "Look, the
+sledge races are just beginning. Come, cousin, give me your hand," and,
+taking Lysbeth by the arm, he skated off into the throng, followed at a
+distance by Dirk and the serving-maid, Greta.
+
+"Cousin," he whispered as he went, "this is not my place, it is Dirk's
+place, but I pray you as you love him--I beg your pardon--as you esteem
+a worthy relative--do not enter into a religious argument with him here
+in public, where even the ice and sky are two great ears. It is not
+safe, little cousin, I swear to you that it is not safe."
+
+In the centre of the mere the great event of the day, the sledge races,
+were now in progress. As the competitors were many these must be run in
+heats, the winners of each heat standing on one side to compete in the
+final contest. Now these victors had a pretty prerogative not unlike
+that accorded to certain dancers in the cotillion of modern days. Each
+driver of a sledge was bound to carry a passenger in the little car in
+front of him, his own place being on the seat behind, whence he directed
+the horse by means of reins supported upon a guide-rod so fashioned
+that it lifted them above the head of the traveller in the car. This
+passenger he could select from among the number of ladies who were
+present at the games; unless, indeed, the gentleman in charge of her
+chose to deny him in set form; namely, by stepping forward and saying in
+the appointed phrase, "No, for this happy hour she is mine."
+
+Among the winners of these heats was a certain Spanish officer, the
+Count Don Juan de Montalvo, who, as it chanced, in the absence on
+leave of his captain, was at that date the commander of the garrison at
+Leyden. He was a man still young, only about thirty indeed, reported to
+be of noble birth, and handsome in the usual Castilian fashion. That is
+to say, he was tall, of a graceful figure, dark-eyed, strong-featured,
+with a somewhat humorous expression, and of very good if exaggerated
+address. As he had but recently come to Leyden, very little was known
+about this attractive cavalier beyond that he was well spoken of by the
+priests and, according to report, a favourite with the Emperor. Also the
+ladies admired him much.
+
+For the rest everything about him was handsome like his person, as might
+be expected in the case of a man reputed to be as rich as he was noble.
+Thus his sledge was shaped and coloured to resemble a great black wolf
+rearing itself up to charge. The wooden head was covered in wolf skin
+and adorned by eyes of yellow glass and great fangs of ivory. Round the
+neck also ran a gilded collar hung with a silver shield, whereon were
+painted the arms of its owner, a knight striking the chains from off a
+captive Christian saint, and the motto of the Montalvos, "Trust to God
+and me." His black horse, too, of the best breed, imported from Spain,
+glittered in harness decorated with gilding, and bore a splendid plume
+of dyed feathers rising from the head-band.
+
+Lysbeth happened to be standing near to the spot where this gallant had
+halted after his first victory. She was in the company of Dirk van Goorl
+alone--for as he was the driver of one of the competing sledges, her
+other cousin, Pieter van de Werff, had now been summoned away. Having
+nothing else to do at the moment, she approached and not unnaturally
+admired this brilliant equipage, although in truth it was the sledge and
+the horse rather than their driver which attracted her attention. As for
+the Count himself she knew him slightly, having been introduced to and
+danced a measure with him at a festival given by a grandee of the town.
+On that occasion he was courteous to her in the Spanish fashion, rather
+too courteous, she thought, but as this was the manner of Castilian
+dons when dealing with burgher maidens she paid no more attention to the
+matter.
+
+The Captain Montalvo saw Lysbeth among the throng and recognised her,
+for he lifted his plumed hat and bowed to her with just that touch of
+condescension which in those days a Spaniard showed when greeting
+one whom he considered his inferior. In the sixteenth century it was
+understood that all the world were the inferiors to those whom God
+had granted to be born in Spain, the English who rated themselves at
+a valuation of their own--and were careful to announce the fact--alone
+excepted.
+
+An hour or so later, after the last heat had been run, a steward of the
+ceremonies called aloud to the remaining competitors to select their
+passengers and prepare for the final contest. Accordingly each Jehu,
+leaving his horse in charge of an attendant, stepped up to some young
+lady who evidently was waiting for him, and led her by the hand to his
+sledge. While Lysbeth was watching this ceremony with amusement--for
+these selections were always understood to show a strong preference
+on behalf of the chooser for the chosen--she was astonished to hear a
+well-trained voice addressing her, and on looking up to see Don Juan de
+Montalvo bowing almost to the ice.
+
+"Senora," he said in Castilian, a tongue which Lysbeth understood
+well enough, although she only spoke it when obliged, "unless my ears
+deceived me, I heard you admiring my horse and sledge. Now, with the
+permission of your cavalier," and he bowed courteously to Dirk, "I name
+you as my passenger for the great race, knowing that you will bring me
+fortune. Have I your leave, Senor?"
+
+Now if there was a people on earth whom Dirk van Goorl hated, the
+Spaniards were that people, and if there lived a cavalier who he would
+prefer should not take his cousin Lysbeth for a lonely drive, that
+cavalier was the Count Juan de Montalvo. But as a young man, Dirk was
+singularly diffident and so easily confused that on the spur of the
+moment it was quite possible for a person of address to make him say
+what he did not mean. Thus, on the present occasion, when he saw this
+courtly Spaniard bowing low to him, a humble Dutch tradesman, he was
+overwhelmed, and mumbled in reply, "Certainly, certainly."
+
+If a glance could have withered him, without doubt Dirk would
+immediately have been shrivelled to nothing. To say that Lysbeth was
+angry is too little, for in truth she was absolutely furious. She did
+not like this Spaniard, and hated the idea of a long interview with him
+alone. Moreover, she knew that among her fellow townspeople there was a
+great desire that the Count should not win this race, which in its
+own fashion was the event of the year, whereas, if she appeared as his
+companion it would be supposed that she was anxious for his success.
+Lastly--and this was the chiefest sore--although in theory the
+competitors had a right to ask any one to whom they took a fancy to
+travel in their sledges, in practise they only sought the company of
+young women with whom they were on the best of terms, and who were
+already warned of their intention.
+
+In an instant these thoughts flashed through her mind, but all she did
+was to murmur something about the Heer van Goorl----
+
+"Has already given his consent, like an unselfish gentleman," broke in
+Captain Juan tendering her his hand.
+
+Now, without absolutely making a scene, which then, as to-day, ladies
+considered an ill-bred thing to do, there was no escape, since half
+Leyden gathered at these "sledge choosings," and many eyes were on her
+and the Count. Therefore, because she must, Lysbeth took the proferred
+hand, and was led to the sledge, catching, as she passed to it through
+the throng, more than one sour look from the men and more than one
+exclamation of surprise, real or affected, on the lips of the ladies
+of her acquaintance. These manifestations, however, put her upon her
+mettle. So determining that at least she would not look sullen or
+ridiculous, she began to enter into the spirit of the adventure, and
+smiled graciously while the Captain Montalvo wrapped a magnificent apron
+of wolf skins about her knees.
+
+When all was ready her charioteer took the reins and settled himself
+upon the little seat behind the sleigh, which was then led into line by
+a soldier servant.
+
+"Where is the course, Senor?" Lysbeth asked, hoping that it would be a
+short one.
+
+But in this she was to be disappointed, for he answered:
+
+"Up to the little Quarkel Mere, round the island in the middle of it,
+and back to this spot, something over a league in all. Now, Senora,
+speak to me no more at present, but hold fast and have no fear, for at
+least I drive well, and my horse is sure-footed and roughed for ice.
+This is a race that I would give a hundred gold pieces to win, since
+your countrymen, who contend against me, have sworn that I shall lose
+it, and I tell you at once, Senora, that grey horse will press me hard."
+
+Following the direction of his glance, Lysbeth's eye lit upon the next
+sledge. It was small, fashioned and painted to resemble a grey badger,
+that silent, stubborn, and, if molested, savage brute, which will not
+loose its grip until the head is hacked from off its body. The horse,
+which matched it well in colour, was of Flemish breed; rather a
+raw-boned animal, with strong quarters and an ugly head, but renowned in
+Leyden for its courage and staying power. What interested Lysbeth most,
+however, was to discover that the charioteer was none other than Pieter
+van de Werff, though now when she thought of it, she remembered he
+had told her that his sledge was named the Badger. In his choice of
+passenger she noted, too, not without a smile, that he showed his
+cautious character, disdainful of any immediate glory, so long as the
+end in view could be attained. For there in the sleigh sat no fine young
+lady, decked out in brave attire, who might be supposed to look at him
+with tender eyes, but a little fair-haired mate aged nine, who was in
+fact his sister. As he explained afterwards, the rules provided that a
+lady passenger must be carried, but said nothing of her age and weight.
+
+Now the competitors, eight of them, were in a line, and coming forward,
+the master of the course, in a voice that every one might hear, called
+out the conditions of the race and the prize for which it was to be
+run, a splendid glass goblet engraved with the cross-keys, the Arms of
+Leyden. This done, after asking if all were ready, he dropped a little
+flag, whereon the horses were loosed and away they went.
+
+Before a minute had passed, forgetting all her doubts and annoyances,
+Lysbeth was lost in the glorious excitement of the moment. Like birds
+in the heavens, cleaving the keen, crisp air, they sped forward over
+the smooth ice. The gay throng vanished, the dead reeds and stark bushes
+seemed to fly away from them. The only sounds in their ears were the
+rushing of the wind, the swish of the iron runners, and the hollow
+tapping of the hooves of their galloping horses. Certain sledges drew
+ahead in the first burst, but the Wolf and the Badger were not among
+these. The Count de Montalvo was holding in his black stallion, and as
+yet the grey Flemish gelding looped along with a constrained and awkward
+stride. When, passing from the little mere, they entered the straight of
+the canal, these two were respectively fourth and fifth. Up the course
+they sped, through a deserted snow-clad country, past the church of the
+village of Alkemaade. Now, half a mile or more away appeared the Quarkel
+Mere, and in the centre of it the island which they must turn. They
+reached it, they were round it, and when their faces were once more set
+homewards, Lysbeth noted that the Wolf and the Badger were third and
+fourth in the race, some one having dropped behind. Half a mile more and
+they were second and third; another half mile and they were first and
+second with perhaps a mile to go. Then the fight began.
+
+Yard by yard the speed increased, and yard by yard the black stallion
+drew ahead. Now in front of them lay a furlong or more of bad ice
+encumbered with lumps of frozen snow that had not been cleared away,
+which caused the sleigh to shake and jump as it struck. Lysbeth looked
+round.
+
+"The Badger is coming up," she said.
+
+Montalvo heard, and for the first time laid his whip upon the haunches
+of his horse, which answered gallantly. But still the Badger came up.
+The grey was the stronger beast, and had begun to put out his strength.
+Presently his ugly head was behind them, for Lysbeth felt the breath
+from his nostrils blowing on her, and saw their steam. Then it was past,
+for the steam blew back into her face; yes, and she could see the eager
+eyes of the child in the grey sledge. Now they were neck and neck, and
+the rough ice was done with. Six hundred yards away, not more, lay the
+goal, and all about them, outside the line of the course, were swift
+skaters travelling so fast that their heads were bent forward and down
+to within three feet of the ice.
+
+Van de Werff called to his horse, and the grey began to gain. Montalvo
+lashed the stallion, and once more they passed him. But the black was
+failing, and he saw it, for Lysbeth heard him curse in Spanish. Then of
+a sudden, after a cunning glance at his adversary, the Count pulled upon
+the right rein, and a shrill voice rose upon the air, the voice of the
+little girl in the other sledge.
+
+"Take care, brother," it cried, "he will overthrow us."
+
+True enough, in another moment the black would have struck the grey
+sideways. Lysbeth saw Van de Werff rise from his seat and throw his
+weight backward, dragging the grey on to his haunches. By an inch--not
+more--the Wolf sleigh missed the gelding. Indeed, one runner of it
+struck his hoof, and the high wood work of the side brushed and cut his
+nostril.
+
+"A foul, a foul!" yelled the skaters, and it was over. Once more they
+were speeding forward, but now the black had a lead of at least ten
+yards, for the grey must find his stride again. They were in the
+straight; the course was lined with hundreds of witnesses, and from the
+throats of every one of them arose a great cry, or rather two cries.
+
+"The Spaniard, the Spaniard wins!" said the first cry that was answered
+by another and a deeper roar.
+
+"No, Hollander, the Hollander! The Hollander comes up!"
+
+Then in the midst of the fierce excitement--bred of the excitement
+perhaps--some curious spell fell upon the mind of Lysbeth. The race, its
+details, its objects, its surroundings faded away; these physical
+things were gone, and in place of them was present a dream, a spiritual
+interpretation such as the omens and influences of the times she lived
+in might well inspire. What did she seem to see?
+
+She saw the Spaniard and the Hollander striving for victory, but not a
+victory of horses. She saw the black Spanish Wolf, at first triumphant,
+outmatch the Netherland Badger. Still, the Badger, the dogged Dutch
+badger, held on.
+
+Who would win? The fierce beast or the patient beast? Who would be the
+master in this fight? There was death in it. Look, the whole snow was
+red, the roofs of Leyden were red, and red the heavens; in the deep hues
+of the sunset they seemed bathed in blood, while about her the shouts of
+the backers and factions transformed themselves into a fierce cry as
+of battling peoples. All voices mingled in that cry--voices of hope, of
+agony, and of despair; but she could not interpret them. Something told
+her that the interpretation and the issue were in the mind of God alone.
+
+Perhaps she swooned, perhaps she slept and dreamed this dream; perhaps
+the sharp rushing air overcame her. At the least Lysbeth's eyes closed
+and her mind gave way. When they opened and it returned again their
+sledge was rushing past the winning post. But in front of it travelled
+another sledge, drawn by a gaunt grey horse, which galloped so hard
+that its belly seemed to lie upon the ice, a horse driven by a young man
+whose face was set like steel and whose lips were as the lips of a trap.
+
+Could that be the face of her cousin Pieter van de Werff, and, if so,
+what passion had stamped that strange seal thereon? She turned herself
+in her seat and looked at him who drove her.
+
+Was this a man, or was it a spirit escaped from doom? Blessed Mother of
+Christ! what a countenance! The eyeballs starting and upturned, nothing
+but the white of them to be seen; the lips curled, and, between, two
+lines of shining fangs; the lifted points of the mustachios touching the
+high cheekbones. No--no, it was neither a spirit nor a man, she knew now
+what it was; it was the very type and incarnation of the Spanish Wolf.
+
+Once more she seemed to faint, while in her ears there rang the
+cry--"The Hollander! Outstayed! Outstayed! Conquered is the accursed
+Spaniard!"
+
+Then Lysbeth knew that it was over, and again the faintness overpowered
+her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHE WHO BUYS--PAYS
+
+When Lysbeth's mind recovered from its confusion she found herself still
+in the sledge and beyond the borders of the crowd that was engaged in
+rapturously congratulating the winner. Drawn up alongside of the Wolf
+was another sleigh of plain make, and harnessed to it a heavy Flemish
+horse. This vehicle was driven by a Spanish soldier, with whom sat a
+second soldier apparently of the rank of sergeant. There was no one
+else near; already people in the Netherlands had learnt to keep their
+distance from Spanish soldiers.
+
+"If your Excellency would come now," the sergeant was saying, "this
+little matter can be settled without any further trouble."
+
+"Where is she?" asked Montalvo.
+
+"Not more than a mile or so away, near the place called Steene Veld."
+
+"Tie her up in the snow to wait till to-morrow morning. My horse is
+tired and it may save us trouble," he began, then added, after glancing
+back at the crowd behind him and next at Lysbeth, "no, I will come."
+
+Perhaps the Count did not wish to listen to condolences on his defeat,
+or perhaps he desired to prolong the _tete-a-tete_ with his fair
+passenger. At any rate, without further hesitation, he struck his weary
+horse with the whip, causing it to amble forward somewhat stiffly but at
+a good pace.
+
+"Where are we going, Senor?" asked Lysbeth anxiously. "The race is over
+and I must seek my friends."
+
+"Your friends are engaged in congratulating the victor, lady," he
+answered in his suave and courteous voice, "and I cannot leave you alone
+upon the ice. Do not trouble; this is only a little matter of business
+which will scarcely take a quarter of an hour," and once more he struck
+the horse urging it to a better speed.
+
+Lysbeth thought of remonstrating, she thought even of springing from the
+sledge, but in the end she did neither. To seem to continue the drive
+with her cavalier would, she determined, look more natural and less
+absurd than to attempt a violent escape from him. She was certain that
+he would not put her down merely at her request; something in his manner
+told her so, and though she had no longing for his company it was
+better than being made ridiculous before half the inhabitants of Leyden.
+Moreover, the position was no fault of hers; it was the fault of Dirk
+van Goorl, who should have been present to take her from the sledge.
+
+As they drove along the frozen moat Montalvo leant forward and began to
+chat about the race, expressing regret at having lost it, but using no
+angry or bitter words. Could this be the man, wondered Lysbeth as
+she listened, whom she had seen deliberately attempt to overthrow his
+adversary in a foul heedless of dishonour or of who might be killed by
+the shock? Could this be the man whose face just now had looked like
+the face of a devil? Had these things happened, indeed, or was it not
+possible that her fancy, confused with the excitement and the speed at
+which they were travelling, had deceived her? Certainly it seemed to
+have been overcome at last, for she could not remember the actual finish
+of the race, or how they got clear of the shouting crowd.
+
+While she was still wondering thus, replying from time to time to
+Montalvo in monosyllables, the sledge in front of them turned the corner
+of one of the eastern bastions and came to a halt. The place where it
+stopped was desolate and lonely, for the town being in a state of peace
+no guard was mounted on the wall, nor could any living soul be found
+upon the snowy waste that lay beyond the moat. At first, indeed, Lysbeth
+was able to see nobody at all, for by now the sun had gone down and her
+eyes were not accustomed to the increasing light of the moon. Presently,
+however, she caught sight of a knot of people standing on the ice in a
+recess or little bay of the moat, and half hidden by a fringe of dead
+reeds.
+
+Montalvo saw also, and halted his horse within three paces of them.
+The people were five in number, three Spanish soldiers and two women.
+Lysbeth looked, and with difficulty stifled a cry of surprise and fear,
+for she knew the women. The tall, dark person, with lowering eyes, was
+none other than the cap-seller and Spanish spy, Black Meg. And she who
+crouched there upon the ice, her arms bound behind her, her grizzled
+locks, torn loose by some rough hand, trailing on the snow--surely it
+was the woman who called herself the Mare, and who that very afternoon
+spoke to her, saying that she had known her father, and cursing the
+Spaniards and their Inquisition. What were they doing here? Instantly an
+answer leapt into her mind, for she remembered Black Meg's words--that
+there was a price upon this heretic's head which before nightfall
+would be in her pocket. And why was there a square hole cut in the
+ice immediately in front of the captive? Could it be--no, that was too
+horrible.
+
+"Well, officer," broke in Montalvo, addressing the sergeant in a quiet,
+wearied voice, "what is all this about? Set out your case."
+
+"Excellency," replied the man, "it is a very simple matter. This
+creature here, so that woman is ready to take oath," and he pointed to
+Black Meg, "is a notorious heretic who has already been condemned to
+death by the Holy Office, and whose husband, a learned man who painted
+pictures and studied the stars, was burnt on a charge of witchcraft and
+heresy, two years ago at Brussels. But she managed to escape the stake,
+and since then has lived as a vagrant, hiding in the islands of the
+Haarlemer Meer, and, it is suspected, working murder and robbery on any
+of Spanish blood whom she can catch. Now she has been caught herself
+and identified, and, of course, the sentence being in full force against
+her, can be dealt with at once on your Excellency's command. Indeed,
+it would not have been necessary that you should be troubled about
+the thing at all had it not been that this worthy woman," and again he
+pointed to Black Meg, "who was the one who waylaid her, pulled her down
+and held her till we came, requires your certificate in order that
+she may claim the reward from the Treasurer of the Holy Inquisition.
+Therefore, you will be asked to certify that this is, indeed, the
+notorious heretic commonly known as Martha the Mare, but whose other
+name I forget, after which, if you will please to withdraw, we will see
+to the rest."
+
+"You mean that she will be taken to the prison to be dealt with by the
+Holy Office?" queried Montalvo.
+
+"Not exactly, Excellency," answered the sergeant with a discreet smile
+and a cough. "The prison, I am told, is quite full, but she may start
+for the prison and--there seems to be a hole in the ice into which,
+since Satan leads the footsteps of such people astray, this heretic
+might chance to fall--or throw herself."
+
+"What is the evidence?" asked Montalvo.
+
+Then Black Meg stood forward, and, with the rapidity and unction of a
+spy, poured out her tale. She identified the woman with one whom she had
+known who was sentenced to death by the Inquisition and escaped, and,
+after giving other evidence, ended by repeating the conversation which
+she had overheard between the accused and Lysbeth that afternoon.
+
+"You accompanied me in a fortunate hour, Senora van Hout," said the
+captain gaily, "for now, to satisfy myself, as I wish to be just, and do
+not trust these paid hags," and he nodded towards Black Meg, "I must
+ask you upon your oath before God whether or no you confirm that woman's
+tale, and whether or no this very ugly person named the Mare called down
+curses upon my people and the Holy Office? Answer, and quickly, if you
+please, Senora, for it grows cold here and my horse is beginning to
+shiver."
+
+Then, for the first time, the Mare raised her head, dragging at her
+hair, which had become frozen to the ice, until she tore it free.
+
+"Lysbeth van Hout," she cried in shrill, piercing tones, "would you, to
+please your Spanish lover, bring your father's playmate to her death?
+The Spanish horse is cold and cannot stay, but the poor Netherland
+Mare--ah! she may be thrust beneath the blue ice and bide there till her
+bones rot at the bottom of the moat. You have sought the Spaniards, you,
+whose blood should have warned you against them, and I tell you that it
+shall cost you dear; but if you say this word they seek, then it shall
+cost you everything, not only the body, but the spirit also. Woe to you,
+Lysbeth van Hout, if you cut me off before my work is done. I fear not
+death, nay I welcome it, but I tell you I have work to do before I die."
+
+Now, in an agony of mind, Lysbeth turned and looked at Montalvo.
+
+The Count was a man of keen perceptions, and understood it all. Leaning
+forward, his arm resting on the back of the sledge, as though to
+contemplate the prisoner, he whispered into Lysbeth's ear, so low that
+no one else could hear his words.
+
+"Senora," he said, "I have no wishes in this matter. I do not desire to
+drown that poor mad woman, but if you confirm the spy's story, drown
+she must. At present I am not satisfied, so everything turns upon your
+evidence. I do not know what passed between you this afternoon, and
+personally I do not care, only, if you should chance to have no clear
+recollection of the matter alleged, I must make one or two little
+stipulations--very little ones. Let me see, they are--that you will
+spend the rest of this evening's fete in my company. Further, that
+whenever I choose to call upon you, your door will be open to me, though
+I must remind you that, on three occasions already, when I have wished
+to pay my respects, it has been shut."
+
+Lysbeth heard and understood. If she would save this woman's life she
+must expose herself to the attentions of the Spaniard, which she desired
+least of anything in the world. More, speaking upon her oath in the
+presence of God, she must utter a dreadful lie, she who as yet had never
+lied. For thirty seconds or more she thought, staring round her with
+anguished eyes, while the scene they fell on sank into her soul in such
+fashion that never till her death's day did she forget its aspect.
+
+The Mare spoke no more, she only knelt searching her face with a stern
+and wondering glance. A little to the right stood Black Meg, glaring
+at her sullenly, for the blood-money was in danger. Behind the prisoner
+were two of the soldiers, one patting his hand to his face to hide
+a yawn, while the other beat his breast to warm himself. The third
+soldier, who was placed somewhat in front, stirred the surface of the
+hole with the shaft of his halbert to break up the thin film of ice
+which was forming over it, while Montalvo himself, still leaning
+sideways and forwards, watched her eyes with an amused and cynical
+expression. And over all, over the desolate snows and gabled roofs of
+the town behind; over the smooth blue ice, the martyr and the murderers;
+over the gay sledge and the fur-wrapped girl who sat within it, fell the
+calm light of the moon through a silence broken only by the beating of
+her heart, and now and again by the sigh of a frost-wind breathing among
+the rushes.
+
+"Well, Senora," asked Montalvo, "if you have sufficiently reflected
+shall I administer the oath in the form provided?"
+
+"Administer it," she said hoarsely.
+
+So, descending from the sledge, he stood in front of Lysbeth, and,
+lifting his cap, repeated the oath to her, an oath strong enough to
+blast her soul if she swore to it with false intent.
+
+"In the name of God the Son and of His Blessed Mother, you swear?" he
+asked.
+
+"I swear," she answered.
+
+"Good, Senora. Now listen to me. Did you meet that woman this
+afternoon?"
+
+"Yes, I met her on the ice."
+
+"And did she in your hearing utter curses upon the Government and the
+Holy Church, and call upon you to assist in driving the Spaniards from
+the land, as this spy, whom I believe is called Black Meg, has borne
+witness?"
+
+"No," said Lysbeth.
+
+"I am afraid that is not quite enough, Senora; I may have misquoted the
+exact words. Did the woman say anything of the sort?"
+
+For one second Lysbeth hesitated. Then she caught sight of the victim's
+watching, speculative eyes, and remembered that this crazed and broken
+creature once had been a child whom her father had kissed and played
+with, and that the crime of which she was accused was that she had
+escaped from death at the stake.
+
+"The water is cold to die in!" the Mare said, in a meditative voice, as
+though she were thinking aloud.
+
+"Then why did you run away from the warm fire, heretic witch?" jeered
+Black Meg.
+
+Now Lysbeth hesitated no longer, but again answered in a monosyllable,
+"No."
+
+"Then what did she do or say, Senora?"
+
+"She said she had known my father who used to play with her when she was
+a child, and begged for alms, that is all. Then that woman came up, and
+she ran away, whereon the woman said there was a price upon her head,
+and that she meant to have the money."
+
+"It is a lie," screamed Black Meg in fierce, strident tones.
+
+"If that person will not be silent, silence her," said Montalvo,
+addressing the sergeant. "I am satisfied," he went on, "that there is no
+evidence at all against the prisoner except the story of a spy, who says
+she believes her to be a vagrant heretic of bad character who escaped
+from the stake several years ago in the neighbourhood of Brussels,
+whither it is scarcely worth while to send to inquire about the matter.
+So that charge may drop. There remains the question as to whether or
+no the prisoner uttered certain words this afternoon, which, if she did
+utter them, are undoubtedly worthy of the death that, under my authority
+as acting commandant of this town, I have power to inflict. This
+question I foresaw, and that is why I asked the Senora, to whom the
+woman is alleged to have spoken the words, to accompany me here to
+give evidence. She has done so, and her evidence on oath as against the
+statement of a spy woman not on oath, is that no such words were spoken.
+This being so, as the Senora is a good Catholic whom I have no reason to
+disbelieve, I order the release of the prisoner, whom for my part I take
+for nothing more than a crazy and harmless wanderer."
+
+"At least you will detain her till I can prove that she is the heretic
+who escaped from the stake near Brussels," shouted Black Meg.
+
+"I will do nothing of the sort; the prison here is over-full already.
+Untie her arms and let her go."
+
+The soldiers obeyed, wondering somewhat, and the Mare scrambled to her
+feet. For a moment she stood looking at her deliverer. Then crying, "We
+shall met again, Lysbeth van Hout!" suddenly she turned and sped up a
+dyke at extraordinary speed. In a few seconds there was nothing to be
+seen of her but a black spot upon the white landscape, and presently she
+had vanished altogether.
+
+"Gallop as you will, Mare, I shall catch you yet," screamed Black Meg
+after her. "And you too, my pretty little liar, who have cheated me out
+of a dozen florins. Wait till you are up before the Inquisition as a
+heretic--for that's where you'll end. No fine Spanish lover will save
+you then. So you have gone to the Spanish, have you, and thrown over
+your fat-faced burgher; well, you will have enough of Spaniards before
+you have done with them, I can tell you."
+
+Twice had Montalvo tried to stop this flood of furious eloquence, which
+had become personal and might prove prejudicial to his interests, but
+without avail. Now he adopted other measures.
+
+"Seize her," he shouted to two of the soldiers; "that's it; now hold her
+under water in that hole till I tell you to let her up again."
+
+They obeyed, but it took all three of them to carry out the order, for
+Black Meg fought and bit like a wild cat, until at last she was thrust
+into the icy moat head downwards. When at length she was released,
+soaked and shivering, she crept off silently enough, but the look of
+fury which she cast at Montalvo and Lysbeth drew from the captain a
+remark that perhaps it would have been as well to have kept her under
+water two minutes longer.
+
+"Now, sergeant," he added, in a genial voice, "it is a cold night,
+and this has been a troublesome business for a feast-day, so here's
+something for you and your watch to warm yourselves with when you go off
+duty," and he handed him what in those days was a very handsome present.
+"By the way," he said, as the men saluted him gratefully, "perhaps you
+will do me a favour. It is only to take this black horse of mine to his
+stable and harness that grey trooper nag to the sledge instead, as I
+wish to go the round of the moat, and my beast is tired."
+
+Again the men saluted and set to work to change the horses, whereon
+Lysbeth, guessing her cavalier's purpose, turned as though to fly away,
+for her skates were still upon her feet. But he was watching.
+
+"Senora," he said in a quiet voice, "I think that you gave me the
+promise of your company for the rest of this evening, and I am certain,"
+he added with a slight bow, "that you are a lady whom nothing would
+induce to tell an untruth. Had I not been sure of that I should scarcely
+have accepted your evidence so readily just now."
+
+Lysbeth winced visibly. "I thought, Senor, that you were going to return
+to the fete."
+
+"I do not remember saying so, Senora, and as a matter of fact I have
+pickets to visit. Do not be afraid, the drive is charming in this
+moonlight, and afterwards perhaps you will extend your hospitality so
+far as to ask me to supper at your house."
+
+Still she hesitated, dismay written on her face.
+
+"Jufvrouw Lysbeth," he said in an altered voice, "in my country we
+have a homely proverb which says, 'she who buys, pays.' You have bought
+and--the goods have been delivered. Do you understand? Ah! allow me to
+have the pleasure of arranging those furs. I knew that you were the soul
+of honour, and were but--shall we say teasing me? Otherwise, had you
+really wished to go, of course you would have skated away just now
+while you had the opportunity. That is why I gave it you, as naturally I
+should not desire to detain you against your will."
+
+Lysbeth heard and was aghast, for this man's cleverness overwhelmed her.
+At every step he contrived to put her in the wrong; moreover she was
+crushed by the sense that he had justice on his side. She _had_ bought
+and she _must_ pay. Why had she bought? Not for any advantage of her
+own, but from an impulse of human pity--to save a fellow creature's
+life. And why should she have perjured herself so deeply in order to
+save that life? She was a Catholic and had no sympathy with such people.
+Probably this person was an Anabaptist, one of that dreadful sect which
+practised nameless immoralities, and ran stripped through the streets
+crying that they were "the naked Truth." Was it then because the
+creature had declared that she had known her father in her childhood?
+To some extent yes, but was not there more behind? Had she not been
+influenced by the woman's invocation about the Spaniards, of which the
+true meaning came home to her during that dreadful sledge race; at the
+moment, indeed, when she saw the Satanic look upon the face of Montalvo?
+It seemed to her that this was so, though at the time she had not
+understood it; it seemed to her that she was not a free agent; that some
+force pushed her forward which she could neither control nor understand.
+
+Moreover--and this was the worst of it--she felt that little good could
+come of her sacrifice, or that if good came, at least it would not be
+to her or hers. Now she was as a fish in a net, though why it was worth
+this brilliant Spaniard's while to snare her she could not understand,
+for she forgot that she was beautiful and a woman of property. Well,
+to save the blood of another she had bought, and in her own blood and
+happiness, or in that of those dear to her, assuredly she must pay,
+however cruel and unjust might be the price.
+
+Such were the thoughts that passed through Lysbeth's mind as the strong
+Flemish gelding lumbered forward, dragging the sledge at the same steady
+pace over rough ice and smooth. And all the while Montalvo behind her
+was chatting pleasantly about this matter and that; telling her of
+the orange groves in Spain, of the Court of the Emperor Charles,
+of adventures in the French wars, and many other things, to which
+conversation she made such answer as courtesy demanded and no more.
+What would Dirk think, she was wondering, and her cousin, Pieter van de
+Werff, whose good opinion she valued, and all the gossips of Leyden? She
+only prayed that they might not have missed her, or at least that they
+took it for granted that she had gone home.
+
+On this point, however, she was soon destined to be undeceived, for
+presently, trudging over the snow-covered ice and carrying his useless
+skates in his hand, they met a young man whom she knew as Dirk's fellow
+apprentice. On seeing them he stopped in front of the sledge in such a
+position that the horse, a steady and a patient animal, pulled up of its
+own accord.
+
+"Is the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout there?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes," she replied, but before she could say more Montalvo broke in,
+inquiring what might be the matter.
+
+"Nothing," he answered, "except that she was lost and Dirk van Goorl, my
+friend, send me to look for her this way while he took the other."
+
+"Indeed. Then, noble sir, perhaps you will find the Heer Dirk van Goorl
+and tell him that the Senora, his cousin, is merely enjoying an evening
+drive, and that if he comes to her house in an hour's time he will find
+her safe and sound, and with her myself, the Count Juan de Montalvo,
+whom she has honoured with an invitation to supper."
+
+Then, before the astonished messenger could answer; before, indeed,
+Lysbeth could offer any explanation of his words, Montalvo lashed up
+the horse and left him standing on the moat bewildered, his cap off and
+scratching his head.
+
+After this they proceeded on a journey which seemed to Lysbeth almost
+interminable. When the circuit of the walls was finished, Montalvo
+halted at one of the shut gates, and, calling to the guard within,
+summoned them to open. This caused delay and investigation, for at
+first the sergeant of the guard would not believe that it was his acting
+commandant who spoke without.
+
+"Pardon, Excellency," he said when he had inspected him with a lantern,
+"but I did not think that you would be going the rounds with a lady
+in your sledge," and holding up the light the man took a long look at
+Lysbeth, grinning visibly as he recognised her.
+
+"Ah, he is a gay bird, the captain, a very gay bird, and it's a pretty
+Dutch dickey he is teaching to pipe now," she heard him call to a
+comrade as he closed the heavy gates behind their sleigh.
+
+Then followed more visits to other military posts in the town, and with
+each visit a further explanation. All this while the Count Montalvo
+uttered no word beyond those of ordinary compliment, and ventured on
+no act of familiarity; his conversation and demeanour indeed remaining
+perfectly courteous and respectful. So far as it went this was
+satisfactory, but at length there came a moment when Lysbeth felt that
+she could bear the position no longer.
+
+"Senor," she said briefly, "take me home; I grow faint."
+
+"With hunger doubtless," he interrupted; "well, by heaven! so do I. But,
+my dear lady, as you are aware, duty must be attended to, and, after
+all, you may have found some interest in accompanying me on a tour of
+the pickets at night. I know your people speak roughly of us Spanish
+soldiers, but I hope that after this you will be able to bear testimony
+to their discipline. Although it is a fete day you will be my witness
+that we have not found a man off duty or the worse for drink. Here,
+you," he called to a soldier who stood up to salute him, "follow me to
+the house of the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, where I sup, and lead this
+sledge back to my quarters."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MONTALVO WINS A TRICK
+
+Turning up the Bree Straat, then as now perhaps the finest in the town
+of Leyden, Montalvo halted his horse before a substantial house fronted
+with three round-headed gables, of which the largest--that over the
+entrance in the middle--was shaped into two windows with balconies. This
+was Lysbeth's house which had been left to her by her father, where,
+until such time as she should please to marry, she dwelt with her aunt,
+Clara van Ziel. The soldier whom he had summoned having run to the
+horse's head, Montalvo leapt from his driver's seat to assist the lady
+to alight. At the moment Lysbeth was occupied with wild ideas of swift
+escape, but even if she could make up her mind to try it there was an
+obstacle which her thoughtful cavalier had foreseen.
+
+"Jufvrouw van Hout," he said as he pulled up, "do you remember that you
+are still wearing skates?"
+
+It was true, though in her agitation she had forgotten all about them,
+and the fact put sudden flight out of the question. She could not
+struggle into her own house walking on the sides of her feet like the
+tame seal which old fisherman Hans had brought from northern seas. It
+would be too ridiculous, and the servants would certainly tell the story
+all about the town. Better for a while longer to put up with the company
+of this odious Spaniard than to become a laughing stock in an attempt to
+fly. Besides, even if she found herself on the other side of it, could
+she shut the door in his face? Would her promise let her, and would he
+consent?
+
+"Yes," she answered briefly, "I will call my servant."
+
+Then for the first time the Count became complimentary in a dignified
+Spanish manner.
+
+"Let no base-born menial hold the foot which it is an honour for an
+hidalgo of Spain to touch. I am your servant," he said, and resting one
+knee on the snow-covered step he waited.
+
+Again there was nothing to be done, so Lysbeth must needs thrust out her
+foot from which very delicately and carefully he unstrapped the skate.
+
+"What Jack can bear Jill must put up with," muttered Lysbeth to herself
+as she advanced the other foot. Just at that moment, however, the door
+behind them began to open.
+
+"She who buys," murmured Montalvo as he commenced on the second set of
+straps. Then the door swung wide, and the voice of Dirk van Goorl was
+heard saying in a tone of relief:
+
+"Yes, sure enough it is she, Tante Clara, and some one is taking off her
+boots."
+
+"Skates, Senor, skates," interrupted Montalvo, glancing backward over
+his shoulder, then added in a whisper as he bent once more to his task,
+"ahem--_pays_. You will introduce me, is it not so? I think it will be
+less awkward for you."
+
+So, as flight was impossible, for he held her by the foot, and an
+instinct told her that, especially to the man she loved, the only thing
+to do was to make light of the affair, Lysbeth said--
+
+"Dirk, Cousin Dirk, I think you know--this is--the Honourable Captain
+the Count Juan de Montalvo."
+
+"Ah! it is the Senor van Goorl," said Montalvo, pulling off the skate
+and rising from his knee, which, from his excess of courtesy, was now
+wet through. "Senor, allow me to return to you, safe and sound, the fair
+lady of whom I have robbed you for a while."
+
+"For a while, captain," blurted Dirk; "why, from first to last, she
+has been gone nearly four hours, and a fine state we have been in about
+her."
+
+"That will all be explained presently, Senor--at supper, to which the
+Jufvrouw has been so courteous as to ask me," then, aside and below his
+breath, again the ominous word of reminder--"_pays_." "Most happily,
+your cousin's presence was the means of saving a fellow-creature's life.
+But, as I have said, the tale is long. Senor--permit," and in another
+second Lysbeth found herself walking down her own hall upon the arm of
+the Spaniard, while Dirk, her aunt, and some guests followed obediently
+behind.
+
+Now Montalvo knew that his difficulties were over for that evening at
+any rate, since he had crossed the threshold and was a guest.
+
+Half unconsciously Lysbeth guided him to the balconied _sit-kamer_ on
+the first floor, which in our day would answer to the drawing-room. Here
+several other of her friends were gathered, for it had been arranged
+that the ice-festival should end with a supper as rich as the house
+could give. To these, too, she must introduce her cavalier, who bowed
+courteously to each in turn. Then she escaped, but, as she passed him,
+distinctly, she could swear, did she see his lips shape themselves to
+the hateful word--"_pays_."
+
+When she reached her chamber, so great was Lysbeth's wrath and
+indignation that almost she choked with it, till again reason came to
+her aid, and with reason a desire to carry the thing off as well as
+might be. So she told her maid Greta to robe her in her best garment,
+and to hang about her neck the famous collar of pearls which her father
+had brought from the East, that was the talk and envy of half the women
+in Leyden. On her head, too, she placed the cap of lovely lace which had
+been a wedding gift to her mother by her grandmother, the old dame who
+wove it. Then she added such golden ornaments as it was customary for
+women of her class of wear, and descended to the gathering room.
+
+Meanwhile Montalvo had not been idle. Taking Dirk aside, and pleading
+his travel-worn condition, he had prayed him to lead him to some room
+where he might order his dress and person. Dirk complied, though with
+an ill grace, but so pleasant did Montalvo make himself during those few
+minutes, that before he ushered him back to the company in some way Dirk
+found himself convinced that this particular Spaniard was not, as the
+saying went, "as black as his mustachios." He felt almost sure too,
+although he had not yet found time to tell him the details of it, that
+there was some excellent reason to account for his having carried off
+the adorable Lysbeth during an entire afternoon and evening.
+
+It is true that there still remained the strange circumstance of the
+attempted foul of his cousin Van de Werff's sledge in the great race,
+but, after all, why should there not be some explanation of this also?
+It had happened, if it did happen, at quite a distance from the winning
+post, when there were few people to see what passed. Indeed, now that
+he came to think of it, the only real evidence on the matter was that
+of his cousin, the little girl passenger, since Van de Werff himself had
+brought no actual accusation against his opponent.
+
+Shortly after they returned to the company it was announced that supper
+had been served, whereon ensued a pause. It was broken by Montalvo, who,
+stepping forward, offered his hand to Lysbeth, saying in a voice that
+all could hear:
+
+"Lady, my companion of the race, permit the humblest representative of
+the greatest monarch in the world to have an honour which doubtless that
+monarch would be glad to claim."
+
+That settled the matter, for as the acting commandant of the Spanish
+garrison of Leyden had chosen to refer to his official position, it was
+impossible to question his right of precedence over a number of folk,
+who, although prominent in their way, were but unennobled Netherlander
+burghers.
+
+Lysbeth, indeed, did find courage to point to a rather flurried and
+spasmodic lady with grey hair who was fanning herself as though the
+season were July, and wondering whether the cook would come up to the
+grand Spaniard's expectations, and to murmur "My aunt." But she got no
+further, for the Count instantly added in a low voice--
+
+"Doubtless comes next in the direct line, but unless my education has
+been neglected, the heiress of the house who is of age goes before the
+collateral--however aged."
+
+By this time they were through the door, so it was useless to argue the
+point further, and again Lysbeth felt herself overmatched and submitted.
+In another minute they had passed down the stairs, entered the dining
+hall, and were seated side by side at the head of the long table, of
+which the foot was occupied presently by Dirk van Goorl and her aunt,
+who was also his cousin, the widow Clara van Ziel.
+
+There was a silence while the domestics began their service, of which
+Montalvo took opportunity to study the room, the table and the guests.
+It was a fine room panelled with German oak, and lighted sufficiently,
+if not brilliantly, by two hanging brass chandeliers of the famous
+Flemish workmanship, in each of which were fixed eighteen of the best
+candles, while on the sideboards were branch candlesticks, also of
+worked brass. The light thus provided was supplemented by that from
+the great fire of peat and old ships' timber which burned in a
+wide blue-tiled fire-place, half way down the chamber, throwing its
+reflections upon many a flagon and bowl of cunningly hammered silver
+that adorned the table and the sideboards.
+
+The company was of the same character as the furniture, handsome and
+solid; people of means, every man and woman of them, accumulated
+by themselves or their fathers, in the exercise of the honest and
+profitable trade whereof at this time the Netherlands had a practical
+monopoly.
+
+"I have made no mistake," thought Montalvo to himself, as he surveyed
+the room and its occupants. "My little neighbour's necklace alone is
+worth more cash than ever I had the handling of, and the plate would add
+up handsomely. Well, before very long I hope to be in a position to make
+its inventory." Then, having first crossed himself devoutly, he fell to
+upon a supper that was well worth his attention, even in a land noted
+for the luxury of its food and wines and the superb appetites of those
+who consumed them.
+
+It must not be supposed, however, that the gallant captain allowed
+eating to strangle conversation. On the contrary, finding that his
+hostess was in no talkative mood, he addressed himself to his fellow
+guests, chatting with them pleasantly upon every convenient subject.
+Among these guests was none other than Pieter van de Werff, his
+conqueror in that afternoon's conquest, upon whose watchful and
+suspicious reserve he brought all his batteries to bear.
+
+First he congratulated Pieter and lamented his own ill-luck, and this
+with great earnestness, for as a matter of fact he had lost much more
+money on the event than he could afford to pay. Then he praised the
+grey horse and asked if he was for sale, offering his own black in part
+exchange.
+
+"A good nag," he said, "but one that I do not wish to conceal has his
+faults, which must be taken into consideration if it comes to the point
+of putting a price upon him. For instance, Mynheer van de Werff, you may
+have noticed the dreadful position in which the brute put me towards the
+end of the race. There are certain things that this horse always shies
+at, and one of them is a red cloak. Now I don't know if you saw that
+a girl in a red cloak suddenly appeared on the bank. In an instant the
+beast was round and you may imagine what my feelings were, being in
+charge of your fair kinswoman, for I thought to a certainty that we
+should be over. What is more, it quite spoilt my chance of the race,
+for after he has shied like that, the black turns sulky, and won't let
+himself go."
+
+When Lysbeth heard this amazing explanation, remembering the facts, she
+gasped. And yet now that she came to think of it, a girl in a red cloak
+did appear near them at the moment, and the horse _did_ whip round as
+though it had shied violently. Was it possible, she wondered, that the
+captain had not really intended to foul the Badger sledge?
+
+Meanwhile Van de Werff was answering in his slow voice. Apparently he
+accepted Montalvo's explanation; at least he said that he, too, saw
+the red-cloaked girl, and was glad that nothing serious had come of the
+mischance. As regarded the proposed deal, he should be most happy to
+go into it upon the lines mentioned, as the grey, although a very good
+horse, was aged, and he thought the barb one of the most beautiful
+animals that he had ever seen. At this point, as he had not the
+slightest intention of parting with his valuable charger, at any rate on
+such terms, Montalvo changed the subject.
+
+At length, when men, and, for the matter of that, women, too, had well
+eaten, and the beautiful tall Flemish glasses not for the first time
+were replenished with the best Rhenish or Spanish wines, Montalvo,
+taking advantage of a pause in the conversation, rose and said that he
+wished to claim the privilege of a stranger among them and propose a
+toast, namely, the health of his late adversary, Pieter van de Werff.
+
+At this the audience applauded, for they were all very proud of the
+young man's success, and some of them had won money over him. Still
+more did they applaud, being great judges of culinary matters, when
+the Spaniard began his speech by an elegant tribute to the surpassing
+excellence of the supper. Rarely, he assured them, and especially did he
+assure the honourable widow Van Ziel (who blushed all over with pleasure
+at his compliments, and fanned herself with such vigour that she upset
+Dirk's wine over his new tunic, cut in the Brussels style), the fame of
+whose skill in such matters had travelled so far as The Hague, for he
+had heard of it there himself--rarely even in the Courts of Kings and
+Emperors, or at the tables of Popes and Archbishops, had he eaten food
+so exquisitely cooked, or drunk wines of a better vintage.
+
+Then, passing on to the subject of his speech, Van de Werff, he toasted
+him and his horse and his little sister and his sledge, in really
+well-chosen and appropriate terms, not by any means overdoing it, for
+he confessed frankly that his defeat was a bitter disappointment to him,
+especially as every solder in the camp had expected him to win
+and--he was afraid--backed him for more than they could afford. Also,
+incidentally, so that every one might be well acquainted with it, he
+retold the story of the girl with the red cloak. Next, suddenly dropping
+his voice and adopting a quieter manner, he addressed himself to the
+Aunt Clara and the "well-beloved Heer Dirk," saying that he owed them
+both an apology, which he must take this opportunity to make, for
+having detained the lady at his right during so unreasonable a time that
+afternoon. When, however, they had heard the facts they would, he was
+sure, blame him no longer, especially if he told them that this breach
+of good manners had been the means of saving a human life.
+
+Immediately after the race, he explained, one of his sergeants had found
+him out to tell him that a woman, suspected of certain crimes against
+life and property and believed to be a notorious escaped witch or
+heretic, had been captured, asking for reasons which he need not trouble
+them with, that he would deal with the case at once. This woman also,
+so said the man, had been heard that every afternoon to make use of the
+most horrible, the most traitorous and blaspheming language to a lady
+of Leyden, the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, indeed; as was deposed by a
+certain spy named Black Meg, who had overheard the conversation.
+
+Now, went on Montalvo, as he knew well, every man and woman in that room
+would share his horror of traitorous and blasphemous heretics--here most
+of the company crossed themselves, especially those who were already
+secret adherents of the New Religion. Still, even heretics had a right
+to a fair trial; at least he, who although a soldier by profession, was
+a man who honestly detested unnecessary bloodshed, held that opinion.
+Also long experience taught him great mistrust of the evidence of
+informers, who had a money interest in the conviction of the accused.
+Lastly, it did not seem well to him that the name of a young and noble
+lady should be mixed up in such a business. As they knew under the
+recent edicts, his powers in these cases were absolute; indeed, in his
+official capacity he was ordered at once to consign any suspected of
+Anabaptism or other forms of heresy to be dealt with by the appointed
+courts, and in the case of people who had escaped, to cause them, on
+satisfactory proof of their identity, to be executed instantly without
+further trial. Under these circumstances, fearing that did the lady knew
+his purpose she might take fright, he had, he confessed, resorted to
+artifice, as he was very anxious both for her sake and in the interest
+of justice that she should bear testimony in the matter. So he asked
+her to accompany him on a short drive while he attended to a business
+affair; a request to which she had graciously assented.
+
+"Friends," he went on in a still more solemn voice, "the rest of my
+story is short. Indeed I do congratulate myself on the decision that
+I took, for when confronted with the prisoner our young and honourable
+hostess was able upon oath to refute the story of the spy with the
+result that I in my turn was to save an unfortunate, and, as I believe,
+a half-crazed creature from an immediate and a cruel death. Is it not
+so, lady?" and helpless in the net of circumstance, not knowing indeed
+what else to do, Lysbeth bowed her head in assent.
+
+"I think," concluded Montalvo, "that after this explanation, what may
+have appeared to be a breach of manners will be forgiven. I have only
+one other word to add. My position is peculiar; I am an official here,
+and I speak boldly among friends taking the risk that any of you present
+will use what I say against me, which for my part I do not believe.
+Although there is no better Catholic and no truer Spaniard in the
+Netherlands, I have been accused of showing too great a sympathy with
+your people, and of dealing too leniently with those who have incurred
+the displeasure of our Holy Church. In the cause of right and justice I
+am willing to bear such aspersions; still this is a slanderous world, a
+world in which truth does not always prevail. Therefore, although I have
+told you nothing but the bare facts, I do suggest in the interests of
+your hostess--in my own humble interest who might be misrepresented, and
+I may add in the interest of every one present at this board--that it
+will perhaps be well that the details of the story which I have had the
+honour of telling you should not be spread about--that they should in
+fact find a grave within these walls? Friends, do you agree?"
+
+Then moved by a common impulse, and by a common if a secret fear, with
+the single exception of Lysbeth, every person present, yes, even the
+cautious and far-seeing young Van de Werff, echoed "We agree."
+
+"Friends," said Montalvo, "those simple words carry to my mind
+conviction deep as any vow however solemn; deep, if that were possible,
+as did the oath of your hostess, upon the faith of which I felt myself
+justified in acquitting the poor creature who was alleged to be an
+escaped heretic." Then with a courteous and all-embracing bow Montalvo
+sat down.
+
+"What a good man! What a delightful man!" murmured Aunt Clara to Dirk in
+the buzz of conversation which ensued.
+
+"Yes, yes, cousin, but----"
+
+"And what discrimination he has, what taste! Did you notice what he said
+about the cooking?"
+
+"I heard something, but----"
+
+"It is true that folk have told me that my capon stewed in milk, such
+as we had to-night--Why, lad, what is the matter with your doublet? You
+fidget me by continually rubbing at it."
+
+"You have upset the red wine over it, that is all," answered Dirk,
+sulkily. "It is spoiled."
+
+"And little loss either; to tell you the truth, Dirk, I never saw a coat
+worse cut. You young men should learn in the matter of clothes from
+the Spanish gentlemen. Look at his Excellency, the Count Montalvo, for
+instance----"
+
+"See here, aunt," broke in Dirk with suppressed fury, "I think I have
+heard enough about Spaniards and the Captain Montalvo for one night.
+First of all he spirits off Lysbeth and is absent with her for four
+hours; then he invites himself to supper and places himself at the head
+of the table with her, setting me down to the dullest meal I ever ate at
+the other end----"
+
+"Cousin Dirk," said Aunt Clara with dignity, "your temper has got the
+better of your manners. Certainly you might learn courtesy as well as
+dress, even from so humble a person as a Spanish hidalgo and commander."
+Then she rose from the table, adding--"Come, Lysbeth, if you are ready,
+let us leave these gentlemen to their wine."
+
+After the ladies had gone the supper went on merrily. In those days,
+nearly everybody drank too much liquor, at any rate at feasts, and this
+company was no exception. Even Montalvo, his game being won and the
+strain on his nerves relaxed, partook pretty freely, and began to talk
+in proportion to his potations. Still, so clever was the man that in his
+cups he yet showed a method, for his conversation revealed a sympathy
+with Netherlander grievances and a tolerance of view in religious
+matters rarely displayed by a Spaniard.
+
+From such questions they drifted into a military discussion, and
+Montalvo, challenged by Van de Werff, who, as it happened, had not
+drunk too much wine, explained how, were he officer in command, he would
+defend Leyden from attack by an overwhelming force. Very soon Van de
+Werff saw that he was a capable soldier who had studied his profession,
+and being himself a capable civilian with a thirst for knowledge pressed
+the argument from point to point.
+
+"And suppose," he asked at length, "that the city were starving and
+still untaken, so that its inhabitants must either fall into the hands
+of the enemy or burn the place over their heads, what would you do
+then?"
+
+"Then, Mynheer, if I were a small man I should yield to the clamour of
+the starving folk and surrender----"
+
+"And if you were a big man, captain?"
+
+"If I were a big man--ah! if I were a big man, why then--I should cut
+the dykes and let the sea beat once more against the walls of Leyden. An
+army cannot live in salt water, Mynheer."
+
+"That would drown out the farmers and ruin the land for twenty years."
+
+"Quite so, Mynheer, but when the corn has to be saved, who thinks of
+spoiling the straw?"
+
+"I follow you, Senor, your proverb is good, although I have never heard
+it."
+
+"Many good things come from Spain, Mynheer, including this red wine. One
+more glass with you, for, if you will allow me to say it, you are a man
+worth meeting over a beaker--or a blade."
+
+"I hope that you will always retain the same opinion of me," answered
+Van de Werff as he drank, "at the trencher or in the trenches."
+
+Then Pieter went home, and before he slept that night made careful notes
+of all the Spaniard's suggested military dispositions, both of attackers
+and attacked, writing underneath them the proverb about the corn and the
+straw. There existed no real reason why he should have done so, as he
+was only a civilian engaged in business, but Pieter van de Werff chanced
+to be a provident young man who knew many things might happen which
+could not precisely be foreseen. As it fell out in after years, a time
+came when he was able to put Montalvo's advice to good use. All readers
+of the history of the Netherlands know how the Burgomaster Pieter van de
+Werff saved Leyden from the Spanish.
+
+As for Dirk van Goorl, he sought his lodging rather tipsy, and
+arm-in-arm with none other than Captain the Count Don Juan de Montalvo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THREE WAKINGS
+
+There were three persons in Leyden whose reflections when they awoke on
+the morning after the sledge race are not without interest, at any rate
+to the student of their history. First there was Dirk van Goorl, whose
+work made an early riser of him--to say nothing of a splitting headache
+which on this morning called him into consciousness just as the clock in
+the bell tower was chiming half-past four. Now there are few things more
+depressing than to be awakened by a bad headache at half-past four
+in the black frost of a winter dawn. Yet as Dirk lay and thought a
+conviction took hold of him that his depression was not due entirely to
+the headache or to the cold.
+
+One by one he recalled the events of yesterday. First he had been late
+for this appointment with Lysbeth, which evidently vexed her. Then the
+Captain Montalvo had swooped down and carried her away, as a hawk bears
+off a chicken under the very eyes of the hen-wife, while he--donkey that
+he was--could find no words in which to protest. Next, thinking it his
+duty to back the sledge wherein Lysbeth rode, although it was driven
+by a Spaniard, he had lost ten florins on that event, which, being a
+thrifty young man, did not at all please him. The rest of the fete
+he had spent hunting for Lysbeth, who mysteriously vanished with the
+Spaniard, an unentertaining and even an anxious pastime. Then came the
+supper, when once more the Count swooped down on Lysbeth, leaving him
+to escort his Cousin Clara, whom he considered an old fool and disliked,
+and who, having spoilt his new jacket by spilling wine over it, ended by
+abusing his taste in dress. Nor was that all--he had drunk a great deal
+more strong wine than was wise, for to this his head certified. Lastly
+he had walked home arm in arm with his lady-snatching Spaniard, and by
+Heaven! yes, he had sworn eternal friendship with him on the doorstep.
+
+Well, there was no doubt that the Count was an uncommonly good
+fellow--for a Spaniard. As for that story of the foul he had explained
+it quite satisfactorily, and he had taken his beating like a gentleman.
+Could anything be nicer or in better feeling than his allusions to
+Cousin Pieter in his after-supper speech? Also, and this was a graver
+matter, the man had shown that he was tolerant and kindly by the way
+in which he dealt with the poor creature called the Mare, a woman whose
+history Dirk knew well; one whose sufferings had made of her a crazy and
+rash-tongued wanderer, who, so it was rumoured, could use a knife.
+
+In fact, for the truth may as well be told at once, Dirk was a Lutheran,
+having been admitted to that community two years before. To be a
+Lutheran in those days, that is in the Netherlands, meant, it need
+scarcely be explained, that you walked the world with a halter round
+your neck and a vision of the rack and the stake before your eyes;
+circumstances under which religion became a more earnest and serious
+thing than most people find it in this century. Still even at that date
+the dreadful penalties attaching to the crime did not prevent many of
+the burgher and lower classes from worshipping God in their own fashion.
+Indeed, if the truth had been known, of those who were present at
+Lysbeth's supper on the previous night more than half, including Pieter
+van de Werff, were adherents of the New Faith.
+
+To dismiss religious considerations, however, Dirk could have wished
+that this kindly natured Spaniard was not quite so good-looking or quite
+so appreciative of the excellent points of the young Leyden ladies,
+and especially of Lysbeth's, with whose sterling character, he now
+remembered, Montalvo had assured him he was much impressed. What he
+feared was that this regard might be reciprocal. After all a Spanish
+hidalgo in command of the garrison was a distinguished person, and,
+alas! Lysbeth also was a Catholic. Dirk loved Lysbeth; he loved her with
+that patient sincerity which was characteristic of his race and his own
+temperament, but in addition to and above the reasons that have been
+given already it was this fact of the difference of religion which
+hitherto had built a wall between them. Of course she was unaware of
+anything of the sort. She did not know even that he belonged to the New
+Faith, and without the permission of the elders of his sect, he would
+not dare to tell her, for the lives of men and of their families could
+not be confided lightly to the hazard of a girl's discretion.
+
+Herein lay the real reason why, although Dirk was so devoted to Lysbeth,
+and although he imagined that she was not indifferent to him, as yet no
+word had passed between them of love or marriage. How could he who was
+a Lutheran ask a Catholic to become his wife without telling her the
+truth? And if he told her the truth, and she consented to take the risk,
+how could he drag her into that dreadful net? Supposing even that she
+kept to her own faith, which of course she would be at liberty to do,
+although equally, of course, he was bound to try to convert her, their
+children, if they had any, must be brought up in his beliefs. Then,
+sooner or later, might come the informer, that dreadful informer whose
+shadow already lay heavy upon thousands of homes in the Netherlands, and
+after the informer the officer, and after the officer the priest, and
+after the priest the judge, and after the judge--the executioner and the
+stake.
+
+In this case, what would happen to Lysbeth? She might prove herself
+innocent of the horrible crime of heresy, if by that time she was
+innocent, but what would life become to the loving young woman whose
+husband and children, perhaps, had been haled off to the slaughter
+chambers of the Papal Inquisition? This was the true first cause why
+Dirk had remained silent, even when he was sorely tempted to speak; yes,
+although his instinct told him that his silence had been misinterpreted
+and set down to over-caution, or indifference, or to unnecessary
+scruples.
+
+The next to wake up that morning was Lysbeth, who, if she was not
+troubled with headache resulting from indulgence--and in that day
+women of her class sometimes suffered from it--had pains of her own to
+overcome. When sifted and classified these pains resolved themselves
+into a sense of fiery indignation against Dirk van Goorl. Dirk had been
+late for his appointment, alleging some ridiculous excuse about the
+cooling of a bell, as though she cared whether the bell were hot or
+cold, with the result that she had been thrown into the company of that
+dreadful Martha the Mare. After the Mare--aggravated by Black Meg--came
+the Spaniard. Here again Dirk had shown contemptible indifference and
+insufficiency, for he allowed her to be forced into the Wolf sledge
+against her will. Nay, he had actually consented to the thing. Next,
+in a fateful sequence followed all the other incidents of that hideous
+carnival; the race, the foul, if it was a foul; the dreadful nightmare
+vision called into her mind by the look upon Montalvo's face; the trial
+of the Mare, her own unpremeditated but indelible perjury; the lonely
+drive with the man who compelled her to it; the exhibition of herself
+before all the world as his willing companion; and the feast in which he
+appeared as her cavalier, and was accepted of the simple company almost
+as an angel entertained by chance.
+
+What did he mean? Doubtless, for on that point she could scarcely be
+mistaken, he meant to make love to her, for had he not in practice said
+as much? And now--this was the terrible thing--she was in his power,
+since if he chose to do so, without doubt he could prove that she had
+sworn a false oath for her own purposes. Also that lie weighed upon her
+mind, although it had been spoken in a good cause; if it was good to
+save a wretched fanatic from the fate which, were the truth known,
+without doubt her crime deserved.
+
+Of course, the Spaniard was a bad man, if an attractive one, and he had
+behaved wickedly, if with grace and breeding; but who expected anything
+else from a Spaniard, who only acted after his kind and for his own
+ends? It was Dirk--Dirk--that was to blame, not so much--and here again
+came the rub--for his awkwardness and mistakes of yesterday, as for his
+general conduct. Why had he not spoken to her before, and put her beyond
+the reach of such accidents as these to which a woman of her position
+and substance must necessarily be exposed? The saints knew that she had
+given him opportunity enough. She had gone as far as a maiden might, and
+not for all the Dirks on earth would she go one inch further. Why
+had she ever come to care for his foolish face? Why had she refused
+So-and-so, and So-and-so and So-and-so--all of them honourable men--with
+the result that now no other bachelor ever came near her, comprehending
+that she was under bond to her cousin? In the past she had persuaded
+herself that it was because of something she felt but could not see, of
+a hidden nobility of character which after all was not very evident
+upon the surface, that she loved Dirk van Goorl. But where was this
+something, this nobility? Surely a man who was a man ought to play his
+part, and not leave her in this false position, especially as
+there could be no question of means. She would not have come to him
+empty-handed, very far from it, indeed. Oh! were it not for the unlucky
+fact that she still happened to care about him--to her sorrow--never,
+never would she speak to him again.
+
+The last of our three friends to awake on this particular morning,
+between nine and ten o'clock, indeed, when Dirk had been already two
+hours at his factory and Lysbeth was buying provisions in the market
+place, was that accomplished and excellent officer, Captain the Count
+Juan de Montalvo. For a few seconds after his dark eyes opened he stared
+at the ceiling collecting his thoughts. Then, sitting up in bed, he
+burst into a prolonged roar of laughter. Really the whole thing was
+too funny for any man of humour to contemplate without being moved
+to merriment. That gaby, Dirk van Goorl; the furiously indignant but
+helpless Lysbeth; the solemn, fat-headed fools of Netherlanders at the
+supper, and the fashion in which he had played his own tune on the whole
+pack of them as though they were the strings of a fiddle--oh! it was
+delicious.
+
+As the reader by this time may have guessed, Montalvo was not the
+typical Spaniard of romance, and, indeed, of history. He was not gloomy
+and stern; he was not even particularly vengeful or bloodthirsty. On the
+contrary, he was a clever and utterly unprincipled man with a sense of
+humour and a gift of _bonhomie_ which made him popular in all places.
+Moreover, he was brave, a good soldier; in a certain sense sympathetic,
+and, strange to say, no bigot. Indeed, which seems to have been a rare
+thing in those days, his religious views were so enlarged that he
+had none at all. His conduct, therefore, if from time to time it
+was affected by passing spasms of acute superstition, was totally
+uninfluenced by any settled spiritual hopes or fears, a condition which,
+he found, gave him great advantages in life. In fact, had it suited his
+purpose, Montalvo was prepared, at a moment's notice, to become Lutheran
+or Calvinist, or Mahomedan, or Mystic, or even Anabaptist; on the
+principle, he would explain, that it is easy for the artist to paint any
+picture he likes upon a blank canvas.
+
+And yet this curious pliancy of mind, this lack of conviction, this
+absolute want of moral sense, which ought to have given the Count such
+great advantages in his conflict with the world, were, in reality, the
+main source of his weakness. Fortune had made a soldier of the man, and
+he filled the part as he would have filled any part. But nature intended
+him for a play-actor, and from day to day he posed and mimed and mouthed
+through life in this character or in that, though never in his
+own character, principally because he had none. Still, far down in
+Montalvo's being there was something solid and genuine, and that
+something not good but bad. It was very rarely on view; the hand of
+circumstance must plunge deep to find it, but it dwelt there; the
+strong, cruel Spanish spirit which would sacrifice anything to save,
+or even to advance, itself. It was this spirit that Lysbeth had seen
+looking out of his eyes on the yesterday, which, when he knew that the
+race was lost, had prompted him to try to kill his adversary, although
+he killed himself and her in the attempt. Nor did she see it then for
+the last time, for twice more at least in her life she was destined to
+meet and tremble at its power.
+
+In short, although Montalvo was a man who really disliked cruelty, he
+could upon occasion be cruel to the last degree; although he appreciated
+friends, and desired to have them, he could be the foulest of traitors.
+Although without a cause he would do no hurt to a living thing, yet if
+that cause were sufficient he would cheerfully consign a whole cityful
+to death. No, not cheerfully, he would have regretted their end very
+much, and often afterwards might have thought of it with sympathy
+and even sorrow. This was where he differed from the majority of his
+countrymen in that age, who would have done the same thing, and more
+brutally, from honest principle, and for the rest of their lives
+rejoiced at the memory of the deed.
+
+Montalvo had his ruling passion; it was not war, it was not women; it
+was money. But here again he did not care about the money for itself,
+since he was no miser, and being the most inveterate of gamblers never
+saved a single stiver. He wanted it to spend and to stake upon the dice.
+Thus again, in variance to the taste of most of his countrymen, he cared
+little for the other sex; he did not even like their society, and as for
+their passion and the rest he thought it something of a bore. But he did
+care intensely for their admiration, so much so that if no better game
+were at hand, he would take enormous trouble to fascinate even a serving
+maid or a fish girl. Wherever he went it was his ambition to be reported
+the man the most admired of the fair in that city, and to attain this
+end he offered himself upon the altar of numerous love affairs which
+did not amuse him in the least. Of course, the indulgence of this vanity
+meant expense, since the fair require money and presents, and he who
+pursues them should be well dressed and horsed and able to do things
+in the very finest style. Also their relatives must be entertained, and
+when they were entertained impressed with the sense that they had the
+honour to be guests of a grandee of Spain.
+
+Now that of a grandee has never been a cheap profession; indeed, as many
+a pauper peer knows to-day, rank without resources is a terrific burden.
+Montalvo had the rank, for he was a well-born man, whose sole heritage
+was an ancient tower built by some warlike ancestor in a position
+admirably suited to the purpose of the said ancestor, namely, the
+pillage of travellers through a neighbouring mountain pass. When,
+however, travellers ceased to use that pass, or for other reasons
+robbery became no longer productive, the revenues of the Montalvo family
+declined till at the present date they were practically nil. Thus it
+came about that the status of the last representative of this ancient
+stock was that of a soldier of fortune of the common type, endowed,
+unfortunately for himself, with grand ideas, a gambler's fatal fire,
+expensive tastes, and more than the usual pride of race.
+
+Although, perhaps, he had never defined them very clearly, even to
+himself, Juan de Montalvo had two aims in life: first to indulge his
+every freak and fancy to the full, and next--but this was secondary
+and somewhat nebulous--to re-establish the fortunes of his family. In
+themselves they were quite legitimate aims, and in those times, when
+fishers of troubled waters generally caught something, and when men of
+ability and character might force their way to splendid positions, there
+was no reason why they should not have led him to success. Yet so
+far, at any rate, in spite of many opportunities, he had not succeeded
+although he was now a man of more than thirty. The causes of his
+failures were various, but at the bottom of them lay his lack of
+stability and genuineness.
+
+A man who is always playing a part amuses every one but convinces
+nobody. Montalvo convinced nobody. When he discoursed on the mysteries
+of religion with priests, even priests who in those days for the
+most part were stupid, felt that they assisted in a mere intellectual
+exercise. When his theme was war his audience guessed that his object
+was probably love. When love was his song an inconvenient instinct was
+apt to assure the lady immediately concerned that it was love of self
+and not of her. They were all more or less mistaken, but, as usual, the
+women went nearest to the mark. Montalvo's real aim was self, but he
+spelt it, Money. Money in large sums was what he wanted, and what in
+this way or that he meant to win.
+
+Now even in the sixteenth century fortunes did not lie to the hand of
+every adventurer. Military pay was small, and not easily recoverable;
+loot was hard to come by, and quickly spent. Even the ransom of a rich
+prisoner or two soon disappeared in the payment of such debts of honour
+as could not be avoided. Of course there remained the possibility of
+wealthy marriage, which in a country like the Netherlands, that was
+full of rich heiresses, was not difficult to a high-born, handsome, and
+agreeable man of the ruling Spanish caste. Indeed, after many chances
+and changes the time had come at length when Montalvo must either marry
+or be ruined. For his station his debts, especially his gaming debts,
+were enormous, and creditors met him at every turn. Unfortunately for
+him, also, some of these creditors were persons who had the ear of
+people in authority. So at last it came about that an intimation reached
+him that this scandal must be abated, or he must go back to Spain, a
+country which, as it happened, he did not in the least wish to visit.
+In short, the sorry hour of reckoning, that hour which overtakes all
+procrastinators, had arrived, and marriage, wealthy marriage, was the
+only way wherewith it could be defied. It was a sad alternative to a man
+who for his own very excellent reasons did not wish to marry, but this
+had to be faced.
+
+Thus it came about that, as the only suitable _partie_ in Leyden,
+the Count Montalvo had sought out the well-favoured and well-endowed
+Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout to be his companion in the great sledge race,
+and taken so much trouble to ensure to himself a friendly reception at
+her house.
+
+So far, things went well, and, what was more, the opening of the chase
+had proved distinctly entertaining. Also, the society of the place,
+after his appropriation of her at a public festival and their long
+moonlight _tete-a-tete_, which by now must be common gossip's talk,
+would be quite prepared for any amount of attention which he might see
+fit to pay to Lysbeth. Indeed, why should he not pay attention to an
+unaffianced woman whose rank was lower if her means were greater than
+his own? Of course, he knew that her name had been coupled with that of
+Dirk van Goorl. He was perfectly aware also that these two young people
+were attached to each other, for as they walked home together on the
+previous night Dirk, possibly for motives of his own, had favoured him
+with a semi-intoxicated confidence to that effect. But as they were not
+affianced what did that matter? Indeed, had they been affianced, what
+would it matter? Still, Dirk van Goorl was an obstacle, and, therefore,
+although he seemed to be a good fellow, and he was sorry for him,
+Dirk van Goorl must be got out of the way, since he was convinced that
+Lysbeth was one of those stubborn-natured creatures who would probably
+decline to marry himself until this young Leyden lout had vanished. And
+yet he did not wish to be mixed up with duels, if for no other reason
+because in a duel the unexpected may always happen, and that would be
+a poor end. Certainly also he did not wish to be mixed up with murder;
+first, because he intensely disliked the idea of killing anybody, unless
+he was driven to it; and secondly, because murder has a nasty way of
+coming out. One could never be quite sure in what light the despatching
+of a young Netherlander of respectable family and fortune would be
+looked at by those in authority.
+
+Also, there was another thing to be considered. If this young man died
+it was impossible to know exactly how Lysbeth would take his death. Thus
+she might elect to refuse to marry or decide to mourn him for four or
+five years, which for all practical purposes would be just as bad. And
+yet while Dirk lived how could he possibly persuade her to transfer her
+affections to himself? It seemed, therefore, that Dirk ought to decease.
+For quite a quarter of an hour Montalvo thought the matter over, and
+then, just as he had given it up and determined to leave things
+to chance, for a while at least, inspiration came, a splendid, a
+heaven-sent inspiration.
+
+Dirk must not die, Dirk must live, but his continued existence must be
+the price of the hand of Lysbeth van Hout. If she was half as fond of
+the man as he believed, it was probable that she would be delighted to
+marry anybody else in order to save his precious neck, for that was just
+the kind of sentimental idiotcy of which nine women out of ten really
+enjoyed the indulgence. Moreover, this scheme had other merits; it did
+every one a good turn. Dirk would be saved from extinction for which he
+should be grateful: Lysbeth, besides earning the honour of an alliance,
+perhaps only temporary, with himself, would be able to go through life
+wrapped in a heavenly glow of virtue arising from the impression that
+she had really done something very fine and tragic, while he, Montalvo,
+under Providence, the humble purveyor of these blessings, would also
+benefit to some small extent.
+
+The difficulty was: How could the situation be created? How could
+the interesting Dirk be brought to a pass that would give the lady an
+opportunity of exercising her finer feelings on his behalf? If only he
+were a heretic now! Well, by the Pope why shouldn't he be a heretic?
+If ever a fellow had the heretical cut this fellow had; flat-faced,
+sanctimonious-looking, and with a fancy for dark-coloured stockings--he
+had observed that all heretics, male and female, wore dark-coloured
+stockings, perhaps by way of mortifying the flesh. He could think of
+only one thing against it, the young man had drunk too much last night.
+But there were certain breeds of heretics who did not mind drinking too
+much. Also the best could slip sometimes, for, as he had learned from
+the old Castilian priest who taught him Latin, _humanum est_, etc.
+
+This, then, was the summary of his reflections. (1) That to save the
+situation, within three months or so he must be united in holy matrimony
+with Lysbeth van Hout. (2) That if it proved impossible to remove the
+young man, Dirk van Goorl, from his path by overmatching him in the
+lady's affections, or by playing on her jealousy (Query: Could a woman
+be egged into becoming jealous of that flounder of a fellow and into
+marrying some one else out of pique?), stronger measures must be
+adopted. (3) That such stronger measures should consist of inducing the
+lady to save her lover from death by uniting herself in marriage with
+one who for her sake would do violence to his conscience and manipulate
+the business. (4) That this plan would be best put into execution by
+proving the lover to be a heretic, but if unhappily this could not be
+proved because he was not, still he must figure in that capacity for
+this occasion only. (5) That meanwhile it would be well to cultivate the
+society of Mynheer van Goorl as much as possible, first because he was a
+person with whom, under the circumstances, he, Montalvo, would naturally
+wish to become intimate, and secondly, because he was quite certain to
+be an individual with cash to lend.
+
+Now, these researches after heretics invariably cost money, for they
+involved the services of spies. Obviously, therefore, friend Dirk, the
+Dutch Flounder, was a man to provide the butter in which he was going to
+be fried. Why, if any Hollander had a spark of humour he would see the
+joke of it himself--and Montalvo ended his reflections as he had begun
+them, with a merry peal of laughter, after which he rose and ate a most
+excellent breakfast.
+
+
+
+It was about half-past five o'clock that afternoon before the Captain
+and Acting-Commandant Montalvo returned from some duty to which he had
+been attending, for it may be explained that he was a zealous officer
+and a master of detail. As he entered his lodgings the soldier who acted
+as his servant, a man selected for silence and discretion, saluted and
+stood at attention.
+
+"Is the woman here?" he asked.
+
+"Excellency, she is here, though I had difficulty enough in persuading
+her to come, for I found her in bed and out of humour."
+
+"Peace to your difficulties. Where is she?"
+
+"In the small inner room, Excellency."
+
+"Good, then see that no one disturbs us, and--stay, when she goes out
+follow her and note her movements till you trace her home."
+
+The man saluted, and Montalvo passed upstairs into the inner room,
+carefully shutting both doors behind him. The place was unlighted,
+but through the large stone-mullioned window the rays of the full
+moon poured brightly, and by them, seated in a straight-backed chair,
+Montalvo saw a draped form. There was something forbidding, something
+almost unnatural, in the aspect of this sombre form perched thus upon
+a chair in expectant silence. It reminded him--for he had a touch of
+inconvenient imagination--of an evil bird squatted upon the bough of
+a dead tree awaiting the dawn that it might go forth to devour some
+appointed prey.
+
+"Is that you, Mother Meg?" he asked in tones from which most of the
+jocosity had vanished. "Quite like old times at The Hague--isn't it?"
+
+The moonlit figure turned its head, for he could see the light shine
+upon the whites of the eyes.
+
+"Who else, Excellency," said a voice hoarse and thick with rheum, a
+voice like the croak of a crow, "though it is little thanks to your
+Excellency. Those must be strong who can bathe in Rhine water through a
+hole in the ice and take no hurt."
+
+"Don't scold, woman," he answered, "I have no time for it. If you were
+ducked yesterday, it served you right for losing your cursed temper.
+Could you not see that I had my own game to play, and you were spoiling
+it? Must I be flouted before my men, and listen while you warn a lady
+with whom I wish to stand well against me?"
+
+"You generally have a game to play, Excellency, but when it ends in my
+being first robbed and then nearly drowned beneath the ice--well, that
+is a game which Black Meg does not forget."
+
+"Hush, mother, you are not the only person with a memory. What was the
+reward? Twelve florins? Well, you shall have them, and five more; that's
+good pay for a lick of cold water. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"No, Excellency. I wanted the life, that heretic's life. I wanted to
+baste her while she burned, or to tread her down while she was buried.
+I have a grudge against the woman because I know, yes, because I know,"
+she repeated fiercely, "that if I do not kill her she will try to kill
+me. Her husband and her young son were burnt, upon my evidence mostly,
+but this is the third time she has escaped me."
+
+"Patience, mother, patience, and I dare say that everything will come
+right in the end. You have bagged two of the family--Papa heretic and
+Young Hopeful. Really you should not grumble if the third takes a little
+hunting, or wonder that in the meanwhile you are not popular with Mama.
+Now, listen. You know the young woman whom it was necessary that I
+should humour yesterday. She is rich, is she not?"
+
+"Yes, I know her, and I knew her father. He left her house, furniture,
+jewellery, and thirty thousand crowns, which are placed out at good
+interest. A nice fortune for a gallant who wants money, but it will be
+Dirk van Goorl's, not yours."
+
+"Ah! that is just the point. Now what do you know about Dirk van Goorl?"
+
+"A respectable, hard-working burgher, son of well-to-do parents,
+brass-workers who live at Alkmaar. Honest, but not very clever; the kind
+of man who grows rich, becomes a Burgomaster, founds a hospital for the
+poor, and has a fine monument put up to his memory."
+
+"Mother, the cold water has dulled your wits. When I ask you about a man
+I want to learn what you know _against_ him."
+
+"Naturally, Excellency, naturally, but against this one I can tell you
+nothing. He has no lovers, he does not gamble, he does not drink except
+a glass after dinner. He works in his factory all day, goes to bed
+early, rises early, and calls on the Jufvrouw van Hout on Sundays; that
+is all."
+
+"Where does he attend Mass?"
+
+"At the Groote Kerke once a week, but he does not take the Sacrament or
+go to confession."
+
+"That sounds bad, mother, very bad. You don't mean to say that he is a
+heretic?"
+
+"Probably he is, Excellency; most of them are about here."
+
+"Dear me, how very shocking. Do you know, I should not like that
+excellent young woman, a good Catholic too, like you and me, mother, to
+become mixed up with one of these dreadful heretics, who might expose
+her to all sorts of dangers. For, mother, who can touch pitch and not be
+defiled?"
+
+"You waste time, Excellency," replied his visitor with a snort. "What do
+you want?"
+
+"Well, in the interests of this young lady, I want to prove that this
+man _is_ a heretic, and it has struck me that--as one accustomed to this
+sort of thing--you might be able to find the evidence."
+
+"Indeed, Excellency, and has it struck you what my face would look like
+after I had thrust my head into a wasp's nest for your amusement? Do
+you know what it means to me if I go peering about among the heretics
+of Leyden? Well, I will tell you; it means that I should be killed. They
+are a strong lot, and a determined lot, and so long as you leave them
+alone they will leave you alone, but if you interfere with them, why
+then it is good night. Oh! yes, I know all about the law and the priests
+and the edicts and the Emperor. But the Emperor cannot burn a whole
+people, and though I hate them, I tell you," she added, standing up
+suddenly and speaking in a fierce, convinced voice, "that in the end
+the law and the edicts and the priests will get the worst of this fight.
+Yes, these Hollanders will beat them all and cut the throats of you
+Spaniards, and thrust those of you who are left alive out of their
+country, and spit upon your memories and worship God in their own
+fashion, and be proud and free, when you are dogs gnawing the bones of
+your greatness; dogs kicked back into your kennels to rot there. Those
+are not my own words," said Meg in a changed voice as she sat down
+again. "They are the words of that devil, Martha the Mare, which she
+spoke in my hearing when we had her on the rack, but somehow I think
+that they will come true, and that is why I always remember them."
+
+"Indeed, her ladyship the Mare is a more interesting person than I
+thought, though if she can talk like that, perhaps, after all, it would
+have been as well to drown her. And now, dropping prophecy and leaving
+posterity to arrange for itself, let us come to business. How much? For
+evidence which would suffice to procure his conviction, mind."
+
+"Five hundred florins, not a stiver less, so, Excellency, you need not
+waste your time trying to beat me down. You want good evidence, evidence
+on which the Council, or whoever they may appoint, will convict, and
+that means the unshaken testimony of two witnesses. Well, I tell you, it
+isn't easy to come by; there is great danger to the honest folk who
+seek it, for these heretics are desperate people, and if they find a spy
+while they are engaged in devil-worship at one of their conventicles,
+why--they kill him."
+
+"I know all that, mother. What are you trying to cover up that you are
+so talkative? It isn't your usual way of doing business. Well, it is a
+bargain--you shall have your money when you produce the evidence.
+And now really if we stop here much longer people will begin to make
+remarks, for who shall escape aspersion in this censorious world? So
+good-night, mother, good-night," and he turned to leave the room.
+
+"No, Excellency," she croaked with a snort of indignation, "no pay, no
+play; I don't work on the faith of your Excellency's word alone."
+
+"How much?" he asked again.
+
+"A hundred florins down."
+
+Then for a while they wrangled hideously, their heads held close
+together in the patch of moonlight, and so loathsome did their faces
+look, so plainly was the wicked purpose of their hearts written upon
+them, that in that faint luminous glow they might have been mistaken
+for emissaries from the under-world chaffering over the price of a
+human soul. At last the bargain was struck for fifty florins, and having
+received it into her hand Black Meg departed.
+
+"Sixty-seven in all," she muttered to herself as she regained the
+street. "Well, it was no use holding out for any more, for he hasn't got
+the cash. The man's as poor as Lazarus, but he wants to live like Dives,
+and, what is more, he gambles, as I learned at The Hague. Also, there's
+something queer about his past; I have heard as much as that. It must be
+looked into, and perhaps the bundle of papers which I helped myself to
+out of his desk while I was waiting"--and she touched the bosom of her
+dress to make sure that they were safe--"may tell me a thing or two,
+though likely enough they are only unpaid bills. Ah! most noble cheat
+and captain, before you have done with her you may find that Black Meg
+knows how to pay back hot water for cold!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE DREAM OF DIRK
+
+On the day following Montalvo's interview with Black Meg Dirk received
+a message from that gentleman, sent to his lodging by an orderly, which
+reminded him that he had promised to dine with him this very night. Now
+he had no recollection of any such engagement. Remembering with shame,
+however, that there were various incidents of the evening of the supper
+whereof his memory was most imperfect, he concluded that this must be
+one of them. So much against his own wishes Dirk sent back an answer to
+say that he would appear at the time and place appointed.
+
+This was the third thing that had happened to annoy him that day. First
+he had met Pieter van de Werff, who informed him that all Leyden was
+talking about Lysbeth and the Captain Montalvo, to whom she was said to
+have taken a great fancy. Next when he went to call at the house in the
+Bree Straat he was told that both Lysbeth and his cousin Clara had gone
+out sleighing, which he did not believe, for as a thaw had set in the
+snow was no longer in a condition suitable to that amusement. Moreover,
+he could almost have sworn that, as he crossed the street, he caught
+sight of Cousin Clara's red face peeping at him from between the
+curtains of the upstairs sitting-room. Indeed he said as much to Greta,
+who, contrary to custom, had opened the door to him.
+
+"I am sorry if Mynheer sees visions," answered that young woman
+imperturbably. "I told Mynheer that the ladies had gone out sleighing."
+
+"I know you did, Greta; but why should they go out sleighing in a wet
+thaw?"
+
+"I don't know, Mynheer. Ladies do those things that please them. It is
+not my place to ask their reasons."
+
+Dirk looked at Greta, and was convinced that she was lying. He put his
+hand in his pocket, to find to his disgust that he had forgotten his
+purse. Then he thought of giving her a kiss and trying to melt the truth
+out of her in this fashion, but remembering that if he did, she might
+tell Lysbeth, which would make matters worse than ever, refrained. So
+the end of it was that he merely said "Oh! indeed," and went away.
+
+"Great soft-head," reflected Greta, as she watched his retreating
+form, "he knew I was telling lies, why didn't he push past me, or--do
+anything. Ah! Mynheer Dirk, if you are not careful that Spaniard will
+take your wind. Well, he is more amusing, that's certain. I am tired of
+these duck-footed Leydeners, who daren't wink at a donkey lest he should
+bray, and among such holy folk somebody a little wicked is rather a
+change." Then Greta, who, it may be remembered, came from Brussels, and
+had French blood in her veins, went upstairs to make a report to her
+mistress, telling her all that passed.
+
+"I did not ask you to speak falsehoods as to my being out sleighing and
+the rest. I told you to answer that I was not at home, and mind you say
+the same to the Captain Montalvo if he calls," said Lysbeth with some
+acerbity as she dismissed her.
+
+In truth she was very sore and angry, and yet ashamed of herself because
+it was so. But things had gone so horribly wrong, and as for Dirk, he
+was the most exasperating person in the world. It was owing to his
+bad management and lack of readiness that her name was coupled with
+Montalvo's at every table in Leyden. And now what did she hear in a note
+from the Captain himself, sent to make excuses for not having called
+upon her after the supper party, but that Dirk was going to dine with
+him that night? Very well, let him do it; she would know how to pay him
+back, and if necessary was ready to act up to any situation which he had
+chosen to create.
+
+Thus thought Lysbeth, stamping her foot with vexation, but all the time
+her heart was sore. All the time she knew well enough that she loved
+Dirk, and, however strange might be his backwardness in speaking out his
+mind, that he loved her. And yet she felt as though a river was running
+between them. In the beginning it had been a streamlet, but now it was
+growing to a torrent. Worse still the Spaniard was upon her bank of the
+river.
+
+After he had to some extent conquered his shyness and irritation Dirk
+became aware that he was really enjoying his dinner at Montalvo's
+quarters. There were three guests besides himself, two Spanish officers
+and a young Netherlander of his own class and age, Brant by name. He was
+the only son of a noted and very wealthy goldsmith at The Hague, who had
+sent him to study certain mysteries of the metal worker's art under
+a Leyden jeweller famous for the exquisite beauty of his designs. The
+dinner and the service were both of them perfect in style, but better
+than either proved the conversation, which was of a character that Dirk
+had never heard at the tables of his own class and people. Not that
+there was anything even broad about it, as might perhaps have been
+expected. No, it was the talk of highly accomplished and travelled men
+of the world, who had seen much and been actors in many moving events;
+men who were not overtrammelled by prejudices, religious or other, and
+who were above all things desirous of making themselves agreeable and
+instructive to the stranger within their gates. The Heer Brant also, who
+had but just arrived in Leyden, showed himself an able and polished
+man, one that had been educated more thoroughly than was usual among his
+class, and who, at the table of his father, the opulent Burgomaster of
+The Hague, from his youth had associated with all classes and conditions
+of men. Indeed it was there that he made the acquaintance of Montalvo,
+who recognising him in the street had asked him to dinner.
+
+After the dishes were cleared, one of the Spanish officers rose and
+begged to be excused, pleading some military duty. When he had saluted
+his commandant and gone, Montalvo suggested that they should play a game
+of cards. This was an invitation which Dirk would have liked to decline,
+but when it came to the point he did not, for fear of seeming peculiar
+in the eyes of these brilliant men of the world.
+
+So they began to play, and as the game was simple very soon he picked
+up the points of it, and what is more, found them amusing. At first
+the stakes were not high, but they doubled themselves in some automatic
+fashion, till Dirk was astonished to find that he was gambling for
+considerable sums and winning them. Towards the last his luck changed a
+little, but when the game came to an end he found himself the richer by
+about three hundred and fifty florins.
+
+"What am I do to with this?" he asked colouring up, as with sighs, which
+in one instance were genuine enough, the losers pushed the money across
+to him.
+
+"Do with it?" laughed Montalvo, "did anybody ever hear such an innocent!
+Why, buy your lady-love, or somebody else's lady-love, a present. No,
+I'll tell you a better use than this, you give us to-morrow night at
+your lodging the best dinner that Leyden can produce, and a chance of
+winning some of this coin back again. Is it agreed?"
+
+"If the other gentlemen wish it," said Dirk, modestly, "though my
+apartment is but a poor place for such company."
+
+"Of course we wish it," replied the three as with one voice, and the
+hour for meeting having been fixed they parted, the Heer Brant walking
+with Dirk to the door of his lodging.
+
+"I was going to call on you to-morrow," he said, "to bring to you a
+letter of introduction from my father, though that should scarcely be
+needed as, in fact, we are cousins--second cousins only, our mothers
+having been first cousins."
+
+"Oh! yes, Brant of The Hague, of whom my mother used to speak, saying
+that they were kinsmen to be proud of, although she had met them but
+little. Well, welcome, cousin; I trust that we shall be friends."
+
+"I am sure of it," answered Brant, and putting his arm through Dirk's
+he pressed it in a peculiar fashion that caused him to start and look
+round. "Hush!" muttered Brant, "not here," and they began to talk of
+their late companions and the game of cards which they had played,
+an amusement as to the propriety of which Dirk intimated that he had
+doubts.
+
+Young Brant shrugged his shoulders. "Cousin," he said, "we live in the
+world, so it is as well to understand the world. If the risking of a
+few pieces at play, which it will not ruin us to lose, helps us to
+understand it, well, for my part I am ready to risk them, especially as
+it puts us on good terms with those who, as things are, it is wise we
+should cultivate. Only, cousin, if I may venture to say it, be careful
+not to take more wine than you can carry with discretion. Better lose a
+thousand florins than let drop one word that you cannot remember."
+
+"I know, I know," answered Dirk, thinking of Lysbeth's supper, and at
+the door of his lodgings they parted.
+
+Like most Netherlanders, when Dirk made up his mind to do anything he
+did it thoroughly. Thus, having undertaken to give a dinner party, he
+determined to give a good dinner. In ordinary circumstances his first
+idea would have been to consult his cousins, Clara and Lysbeth. After
+that monstrous story about the sleighing, however, which by inquiry from
+the coachman of the house, whom he happened to meet, he ascertained to
+be perfectly false, this, for the young man had some pride, he did not
+feel inclined to do. So in place of it he talked first to his landlady,
+a worthy dame, and by her advice afterwards with the first innkeeper of
+Leyden, a man of resource and experience. The innkeeper, well knowing
+that this customer would pay for anything which he ordered, threw
+himself into the affair heartily, with the result that by five o'clock
+relays of cooks and other attendants were to be seen streaming up Dirk's
+staircase, carrying every variety of dish that could be supposed to
+tempt the appetite of high-class cavaliers.
+
+Dirk's apartment consisted of two rooms situated upon the first floor
+of an old house in a street that had ceased to be fashionable. Once,
+however, it had been a fine house, and, according to the ideas of the
+time, the rooms themselves were fine, especially the sitting chamber,
+which was oak-panelled, low, and spacious, with a handsome fireplace
+carrying the arms of its builder. Out of it opened his sleeping
+room--which had no other doorway--likewise oak-panelled, with tall
+cupboards, not unlike the canopy of a tomb in shape and general
+appearance.
+
+The hour came, and with it the guests. The feast began, the cooks
+streamed up and down bearing relays of dishes from the inn. Above the
+table hung a six-armed brass chandelier, and in each of its sockets
+guttered a tallow candle furnishing light to the company beneath,
+although outside of its bright ring there was shadow more or less dense.
+Towards the end of dinner a portion of the rush wick of one of these
+candles fell into the brass saucer beneath, causing the molten grease
+to burn up fiercely. As it chanced, by the light of this sudden flare,
+Montalvo, who was sitting opposite to the door, thought that he caught
+sight of a tall, dark figure gliding along the wall towards the bedroom.
+For one instant he saw it, then it was gone.
+
+"_Caramba_, my friend," he said, addressing Dirk, whose back was turned
+towards the figure, "have you any ghosts in this gloomy old room of
+yours? Because, if so, I think I have just seen one."
+
+"Ghosts!" answered Dirk, "no, I never heard of any; I do not believe in
+ghosts. Take some more of that pasty."
+
+Montalvo took some more pasty, and washed it down with a glass of
+wine. But he said no more about ghosts--perhaps an explanation of the
+phenomenon had occurred to him; at any rate he decided to leave the
+subject alone.
+
+After the dinner they gambled, and this evening the stakes began where
+those of the previous night left off. For the first hour Dirk lost, then
+the luck turned and he won heavily, but always from Montalvo.
+
+"My friend," said the captain at last, throwing down his cards,
+"certainly you are fated to be unfortunate in your matrimonial
+adventures, for the devil lives in your dice-box, and his highness does
+not give everything. I pass," and he rose from the table.
+
+"I pass also," said Dirk following him into the window place, for he
+wished to take no more money. "You have been very unlucky, Count," he
+said.
+
+"Very, indeed, my young friend," answered Montalvo, yawning, "in fact,
+for the next six months I must live on--well--well, nothing, except the
+recollection of your excellent dinner."
+
+"I am sorry," muttered Dirk, confusedly, "I did not wish to take your
+money; it was the turn of those accursed dice. See here, let us say no
+more about it."
+
+"Sir," said Montalvo, with a sudden sternness, "an officer and a
+gentleman cannot treat a debt of honour thus; but," he added with a
+little laugh, "if another gentleman chances to be good enough to charge
+a debt of honour for a debt of honour, the affair is different. If,
+for instance, it would suit you to lend me four hundred florins, which,
+added to the six hundred which I have lost to-night, would make a
+thousand in all, well, it will be a convenience to me, though should it
+be any inconvenience to you, pray do not think of such a thing."
+
+"Certainly," answered Dirk, "I have won nearly as much as that, and here
+at my own table. Take them, I beg of you, captain," and emptying a roll
+of gold into his hand, he counted it with the skill of a merchant, and
+held it towards him.
+
+Montalvo hesitated. Then he took the money, pouring it carelessly into
+his pocket.
+
+"You have not checked the sum," said Dirk.
+
+"My friend, it is needless," answered his guest, "your word is rather
+better than any bond," and again he yawned, remarking that it was
+getting late.
+
+Dirk waited a few moments, thinking in his coarse, business-like way
+that the noble Spaniard might wish to say something about a written
+acknowledgment. As, however, this did not seem to occur to him, and
+the matter was not one of ordinary affairs, he led the way back to the
+table, where the other two were now showing their skill in card tricks.
+
+A few minutes later the two Spaniards took their departure, leaving Dirk
+and his cousin Brant alone.
+
+"A very successful evening," said Brant, "and, cousin, you won a great
+deal."
+
+"Yes," answered Dirk, "but all the same I am a poorer man than I was
+yesterday."
+
+Brant laughed. "Did he borrow of you?" he asked. "Well, I thought he
+would, and what's more, don't you count on that money. Montalvo is a
+good sort of fellow in his own fashion, but he is an extravagant man
+and a desperate gambler, with a queer history, I fancy--at least, nobody
+knows much about him, not even his brother officers. If you ask them
+they shrug their shoulders and say that Spain is a big kettle full of
+all sorts of fish. One thing I do know, however, that he is over head
+and ears in debt; indeed, there was trouble about it down at The Hague.
+So, cousin, don't you play with him more than you can help, and don't
+reckon on that thousand florins to pay your bills with. It is a mystery
+to me how the man gets on, but I am told that a foolish old vrouw in
+Amsterdam lent him a lot till she discovered--but there, I don't
+talk scandal. And now," he added, changing his voice, "is this place
+private?"
+
+"Let's see," said Dirk, "they have cleared the things away, and the old
+housekeeper has tidied up my bedroom. Yes, I think so. Nobody ever comes
+up here after ten o'clock. What is it?"
+
+Brant touched his arm, and, understanding the truth, Dirk led the way
+into the window-place. There, standing with his back to the room, and
+his hands crossed in a peculiar fashion, he uttered the word, "_Jesus_,"
+and paused. Brant also crossed his hands and answered, or, rather,
+continued, "_wept_." It was the password of those of the New Religion.
+
+"You are one of us, cousin?" said Dirk.
+
+"I and all my house, my father, my mother, my sister, and the maiden
+whom I am to marry. They told me at The Hague that I must seek of you or
+the young Heer Pieter van de Werff, knowledge of those things which we
+of the Faith need to know; who are to be trusted, and who are not to
+be trusted; where prayer is held, and where we may partake of the pure
+Sacrament of God the Son."
+
+Dirk took his cousin's hand and pressed it. The pressure was returned,
+and thenceforward brother could not have trusted brother more
+completely, for now between them was the bond of a common and burning
+faith.
+
+Such bonds the reader may say, tie ninety out of every hundred people
+to each other in the present year of grace, but it is not to be observed
+that a like mutual confidence results. No, because the circumstances
+have changed. Thanks very largely to Dirk van Goorl and his fellows of
+that day, especially to one William of Orange, it is no longer necessary
+for devout and God-fearing people to creep into holes and corners, like
+felons hiding from the law, that they may worship the Almighty after
+some fashion as pure as it is simple, knowing the while that if they are
+found so doing their lot and the lot of their wives and children will
+be the torment and the stake. Now the thumbscrew and the rack as
+instruments for the discomfiture of heretics are relegated to the
+dusty cases of museums. But some short generations since all this was
+different, for then a man who dared to disagree with certain doctrines
+was treated with far less mercy than is shown to a dog on the
+vivisector's table.
+
+Little wonder, therefore, that those who lay under such a ban, those who
+were continually walking in the cold shadow of this dreadful doom, clung
+to each other, loved each other, and comforted each other to the last,
+passing often enough hand-in-hand through the fiery gates to that
+country in which there is no more pain. To be a member of the New
+Religion in the Netherlands under the awful rule of Charles the Emperor
+and Philip the King was to be one of a vast family. It was not "sir"
+or "mistress" or "madame," it was "my father" and "my mother," or "my
+sister" and "my brother;" yes, and between people who were of very
+different status and almost strangers in the flesh; strangers in the
+flesh but brethren in spirit.
+
+It will be understood that in these circumstances Dirk and Brant,
+already liking each other, and being already connected by blood, were
+not slow in coming to a complete understanding and fellowship.
+
+There they sat in the window-place telling each other of their families,
+their hopes and fears, and even of their lady-loves. In this, as in
+every other respect, Hendrik Brant's story was one of simple prosperity.
+He was betrothed to a lady of The Hague, the only daughter of a wealthy
+wine-merchant, who, according to his account, seemed to be as beautiful
+as she was good and rich, and they were to be married in the spring. But
+when Dirk told him of his affair, he shook his wise young head.
+
+"You say that both she and her aunt are Catholics?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, cousin, this is the trouble. I think that she is fond of me, or,
+at any rate, she was until a few days since," he added ruefully, "but
+how can I, being a 'heretic,' ask her to plight her troth to me unless
+I tell her? And that, you know, is against the rule; indeed, I scarcely
+dare to do so."
+
+"Had you not best consult with some godly elder who by prayer and words
+may move your lady's heart till the light shines on her?" asked Brant.
+
+"Cousin, it has been done, but always there is the other in the way,
+that red-nosed Aunt Clara, who is a mad idolator; also there is
+the serving-woman, Greta, whom I take for little better than a spy.
+Therefore, between the two of them I see little chance that Lysbeth will
+ever hear the truth this side of marriage. And yet how dare I marry her?
+Is it right that I should marry her and therefore, perhaps, bring her
+too to some dreadful fate such as may wait for you or me? Moreover, now
+since this man Montalvo has crossed my path, all things seem to have
+gone wrong between me and Lysbeth; indeed but yesterday her door was
+shut on me."
+
+"Women have their fancies," answered Brant, slowly; "perhaps he has
+taken hers; she would not be the first who walked that plank. Or,
+perhaps, she is vexed with you for not speaking out ere this; for, man,
+not knowing what you are, how can she read your mind?"
+
+"Perhaps, perhaps," said Dirk, "but I know not what to do," and in his
+perplexity he struck his forehead with his hand.
+
+"Then, brother, in that case what hinders that we should ask Him Who can
+tell you?" said Brant, calmly.
+
+Dirk understood what he meant at once. "It is a wise thought, and a good
+one, cousin. I have the Holy Book; first let us pray, and then we can
+seek wisdom there."
+
+"You are rich, indeed," answered Brant; "sometime you must tell me how
+and where you came by it."
+
+"Here in Leyden, if one can afford to pay for them, such goods are not
+hard to get," said Dirk; "what _is_ hard is to keep them safely, for
+to be found with a Bible in your pocket is to carry your own
+death-warrant."
+
+Brant nodded. "Is it safe to show it here?" he asked.
+
+"As safe as anywhere, cousin; the window is shuttered, the door is, or
+will be, locked, but who can say that he is safe this side of the stake
+in a land where the rats and mice carry news and the wind bears witness?
+Come, I will show you were I keep it," and going to the mantelpiece
+he took down a candle-stick, a quaint brass, ornamented on its massive
+oblong base with two copper snails, and lit the candle. "Do you like the
+piece?" he asked; "it is my own design, which I cast and filed out in
+my spare hours," and he gazed at the holder with the affection of an
+artist. Then without waiting for an answer, he led the way to the door
+of his sitting-room and paused.
+
+"What is it?" asked Brant.
+
+"I thought I heard a sound, that is all, but doubtless the old vrouw
+moves upon the stairs. Turn the key, cousin, so, now come on."
+
+They entered the sleeping chamber, and having glanced round and made
+sure that it was empty, and the window shut, Dirk went to the head of
+the bed, which was formed of oak-panels, the centre one carved with
+a magnificent coat-of-arms, fellow to that in the fireplace of the
+sitting-room. At this panel Dirk began to work, till presently it slid
+aside, revealing a hollow, out of which he took a book bound in boards
+covered with leather. Then, having closed the panel, the two young men
+returned to the sitting-room, and placed the volume upon the oak table
+beneath the chandelier.
+
+"First let us pray," said Brant.
+
+It seems curious, does it not, that two young men as a _finale_ to a
+dinner party, and a gambling match at which the stakes had not been low;
+young men who like others had their weaknesses, for one of them, at any
+rate, could drink too much wine at times, and both being human doubtless
+had further sins to bear, should suggest kneeling side by side to offer
+prayers to their Maker before they studied the Scriptures? But then in
+those strange days prayer, now so common (and so neglected) an exercise,
+was an actual luxury. To these poor hunted men and women it was a joy
+to be able to kneel and offer thanks and petitions to God, believing
+themselves to be safe from the sword of those who worshipped otherwise.
+Thus it came about that, religion being forbidden, was to them a very
+real and earnest thing, a thing to be indulged in at every opportunity
+with solemn and grateful hearts. So there, beneath the light of the
+guttering candles, they knelt side by side while Brant, speaking for
+both of them, offered up a prayer--a sight touching enough and in its
+way beautiful.
+
+The words of his petition do not matter. He prayed for their Church; he
+prayed for their country that it might be made strong and free; he even
+prayed for the Emperor, the carnal, hare-lipped, guzzling, able Hapsburg
+self-seeker. Then he prayed for themselves and all who were dear to
+them, and lastly, that light might be vouchsafed to Dirk in his present
+difficulty. No, not quite lastly, for he ended with a petition that
+their enemies might be forgiven, yes, even those who tortured them and
+burnt them at the stake, since they knew not what they did. It may be
+wondered whether any human aspirations could have been more thoroughly
+steeped in the true spirit of Christianity.
+
+When at length he had finished they rose from their knees.
+
+"Shall I open the Book at a hazard," asked Dirk, "and read what my eye
+falls on?"
+
+"No," answered Brant, "for it savours of superstition; thus did the
+ancients with the writings of the poet Virgilius, and it is not fitting
+that we who hold the light should follow the example of those blind
+heathen. What work of the Book, brother, are you studying now?"
+
+"The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, which I have never read
+before," he answered.
+
+"Then begin where you left off, brother, and read your chapter. Perhaps
+we may find instruction in it; if not, no answer is vouchsafed to us
+to-night."
+
+So from the black-letter volume before him Dirk began to read the
+seventh chapter, in which, as it chances, the great Apostle deals with
+the marriage state. On he read, in a quiet even voice, till he came to
+the twelfth and four following verses, of which the last three run: "For
+the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving
+wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean;
+but now they are holy. But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart.
+A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases; but God has
+called us to peace. For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
+save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save
+thy wife?" Dirk's voice trembled, and he paused.
+
+"Continue to the end of the chapter," said Brant, so the reader went on.
+
+There is a sound. They do not hear it, but the door of the bedchamber
+behind them opens ever so little. They do not see it, but between door
+and lintel something white thrusts itself, a woman's white face crowned
+with black hair, and set in it two evil, staring eyes. Surely,
+when first he raised his head in Eden, Satan might have worn such a
+countenance as this. It cranes itself forward till the long, thin neck
+seems to stretch; then suddenly a stir or a movement alarms it, and back
+the face draws like the crest of a startled snake. Back it draws, and
+the door closes again.
+
+The chapter is read, the prayer is prayed, and strange may seem the
+answer to that prayer, an answer to shake out faith from the hearts of
+men; men who are impatient, who do not know that as the light takes long
+in travelling from a distant star, so the answer from the Throne to the
+supplication of trust may be long in coming. It may not come to-day
+or to-morrow. It may not come in this generation or this century; the
+prayer of to-day may receive its crown when the children's children of
+the lips that uttered it have in their turn vanished in the dust. And
+yet that Divine reply may in no wise be delayed; even as our liberty
+of this hour may be the fruit of those who died when Dirk van Goorl and
+Hendrik Brant walked upon the earth; even as the vengeance that but now
+is falling on the Spaniard may be the reward of the deeds of shame that
+he worked upon them and upon their kin long generations gone. For the
+Throne is still the Throne, and the star is still the star; from the one
+flows justice and from the other light, and to them time and space are
+naught.
+
+Dirk finished the chapter and closed the Book.
+
+"It seems that you have your answer, Brother," said Brant quietly.
+
+"Yes," replied Dirk, "it is written large enough:--'The unbelieving wife
+is sanctified by the husband . . . how knowest thou, O man, whether thou
+shalt save thy wife?' Had the Apostle foreseen my case he could not have
+set the matter forth more clearly."
+
+"He, or the Spirit in him, knew all cases, and wrote for every man that
+ever shall be born," answered Brant. "This is a lesson to us. Had you
+looked sooner you would have learned sooner, and mayhap much trouble
+might have been spared. As it is, without doubt you must make haste and
+speak to her at once, leaving the rest with God."
+
+"Yes," said Dirk, "as soon as may be, but there is one thing more; ought
+I tell her all the truth?"
+
+"I should not be careful to hide it, friend, and now, good night. No,
+do not come to the door with me. Who can tell, there may be watchers
+without, and it is not wise that we should be seen together so late."
+
+
+
+When his cousin and new-found friend had gone Dirk sat for a while, till
+the guttering tallow lights overhead burned to the sockets indeed. Then,
+taking the candle from the snail-adorned holder, he lit it, and,
+having extinguished those in the chandeliers, went into his bedroom and
+undressed himself. The Bible he returned to its hiding-place and closed
+the panel, after which he blew out the light and climbed into the tall
+bed.
+
+As a rule Dirk was a most excellent sleeper; when he laid his head on
+the pillow his eyes closed nor did they open again until the appointed
+and accustomed hour. But this night he could not sleep. Whether it was
+the dinner or the wine, or the gambling, or the prayer and the searching
+of the Scriptures with his cousin Brant, the result remained the same;
+he was very wakeful, which annoyed him the more as a man of his race and
+phlegm found it hard to attribute this unrest to any of these trivial
+causes. Still, as vexation would not make him sleep, he lay awake
+watching the moonlight flood the chamber in broad bars and thinking.
+
+Somehow as Dirk thought thus he grew afraid; it seemed to him as though
+he shared that place with another presence, an evil and malignant
+presence. Never in his life before had he troubled over or been troubled
+by tales of spirits, yet now he remembered Montalvo's remark about a
+ghost, and of a surety he felt as though one were with him there. In
+this strange and new alarm he sought for comfort and could think of none
+save that which an old and simple pastor had recommended to him in all
+hours of doubt and danger, namely, if it could be had, to clasp a Bible
+to his heart and pray.
+
+Well, both things were easy. Raising himself in bed, in a moment he had
+taken the book from its hiding-place and closed the panel. Then pressing
+it against his breast between himself and the mattress he lay down
+again, and it would seem that the charm worked, for presently he was
+asleep.
+
+Yet Dirk dreamed a very evil dream. He dreamed that a tall black figure
+leaned over him, and that a long white hand was stretched out to his
+bed-head where it wandered to and fro, till at last he heard the panel
+slide home with a rattling noise.
+
+Then it seemed to him that he woke, and that his eyes met two eyes bent
+down over him, eyes which searched him as though they would read the
+very secrets of his heart. He did not stir, he could not, but lo!
+in this dream of his the figure straightened itself and glided away,
+appearing and disappearing as it crossed the bars of moonlight until it
+vanished by the door.
+
+A while later and Dirk woke up in truth, to find that although the night
+was cold enough the sweat ran in big drops from his brow and body. But
+now strangely enough his fear was gone, and, knowing that he had but
+dreamed a dream, he turned over, touched the Bible on his breast, and
+fell sleeping like a child, to be awakened only by the light of the
+rising winter sun pouring on his face.
+
+Then Dirk remembered that dream of the bygone night, and his heart grew
+heavy, for it seemed to him that this vision of a dark woman searching
+his face with those dreadful eyes was a portent of evil not far away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BETROTHAL OF LYSBETH
+
+On the following morning when Montalvo entered his private room after
+breakfast, he found a lady awaiting him, in whom, notwithstanding the
+long cloak and veil she wore, he had little difficulty in recognising
+Black Meg. In fact Black Meg had been waiting some while, and being a
+person of industrious habits she had not neglected to use her time to
+the best advantage.
+
+The reader may remember that when Meg visited the gallant Captain
+Montalvo upon a previous occasion, she had taken the liberty of helping
+herself to certain papers which she found lying just inside an unlocked
+desk. These papers on examination, as she feared might be the case, for
+the most part proved to be quite unimportant--unpaid accounts, military
+reports, a billet or two from ladies, and so forth. But in thinking the
+matter over Black Meg remembered that this desk had another part to
+it, which seemed to be locked, and, therefore, just in case they should
+prove useful, she took with her a few skeleton keys and one or two
+little instruments of steel and attended the pleasure of her noble
+patron at an hour when she believed that he would be at breakfast in
+another room. Things went well; he was at breakfast and she was left
+alone in the chamber with the desk. The rest may be guessed. Replacing
+the worthless bundle in the unlocked part, by the aid of her keys and
+instruments she opened the inner half. There sure enough were letters
+hidden, and in a little drawer two miniatures framed in gold, one of a
+lady, young and pretty with dark eyes, and the other of two children,
+a boy and a girl of five or six years of age. Also there was a curling
+lock of hair labelled in Montalvo's writing--"Juanita's hair, which she
+gave me as a keepsake."
+
+Here was treasure indeed whereof Black Meg did not fail to possess
+herself. Thrusting the letters and other articles into the bosom of her
+dress to be examined at leisure, she was clever enough, before closing
+and re-locking the desk, to replace them with a dummy bundle, hastily
+made up from some papers that lay about.
+
+When everything had been satisfactorily arranged she went outside and
+chattered for a while with the soldier on guard, only re-entering the
+room by one door as Montalvo appeared in it through the other.
+
+"Well, my friend," he said, "have you the evidence?"
+
+"I have some evidence, Excellency," she answered. "I was present at the
+dinner that you ate last night, although none of it came my way, and--I
+was present afterwards."
+
+"Indeed. I thought I saw you slip in, and allow me to congratulate you
+on that; it was very well thought out and done, just as folk were
+moving up and down the stairs. Also, when I went home, I believe that
+I recognised a gentleman in the street whom I have been given to
+understand you honour with your friendship, a short, stout person with
+a bald head; let me see, he was called the Butcher at The Hague, was he
+not? No, do not pout, I have no wish to pry into the secrets of ladies,
+but still in my position here it is my business to know a thing or two.
+Well, what did you see?"
+
+"Excellency, I saw the young man I was sent to watch and Hendrik Brant,
+the son of the rich goldsmith at The Hague, praying side by side upon
+their knees."
+
+"That is bad, very bad," said Montalvo shaking his head, "but----"
+
+"I saw," she went on in her hoarse voice, "the pair of them read the
+Bible."
+
+"How shocking!" replied Montalvo with a simulated shudder. "Think of
+it, my orthodox friend, if you are to be believed, these two persons,
+hitherto supposed to be respectable, have been discovered in the crime
+of consulting that work upon which our Faith is founded. Well, those
+who could read anything so dull must, indeed, as the edicts tell us, be
+monsters unworthy to live. But, if you please, your proofs. Of course
+you have this book?"
+
+Then Black Meg poured forth all her tale--how she had watched and seen
+something, how she had listened and heard little, how she had gone to
+the secret panel, bending over the sleeping man, and found--nothing.
+
+"You are a poor sort of spy, mother," commented the captain when she had
+done, "and, upon my soul, I do not believe that even a Papal inquisitor
+could hang that young fellow on your evidence. You must go back and get
+some more."
+
+"No," answered Black Meg with decision, "if you want to force your way
+into conventicles you had best do it yourself. As I wish to go on living
+here is no job for me. I have proved to you that this young man is a
+heretic, so now give me my reward."
+
+"Your reward? Ah! your reward. No, I think not at present, for a reward
+presupposes services--and I see none."
+
+Black Meg began to storm.
+
+"Be silent," said Montalvo, dropping his bantering tone. "Look, I will
+be frank with you. I do not want to burn anybody. I am sick of all this
+nonsense about religion, and for aught I care every Netherlander in
+Leyden may read the Bible until he grows tired. I seek to marry that
+Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, and to do this I desire to prove that the man
+whom she loves, Dirk van Goorl, is a heretic. What you have told me may
+or may not be sufficient for my purpose. If it is sufficient you shall
+be paid liberally after my marriage; if not--well, you have had enough.
+As for your evidence, for my part I may say that I do not believe a word
+of it, for were it true you would have brought the Bible."
+
+As he spoke he rang a bell which stood upon a table, and before Meg
+could answer the soldier appeared.
+
+"Show this good woman out," he said, adding, in a loud voice, "Mother, I
+will do my best for you and forward your petition to the proper quarter.
+Meanwhile, take this trifle in charity," and he pressed a florin into
+her hand. "Now, guard, the prisoners, the prisoners. I have no time to
+waste--and listen--let me be troubled with no more beggars, or you will
+hear of it."
+
+
+
+That afternoon Dirk, filled with a solemn purpose, and dressed in his
+best suit, called at the house in the Bree Straat, where the door was
+again opened by Greta, who looked at him expectantly.
+
+"Is your mistress in?" he stammered. "I have come to see your mistress."
+
+"Alas! Mynheer," answered the young woman, "you are just too late. My
+mistress and her aunt, the Vrouw Clara, have gone away to stay for a
+week or ten days as the Vrouw Clara's health required a change."
+
+"Indeed," said Dirk aghast, "and where have they gone?"
+
+"Oh! Mynheer, I do not know that, they did not tell me," and no other
+answer could he extract from her.
+
+So Dirk went away discomfited and pondering. An hour later the Captain
+Montalvo called, and strange to say proved more fortunate. By hook or
+by crook he obtained the address of the ladies, who were visiting, it
+appeared, at a seaside village within the limits of a ride. By a curious
+coincidence that very afternoon Montalvo, also seeking rest and change
+of air, appeared at the inn of this village, giving it out that he
+proposed to lodge there for a while.
+
+As he walked upon the beach next day, whom should he chance to meet but
+the Vrouw Clara van Ziel, and never did the worthy Clara spend a more
+pleasant morning. So at least she declared to Lysbeth when she brought
+her cavalier back to dinner.
+
+The reader may guess the rest. Montalvo paid his court, and in due
+course Montalvo was refused. He bore the blow with a tender resignation.
+
+"Confess, dear lady," he said, "that there is some other man more
+fortunate."
+
+Lysbeth did not confess, but, on the other hand, neither did she deny.
+
+"If he makes you happy I shall be more than satisfied," the Count
+murmured, "but, lady, loving you as I do, I do not wish to see you
+married to a heretic."
+
+"What do you mean, Senor?" asked Lysbeth, bridling.
+
+"Alas!" he answered, "I mean that, as I fear, the worthy Heer Dirk van
+Goorl, a friend of mine for whom I have every respect, although he has
+outstripped me in your regard, has fallen into that evil net."
+
+"Such accusations should not be made," said Lysbeth sternly, "unless
+they can be proved. Even then----" and she stopped.
+
+"I will inquire further," replied the swain. "For myself I accept the
+position, that is until you learn to love me, if such should be my
+fortune. Meanwhile I beg of you at least to look upon me as a friend, a
+true friend who would lay down his life to serve you."
+
+Then, with many a sigh, Montalvo departed home to Leyden upon his
+beautiful black horse, but not before he had enjoyed a few minutes'
+earnest conversation with the worthy Tante Clara.
+
+"Now, if only this old lady were concerned," he reflected as he rode
+away, "the matter might be easy enough, and the Saints know it would be
+one to me, but unhappily that obstinate pig of a Hollander girl has all
+the money in her own right. In what labours do not the necessities of
+rank and station involve a man who by disposition requires only ease and
+quiet! Well, my young friend Lysbeth, if I do not make you pay for
+these exertions before you are two months older, my name is not Juan de
+Montalvo."
+
+
+
+Three days later the ladies returned to Leyden. Within an hour of their
+arrival the Count called, and was admitted.
+
+"Stay with me," said Lysbeth to her Aunt Clara as the visitor was
+announced, and for a while she stayed. Then, making an excuse, she
+vanished from the room, and Lysbeth was left face to face with her
+tormentor.
+
+"Why do you come here?" she asked; "I have given you my answer."
+
+"I come for your own sake," he replied, "to give you my reasons
+for conduct which you may think strange. You remember a certain
+conversation?"
+
+"Perfectly," broke in Lysbeth.
+
+"A slight mistake, I think, Jufvrouw, I mean a conversation about an
+excellent friend of yours, whose spiritual affairs seem to interest
+you."
+
+"What of it, Senor?"
+
+"Only this; I have made inquiries and----"
+
+Lysbeth looked up unable to conceal her anxiety.
+
+"Oh! Jufvrouw, let me beg of you to learn to control your expression;
+the open face of childhood is so dangerous in these days."
+
+"He is my cousin."
+
+"I know; were he anything more, I should be so grieved, but we can most
+of us spare a cousin or two."
+
+"If you would cease amusing yourself, Senor----"
+
+"And come to the point? Of course I will. Well, the result of my
+inquiries has been to find out that this worthy person _is_ a heretic of
+the most pernicious sort. I said inquiries, but there was no need for me
+to make any. He has been----"
+
+"Not denounced," broke in Lysbeth.
+
+"Oh! my dear lady, again that tell-tale emotion from which all sorts of
+things might be concluded. Yes--denounced--but fortunately to myself as
+a person appointed under the Edict. It will, I fear, be my duty to have
+him arrested this evening--you wish to sit down, allow me to hand you a
+chair--but I shall not deal with the case myself. Indeed, I propose
+to pass him over to the worthy Ruard Tapper, the Papal Inquisitor, you
+know--every one has heard of the unpleasant Tapper--who is to visit
+Leyden next week, and who, no doubt, will make short work of him."
+
+"What has he done?" asked Lysbeth in a low voice, and bending down her
+head to hide the working of her features.
+
+"Done? My dear lady, it is almost too dreadful to tell you. This
+misguided and unfortunate young man, with another person whom the
+witnesses have not been able to identify, was seen at midnight reading
+the Bible."
+
+"The Bible! Why should that be wrong?"
+
+"Hush! Are you also a heretic? Do you not know that all this heresy
+springs from the reading of the Bible? You see, the Bible is a very
+strange book. It seems that there are many things in it which, when
+read by an ordinary layman, appear to mean this or that. When read by a
+consecrated priest, however, they mean something quite different. In the
+same way, there are many doctrines which the layman cannot find in the
+Bible that to the consecrated eye are plain as the sun and the moon.
+The difference between heresy and orthodoxy is, in short, the difference
+between what can actually be found in the letter of this remarkable
+work, and what is really there--according to their holinesses."
+
+"Almost thou persuadest me----" began Lysbeth bitterly.
+
+"Hush! lady--to be, what you are, an angel."
+
+There came a pause.
+
+"What will happen to him?" asked Lysbeth.
+
+"After--after the usual painful preliminaries to discover accomplices,
+I presume the stake, but possibly, as he has the freedom of Leyden, he
+might get off with hanging."
+
+"Is there no escape?"
+
+Montalvo walked to the window, and looking out of it remarked that
+he thought it was going to snow. Then suddenly he wheeled round, and
+staring hard at Lysbeth asked,
+
+"Are you really interested in this heretic, and do you desire to save
+him?"
+
+Lysbeth heard and knew at once that the buttons were off the foils. The
+bantering, whimsical tone was gone. Now her tormentor's voice was stern
+and cold, the voice of a man who was playing for great stakes and meant
+to win them.
+
+She also gave up fencing.
+
+"I am and I do," she answered.
+
+"Then it can be done--at a price."
+
+"What price?"
+
+"Yourself in marriage within three weeks."
+
+Lysbeth quivered slightly, then sat still.
+
+"Would not my fortune do instead?" she asked.
+
+"Oh! what a poor substitute you offer me," Montalvo said, with a return
+to his hateful banter. Then he added, "That offer might be considered
+were it not for the abominable laws which you have here. In practice it
+would be almost impossible for you to hand over any large sum, much of
+which is represented by real estate, to a man who is not your husband.
+Therefore I am afraid I must stipulate that you and your possessions
+shall not be separated."
+
+Again Lysbeth sat silent. Montalvo, watching her with genuine interest,
+saw signs of rebellion, perchance of despair. He saw the woman's mental
+and physical loathing of himself conquering her fears for Dirk. Unless
+he was much mistaken she was about to defy him, which, as a matter of
+fact, would have proved exceedingly awkward, as his pecuniary resources
+were exhausted. Also on the very insufficient evidence which he
+possessed he would not have dared to touch Dirk, and thus to make
+himself a thousand powerful enemies.
+
+"It is strange," he said, "that the irony of circumstances should reduce
+me to pleading for a rival. But, Lysbeth van Hout, before you answer
+I beg you to think. Upon the next movements of your lips it depends
+whether that body you love shall be stretched upon the rack, whether
+those eyes which you find pleasant shall grow blind with agony in the
+darkness of a dungeon, and whether that flesh which you think desirable
+shall scorch and wither in the furnace. Or, on the other hand, whether
+none of these things shall happen, whether this young man shall go free,
+to be for a month or two a little piqued--a little bitter--about the
+inconstancy of women, and then to marry some opulent and respected
+heretic. Surely you could scarcely hesitate. Oh! where is the
+self-sacrificing spirit of the sex of which we hear so much? Choose."
+
+Still there was no answer. Montalvo, playing his trump card, drew from
+his vest an official-looking document, sealed and signed.
+
+"This," he said, "is the information to be given to the incorruptible
+Ruard Trapper. Look, here written on it is your cousin's name. My
+servant waits for me in your kitchen. If you hesitate any longer, I call
+him and in your presence charge him to hand that paper to the messenger
+who starts this afternoon for Brussels. Once given it cannot be recalled
+and the pious Dirk's doom is sealed."
+
+Lysbeth's spirit began to break. "How can I?" she asked. "It is true
+that we are not affianced; perhaps for this very reason which I now
+learn. But he cares for me and knows that I care for him. Must I then,
+in addition to the loss of him, be remembered all his life as little
+better than a light-of-love caught by the tricks and glitter of such a
+man as you? I tell you that first I will kill myself."
+
+Again Montalvo went to the window, for this hint of suicide was most
+disconcerting. No one can marry a dead woman, and Lysbeth was scarcely
+likely to leave a will in his favour. It seemed that what troubled her
+particularly was the fear lest the young man should think her conduct
+light. Well, why should she not give him a reason which he would be the
+first to acknowledge as excellent for breaking with him? Could she, a
+Catholic, be expected to wed a heretic, and could he not be made to tell
+her that he was a heretic?
+
+Behold an answer to his question! The Saints themselves, desiring that
+this pearl of price should continue to rest in the bosom of the true
+Church, had interfered in his behalf, for there in the street below was
+Dirk van Goorl approaching Lysbeth's door. Yes, there he was dressed
+in his best burgher's suit, his brow knit with thought, his step
+hesitating; a very picture of the timid, doubtful lover.
+
+"Lysbeth van Hout," said the Count, turning to her, "as it chances the
+Heer Dirk van Goorl is at your door. You will admit him, and this matter
+can be settled one way or the other. I wish to point out to you how
+needless it is that the young man should be left believing that you have
+treated him ill. All which is necessary is that you should ask whether
+or no he is of your faith. If I know him, he will not lie to you. Then
+it remains only for you to say--for doubtless the man comes here to seek
+your hand--that however much it may grieve you to give such an answer,
+you can take no heretic to husband. Do you understand?"
+
+Lysbeth bowed her head.
+
+"Then listen. You will admit your suitor; you will allow him to make
+his offer to you now--if he is so inclined; you will, before giving any
+answer, ask him of his faith. If he replies that he is a heretic, you
+will dismiss him as kindly as you wish. If he replies that he is a true
+servant of the Church, you will say that you have heard a different tale
+and must have time to make inquiries. Remember also that if by one jot
+you do otherwise than I have bid you, when Dirk van Goorl leaves the
+room you see him for the last time, unless it pleases you--to attend
+his execution. Whereas if you obey and dismiss him finally, as the door
+shuts behind him I put this Information in the fire and satisfy you that
+the evidence upon which it is based is for ever deprived of weight and
+done with."
+
+Lysbeth looked a question.
+
+"I see you are wondering how I should know what you do or do not do.
+It is simple. I shall be the harmless but observant witness of your
+interview. Over this doorway hangs a tapestry; you will grant me the
+privilege--not a great one for a future husband--of stepping behind it."
+
+"Never, never," said Lysbeth, "I cannot be put to such a shame. I defy
+you."
+
+As she spoke came the sound of knocking at the street door. Glancing up
+at Montalvo, for the second time she saw that look which he had worn
+at the crisis of the sledge race. All its urbanity, its careless
+_bonhomie_, had vanished. Instead of these appeared a reflection of the
+last and innermost nature of the man, the rock foundation, as it were,
+upon which was built the false and decorated superstructure that he
+showed to the world. There were the glaring eyes, there the grinning
+teeth of the Spanish wolf; a ravening brute ready to rend and tear, if
+so he might satisfy himself with the meat his soul desired.
+
+"Don't play tricks with me," he muttered, "and don't argue, for there
+is no time. Do as I bid you, girl, or on your head will be this
+psalm-singing fellow's blood. And, look you, don't try setting him on
+me, for I have my sword and he is unarmed. If need be a heretic may be
+killed at sight, you know, that is by one clothed with authority. When
+the servant announces him go to the door and order that he is to be
+admitted," and picking up his plumed hat, which might have betrayed him,
+Montalvo stepped behind the arras.
+
+For a moment Lysbeth stood thinking. Alas! she could see no possible
+escape, she was in the toils, the rope was about her throat. Either
+she must obey or, so she thought, she must give the man she loved to a
+dreadful death. For his sake she would do it, for his sake and might God
+forgive her! Might God avenge her and him!
+
+Another instant and there came a knock upon the door. She opened it.
+
+"The Heer van Goorl stands below," said the voice of Greta, "wishing to
+see you, madam."
+
+"Admit him," answered Lysbeth, and going to a chair almost in the centre
+of the room, she seated herself.
+
+Presently Dirk's step sounded on the stair, that known, beloved step for
+which so often she had listened eagerly. Again the door opened and
+Greta announced the Heer van Goorl. That she could not see the Captain
+Montalvo evidently surprised the woman, for her eyes roamed round the
+room wonderingly, but she was too well trained, or too well bribed, to
+show her astonishment. Gentlemen of this kidney, as Greta had from time
+to time remarked, have a faculty for vanishing upon occasion.
+
+So Dirk walked into the fateful chamber as some innocent and
+unsuspecting creature walks into a bitter snare, little knowing that
+the lady whom he loved and whom he came to win was set as a bait to ruin
+him.
+
+"Be seated, cousin," said Lysbeth, in a voice so forced and strained
+that it caused him to look up. But he saw nothing, for her head was
+turned away from him, and for the rest his mind was too preoccupied to
+be observant. By nature simple and open, it would have taken much
+to wake Dirk into suspicion in the home and presence of his love and
+cousin, Lysbeth.
+
+"Good day to you, Lysbeth," he said awkwardly; "why, how cold your hand
+is! I have been trying to find you for some time, but you have always
+been out or away, leaving no address."
+
+"I have been to the sea with my Aunt Clara," she answered.
+
+Then for a while--five minutes or more--there followed a strained and
+stilted conversation.
+
+"Will the booby never come to the point?" reflected Montalvo, surveying
+him through a join in the tapestry. "By the Saints, what a fool he
+looks!"
+
+"Lysbeth," said Dirk at last, "I want to speak to you."
+
+"Speak on, cousin," she answered.
+
+"Lysbeth, I--I--have loved you for a long while, and I--have come to ask
+you to marry me. I have put it off for a year or more for reasons which
+I hope to tell you some day, but I can keep silent no longer, especially
+now when I see that a much finer gentleman is trying to win you--I mean
+the Spanish Count, Montalvo," he added with a jerk.
+
+She said nothing in reply. So Dirk went on pouring out all his honest
+passion in words that momentarily gathered weight and strength, till at
+length they were eloquent enough. He told her how since first they met
+he had loved her and only her, and how his one desire in life was to
+make her happy and be happy with her. Pausing at length he began to
+speak of his prospects--then she stopped him.
+
+"Your pardon, Dirk," she said, "but I have a question to ask of you,"
+and her voice died away in a kind of sob. "I have heard rumours about
+you," she went on presently, "which must be cleared up. I have heard,
+Dirk, that by faith you are what is called a heretic. Is it true?"
+
+He hesitated before answering, feeling that much depended on that
+answer. But it was only for an instant, since Dirk was far too honest a
+man to lie.
+
+"Lysbeth," he said, "I will tell to you what I would not tell to any
+other living creature, not being one of my own brotherhood, for whether
+you accept me or reject me, I know well that I am as safe in speaking
+to you as when upon my knees I speak to the God I serve. I _am_ what you
+call a heretic. I am a member of that true faith to which I hope to draw
+you, but which if you do not wish it I should never press upon you. It
+is chiefly because I am what I am that for so long I have hung back from
+speaking to you, since I did not know whether it would be right--things
+being thus--to ask you to mix your lot with mine, or whether I ought to
+marry you, if you would marry me, keeping this secret from you. Only the
+other night I sought counsel of--well, never mind of whom--and we prayed
+together, and together searched the Word of God. And there, Lysbeth, by
+some wonderful mercy, I found my prayer answered and my doubts solved,
+for the great St. Paul had foreseen this case, as in that Book all cases
+are foreseen, and I read how the unbelieving wife may be sanctified by
+the husband, and the unbelieving husband by the wife. Then everything
+grew clear to me, and I determined to speak. And now, dear, I have
+spoken, and it is for you to answer."
+
+"Dirk, dear Dirk," she replied almost with a cry, "alas! for the answer
+which I must give you. Renounce the error of your ways, make confession,
+and be reconciled to the Church and--I will marry you. Otherwise I
+cannot, no, and although I love you, you and no other man"--here she put
+an energy into her voice that was almost dreadful--"with all my heart
+and soul and body; I cannot, I cannot, I cannot!"
+
+Dirk heard, and his ruddy face turned ashen grey.
+
+"Cousin," he replied, "you seek of me the one thing which I must not
+give. Even for your sake I may not renounce my vows and my God as
+I behold Him. Though it break my heart to bid you farewell and live
+without you, here I pay you back in your own words--I cannot, I cannot,
+I cannot!"
+
+Lysbeth looked at him, and lo! his short, massive form and his
+square-cut, honest countenance in that ardour of renunciation had
+suffered a change to things almost divine. At that moment--to her sight
+at least--this homely Hollander wore the aspect of an angel. She ground
+her teeth and pressed her hands upon her heart. "For his sake--to save
+him," she muttered to herself--then she spoke.
+
+"I respect you for it, I love you for it more than ever; but, Dirk, it
+is over between us. One day, here or hereafter, you will understand and
+you will forgive."
+
+"So be it," said Dirk hastily, stretching out his hand to find his hat,
+for he was too blind to see. "It is a strange answer to my prayer, a
+very strange answer; but doubtless you are right to follow your lights
+as I am sure that I am right to follow mine. We must carry our cross,
+dear Lysbeth, each of us; you see that we must carry our cross. Only I
+beg of you--I don't speak as a jealous man, because the thing has gone
+further than jealousy--I speak as a friend, and come what may while I
+live you will always find me that--I beg of you, beware of the Spaniard,
+Montalvo. I know that he followed you to the coast; I have heard too he
+boasts that he will marry you. The man is wicked, although he took me
+in at first. I feel it--his presence seems to poison the air, yes, this
+very air I breathe. But oh! and I should like him to hear me say it,
+because I am sure that he is at the bottom of all this, his hour will
+come. For whatever he does he will be paid back; he will be paid back
+here and hereafter. And now, good-bye. God bless you and protect you,
+dear Lysbeth. If you think it wrong you are quite right not to marry me,
+and I know that you will keep my secret. Good-bye, again," and lifting
+her hand Dirk kissed it. Then he stumbled from the room.
+
+As for Lysbeth she cast herself at full length, and in the bitterness of
+her heart beat her brow upon the boards.
+
+
+
+When the front door had shut behind Dirk, but not before, Montalvo
+emerged from his hiding place and stood over the prostrate Lysbeth. He
+tried to adopt his airy and sarcastic manner, but he was shaken by the
+scene which he had overheard, shaken and somewhat frightened also, for
+he felt that he had called into being passions of which the force and
+fruits could not be calculated.
+
+"Bravo! my little actress," he began, then gave it up and added in his
+natural voice, "you had best rise and see me burn this paper."
+
+Lysbeth struggled to her knees and watched him thrust the document
+between two glowing peats.
+
+"I have fulfilled my promise," he said, "and that evidence is done with,
+but in case you should think of playing any tricks and not fulfilling
+yours, please remember that I have fresh evidence infinitely more
+valuable and convincing, to gain which, indeed, I condescended to a
+stratagem not quite in keeping with my traditions. With my own ears I
+heard this worthy gentleman, who is pleased to think so poorly of me,
+admit that he is a heretic. That is enough to burn him any day, and
+I swear that if within three weeks we are not man and wife, burn he
+shall."
+
+While he was speaking Lysbeth had risen slowly to her feet. Now she
+confronted him, no longer the Lysbeth whom he had known, but a new being
+filled like a cup with fury that was the more awful because it was so
+quiet.
+
+"Juan de Montalvo," she said in a low voice, "your wickedness has won
+and for Dirk's sake my person and my goods must pay its price. So be it
+since so it must be, but listen. I make no prophecies about you; I do
+not say that this or that shall happen to you, but I call down upon you
+the curse of God and the execration of men."
+
+Then she threw up her hands and began to pray. "God, Whom it has pleased
+that I should be given to a fate far worse than death; O God, blast
+the mind and the soul of this monster. Let him henceforth never know
+a peaceful hour; let misfortune come upon him through me and mine; let
+fears haunt his sleep. Let him live in heavy labour and die in blood and
+misery, and through me; and if I bear children to him, let the evil be
+upon them also."
+
+She ceased. Montalvo looked at her and tried to speak. Again he looked
+and again he tried to speak, but no words would come.
+
+Then the fear of Lysbeth van Hout fell upon him, that fear which was to
+haunt him all his life. He turned and crept from the room, and his face
+was like the face of an old man, nor, notwithstanding the height of his
+immediate success, could his heart have been more heavy if Lysbeth
+had been an angel sent straight from Heaven to proclaim to him the
+unalterable doom of God.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HENDRIK BRANT HAS A VISITOR
+
+Nine months had gone by, and for more then eight of them Lysbeth had
+been known as the Countess Juan de Montalvo. Indeed of this there could
+be no doubt, since she was married with some ceremony by the Bishop in
+the Groote Kerk before the eyes of all men. Folk had wondered much at
+these hurried nuptials, though some of the more ill-natured shrugged
+their shoulders and said that when a young woman had compromised
+herself by long and lonely drives with a Spanish cavalier, and was in
+consequence dropped by her own admirer, why the best thing she could do
+was to marry as soon as possible.
+
+So the pair, who looked handsome enough before the altar, were wed,
+and went to taste of such nuptial bliss as was reserved for them in
+Lysbeth's comfortable house in the Bree Straat. Here they lived almost
+alone, for Lysbeth's countrymen and women showed their disapproval
+of her conduct by avoiding her company, and, for reasons of his own,
+Montalvo did not encourage the visiting of Spaniards at his house.
+Moreover, the servants were changed, while Tante Clara and the girl
+Greta had also disappeared. Indeed, Lysbeth, finding out the false
+part which they had played towards her, dismissed them both before her
+marriage.
+
+It will be guessed that after the events that led to their union Lysbeth
+took little pleasure in her husband's society. She was not one of those
+women who can acquiesce in marriage by fraud or capture, and even learn
+to love the hand which snared them. So it came about that to Montalvo
+she spoke very seldom; indeed after the first week of marriage she only
+saw him on rare occasions. Very soon he found out that his presence was
+hateful to her, and turned her detestation to account with his usual
+cleverness. In other words, Lysbeth bought freedom by parting with her
+property--in fact, a regular tariff was established, so many guilders
+for a week's liberty, so many for a month's.
+
+This was an arrangement that suited Montalvo well enough, for in his
+heart he was terrified of this woman, whose beautiful face had frozen
+into a perpetual mask of watchful hatred. He could not forget that
+frightful curse which had taken deep root in his superstitious mind, and
+already seemed to flourish there, for it was true that since she spoke
+it he had never known a quiet hour. How could he when he was haunted
+night and day by the fear lest his wife should murder him?
+
+Surely, if ever Death looked out of a woman's eyes it looked out of
+hers, and it seemed to him that such a deed might trouble her conscience
+little; that she might consider it in the light of an execution, and not
+as a murder. Bah! he could not bear to think of it. What would it be
+to drink his wine one day and then feel a hand of fire gripping at his
+vitals because poison had been set within the cup; or, worse still,
+if anything could be worse, to wake at night and find a stiletto point
+grating against his backbone? Little wonder that Montalvo slept alone
+and was always careful to lock his door.
+
+He need not have taken such precautions; whatever her eyes might say,
+Lysbeth had no intention of killing this man. In that prayer of hers she
+had, as it were, placed the matter in the hand of a higher Power, and
+there she meant to leave it, feeling quite convinced that although
+vengeance might tarry it would fall at last. As for her money, he could
+have it. From the beginning her instinct told her that her husband's
+object was not amorous, but purely monetary, a fact of which she soon
+had plentiful proof, and her great, indeed her only hope was that when
+the wealth was gone he would go too. An otter, says the Dutch proverb,
+does not nest in a dry dyke.
+
+But oh! what months those were, what dreadful months! From time to time
+she saw her husband--when he wanted cash--and every night she heard him
+returning home, often with unsteady steps. Twice or thrice a week also
+she was commanded to prepare a luxurious meal for himself and some six
+or eight companions, to be followed by a gambling party at which the
+stakes ruled high. Then in the morning, before he was up, strange people
+would arrive, Jews some of them, and wait till they could see him, or
+catch him as he slipped from the house by a back way. These men, Lysbeth
+discovered, were duns seeking payment of old debts. Under such constant
+calls her fortune, which if substantial was not great, melted rapidly.
+Soon the ready money was gone, then the shares in certain ships were
+sold, then the land and the house itself were mortgaged.
+
+So the time went on.
+
+
+
+Almost immediately after his refusal by Lysbeth, Dirk van Goorl had left
+Leyden, and returned to Alkmaar, where his father lived. His cousin and
+friend, however, Hendrik Brant, remained there studying the jeweller's
+art under the great master of filigree work, who was known as Petrus.
+One morning, as Hendrik was sitting at breakfast in his lodging, it was
+announced that a woman who would not give her name, wished to see him.
+Moved more by curiosity than by any other reason, he ordered her to be
+admitted. When she entered he was sorry, for in the gaunt person and
+dark-eyed face he recognised one against whom he had been warned by the
+elders of his church as a spy, a creature who was employed by the papal
+inquisitors to get up cases against heretics, and who was known as Black
+Meg.
+
+"What is your business with me?" Brant asked sternly.
+
+"Nothing to your hurt, worthy Heer, believe me, nothing to your hurt.
+Oh! yes, I know that tales are told against me, who only earn an honest
+living in an honest way, to keep my poor husband, who is an imbecile.
+Once alas! he followed that mad Anabaptist fool, John of Leyden, the
+fellow who set up as a king, and said that men might have as many wives
+as they wished. That was what sent my husband silly, but, thanks be
+to the Saints, he has repented of his errors and is reconciled to the
+Church and Christian marriage, and now, I, who have a forgiving nature,
+am obliged to support him."
+
+"Your business?" said Brant.
+
+"Mynheer," she answered, dropping her husky voice, "you are a friend of
+the Countess Montalvo, she who was Lysbeth van Hout?"
+
+"No, I am acquainted with her, that is all."
+
+"At least you are a friend of the Heer Dirk van Goorl who has left this
+town for Alkmaar; he who was her lover?"
+
+"Yes, I am his cousin, but he is not the lover of any married woman."
+
+"No, no, of course not; love cannot look through a bridal veil, can it?
+Still, you are his friend, and, therefore, perhaps, her friend, and--she
+isn't happy."
+
+"Indeed? I know nothing of her present life: she must reap the field
+which she has sown. That door is shut."
+
+"Not altogether perhaps. I thought it might interest Dirk van Goorl to
+learn that it is still ajar."
+
+"I don't see why it should. Fish merchants are not interested in rotten
+herrings; they write off the loss and send out the smack for a fresh
+cargo."
+
+"The first fish we catch is ever the finest, Mynheer, and if we haven't
+quite caught it, oh! what a fine fish is that."
+
+"I have no time to waste in chopping riddles. What is your errand? Tell
+it, or leave it untold, but be quick."
+
+Black Meg leant forward, and the hoarse voice sank to a cavernous
+whisper.
+
+"What will you give me," she asked, "if I prove to you that the Captain
+Montalvo is not married at all to Lysbeth van Hout?"
+
+"It does not much matter what I would give you, for I saw the thing done
+in the Groote Kerk yonder."
+
+"Things are not always done that seem to be done."
+
+"Look here, woman, I have had enough of this," and Brant pointed to the
+door.
+
+Black Meg did not stir, only she produced a packet from the bosom of her
+dress and laid it on the table.
+
+"A man can't have two wives living at once, can he?"
+
+"No, I suppose not--that is, legally."
+
+"Well, if I show you that Montalvo has two wives, how much?"
+
+Brant became interested. He hated Montalvo; he guessed, indeed he knew
+something of the part which the man had played in this infamous affair,
+and knew also that it would be a true kindness to Lysbeth to rid her of
+him.
+
+"If you _proved_ it," he said, "let us say two hundred florins."
+
+"It is not enough, Mynheer."
+
+"It is all I have to offer, and, mind you, what I promise to pay."
+
+"Ah! yes, the other promises and doesn't pay--the rogue, the rogue," she
+added, striking a bony fist upon the table. "Well, I agree, and I ask no
+bond, for you merchant folk are not like cavaliers, your word is as good
+as your paper. Now read these," and she opened the packet and pushed its
+contents towards him.
+
+With the exception of two miniatures, which he placed upon one side,
+they were letters written in Spanish and in a very delicate hand. Brant
+knew Spanish well, and in twenty minutes he had read them all. They
+proved to be epistles from a lady who signed herself Juanita de
+Montalvo, written to the Count Juan de Montalvo, whom she addressed as
+her husband. Very piteous documents they were also, telling a tale
+that need not be set out here of heartless desertion; pleading for the
+writer's sake and for the sake of certain children, that the husband and
+father would return to them, or at least remit them means to live, for
+they, his wife and family, were sunk in great poverty.
+
+"All this is sad enough," said Brant with a gesture of disgust as he
+glanced at the miniature of the lady and her children, "but it proves
+nothing. How are we to know that she is the man's wife?"
+
+Black Meg put her hand into the bosom of her dress and produced another
+letter dated not more than three months ago. It was, or purported to
+be, written by the priest of the village where the lady lived, and
+was addressed to the Captain the Count Juan de Montalvo at Leyden. In
+substance this epistle was an earnest appeal to the noble count from one
+who had a right to speak, as the man who had christened him, taught him,
+and married him to his wife, either to return to her or to forward
+her the means to join him. "A dreadful rumour," the letter ended, "has
+reached us here in Spain that you have taken to wife a Dutch lady at
+Leyden named Van Hout, but this I do not believe, since never could you
+have committed such a crime before God and man. Write, write at once, my
+son, and disperse this black cloud of scandal which is gathering on your
+honoured and ancient name."
+
+"How did you come by these, woman?" asked Brant.
+
+"The last I had from a priest who brought it from Spain. I met him at
+The Hague, and offered to deliver the letter, as he had no safe means
+of sending it to Leyden. The others and the pictures I stole out of
+Montalvo's room."
+
+"Indeed, most honest merchant, and what might you have been doing in his
+Excellency's room?"
+
+"I will tell you," she answered, "for, as he never gave me my pay, my
+tongue is loosed. He wished for evidence that the Heer Dirk van Goorl
+was a heretic, and employed me to find it."
+
+Brant's face hardened, and he became more watchful.
+
+"Why did he wish such evidence?"
+
+"To use it to prevent the marriage of Jufvrouw Lysbeth with the Heer
+Dirk van Goorl."
+
+"How?"
+
+Meg shrugged her shoulders. "By telling his secret to her so that she
+might dismiss him, I suppose, or more likely by threatening that, if she
+did not, he would hand her lover over to the Inquisitors."
+
+"I see. And did you get the evidence?"
+
+"Well, I hid in the Heer Dirk's bedroom one night, and looking through
+a door saw him and another young man, whom I do not know, reading the
+Bible, and praying together."
+
+"Indeed; what a terrible risk you must have run, for had those young
+men, or either of them, chanced to catch you, it is quite certain that
+you would not have left that room alive. You know these heretics think
+that they are justified in killing a spy at sight, and, upon my word,
+I do not blame them. In fact, my good woman," and he leaned forward and
+looked her straight in the eyes, "were I in the same position I would
+have knocked you on the head as readily as though you had been a rat."
+
+Black Meg shrank back, and turned a little blue about the lips.
+
+"Of course, Mynheer, of course, it is a rough game, and the poor agents
+of God must take their risks. Not that the other young man had any cause
+to fear. I wasn't paid to watch him, and--as I have said--I neither know
+nor care who he is."
+
+"Well, who can say, that may be fortunate for you, especially if he
+should ever come to know or to care who you are. But it is no affair of
+ours, is it? Now, give me those letters. What, do you want your money
+first? Very well," and, rising, Brant went to a cupboard and produced
+a small steel box, which he unlocked; and, having taken from it the
+appointed sum, locked it again. "There you are," he said; "oh, you
+needn't stare at the cupboard; the box won't live there after to-day,
+or anywhere in this house. By the way, I understand that Montalvo never
+paid you."
+
+"Not a stiver," she answered with a sudden access of rage; "the
+low thief, he promised to pay me after his marriage, but instead of
+rewarding her who put him in that warm nest, I tell you that already he
+has squandered every florin of the noble lady's money in gambling and
+satisfying such debts as he was obliged to, so that to-day I believe
+that she is almost a beggar."
+
+"I see," said Brant, "and now good morning, and look you, if we should
+chance to meet in the town, you will understand that I do not know you."
+
+"I understand, Mynheer," said Black Meg with a grin and vanished.
+
+When she had gone Brant rose and opened the window. "Bah!" he said,
+"the air is poisoned. But I think I frightened her, I think that I have
+nothing to fear. Yet who can tell? My God! she saw me reading the Bible,
+and Montalvo knows it! Well, it is some time ago now, and I must take my
+chance."
+
+Ah! who could tell indeed?
+
+Then, taking the miniatures and documents with him, Brant started to
+call upon his friend and co-religionist, the Heer Pieter van de Werff,
+Dirk van Goorl's friend, and Lysbeth's cousin, a young man for whose
+judgment and abilities he had a great respect. As a result of this
+visit, these two gentlemen left that afternoon for Brussels, the seat of
+Government, where they had very influential friends.
+
+It will be sufficient to tell the upshot of their visit. Just at that
+time the Government of the Netherlands wished for its own reasons to
+stand well with the citizen class, and when those in authority learned
+of the dreadful fraud that had been played off upon a lady of note who
+was known to be a good Catholic, for the sole object of robbing her of
+her fortune, there was indignation in high places. Indeed, an order was
+issued, signed by a hand which could not be resisted--so deeply was
+one woman moved by the tale of another's wrong--that the Count Montalvo
+should be seized and put upon his trial, just as though he were any
+common Netherland malefactor. Moreover, since he was a man with many
+enemies, no one was found to stand between him and the Royal decree.
+
+
+
+Three days later Montalvo made an announcement to Lysbeth. For a wonder
+he was supping at home alone with his wife, whose presence he had
+commanded. She obeyed and attended, sitting at the further end of the
+table, whence she rose from time to time to wait upon him with her own
+hands. Watching him the while with her quiet eyes, she noticed that he
+was ill at ease.
+
+"Cannot you speak?" he asked at last and savagely. "Do you think it is
+pleasant for a man to sit opposite a woman who looks like a corpse in
+her coffin till he wishes she were one?"
+
+"So do I," answered Lysbeth, and again there was silence.
+
+Presently she broke it. "What do you want?" she asked. "More money?"
+
+"Of course I want money," he answered furiously.
+
+"Then there is none; everything has gone, and the notary tells me that
+no one will advance another stiver on the house. All my jewellery is
+sold also."
+
+He glanced at her hand. "You have still that ring," he said.
+
+She looked at it. It was a hoop of gold set with emeralds of
+considerable value which her husband had given her before marriage and
+always insisted upon her wearing. In fact, it had been bought with the
+money which he borrowed from Dirk van Goorl.
+
+"Take it," she said, smiling for the first time, and drawing off the
+ring she passed it over to him. He turned his head aside as he stretched
+his hand towards the trinket lest his face should betray the shame which
+even he must feel.
+
+"If your child should be a son," he muttered, "tell him that his father
+had nothing but a piece of advice to leave him; that he should never
+touch a dice-box."
+
+"Are you going away then?" she asked.
+
+"For a week or two I must. I have been warned that a difficulty has
+arisen, about which I need not trouble you. Doubtless you will hear of
+it soon enough, and though it is not true, I must leave Leyden until the
+thing blows over. In fact I am going now."
+
+"You are about to desert me," she answered; "having got all my money,
+I say that you are going to desert me who am--thus! I see it in your
+face."
+
+Montalvo turned away and pretended not to hear.
+
+"Well, thank God for it," Lysbeth added, "only I wish that you could
+take your memory and everything else of yours with you."
+
+As these bitter words passed her lips the door opened, and there entered
+one of his own subalterns, followed by four soldiers and a man in a
+lawyer's robe.
+
+"What is this?" asked Montalvo furiously.
+
+The subaltern saluted as he entered:
+
+"My captain, forgive me, but I act under orders, and they are to arrest
+you alive, or," he added significantly, "dead."
+
+"Upon what charge?" asked Montalvo.
+
+"Here, notary, you had best read the charge," said the subaltern, "but
+perhaps the lady would like to retire first," he added awkwardly.
+
+"No," answered Lysbeth, "it might concern me."
+
+"Alas! Senora, I fear it does," put in the notary. Then he began to read
+the document, which was long and legal. But she was quick to understand.
+Before ever it was done Lysbeth knew that she was not the lawful wife of
+Count Juan de Montalvo, and that he was to be put upon his trial for
+his betrayal of her and the trick he had played the Church. So she
+was free--free, and overcome by that thought she staggered, fell, and
+swooned away.
+
+When her eyes opened again, Montalvo, officer, notary, and soldiers, all
+had vanished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MARE'S STABLE
+
+When Lysbeth's reason returned to her in that empty room, her first
+sense was one of wild exultation. She was free, she was not Montalvo's
+wife, never again could she be obliged to see him, never again could
+she be forced to endure the contamination of his touch--that was her
+thought. She was sure that the story was true; were it not true who
+could have moved the authorities to take action against him? Moreover,
+now that she had the key, a thousand things were explained, trivial
+enough in themselves, each of them, but in their sum amounting to proof
+positive of his guilt. Had he not spoken of some entanglement in
+Spain and of children? Had he not in his sleep--but it was needless to
+remember all these things. She was free! She was free! and there on the
+table still lay the symbol of her bondage, the emerald ring that was to
+give him the means of flight, a flight from this charge which he knew
+was hanging over him. She took it up, dashed it to the ground and
+stamped upon it. Next she fell upon her knees, praising and blessing
+God, and then, worn out, crept away to rest.
+
+The morning came, the still and beautiful autumn morning, but now
+all her exultation had left her, and Lysbeth was depressed and heavy
+hearted. She rose and assisted the one servant who remained in the house
+to prepare their breakfast, taking no heed of the sidelong glances that
+the woman cast at her. Afterwards she went to the market to spend some
+of her last florins in necessaries. Here and in the streets she became
+aware that she was the object of remark, for people nudged each other
+and stared at her. Moreover, as she hurried home appalled, her quick
+ear caught the conversation of two coarse women while they walked behind
+her.
+
+"She's got it now," said one.
+
+"Serve her right, too," answered the other, "for running after and
+marrying a Spanish don."
+
+"Marrying?" broke in the first, "it was the best that she could do. She
+couldn't stop to ask questions. Some corpses must be buried quickly."
+
+Glancing behind her, Lysbeth saw the creature nip her nostrils with her
+fingers, as though to shut out an evil smell.
+
+Then she could bear it no longer, and turned upon them.
+
+"You are evil slanderers," she said, and walked away swiftly, pursued by
+the sound of their loud, insulting laughter.
+
+At the house she was told that two men were waiting to see her. They
+proved to be creditors clamouring for large sums of money, which she
+could not pay. Lysbeth told them that she knew nothing of the matter.
+Thereupon they showed her her own writing at the foot of deeds, and she
+remembered that she had signed more things than she chose to keep count
+of, everything indeed that the man who called himself her husband put
+before her, if only to win an hour of blessed freedom from his presence.
+At length the duns went away vowing that they would have their money if
+they dragged the bed from under her.
+
+After that came loneliness and silence. No friend appeared to cheer her.
+Indeed, she had no friends left, for by her husband's command she had
+broken off her acquaintance with all who after the strange circumstances
+connected with her marriage were still inclined to know her. He said
+that he would have no chattering Dutch vrouws about the house, and they
+said and believed that the Countess de Montalvo had become too proud to
+associate with those of her own class and people.
+
+Midday came and she could eat no food; indeed, she had touched none for
+twenty-four hours; her gorge rose against it, although in her state
+she needed food. Now the shame of her position began to come home to
+Lysbeth. She was a wife and no wife; soon she must bear the burden of
+motherhood, and oh! what would that child be? And what should she be,
+its mother? What, too, would Dirk think of her? Dirk, for whom she had
+done and suffered all these things. Through the long afternoon hours she
+lay upon her bed thinking such thoughts as these till at length her mind
+gave and Lysbeth grew light-headed. Her brain became a chaos, a perfect
+hell of distorted imaginations.
+
+Then out of its turmoil and confusion rose a vision and a desire; a
+vision of peace and a desire for rest. But what rest was there for her
+except the rest of death? Well, why not die? God would forgive her, the
+Mother of God would plead for her who was shamed and broken-hearted and
+unfit to live. Even Dirk would think kindly of her when she was dead,
+though, doubtless, now if he met her he would cover his eyes with his
+hand. She was burning hot and she was thirsty. How cool the water would
+be on this fevered night. What could be better than to slip into it and
+slowly let it close above her poor aching head? She would go out and
+look at the water; in that, at any rate, there could be no harm.
+
+She wrapped herself in a long cloak and drew its hood over her head.
+Then she slipped from the house and stole like a ghost through the
+darkling streets and out of the Maren or Sea Poort, where the guard let
+her pass thinking that she was a country woman returning to her village.
+Now the moon was rising, and by the light of it Lysbeth recognised
+the place. Here was the spot where she had stood on the day of the ice
+carnival, when that woman who was called Martha the Mare, and who said
+that she had known her father, had spoken to her. On that water she had
+galloped in Montalvo's sledge, and up yonder canal the race was run.
+She followed along its banks, remembering the reedy mere some miles
+away spotted with islets that were only visited from time to time by
+fishermen and wild-fowlers; the great Haarlemer Meer which covered many
+thousands of acres of ground. That mere she felt must look very cool and
+beautiful on such a night as this, and the wind would whisper sweetly
+among the tall bulrushes which fringed its banks.
+
+On Lysbeth went and on; it was a long, long walk, but at last she came
+there, and, oh! the place was sweet and vast and lonely. For so far as
+her eye could reach in the light of the low moon there was nothing but
+glimmering water broken here and there by the reed-wreathed islands.
+Hark! how the frogs croaked and the bitterns boomed among the rushes.
+Look where the wild ducks swam leaving behind them broad trails of
+silver as their breasts broke the surface of the great mere into
+rippling lines.
+
+There, on an island, not a bowshot from her, grew tufts of a daisy-like
+marsh bloom, white flowers such as she remembered gathering when she was
+a child. A desire came upon her to pluck some of these flowers, and the
+water was shallow; surely she could wade to the island, or if not what
+did it matter? Then she could turn to the bank again, or she might stay
+to sleep a while in the water; what did it matter? She stepped from
+the bank--how sweet and cool it felt to her feet! Now it was up to
+her knees, now it reached her middle, and now the little wavelets beat
+against her breast. But she would not go back, for there ahead of her
+was the island, and the white flowers were so close that she could count
+them, eight upon one bunch and twelve upon the next. Another step and
+the water struck her in the face, one more and it closed above her head.
+She rose, and a low cry broke from her lips.
+
+Then, as in a dream, Lysbeth saw a skiff glide out from among the rushes
+before her. She saw also a strange mutilated face, which she remembered
+dimly, bending over the edge of the boat, and a long, brown hand
+stretched out to clasp her, while a hoarse voice bade her keep still and
+fear nothing.
+
+After this came a sound of singing in her ears and--darkness.
+
+
+
+When Lysbeth woke again she found herself lying upon the ground, or
+rather upon a soft mattress of dry reeds and aromatic grasses. Looking
+round her she saw that she was in a hut, reed-roofed and plastered with
+thick mud. In one corner of this hut stood a fireplace with a chimney
+artfully built of clay, and on the fire of turfs boiled an earthen pot.
+Hanging from the roof by a string of twisted grass was a fish, fresh
+caught, a splendid pike, and near to it a bunch of smoked eels. Over her
+also was thrown a magnificent rug of otter skins. Noting these things,
+she gathered that she must be in the hovel of some fisherman.
+
+Now by degrees the past came back to Lysbeth, and she remembered her
+parting with the man who called himself her husband; remembered also her
+moonlight flight and how she had waded out into the waters of the great
+mere to pluck the white flowers, and how, as they closed above her
+head a hand had been stretched out to save her. Lysbeth remembered,
+and remembering, she sighed aloud. The sound of her sighing seemed to
+attract the attention of some one who was listening outside the hut; at
+any rate a rough door was opened or pushed aside and a figure entered.
+
+"Are you awake, lady?" asked a hoarse voice.
+
+"Yes," answered Lysbeth, "but tell me, how did I come here, and who are
+you?"
+
+The figure stepped back so that the light from the open door fell full
+upon it. "Look, Carolus van Hout's daughter and Juan Montalvo's wife;
+those who have seen me once do not forget me."
+
+Lysbeth sat up on the bed and stared at the gaunt, powerful form,
+the deep-set grey eyes, the wide-spread nostrils, the scarred, high
+cheek-bones, the teeth made prominent by some devil's work upon the
+lips, and the grizzled lock of hair that hung across the forehead. In an
+instant she knew her.
+
+"You are Martha the Mare," she said.
+
+"Yes, I am the Mare, none other, and you are in the Mare's stable. What
+has he been doing to you, that Spanish dog, that you came last night to
+ask the Great Water to hide you and your shame?"
+
+Lysbeth made no answer; the story seemed hard to begin with this strange
+woman. Then Martha went on:
+
+"What did I tell you, Lysbeth van Hout? Did I not say that your blood
+should warn you against the Spaniards? Well, well, you saved me from the
+ice and I have saved you from the water. Ah! who was it that led me to
+row round by that outer isle last night because I could not sleep? But
+what does it matter; God willed it so, and here you lie in the Mare's
+stable. Nay, do not answer me, first you must eat."
+
+Then, going to the pot, she took it from the fire, pouring its contents
+into an earthen basin, and, at the smell of them, for the first time
+for days Lysbeth felt hungry. Of what that stew was compounded she never
+learned, but she ate it to the last spoonful and was thankful, while
+Martha, seated on the ground beside her, watched her with delight, from
+time to time stretching out a long, thin hand to touch the brown hair
+that hung about her shoulders.
+
+"Come out and look," said Martha when her guest had done eating. And she
+led her through the doorway of the hut.
+
+Lysbeth gazed round her, but in truth there was not much to see. The hut
+itself was hidden away in a little clump of swamp willows that grew upon
+a mound in the midst of a marshy plain, broken here and there by patches
+of reed and bulrushes. Walking across this plain for a hundred yards or
+so, they came to more reeds, and in them a boat hidden cunningly, for
+here was the water of the lake, and, not fifty paces away, what seemed
+to be the shore of an island. The Mare bade her get into the boat and
+rowed her across to this island, then round it to another, and thence to
+another and yet another.
+
+"Now tell me," she said, "upon which of them is my stable built?"
+
+Lysbeth shook her head helplessly.
+
+"You cannot tell, no, nor any living man; I say that no man lives who
+could find it, save I myself, who know the path there by night or by
+day. Look," and she pointed to the vast surface of the mere, "on this
+great sea are thousands of such islets, and before they find me the
+Spaniards must search them all, for here upon the lonely waters no
+spies or hound will help them." Then she began to row again without even
+looking round, and presently they were in the clump of reeds from which
+they had started.
+
+"I must be going home," faltered Lysbeth.
+
+"No," answered Martha, "it is too late, you have slept long. Look, the
+sun is westering fast, this night you must stop with me. Oh! do not be
+afraid, my fare is rough, but it is sweet and fresh and plenty; fish
+from the mere as much as you will, for who can catch them better than I?
+And water-fowl that I snare, yes, and their eggs; moreover, dried flesh
+and bacon which I get from the mainland, for there I have friends whom
+sometimes I meet at night."
+
+So Lysbeth yielded, for the great peace of this lake pleased her. Oh!
+after all that she had gone through it was like heaven to watch the sun
+sinking towards the quiet water, to hear the wild-fowl call, to see the
+fish leap and the halcyons flash by, and above all to be sure that by
+nothing short of a miracle could this divine silence, broken only by
+Nature's voices, be defiled with the sound of the hated accents of the
+man who had ruined and betrayed her. Yes, she was weary, and a strange
+unaccustomed langour crept over her; she would rest there this night
+also.
+
+So they went back to the hut, and made ready their evening meal, and as
+she fried the fish over the fire of peats, verily Lysbeth found herself
+laughing like a girl again. Then they ate it with appetite, and after
+it was done, Mother Martha prayed aloud; yes, and without fear, although
+she knew Lysbeth to be a Catholic, read from her one treasure, a
+Testament, crouching there in the light of the fire and saying:
+
+"See, lady, what a place this is for a heretic to hide in. Where else
+may a woman read from the Bible and fear no spy or priest?" Remembering
+a certain story, Lysbeth shivered at her words.
+
+"Now," said the Mare, when she had finished reading, "tell me before
+you sleep, what it was that brought you into the waters of the Haarlemer
+Meer, and what that Spanish man has done to you. Do not be afraid, for
+though I am mad, or so they say, I can keep counsel, and between you and
+me are many bonds, Carolus van Hout's daughter, some of which you know
+and see, and some that you can neither know nor see, but which God will
+weave in His own season."
+
+Lysbeth looked at the weird countenance, distorted and made unhuman by
+long torment of body and mind, and found in it something to trust; yes,
+even signs of that sympathy which she so sorely needed. So she told her
+all the tale from the first word of it to the last.
+
+The Mare listened in silence, for no story of evil perpetrated by a
+Spaniard seemed to move or astonish her, only when Lysbeth had done, she
+said:
+
+"Ah! child, had you but known of me, and where to find me, you should
+have asked my aid."
+
+"Why, mother, what could you have done?" answered Lysbeth.
+
+"Done? I would have followed him by night until I found my chance in
+some lonely place, and there I would have----" Then she stretched out
+her bony hand to the red light of the fire, and Lysbeth saw that in it
+was a knife.
+
+She sank back aghast.
+
+"Why are you frightened, my pretty lady?" asked the Mare. "I tell you
+that I live on for only one thing--to kill Spaniards, yes, priests first
+and then the others. Oh! I have a long count to pay; for every time that
+he was tortured a life, for every groan he uttered at the stake a life;
+yes, so many for the father and half as many for the son. Well, I shall
+live to be old, I know that I shall live to be old, and the count will
+be discharged, ay, to the last stiver."
+
+As she spoke, the outlawed Water Wife had risen, and the flare of the
+fire struck full upon her. It was an awful face that Lysbeth beheld by
+the light of it, full of fierceness and energy, the face of an inspired
+avenger, dread and unnatural, yet not altogether repulsive. Indeed, that
+countenance was such as an imaginative artist might give to one of the
+beasts in the Book of Revelation. Amazed and terrified, Lysbeth said
+nothing.
+
+"I frighten you, gentle one," went on the Mare, "you who, although
+you have suffered, are still full of the milk of human kindness. Wait,
+woman, wait till they have murdered the man you love, till your heart is
+like my heart, and you also live on, not for love's sake, not for life's
+sake, but to be a Sword, a Sword, a Sword in the hand of God!"
+
+"Cease, I pray you," said Lysbeth in a low voice; "I am faint, I am
+ill."
+
+Ill she was indeed, and before morning there, in that lonely hovel on
+the island of the mere, a son was born to her.
+
+
+
+When she was strong enough her nurse spoke:
+
+"Will you keep the brat, or shall I kill it?" she asked.
+
+"How can I kill my child?" said Lysbeth.
+
+"It is the Spaniard's child also, and remember the curse you told me of,
+your own curse uttered on this thing before ever you were married? If
+it lives that curse shall cling to it, and through it you, too, shall be
+accursed. Best let me kill it and have done."
+
+"How can I kill my own child? Touch it not," answered Lysbeth sullenly.
+
+So the black-eyed boy lived and throve.
+
+
+
+Somewhat slowly, lying there in the island hut, Lysbeth won back her
+strength. The Mare, or Mother Martha, as Lysbeth had now learned to call
+her, tended her as few midwives would have done. Food, too, she had
+in plenty, for Martha snared the fowl and caught the fish, or she made
+visits to the mainland, and thence brought eggs and milk and flesh,
+which, so she said, the boors of that country gave her as much as she
+wanted of them. Also, to while away the hours, she would read to her out
+of the Testament, and from that reading Lysbeth learnt many things which
+until then she had not known. Indeed, before it was done with--Catholic
+though she was--she began to wonder in what lay the wickedness of these
+heretics, and how it came about that they were worthy of death and
+torment, since, sooth to say, in this Book she could find no law to
+which their lives and doctrine seemed to give offence.
+
+Thus it happened that Martha, the fierce, half-crazy water-dweller,
+sowed the seed in Lysbeth's heart that was to bear fruit in due season.
+
+When three weeks had gone by and Lysbeth was on her feet again, though
+as yet scarcely strong enough to travel, Martha told her that she had
+business which would keep her from home a night, but what the business
+was she refused to say. Accordingly on a certain afternoon, having left
+good store of all things to Lysbeth's hand, the Mare departed in her
+skiff, nor did she return till after midday on the morrow. Now Lysbeth
+talked of leaving the island, but Martha would not suffer it, saying
+that if she desired to go she must swim, and indeed when Lysbeth went
+to look she found that the boat had been hidden elsewhere. So, nothing
+loth, she stayed on, and in the crisp autumn air her health and beauty
+came back to her, till she was once more much as she had been before the
+day when she went sledging with Juan de Montalvo.
+
+On a November morning, leaving her infant in the hut with Martha, who
+had sworn to her on the Bible that she would not harm it, Lysbeth walked
+to the extremity of the island. During the night the first sharp frost
+of late autumn had fallen, making a thin film of ice upon the surface
+of the lake, which melted rapidly as the sun grew high. The air too was
+very clear and calm, and among the reeds, now turning golden at their
+tips, the finches flew and chirped, forgetful that winter was at hand.
+So sweet and peaceful was the scene that Lysbeth, also forgetful of many
+things, surveyed it with a kind of rapture. She knew not why, but her
+heart was happy that morning; it was as though a dark cloud had passed
+from her life; as though the blue skies of peace and joy were spread
+about her. Doubtless other clouds might appear upon the horizon;
+doubtless in their season they would appear, but she felt that this
+horizon was as yet a long way off, and meanwhile above her bent the
+tender sky, serene and sweet and happy.
+
+Upon the crisp grass behind her suddenly she heard a footfall, a new
+footfall, not that of the long, stealthy stride of Martha, who was
+called the Mare, and swung round upon her heel to meet it.
+
+Oh, God! Who was this? Oh, God! there before her stood Dirk van Goorl.
+Dirk, and no other than Dirk, unless she dreamed, Dirk with his kind
+face wreathed in a happy smile, Dirk with his arms outstretched towards
+her. Lysbeth said nothing, she could not speak, only she stood still
+gazing, gazing, gazing, and always he came on, till now his arms were
+round her. Then she sprang back.
+
+"Do not touch me," she cried, "remember what I am and why I stay here."
+
+"I know well what you are, Lysbeth," he answered slowly; "you are the
+holiest and purest woman who ever walked this earth; you are an angel
+upon this earth; you are the woman who gave her honour to save the man
+she loved. Oh! be silent, be silent, I have heard the story; I know it
+every word, and here I kneel before you, and, next to my God, I worship
+you, Lysbeth, I worship you."
+
+"But the child," she murmured, "it lives, and it is mine and the man's."
+
+Dirk's face hardened a little, but he only answered:
+
+"We must bear our burdens; you have borne yours, I must bear mine," and
+he seized her hands and kissed them, yes, and the hem of her garment and
+kissed it also.
+
+So these two plighted their troth.
+
+Afterwards Lysbeth heard all the story. Montalvo had been put upon his
+trial, and, as it chanced, things went hard with him. Among his judges
+one was a great Netherlander lord, who desired to uphold the rights of
+his countrymen; one was a high ecclesiastic, who was furious because of
+the fraud that had been played upon the Church, which had been trapped
+into celebrating a bigamous marriage; and a third was a Spanish grandee,
+who, as it happened, knew the family of the first wife who had been
+deserted.
+
+Therefore, for the luckless Montalvo, when the case had been proved
+to the hilt against him by the evidence of the priest who brought the
+letter, of the wife's letters, and of the truculent Black Meg, who now
+found an opportunity of paying back "hot water for cold," there was
+little mercy. His character was bad, and it was said, moreover, that
+because of his cruelties and the shame she had suffered at his hands,
+Lysbeth van Hout had committed suicide. At least, this was certain, that
+she was seen running at night towards the Haarlemer Meer, and that after
+this, search as her friends would, nothing more could be heard of her.
+
+So, that an example might be made, although he writhed and fenced his
+best, the noble captain, Count Juan de Montalvo, was sent to serve for
+fourteen years in the galleys as a common slave. And there, for the
+while, was an end of him.
+
+
+
+There also was an end of the strange and tragic courtship of Dirk van
+Goorl and Lysbeth van Hout.
+
+Six months afterwards they were married, and by Dirk's wish took the
+child, who was christened Adrian, to live with them. A few months later
+Lysbeth entered the community of the New Religion, and less than two
+years after her marriage a son was born to her, the hero of this story,
+who was named Foy.
+
+As it happened, she bore no other children.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE SECOND
+
+THE RIPENING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ADRIAN, FOY, AND MARTIN THE RED
+
+Many years had gone by since Lysbeth found her love again upon the
+island in the Haarlemer Meer. The son that she bore there was now a
+grown man, as was her second son, Foy, and her own hair showed grey
+beneath the lappets of her cap.
+
+Fast, fast wove the loom of God during those fateful years, and the web
+thereof was the story of a people's agony and its woof was dyed red with
+their blood. Edict had followed edict, crime had been heaped upon crime.
+Alva, like some inhuman and incarnate vengeance, had marched his army,
+quiet and harmless as is the tiger when he stalks his prey, across the
+fields of France. Now he was at Brussels, and already the heads of
+the Counts Egmont and Hoorn had fallen; already the Blood Council was
+established and at its work. In the Low Countries law had ceased to
+exist, and there anything might happen however monstrous or inhuman.
+Indeed, with one decree of the Holy Office, confirmed by a proclamation
+of Philip of Spain, all the inhabitants of the Netherlands, three
+millions of them, had been condemned to death. Men's minds were full
+of terror, for on every side were burnings and hangings and torturings.
+Without were fightings, within were fears, and none knew whom they could
+trust, since the friend of to-day might be the informer or judge of
+to-morrow. All this because they chose to worship God in their own
+fashion unaided by images and priests.
+
+
+
+Although so long a time had passed, as it chanced those personages with
+whom we have already made acquaintance in this history were still alive.
+Let us begin with two of them, one of whom we know and one of
+whom, although we have heard of him before, will require some
+introduction--Dirk van Goorl and his son Foy.
+
+
+
+Scene--an upper room above a warehouse overlooking the market-place
+of Leyden, a room with small windows and approached by two staircases;
+time, a summer twilight. The faint light which penetrated into this
+chamber through the unshuttered windows, for to curtain them would have
+been to excite suspicion, showed that about twenty people were gathered
+there, among whom were one or two women. For the most part they were men
+of the better class, middle-aged burghers of sober mien, some of whom
+stood about in knots, while others were seated upon stools and benches.
+At the end of the room addressing them was a man well on in middle life,
+with grizzled hair and beard, small and somewhat mean of stature, yet
+one through whose poor exterior goodness seemed to flow like light
+through some rough casement of horn. This was Jan Arentz, the famous
+preacher, by trade a basket-maker, a man who showed himself steadfast
+to the New Religion through all afflictions, and who was gifted with a
+spirit which could remain unmoved amidst the horrors of perhaps the most
+terrible persecution that Christians have suffered since the days of
+the Roman Emperors. He was preaching now and these people were his
+congregation.
+
+"I come not to bring peace but a sword," was his text, and certainly
+this night it was most appropriate and one easy of illustration. For
+there, on the very market-place beneath them, guarded by soldiers and
+surrounded with the rabble of the city, two members of his flock, men
+who a fortnight before had worshipped in that same room, at this moment
+were undergoing martyrdom by fire!
+
+Arentz preached patience and fortitude. He went back into recent history
+and told his hearers how he himself had passed a hundred dangers; how he
+had been hunted like a wolf, how he had been tried, how he had escaped
+from prisons and from the swords of soldiers, even as St. Paul had done
+before him, and how yet he lived to minister to them this night. He
+told them that they must have no fear, that they must go on quite happy,
+quite confident, taking what it pleased God to send them, feeling that
+it would all be for the best; yes, that even the worst would be for the
+best. What was the worst? Some hours of torment and death. And what lay
+beyond the death? Ah! let them think of that. The whole world was but a
+brief and varying shadow, what did it matter how or when they walked
+out of that shadow into the perfect light? The sky was very black, but
+behind it the sun shone. They must look forward with the eye of faith;
+perhaps the sufferings of the present generation were part of the scheme
+of things; perhaps from the earth which they watered with their blood
+would spring the flower of freedom, that glorious freedom in whose day
+all men would be able to worship their Creator responsible only to the
+Bible law and their own conscience, not to the dogmas or doctrines of
+other men.
+
+As Arentz spoke thus, eloquently, sweetly, spoke like one inspired, the
+twilight deepened and the flare of those sacrificial fires flickered on
+the window pane, and the mixed murmurs of the crowd of witnesses broke
+upon his listeners' ears. The preacher paused and looked down upon the
+dreadful scene below, for from where he stood he could behold it all.
+
+"Mark is dead," he said, "and our dear brother, Andreas Jansen, is
+dying; the executioners heap the faggots round him. You think it cruel,
+you think it piteous, but I say to you, No. I say that it is a holy
+and a glorious sight, for we witness the passing of souls to bliss.
+Brethren, let us pray for him who leaves us, and for ourselves who stay
+behind. Yes, and let us pray for those who slay him that know not what
+they do. We watch his sufferings, but I tell you that Christ his Lord
+watches also; Christ who hung upon the Cross, the victim of such men as
+these. He stands with him in the fire, His hand compasses him, His voice
+supports him. Brethren, let us pray."
+
+Then at his bidding every member of that little congregation knelt in
+prayer for the passing spirit of Andreas Jansen.
+
+Again Arentz looked through the window.
+
+"He dies!" he cried; "a soldier has thrust him through with a pike in
+mercy, his head falls forward. Oh! God, if it be Thy will, grant to us a
+sign."
+
+Some strange breath passed through that upper chamber, a cold breath
+which blew upon the brows of the worshippers and stirred their hair,
+bringing with it a sense of the presence of Andreas Jansen, the martyr.
+Then, there upon the wall opposite to the window, at the very spot where
+their brother and companion, Andreas, saint and martyr, was wont to
+kneel, appeared the sign, or what they took to be a sign. Yes, there
+upon the whitewashed wall, reflected, mayhap, from the fires below, and
+showing clearly in the darkened room, shone the vision of a fiery cross.
+For a second it was seen. Then it was gone, but to every soul in
+this room the vision of that cross had brought its message; to each a
+separate message, an individual inspiration, for in the light of it they
+read strange lessons of life and death. The cross vanished and there was
+silence.
+
+"Brethren," said the voice of Arentz, speaking in the darkness, "you
+have seen. Through the fire and through the shadow, follow the Cross and
+fear not."
+
+
+
+The service was over, and below in the emptied market-place the
+executioners collected the poor calcined fragments of the martyrs to
+cast them with contumely and filthy jests into the darkling waters of
+the river. Now, one by one and two by two, the worshippers slipped away
+through some hidden door opening on an alley. Let us look at three of
+their number as they crept through bye streets back to a house on the
+Bree Straat with which we are acquainted, two of them walking in front
+and one behind.
+
+The pair were Dirk van Goorl and his son Foy--there was no mistaking
+their relationship. Save that he had grown somewhat portly and
+thoughtful, Dirk was the Dirk of five and twenty years ago, thickset,
+grey-eyed, bearded, a handsome man according to the Dutch standard,
+whose massive, kindly countenance betrayed the massive, kindly mind
+within. Very like him was his son Foy, only his eyes were blue instead
+of grey, and his hair was yellow. Though they seemed sad enough just
+now, these were merry and pleasant eyes, and the round, the somewhat
+childlike face was merry also, the face of a person who looked upon the
+bright side of things.
+
+There was nothing remarkable or distinguished about Foy's appearance,
+but from it the observer, who met him for the first time, received an
+impression of energy, honesty, and good-nature. In truth, such were
+apt to set him down as a sailor-man, who had just returned from a long
+journey, in the course of which he had come to the conclusion that this
+world was a pleasant place, and one well worth exploring. As Foy walked
+down the street with his quick and nautical gait, it was evident that
+even the solemn and dreadful scene which he had just experienced had not
+altogether quenched his cheery and hopeful spirit. Yet of all those who
+listened to the exhortation of the saint-like Arentz, none had laid its
+burden of faith and carelessness for the future to heart more entirely
+than Foy van Goorl.
+
+But of this power of looking on the bright side of things the credit
+must be given to his nature and not to his piety, for Foy could not be
+sad for long. _Dum spiro, spero_ would have been his motto had he known
+Latin, and he did not mean to grow sorrowful--over the prospect of being
+burnt, for instance--until he found himself fast to the stake. It was
+this quality of good spirits in a depressing and melancholy age that
+made of Foy so extraordinarily popular a character.
+
+Behind these two followed a much more remarkable-looking personage, the
+Frisian, Martin Roos, or Red Martin, so named from his hair, which was
+red to the verge of flame colour, and his beard of a like hue that hung
+almost to his breast. There was no other such beard in Leyden; indeed
+the boys, taking advantage of his good nature, would call to him as he
+passed, asking him if it was true that the storks nested in it every
+spring. This strange-looking man, who was now perhaps a person of forty
+years of age, for ten years or more had been the faithful servant of
+Dirk van Goorl, whose house he had entered under circumstances which
+shall be told of in their place.
+
+Any one glancing at Martin casually would not have said that he was
+a giant, and yet his height was considerable; to be accurate, when he
+stood upright, something over six feet three inches. The reason why he
+did not appear to be tall was that in truth his great bulk shortened him
+to the eye, and also because his carried himself ill, more from a desire
+to conceal his size than for any other reason. It was in girth of
+chest and limb that Martin was really remarkable, so much so that a
+short-armed man standing before him could not make his fingers touch
+behind his back. His face was fair as a girl's, and almost as flat as a
+full moon, for of nose he had little. Nature, indeed, had furnished him
+with one of ordinary, if not excessive size, but certain incidents in
+Martin's early career, which in our day would be designated as that of
+a prize-fighter, had caused it to spread about his countenance in
+an interesting and curious fashion. His eyebrows, however, remained
+prominent. Beneath them appeared a pair of very large, round, and rather
+mild blue eyes, covered with thick white lids absolutely devoid of
+lashes, which eyes had a most unholy trick of occasionally taking fire
+when their owner was irritated. Then they could burn and blaze like
+lamps tied to a barge on a dark night, with an effect that was all the
+more alarming because the rest of his countenance remained absolutely
+impassive.
+
+Suddenly while this little company went homewards a sound arose in the
+quiet street as of people running. Instantly all three of them pressed
+themselves into the doorway of a house and crouched down. Martin lifted
+his ear and listened.
+
+"Three people," he whispered; "a woman who flies and two men who
+follow."
+
+At that moment a casement was thrown open forty paces or so away, and a
+hand, bearing a torch, thrust out of it. By its light they saw the
+pale face of a lady speeding towards them, and after her two Spanish
+soldiers.
+
+"The Vrouw Andreas Jansen," whispered Martin again, "flying from two of
+the guard who burned her husband."
+
+The torch was withdrawn and the casement shut with a snap. In those
+days quiet burghers could not afford to be mixed up in street troubles,
+especially if soldiers had to do with them. Once more the place was
+empty and quiet, except for the sound of running feet.
+
+Opposite to the doorway the lady was overtaken. "Oh! let me go,"
+she sobbed, "oh! let me go. Is it not enough that you have killed my
+husband? Why must I be hunted from my house thus?"
+
+"Because you are so pretty, my dear," answered one of the brutes, "also
+you are rich. Catch hold of her, friend. Lord! how she kicks!"
+
+Foy made a motion as though to start out of the doorway, but Martin
+pressed him back with the flat of his hand, without apparent effort, and
+yet so strongly that the young man could not move.
+
+"My business, masters," he muttered; "you would make a noise," and they
+heard his breath come thick.
+
+Now, moving with curious stealthiness for one of so great a bulk, Martin
+was out of the porch. By the summer starlight the watchers could see
+that, before they had caught sight of, or even heard, him, he gripped
+the two soldiers, small men, like most Spaniards, by the napes of their
+necks, one in either hand, and was grinding their faces together. This,
+indeed, was evident, for his great shoulders worked visibly and their
+breastplates clicked as they touched. But the men themselves made no
+sound at all. Then Martin seemed to catch them round the middle, and
+behold! in another second the pair of them had gone headlong into the
+canal, which ran down the centre of the street.
+
+"My God! he has killed them," muttered Dirk.
+
+"And a good job, too, father," said Foy, "only I wish that I had shared
+in it."
+
+Martin's great form loomed in the doorway. "The Vrouw Jansen has fled
+away," he said, "and the street is quite quiet now, so I think that we
+had better be moving before any see us, my masters."
+
+Some days later the bodies of these Spanish soldiers were found with
+their faces smashed flat. It was suggested in explanation of this
+plight, that they had got drunk and while fighting together had fallen
+from the bridge on to the stonework of a pier. This version of their end
+found a ready acceptance, as it consorted well with the reputations of
+the men. So there was no search or inquiry.
+
+"I had to finish the dogs," Martin explained apologetically--"may the
+Lord Jesus forgive me--because I was afraid that they might know me
+again by my beard."
+
+"Alas! alas!" groaned Dirk, "what times are these. Say nothing of this
+dreadful matter to your mother, son, or to Adrian either." But Foy
+nudged Martin in the ribs and muttered, "Well done, old fellow, well
+done!"
+
+After this experience, which the reader must remember was nothing
+extraordinary in those dark and dreadful days when neither the lives of
+men nor the safety of women--especially Protestant men and women--were
+things of much account, the three of them reached home without further
+incident, and quite unobserved. Arriving at the house, they entered it
+near the Watergate by a back door that led into the stableyard. It was
+opened by a woman whom they followed into a little room where a light
+burned. Here she turned and kissed two of them, Dirk first and then Foy.
+
+"Thank God that I see you safe," she said. "Whenever you go to the
+Meeting-place I tremble until I hear your footsteps at the door."
+
+"What's the use of that, mother?" said Foy. "Your fretting yourself
+won't make things better or worse."
+
+"Ah! dear, how can I help it?" she replied softly; "we cannot all be
+young and cheerful, you know."
+
+"True, wife, true," broke in Dirk, "though I wish we could; we should be
+lighter-hearted so," and he looked at her and sighed.
+
+Lysbeth van Goorl could no longer boast the beauty which was hers when
+first we met her, but she was still a sweet and graceful woman, her
+figure remaining almost as slim as it had been in girlhood. The grey
+eyes also retained their depth and fire, only the face was worn, though
+more by care and the burden of memories than with years. The lot of the
+loving wife and mother was hard indeed when Philip the King ruled in
+Spain and Alva was his prophet in the Netherlands.
+
+"Is it done?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, wife, our brethren are now saints in Paradise, therefore rejoice."
+
+"It is very wrong," she answered with a sob, "but I cannot. Oh!" she
+added with a sudden blaze of indignation, "if He is just and good, why
+does God suffer His servants to be killed thus?"
+
+"Perhaps our grandchildren will be able to answer that question,"
+replied Dirk.
+
+"That poor Vrouw Jansen," broke in Lysbeth, "just married, and so young
+and pretty. I wonder what will become of her."
+
+Dirk and Foy looked at each other, and Martin, who was hovering about
+near the door, slunk back guiltily into the passage as though _he_ had
+attempted to injure the Vrouw Jansen.
+
+"To-morrow we will look to it, wife. And now let us eat, for we are
+faint with hunger."
+
+Ten minutes later they were seated at their meal. The reader may
+remember the room; it was that wherein Montalvo, ex-count and captain,
+made the speech which charmed all hearers on the night when he had lost
+the race at the ice-carnival. The same chandelier hung above them, some
+portion of the same plate, even, repurchased by Dirk, was on the table,
+but how different were the company and the feast! Aunt Clara, the
+fatuous, was long dead, and with her many of the companions of that
+occasion, some naturally, some by the hand of the executioner, while
+others had fled the land. Pieter van de Werff still lived, however, and
+though regarded with suspicion by the authorities, was a man of weight
+and honour in the town, but to-night he was not present there. The food,
+too, if ample was plain, not on account of the poverty of the household,
+for Dirk had prospered in his worldly affairs, being hard-working and
+skilful, and the head of the brass foundry to which in those early days
+he was apprenticed, but because in such times people thought little
+of the refinements of eating. When life itself is so doubtful, its
+pleasures and amusements become of small importance. The ample waiting
+service of the maid Greta, who long ago had vanished none knew where,
+and her fellow domestics was now carried on by the man, Martin, and
+one old woman, since, as every menial might be a spy, even the richest
+employed few of them. In short all the lighter and more cheerful parts
+of life were in abeyance.
+
+"Where is Adrian?" asked Dirk.
+
+"I do not know," answered Lysbeth. "I thought that perhaps----"
+
+"No," replied her husband hastily; "he did not accompany us; he rarely
+does."
+
+"Brother Adrian likes to look underneath the spoon before he licks it,"
+said Foy with his mouth full.
+
+The remark was enigmatic, but his parents seemed to understand what
+Foy meant; at least it was followed by an uncomfortable and acquiescent
+silence. Just then Adrian came in, and as we have not seen him since,
+some four and twenty years ago, he made his entry into the world on the
+secret island in the Haarlemer Meer, here it may be as well to describe
+his appearance.
+
+He was a handsome young man, but of quite a different stamp from his
+half-brother, Foy, being tall, slight, and very graceful in figure;
+advantages which he had inherited from his mother Lysbeth. In
+countenance, however, he differed from her so much that none would have
+guessed him to be her son. Indeed, Adrian's face was pure Spanish, there
+was nothing of a Netherlander about his dark beauty. Spanish were the
+eyes of velvet black, set rather close together, Spanish also the finely
+chiselled features and the thin, spreading nostrils, Spanish the cold,
+yet somewhat sensual mouth, more apt to sneer than smile; the straight,
+black hair, the clear, olive skin, and that indifferent, half-wearied
+mien which became its wearer well enough, but in a man of his years of
+Northern blood would have seemed unnatural or affected.
+
+He took his seat without speaking, nor did the others speak to him till
+his stepfather Dirk said:
+
+"You were not at the works to-day, Adrian, although we should have been
+glad of your help in founding the culverin."
+
+"No, father"--he called him father--answered the young man in a measured
+and rather melodious voice. "You see we don't quite know who is going to
+pay for that piece. Or at any rate I don't quite know, as nobody seems
+to take me into confidence, and if it should chance to be the losing
+side, well, it might be enough to hang me."
+
+Dirk flushed up, but made no answer, only Foy remarked:
+
+"That's right, Adrian, look after your own skin."
+
+"Just now I find it more interesting," went on Adrian loftily and
+disregardful of his brother, "to study those whom the cannon may shoot
+than to make the cannon which is to shoot them."
+
+"Hope you won't be one of them," interrupted Foy again.
+
+"Where have you been this evening, son?" asked Lysbeth hastily, fearing
+a quarrel.
+
+"I have been mixing with the people, mother, at the scene on the
+market-place yonder."
+
+"Not the martyrdom of our good friend, Jansen, surely?"
+
+"Yes, mother, why not? It is terrible, it is a crime, no doubt, but
+the observer of life should study these things. There is nothing more
+fascinating to the philosopher than the play of human passions. The
+emotions of the brutal crowd, the stolid indifference of the guard, the
+grief of the sympathisers, the stoical endurance of the victims animated
+by religious exaltation----"
+
+"And the beautiful logic of the philosopher, with his nose in the air,
+while he watches his friend and brother in the Faith being slowly burnt
+to death," broke out Foy with passion.
+
+"Hush! hush!" said Dirk, striking his fist upon the table with a blow
+that caused the glasses to ring, "this is no subject for word-chopping.
+Adrian, you would have been better with us than down below at that
+butchery, even though you were less safe," he added, with meaning.
+"But I wish to run none into danger, and you are of an age to judge for
+yourself. I beg you, however, to spare us your light talk about scenes
+that we think dreadful, however interesting you may have found them."
+
+Adrian shrugged his shoulders and called to Martin to bring him some
+more meat. As the great man approached him he spread out his fine-drawn
+nostrils and sniffed.
+
+"You smell, Martin," he said, "and no wonder. Look, there is blood upon
+your jerkin. Have you been killing pigs and forgotten to change it?"
+
+Martin's round blue eyes flashed, then went pale and dead again.
+
+"Yes, master," he answered, in his thick voice, "I have been killing
+pigs. But your dress also smells of blood and fire; perhaps you went too
+near the stake." At that moment, to put an end to the conversation, Dirk
+rose and said grace. Then he went out of the room accompanied by his
+wife and Foy, leaving Adrian to finish his meal alone, which he did
+reflectively and at leisure.
+
+When he left the eating chamber Foy followed Martin across the courtyard
+to the walled-in stables, and up a ladder to the room where the serving
+man slept. It was a queer place, and filled with an extraordinary
+collection of odds and ends; the skins of birds, otters, and wolves;
+weapons of different makes, notably a very large two-handed sword, plain
+and old-fashioned, but of excellent steel; bits of harness and other
+things.
+
+There was no bed in this room for the reason that Martin disdained a
+bed, a few skins upon the floor being all that he needed to lie on.
+Nor did he ask for much covering, since so hardy was he by nature, that
+except in the very bitterest weather his woollen vest was enough for
+him. Indeed, he had been known to sleep out in it when the frost was so
+sharp that he rose with his hair and beard covered with icicles.
+
+Martin shut the door and lit three lanterns, which he hung to hooks upon
+the wall.
+
+"Are you ready for a turn, master?" he asked.
+
+Foy nodded as he answered, "I want to get the taste of it all out of
+my mouth, so don't spare me. Lay on till I get angry, it will make me
+forget," and taking a leathern jerkin off a peg he pulled it over his
+head.
+
+"Forget what, master?"
+
+"Oh! the prayings and the burnings and Vrouw Jansen, and Adrian's
+sea-lawyer sort of talk."
+
+"Ah, yes, that's the worst of them all for us," and the big man leapt
+forward and whispered. "Keep an eye on him, Master Foy."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Foy sharply and flushing.
+
+"What I say."
+
+"You forget; you are talking of my brother, my own mother's son. I
+will hear no harm of Adrian; his ways are different to ours, but he is
+good-hearted at bottom. Do you understand me, Martin?"
+
+"But not your father's son, master. It's the sire sets the strain; I
+have bred horses, and I know."
+
+Foy looked at him and hesitated.
+
+"No," said Martin, answering the question in his eyes. "I have nothing
+against him, but he always sees the other side, and that's bad. Also he
+is Spanish----"
+
+"And you don't like Spaniards," broke in Foy. "Martin, you are a
+pig-headed, prejudiced, unjust jackass."
+
+Martin smiled. "No, master, I don't like Spaniards, nor will you before
+you have done with them. But then it is only fair as they don't like
+me."
+
+"I say, Martin," said Foy, following a new line of thought, "how did you
+manage that business so quietly, and why didn't you let me do my share?"
+
+"Because you'd have made a noise, master, and we didn't want the watch
+on us; also, being fulled armed, they might have bettered you."
+
+"Good reasons, Martin. How did you do it? I couldn't see much."
+
+"It is a trick I learned up there in Friesland. Some of the Northmen
+sailors taught it me. There is a place in a man's neck, here at the
+back, and if he is squeezed there he loses his senses in a second. Thus,
+master--" and putting out his great hand he gripped Foy's neck in a
+fashion that caused him the intensest agony.
+
+"Drop it," said Foy, kicking at his shins.
+
+"I didn't squeeze; I was only showing you," answered Martin, opening his
+eyes. "Well, when their wits were gone of course it was easy to knock
+their heads together, so that they mightn't find them again. You see,"
+he added, "if I had left them alive--well, they are dead anyway, and
+getting a hot supper by now, I expect. Which shall it be, master? Dutch
+stick or Spanish point?"
+
+"Stick first, then point," answered Foy.
+
+"Good. We need 'em both nowadays," and Martin reached down a pair of ash
+plants fitted into old sword hilts to protect the hands of the players.
+
+They stood up to each other on guard, and then against the light of
+the lanterns it could be seen how huge a man was Martin. Foy, although
+well-built and sturdy, and like all his race of a stout habit, looked
+but a child beside the bulk of this great fellow. As for their stick
+game, which was in fact sword exercise, it is unnecessary to follow its
+details, for the end of it was what might almost have been expected. Foy
+sprang to and fro slashing and cutting, while Martin the solid scarcely
+moved his weapon. Then suddenly there would be a parry and a reach,
+and the stick would fall with a thud all down the length of Foy's back,
+causing the dust to start from his leathern jerkin.
+
+"It's no good," said Foy at last, rubbing himself ruefully. "What's
+the use of guarding against you, you great brute, when you simply crash
+through my guard and hit me all the same? That isn't science."
+
+"No, master," answered Martin, "but it is business. If we had been using
+swords you would have been in pieces by now. No blame to you and no
+credit to me; my reach is longer and my arm heavier, that is all."
+
+"At any rate I am beaten," said Foy; "now take the rapiers and give me a
+chance."
+
+Then they went at it with the thrusting-swords, rendered harmless by a
+disc of lead upon their points, and at this game the luck turned. Foy
+was active as a cat in the eye of a hawk, and twice he managed to get in
+under Martin's guard.
+
+"You're dead, old fellow," he said at the second thrust.
+
+"Yes, young master," answered Martin, "but remember that I killed you
+long ago, so that you are only a ghost and of no account. Although I
+have tried to learn its use to please you, I don't mean to fight with
+a toasting fork. This is my weapon," and, seizing the great sword which
+stood in the corner, he made it hiss through the air.
+
+Foy took it from his hand and looked at it. It was a long straight
+blade with a plain iron guard, or cage, for the hands, and on it, in old
+letters, was engraved one Latin word, _Silentium_, "Silence."
+
+"Why is it called 'Silence,' Martin?"
+
+"Because it makes people silent, I suppose, master."
+
+"What is its history, and how did you come by it?" asked Foy in a
+malicious voice. He knew that the subject was a sore one with the huge
+Frisian.
+
+Martin turned red as his own beard and looked uncomfortable. "I
+believe," he answered, staring upwards, "that it was the ancient Sword
+of Justice of a little place up in Friesland. As to how I came by it,
+well, I forget."
+
+"And you call yourself a good Christian," said Foy reproachfully. "Now
+I have heard that your head was going to be chopped off with this sword,
+but that somehow you managed to steal it first and got away."
+
+"There was something of the sort," mumbled Martin, "but it is so long
+ago that it slips my mind. I was so often in broils and drunk in those
+days--may the dear Lord forgive me--that I can't quite remember things.
+And now, by your leave, I want to go to sleep."
+
+"You old liar," said Foy shaking his head at him, "you killed that poor
+executioner and made off with his sword. You know you did, and now you
+are ashamed to own the truth."
+
+"May be, may be," answered Martin vacuously; "so many things happen
+in the world that a fool man cannot remember them all. I want to go to
+sleep."
+
+"Martin," said Foy, sitting down upon a stool and dragging off his
+leather jerkin, "what used you to do before you turned holy? You have
+never told me all the story. Come now, speak up. I won't tell Adrian."
+
+"Nothing worth mentioning, Master Foy."
+
+"Out with it, Martin."
+
+"Well, if you wish to know, I am the son of a Friesland boor."
+
+"--And an Englishwoman from Yarmouth: I know all that."
+
+"Yes," repeated Martin, "an Englishwoman from Yarmouth. She was very
+strong, my mother; she could hold up a cart on her shoulders while my
+father greased the wheels, that is for a bet; otherwise she used to make
+my father hold the cart up while _she_ greased the wheels. Folk would
+come to see her do the trick. When I grew up I held the cart and they
+both greased the wheels. But at last they died of the plague, the pair
+of them, God rest their souls! So I inherited the farm----"
+
+"And--" said Foy, fixing him with his eye.
+
+"And," jerked out Martin in an unwilling fashion, "fell into bad
+habits."
+
+"Drink?" suggested the merciless Foy.
+
+Martin sighed and hung his great head. He had a tender conscience.
+
+"Then you took to prize-fighting," went on his tormentor; "you can't
+deny it; look at your nose."
+
+"I did, master, for the Lord hadn't touched my heart in those days,
+and," he added, brisking up, "it wasn't such a bad trade, for nobody
+ever beat me except a Brussels man once when I was drunk. He broke my
+nose, but afterwards, when I was sober--" and he stopped.
+
+"You killed the Spanish boxer here in Leyden," said Foy sternly.
+
+"Yes," echoed Martin, "I killed him sure enough, but--oh! it was a
+pretty fight, and he brought it on himself. He was a fine man, that
+Spaniard, but the devil wouldn't play fair, so I just had to kill him. I
+hope that they bear in mind up above that I _had_ to kill him."
+
+"Tell me about it, Martin, for I was at The Hague at the time, and
+can't remember. Of course I don't approve of such things"--and the young
+rascal clasped his hands and looked pious--"but as it is all done with,
+one may as well hear the story of the fight. To spin it won't make you
+more wicked than you are."
+
+Then suddenly Martin the unreminiscent developed a marvellous memory,
+and with much wealth of detail set out the exact circumstances of that
+historic encounter.
+
+"And after he had kicked me in the stomach," he ended, "which, master,
+you will know he had no right to do, I lost my temper and hit out with
+all my strength, having first feinted and knocked up his guard with my
+left arm----"
+
+"And then," said Foy, growing excited, for Martin really told the story
+very well, "what happened?"
+
+"Oh, his head went back between his shoulders, and when they picked him
+up, his neck was broken. I was sorry, but I couldn't help it, the Lord
+knows I couldn't help it; he shouldn't have called me 'a dirty Frisian
+ox' and kicked me in the stomach."
+
+"No, that was very wrong of him. But they arrested you, didn't they,
+Martin?"
+
+"Yes, for the second time they condemned me to death as a brawler and a
+manslayer. You see, the other Friesland business came up against me, and
+the magistrates here had money on the Spaniard. Then your dear father
+saved me. He was burgomaster of that year, and he paid the death fine
+for me--a large sum--afterwards, too, he taught me to be sober and think
+of my soul. So you know why Red Martin will serve him and his while
+there is a drop of blood left in his worthless carcase. And now, Master
+Foy, I'm going to sleep, and God grant that those dirty Spanish dogs
+mayn't haunt me."
+
+"Don't you fear for that, Martin," said Foy as he took his departure,
+"_absolvo te_ for those Spaniards. Through your strength God smote them
+who were not ashamed to rob and insult a poor new widowed woman after
+helping to murder her husband. Yes, Martin, you may enter that on the
+right side of the ledger--for a change--for they won't haunt you at
+night. I'm more afraid lest the business should be traced home to us,
+but I don't think it likely since the street was quite empty."
+
+"Quite empty," echoed Martin nodding his head. "Nobody saw me except the
+two soldiers and Vrouw Jansen. They can't tell, and I'm sure that she
+won't. Good-night, my young master."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ADRIAN GOES OUT HAWKING
+
+In a house down a back street not very far from the Leyden prison, a man
+and a woman sat at breakfast on the morning following the burning of the
+Heer Jansen and his fellow martyr. These also we have met before, for
+they were none other than the estimable Black Meg and her companion,
+named the Butcher. Time, which had left them both strong and active, had
+not, it must be admitted, improved their personal appearance. Black Meg,
+indeed, was much as she had always been, except that her hair was now
+grey and her features, which seemed to be covered with yellow parchment,
+had become sharp and haglike, though her dark eyes still burned with
+their ancient fire. The man, Hague Simon, or the Butcher, scoundrel by
+nature and spy and thief by trade, one of the evil spawn of an age of
+violence and cruelty, boasted a face and form that became his reputation
+well. His countenance was villainous, very fat and flabby, with small,
+pig-like eyes, and framed, as it were, in a fringe of sandy-coloured
+whiskers, running from the throat to the temple, where they faded away
+into a great expanse of utterly bald head. The figure beneath was heavy,
+pot-haunched, and supported upon a pair of bowed but sturdy legs.
+
+But if they were no longer young, and such good looks as they
+ever possessed had vanished, the years had brought them certain
+compensations. Indeed, it was a period in which spies and all such
+wretches flourished, since, besides other pickings, by special enactment
+a good proportion of the realized estates of heretics was paid over to
+the informers as blood-money. Of course, however, humble tools like
+the Butcher and his wife did not get the largest joints of the heretic
+sheep, for whenever one was slaughtered, there were always many honest
+middlemen of various degree to be satisfied, from the judge down to the
+executioner, with others who never showed their faces.
+
+Still, when the burnings and torturings were brisk, the amount totalled
+up very handsomely. Thus, as the pair sat at their meal this morning,
+they were engaged in figuring out what they might expect to receive
+from the estate of the late Heer Jansen, or at least Black Meg was so
+employed with the help of a deal board and a bit of chalk. At last she
+announced the result, which was satisfactory. Simon held up his fat
+hands in admiration.
+
+"Clever little dove," he said, "you ought to have been a lawyer's wife
+with your head for figures. Ah! it grows near, it grows near."
+
+"What grows near, you fool?" asked Meg in her deep mannish voice.
+
+"That farm with an inn attached of which I dream, standing in rich
+pasture land with a little wood behind it, and in the wood a church. Not
+too large; no, I am not ambitious; let us say a hundred acres, enough
+to keep thirty or forty cows, which you would milk while I marketed the
+butter and the cheeses----"
+
+"And slit the throats of the guests," interpolated Meg.
+
+Simon looked shocked. "No, wife, you misjudge me. It is a rough
+world, and we must take queer cuts to fortune, but once I get there,
+respectability for me and a seat in the village church, provided, of
+course, that it is orthodox. I know that you come of the people,
+and your instincts are of the people, but I can never forget that my
+grandfather was a gentleman," and Simon puffed himself out and looked at
+the ceiling.
+
+"Indeed," sneered Meg, "and what was your grandmother, or, for the
+matter of that, how do you know who was your grandfather? Country house!
+The old Red Mill, where you hide goods out there in the swamp, is likely
+to be your only country house. Village church? Village gallows more
+likely. No, don't you look nasty at me, for I won't stand it, you dirty
+little liar. I have done things, I know; but I wouldn't have got my own
+aunt burned for an Anabaptist, which she wasn't, in order to earn twenty
+florins, so there."
+
+Simon turned purple with rage; that aunt story was one which touched him
+on the raw. "Ugly----" he began.
+
+Instantly Meg's hand shot out and grasped the neck of a bottle, whereon
+he changed his tune.
+
+"The sex, the sex!" he murmured, turning aside to mop his bald head with
+a napkin; "well, it's only their pretty way, they will have their little
+joke. Hullo, there is someone knocking at the door."
+
+"And mind how you open it," said Meg, becoming alert. "Remember we have
+plenty of enemies, and a pike blade comes through a small crack."
+
+"Can you live with the wise and remain a greenhorn? Trust me." And
+placing his arm about his spouse's waist, Simon stood on tiptoe and
+kissed her gently on the cheek in token of reconciliation, for Meg had a
+nasty memory in quarrels. Then he skipped away towards the door as fast
+as his bandy legs would carry him.
+
+The colloquy there was long and for the most part carried on through
+the keyhole, but in the end their visitor was admitted, a beetle-browed
+brute of much the same stamp as his host.
+
+"You are nice ones," he said sulkily, "to be so suspicious about an old
+friend, especially when he comes on a job."
+
+"Don't be angry, dear Hans," interrupted Simon in a pleading voice. "You
+know how many bad characters are abroad in these rough times; why,
+for aught we could tell, you might have been one of these desperate
+Lutherans, who stick at nothing. But about the business?"
+
+"Lutherans, indeed," snarled Hans; "well, if they are wise they'd stick
+at your fat stomach; but it is a Lutheran job that I have come from The
+Hague to talk about."
+
+"Ah!" said Meg, "who sent you?"
+
+"A Spaniard named Ramiro, who has recently turned up there, a humorous
+dog connected with the Inquisition, who seems to know everybody and whom
+nobody knows. However, his money is right enough, and no doubt he has
+authority behind him. He says that you are old friends of his."
+
+"Ramiro? Ramiro?" repeated Meg reflectively, "that means Oarsman,
+doesn't it, and sounds like an alias? Well, I've lots of acquaintances
+in the galleys, and he may be one of them. What does he want, and what
+are the terms?"
+
+Hans leant forward and whispered for a long while. The other two
+listened in silence, only nodding from time to time.
+
+"It doesn't seem much for the job," said Simon when Hans had finished.
+
+"Well, friend, it is easy and safe; a fat merchant and his wife and a
+young girl. Mind you, there is no killing to be done if we can help it,
+and if we can't help it the Holy Office will shield us. Also it is only
+the letter which he thinks that the young woman may carry that the noble
+Ramiro wants. Doubtless it has to do with the sacred affairs of the
+Church. Any valuables about them we may keep as a perquisite over and
+above the pay."
+
+Simon hesitated, but Meg announced with decision,
+
+"It is good enough; these merchant woman generally have jewels hidden in
+their stays."
+
+"My dear," interrupted Simon.
+
+"Don't 'my dear' me," said Meg fiercely. "I have made up my mind, so
+there's an end. We meet by the Boshhuysen at five o'clock at the big oak
+in the copse, where we will settle the details."
+
+After this Simon said no more, for he had this virtue, so useful in
+domestic life--he knew when to yield.
+
+
+
+On this same morning Adrian rose late. The talk at the supper table on
+the previous night, especially Foy's coarse, uneducated sarcasm, had
+ruffled his temper, and when Adrian's temper was ruffled he generally
+found it necessary to sleep himself into good humour. As the bookkeeper
+of the establishment, for his stepfather had never been able to induce
+him to take an active part in its work, which in his heart he considered
+beneath him, Adrian should have been in the office by nine o'clock. Not
+having risen before ten, however, nor eaten his breakfast until after
+eleven, this was clearly impossible. Then he remembered that here was a
+good chance of finishing a sonnet, of which the last lines were running
+in his head. It chanced that Adrian was a bit of a poet, and, like most
+poets, he found quiet essential to the art of composition. Somehow, when
+Foy was in the house, singing and talking, and that great Frisian brute,
+Martin, was tramping to and fro, there was never any quiet, for even
+when he could not hear them, the sense of their presence exasperated
+his nerves. So now was his opportunity, especially as his mother was
+out--marketing, she said--but in all probability engaged upon some
+wretched and risky business connected with the people whom she called
+martyrs. Adrian determined to avail himself of it and finish his sonnet.
+
+This took some time. First, as all true artists know, the Muse must be
+summoned, and she will rarely arrive under an hour's appropriate and
+gloomy contemplation of things in general. Then, especially in the case
+of sonnets, rhymes, which are stubborn and remorseless things, must be
+found and arranged. The pivot and object of this particular poem was a
+certain notable Spanish beauty, Isabella d'Ovanda by name. She was the
+wife of a decrepit but exceedingly noble Spaniard, who might almost
+have been her grandfather, and who had been sent as one of a commission
+appointed by King Philip II. to inquire into certain financial matters
+connected with the Netherlands.
+
+This grandee, who, as it happened, was a very industrious and
+conscientious person, among other cities, had visited Leyden in order to
+assess the value of the Imperial dues and taxes. The task did not take
+him long, because the burghers rudely and vehemently declared that under
+their ancient charter they were free from any Imperial dues or taxes
+whatsoever, nor could the noble marquis's arguments move them to a more
+rational view. Still, he argued for a week, and during that time his
+wife, the lovely Isabella, dazzled the women of the town with her
+costumes and the men with her exceedingly attractive person.
+
+Especially did she dazzle the romantic Adrian; hence the poetry. On the
+whole the rhymes went pretty well, though there were difficulties, but
+with industry he got round them. Finally the sonnet, a high-flown and
+very absurd composition, was completed.
+
+By now it was time to eat; indeed, there are few things that make a man
+hungrier than long-continued poetical exercise, so Adrian ate. In the
+midst of the meal his mother returned, pale and anxious-faced, for the
+poor woman had been engaged in making arrangements for the safety of the
+beggared widow of the martyred Jansen, a pathetic and even a dangerous
+task. In his own way Adrian was fond of his mother, but being a selfish
+puppy he took but little note of her cares or moods. Therefore, seizing
+the opportunity of an audience he insisted upon reading to her his
+sonnet, not once but several times.
+
+"Very pretty, my son, very pretty," murmured Lysbeth, through whose
+bewildered brain the stilted and meaningless words buzzed like bees in
+an empty hive, "though I am sure I cannot guess how you find the heart
+in such times as these to write poetry to fine ladies whom you do not
+know."
+
+"Poetry, mother," said Adrian sententiously, "is a great consoler; it
+lifts the mind from the contemplation of petty and sordid cares."
+
+"Petty and sordid cares!" repeated Lysbeth wonderingly, then she added
+with a kind of cry: "Oh! Adrian, have you no heart that you can watch
+a saint burn and come home to philosophise about his agonies? Will you
+never understand? If you could have seen that poor woman this morning
+who only three months ago was a happy bride." Then bursting into tears
+Lysbeth turned and fled from the room, for she remembered that what was
+the fate of the Vrouw Jansen to-day to-morrow might be her own.
+
+This show of emotion quite upset Adrian whose nerves were delicate,
+and who being honestly attached to his mother did not like to see her
+weeping.
+
+"Pest on the whole thing," he thought to himself, "why can't we go away
+and live in some pleasant place where they haven't got any religion,
+unless it is the worship of Venus? Yes, a place of orange groves, and
+running streams, and pretty women with guitars, who like having sonnets
+read to them, and----"
+
+At this moment the door opened and Martin's huge and flaming poll
+appeared.
+
+"The master wants to know if you are coming to the works, Heer Adrian,
+and if not will you be so good as to give me the key of the strong-box
+as he needs the cash book."
+
+With a groan Adrian rose to go, then changed his mind. No, after that
+perfumed vision of green groves and lovely ladies it was impossible for
+him to face the malodorous and prosaic foundry.
+
+"Tell them I can't come," he said, drawing the key from his pocket.
+
+"Very good, Heer Adrian, why not?"
+
+"Because I am writing."
+
+"Writing what?" queried Martin.
+
+"A sonnet."
+
+"What's a sonnet?" asked Martin blankly.
+
+"Ill-educated clown," murmured Adrian, then--with a sudden inspiration,
+"I'll show you what a sonnet is; I will read it to you. Come in and
+shut the door." Martin obeyed, and was duly rewarded with the sonnet, of
+which he understood nothing at all except the name of the lady, Isabella
+d'Ovanda. But Martin was not without the guile of the serpent.
+
+"Beautiful," he said, "beautiful! Read it again, master."
+
+Adrian did so with much delight, remembering the tale of how the music
+of Orpheus had charmed the very beasts.
+
+"Ah!" said Martin, "that's a love-letter, isn't it, to that splendid,
+black-eyed marchioness, whom I saw looking at you?"
+
+"Well, not exactly," said Adrian, highly pleased, although to tell the
+truth he could not recollect upon what occasion the fair Isabella had
+favoured him with her kind glances. "Yet I suppose that you might call
+it so, an idealised love-letter, a letter in which ardent and distant
+yet tender admiration is wrapt with the veil of verse."
+
+"Quite so. Well, Master Adrian, just you send it to her."
+
+"You don't think that she might be offended?" queried Adrian doubtfully.
+
+"Offended!" said Martin, "if she is I know nothing of women" (as a
+matter of fact he didn't.) "No, she will be very pleased; she'll take
+it away and read it by herself, and sleep with it under her pillow until
+she knows it by heart, and then I daresay she will ask you to come and
+see her. Well, I must be off, but thank you for reading me the beautiful
+poetry letter, Heer Adrian."
+
+"Really," reflected Adrian, as the door closed behind him, "this is
+another instance of the deceitfulness of appearances. I always thought
+Martin a great, brutal fool, yet in his breast, uncultured as it is, the
+sacred spark still smoulders." And then and there he made up his mind
+that he would read Martin a further selection of poems upon the first
+opportunity.
+
+If only Adrian could have been a witness to the scene which at that very
+moment was in progress at the works! Martin having delivered the key
+of the box, sought out Foy, and proceeded to tell him the story. More,
+perfidious one, he handed over a rough draft of the sonnet which he had
+surreptitiously garnered from the floor, to Foy, who, clad in a leather
+apron, and seated on the edge of a casting, read it eagerly.
+
+"I told him to send it," went on Martin, "and, by St. Peter, I think he
+will, and then if he doesn't have old Don Diaz after him with a pistol
+in one hand and a stiletto in the other, my name isn't Martin Roos."
+
+"Of course, of course," gasped Foy, kicking his legs into the air
+with delight, "why, they call the old fellow 'Singe jaloux.' Oh! it's
+capital, and I only hope that he opens the lady's letters."
+
+Thus did Foy, the commonplace and practical, make a mock of the poetic
+efforts of the high-souled and sentimental Adrian.
+
+Meanwhile Adrian, feeling that he required air after his literary
+labours, fetched his peregrine from its perch--for he was fond of
+hawking--and, setting it on his wrist, started out to find a quarry on
+the marshes near the town.
+
+Before he was halfway down the street he had forgotten all about the
+sonnet and the lovely Isabella. His was a curious temperament, and this
+sentimentality, born of vainness and idle hours, by no means expressed
+it all. That he was what we should nowadays call a prig we know, and
+also that he possessed his father's, Montalvo's, readiness of speech
+without his father's sense of humour. In him, as Martin had hinted, the
+strain of the sire predominated, for in all essentials Adrian was as
+Spanish in mind as in appearance.
+
+For instance, the sudden and violent passions into which he was apt to
+fall if thwarted or overlooked were purely Spanish; there seemed to be
+nothing of the patient, phlegmatic Netherlander about this side of him.
+Indeed it was this temper of his perhaps more than any other desire or
+tendency that made him so dangerous, for, whereas the impulses of his
+heart were often good enough, they were always liable to be perverted by
+some access of suddenly provoked rage.
+
+From his birth up Adrian had mixed little with Spaniards, and every
+influence about him, especially that of his mother, the being whom he
+most loved on earth, had been anti-Spanish, yet were he an hidalgo
+fresh from the Court at the Escurial, he could scarcely have been
+more Castilian. Thus he had been brought up in what might be called
+a Republican atmosphere, yet he was without sympathy for the love of
+liberty which animated the people of Holland. The sturdy independence
+of the Netherlanders, their perpetual criticism of kings and established
+rules, their vulgar and unheard-of assumption that the good things of
+the world were free to all honest and hard-working citizens, and not
+merely the birthright of blue blood, did not appeal to Adrian. Also from
+childhood he had been a member of the dissenting Church, one of the
+New Religion. Yet, at heart, he rejected this faith with its humble
+professors and pastors, its simple, and sometimes squalid rites; its
+long and earnest prayers offered to the Almighty in the damp of a cellar
+or the reek of a cowhouse.
+
+Like thousands of his Spanish fellow-countrymen, he was constitutionally
+unable to appreciate the fact that true religion and true faith are the
+natural fruits of penitence and effort, and that individual repentance
+and striving are the only sacrifices required of man.
+
+For safety's sake, like most politic Netherlanders, Adrian was called
+upon from time to time to attend worship in the Catholic churches. He
+did not find the obligation irksome. In fact, the forms and rites of
+that stately ceremonial, the moving picture of the Mass in those
+dim aisles, the pealing of the music and the sweet voices of hidden
+choristers--all these things unsealed a fountain in his bosom and at
+whiles moved him well nigh to tears. The system appealed to him also,
+and he could understand that in it were joy and comfort. For here was
+to be found forgiveness of sins, not far off in the heavens, but at hand
+upon the earth; forgiveness to all who bent the head and paid the fee.
+Here, ready made by that prince of armourers, a Church that claimed to
+be directly inspired, was a harness of proof which, after the death he
+dreaded (for he was full of spiritual fears and superstitions), would
+suffice to turn the shafts of Satan from his poor shivering soul,
+however steeped in crime. Was not this a more serviceable and practical
+faith than that of these loud-voiced, rude-handed Lutherans among whom
+he lived; men who elected to cast aside this armour and trust instead to
+a buckler forged by their faith and prayers--yes, and to give up their
+evil ways and subdue their own desires that they might forge it better?
+
+Such were the thoughts of Adrian's secret heart, but as yet he had never
+acted on them, since, however much he might wish to do so, he had not
+found the courage to break away from the influence of his surroundings.
+His surroundings--ah! how he hated them! How he hated them! For very
+shame's sake, indeed, he could not live in complete idleness among
+folk who were always busy, therefore he acted as accountant in his
+stepfather's business, keeping the books of the foundry in a scanty and
+inefficient fashion, or writing letters to distant customers, for he was
+a skilled clerk, to order the raw materials necessary to the craft. But
+of this occupation he was weary, for he had the true Spanish dislike and
+contempt of trade. In his heart he held that war was the only occupation
+worthy of a man, successful war, of course, against foes worth
+plundering, such as Cortes and Pizarro had waged upon the poor Indians
+of New Spain.
+
+Adrian had read a chronicle of the adventures of these heroes, and
+bitterly regretted that he had come into the world too late to share
+them. The tale of heathen foemen slaughtered by thousands, and of the
+incalculable golden treasures divided among their conquerors, fired his
+imagination--especially the treasures. At times he would see them in his
+sleep, baskets full of gems, heaps of barbaric gold and guerdon of
+fair women slaves, all given by heaven to the true soldier whom it had
+charged with the sacred work of Christianising unbelievers by means of
+massacre and the rack.
+
+Oh! how deeply did he desire such wealth and the power which it would
+bring with it; he who was dependent upon others that looked down upon
+him as a lazy dreamer, who had never a guilder to spare in his pouch,
+who had nothing indeed but more debts than he cared to remember. But it
+never occurred to him to set to work and grow rich like his neighbours
+by honest toil and commerce. No, that was the task of slaves, like these
+low Hollander fellows among whom his lot was cast.
+
+Such were the main characteristics of Adrian, surnamed van Goorl; Adrian
+the superstitious but unspiritual dreamer, the vain Sybarite, the dull
+poet, the chopper of false logic, the weak and passionate self-seeker,
+whose best and deepest cravings, such as his love for his mother and
+another love that shall be told of, were really little more than a
+reflection of his own pride and lusts, or at least could be subordinated
+to their fulfilment. Not that he was altogether bad; somewhere in him
+there was a better part. Thus: he was capable of good purposes and of
+bitter remorse; under certain circumstances even he might become capable
+also of a certain spurious spiritual exaltation. But if this was to
+bloom in his heart, it must be in a prison strong enough to protect from
+the blows of temptation. Adrian tempted would always be Adrian overcome.
+He was fashioned by nature to be the tool of others or of his own
+desires.
+
+It may be asked what part had his mother in him; where in his weak
+ignoble nature was the trace of her pure and noble character? It seems
+hard to find. Was this want to be accounted for by the circumstances
+connected with his birth, in which she had been so unwilling an agent?
+Had she given him something of her body but naught of that which was
+within her own control--her spirit? Who can say? This at least is true,
+that from his mother's stock he had derived nothing beyond a certain
+Dutch doggedness of purpose which, when added to his other qualities,
+might in some events make him formidable--a thing to fear and flee from.
+
+
+
+Adrian reached the Witte Poort, and paused on this side of the moat to
+reflect about things in general. Like most young men of his time and
+blood, as has been said, he had military leanings, and was convinced
+that, given the opportunity, he might become one of the foremost
+generals of his age. Now he was engaged in imagining himself besieging
+Leyden at the head of a great army, and in fancy disposing his forces
+after such fashion as would bring about its fall in the shortest
+possible time. Little did he guess that within some few years this very
+question was to exercise the brain of Valdez and other great Spanish
+captains.
+
+Whilst he was thus occupied suddenly a rude voice called,
+
+"Wake up, Spaniard," and a hard object--it was a green apple--struck
+him on his flat cap nearly knocking out the feather. Adrian leaped
+round with an oath, to catch sight of two lads, louts of about fifteen,
+projecting their tongues and jeering at him from behind the angles of
+the gate-house. Now Adrian was not popular with the youth of Leyden,
+and he knew it well. So, thinking it wisest to take no notice of this
+affront, he was about to continue on his way when one of the youths,
+made bold by impunity, stepped from his corner and bowed before him till
+the ragged cap in his hand touched the dust, saying, in a mocking voice,
+
+"Hans, why do you disturb the noble hidalgo? Cannot you see that the
+noble hidalgo is going for a walk in the country to look for his most
+high father, the honourable duke of the Golden Fleece, to whom he is
+taking a cockolly bird as a present?"
+
+Adrian heard and winced at the sting of the insult, as a high-bred horse
+winces beneath the lash. Of a sudden rage boiled in his veins like a
+fountain of fire, and drawing the dagger from his girdle, he rushed at
+the boys, dragging the hooded hawk, which had become dislodged from his
+wrist, fluttering through the air after him. At that moment, indeed, he
+would have been capable of killing one or both of them if he could have
+caught them, but, fortunately for himself and them, being prepared
+for an onslaught, they vanished this way and that up the narrow lanes.
+Presently he stopped, and, still shaking with wrath, replaced the hawk
+on his wrist and walked across the bridge.
+
+"They shall pay for it," he muttered. "Oh! I will not forget, I will not
+forget."
+
+Here it may be explained that of the story of his birth Adrian had heard
+something, but not all. He knew, for instance, that his father's name
+was Montalvo, that the marriage with his mother for some reason was
+declared to be illegal, and that this Montalvo had left the Netherlands
+under a cloud to find his death, so he had been told, abroad. More than
+this Adrian did not know for certain, since everybody showed a singular
+reticence in speaking to him of the matter. Twice he had plucked up
+courage to question his mother on the subject, and on each occasion her
+face had turned cold and hard as stone, and she answered almost in the
+same words:
+
+"Son, I beg you to be silent. When I am dead you will find all the story
+of your birth written down, but if you are wise you will not read."
+
+Once he had asked the same question of his stepfather, Dirk van Goorl,
+whereupon Dirk looked ill at ease and answered:
+
+"Take my advice, lad, and be content to know that you are here and
+alive with friends to take care of you. Remember that those who dig in
+churchyards find bones."
+
+"Indeed," replied Adrian haughtily; "at least I trust that there is
+nothing against my mother's reputation."
+
+At these words, to his surprise, Dirk suddenly turned pale as a sheet
+and stepped towards him as though he were about to fly at his throat.
+
+"You dare to doubt your mother," he began, "that angel out of Heaven--"
+then ceased and added presently, "Go! I beg your pardon; I should have
+remembered that you at least are innocent, and it is but natural that
+the matter weighs upon your mind."
+
+So Adrian went, also that proverb about churchyards and bones made such
+an impression on him that he did no more digging. In other words he
+ceased to ask questions, trying to console his mind with the knowledge
+that, however his father might have behaved to his mother, at least he
+was a man of ancient rank and ancient blood, which blood was his to-day.
+The rest would be forgotten, although enough of it was still remembered
+to permit of his being taunted by those street louts, and when it was
+forgotten the blood, that precious blue blood of an hidalgo of Spain,
+must still remain his heritage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ADRIAN RESCUES BEAUTY IN DISTRESS
+
+All that long evening Adrian wandered about the causeways which pierced
+the meadowlands and marshes, pondering these things and picturing
+himself as having attained to the dignity of a grandee of Spain, perhaps
+even--who could tell--to the proud rank of a Knight of the Golden Fleece
+entitled to stand covered in the presence of his Sovereign. More than
+one snipe and other bird such as he had come to hawk rose at his feet,
+but so preoccupied was he that they were out of flight before he
+could unhood his falcon. At length, after he had passed the church of
+Weddinvliet, and, following the left bank of the Old Vliet, was opposite
+to the wood named Boshhuyen after the half-ruined castle that stood in
+it, he caught sight of a heron winging its homeward way to the heronry,
+and cast off his peregrine out of the hood. She saw the quarry at once
+and dashed towards it, whereon the heron, becoming aware of the approach
+of its enemy, began to make play, rising high into the air in narrow
+circles. Swiftly the falcon climbed after it in wider rings till at
+length she hovered high above and stooped, but in vain. With a quick
+turn of the wings the heron avoided her, and before the falcon could
+find her pitch again, was far on its path towards the wood.
+
+Once more the peregrine climbed and stooped with a like result. A
+third time she soared upwards in great circles, and a third time rushed
+downwards, now striking the quarry full and binding to it. Adrian, who
+was following their flight as fast as he could run, leaping some of the
+dykes in his path and splashing through others, saw and paused to watch
+the end. For a moment hawk and quarry hung in the air two hundred feet
+above the tallest tree beneath them, for at the instant of its taking
+the heron had begun to descend to the grove for refuge, a struggling
+black dot against the glow of sunset. Then, still bound together, they
+rushed downward headlong, for their spread and fluttering wings did not
+serve to stay their fall, and vanished among the tree-tops.
+
+"Now my good hawk will be killed in the boughs--oh! what a fool was I
+to fly so near the wood," thought Adrian to himself as again he started
+forward.
+
+Pushing on at his best pace, soon he was wandering about among the trees
+as near to that spot where he had seen the birds fall as he could guess
+it, calling to the falcon and searching for her with his eyes. But here,
+in the dense grove, the fading light grew faint, so that at length he
+was obliged to abandon the quest in despair, and turned to find his way
+to the Leyden road. When within twenty paces of it, suddenly he came
+upon hawk and heron. The heron was stone dead, and the brave falcon so
+injured that it seemed hopeless to try to save her, for as he feared,
+they had crashed through the boughs of a tree in their fall. Adrian
+looked at her in dismay, for he loved this bird, which was the best of
+its kind in the city, having trained her himself from a nestling. Indeed
+there had always been a curious sympathy between himself and this fierce
+creature of which he made a companion as another man might of a dog.
+Even now he noted with a sort of pride that broken-winged and shattered
+though she was, her talons remained fixed in the back of the quarry, and
+her beak through the neck.
+
+He stroked the falcon's head, whereon the bird, recognising him, loosed
+her grip of the heron and tried to flutter to her accustomed perch upon
+his wrist, only to fall to the ground, where she lay watching him with
+her bright eyes. Then, because there was no help for it, although he
+choked with grief at the deed, Adrian struck her on the head with his
+staff until she died.
+
+"Goodbye, friend," he muttered; "at least that is the best way to go
+hence, dying with a dead foe beneath," and, picking up the peregrine, he
+smoothed her ruffled feathers and placed her tenderly in his satchel.
+
+Then it was, just as Adrian rose to his feet, standing beneath the
+shadow of the big oak upon which the birds had fallen, that coming from
+the road, which was separated from him by a little belt of undergrowth,
+he heard the sound of men's voices growling and threatening, and with
+them a woman's cry for help. At any other time he would have hesitated
+and reconnoitred, or, perhaps, have retreated at once, for he knew well
+the dangers of mixing himself up in the quarrels of wayfarers in those
+rough days. But the loss of the hawk had exasperated his nerves, making
+any excitement or adventure welcome to him. Therefore, without pausing
+to think, Adrian pushed forward through the brushwood to find himself in
+the midst of a curious scene.
+
+Before him ran the grassy road or woodland lane. In the midst of it,
+sprawling on his back, for he had been pulled from his horse, lay
+a stout burgher, whose pockets were being rifled by a heavy-browed
+footpad, who from time to time, doubtless to keep him quiet, threatened
+his victim with a knife. On the pillion of the burgher's thickset
+Flemish horse, which was peacefully cropping at the grass, sat a
+middle-aged female, who seemed to be stricken dumb with terror, while a
+few paces away a second ruffian and a tall, bony woman were engaged in
+dragging a girl from the back of a mule.
+
+Acting on the impulse of the moment, Adrian shouted,
+
+"Come on, friends, here are the thieves," whereon the robber woman took
+to flight and the man wheeled round, as he turned snatching a naked
+knife from his girdle. But before he could lift it Adrian's heavy staff
+crashed down upon the point of his shoulder, causing him to drop the
+dagger with a howl of pain. Again the staff rose and fell, this time
+upon his head, staggering him and knocking off his cap, so that the
+light, such as it was, shone upon his villainous fat face, the fringe of
+sandy-coloured whisker running from throat to temples, and the bald
+head above, which Adrian knew at once for that of Hague Simon, or the
+Butcher. Fortunately for him, however, the Butcher was too surprised,
+or too much confused by the blow which he had received upon his head,
+to recognise his assailant. Nor, having lost his knife, and believing
+doubtless that Adrian was only the first of a troop of rescuers, did he
+seem inclined to continue the combat, but, calling to his companion
+to follow him, he began to run after the woman with a swiftness almost
+incredible in a man of his build and weight, turning presently into the
+brushwood, where he and his two fellow thieves vanished away.
+
+Adrian dropped the point of his stick and looked round him, for the
+whole affair had been so sudden, and the rout of the enemy so complete,
+that he was tempted to believe he must be dreaming. Not eighty seconds
+ago he was hiding the dead falcon in his satchel, and now behold! he was
+a gallant knight who, unarmed, except for a dagger, which he forgot to
+draw, had conquered two sturdy knaves and a female accomplice, bristling
+with weapons, rescuing from their clutches Beauty (for doubtless the
+maiden was beautiful), and, incidentally, her wealthy relatives. Just
+then the lady, who had been dragged from the mule to the ground, where
+she still lay, struggled to her knees and looked up, thereby causing the
+hood of her travelling cloak to fall back from her head.
+
+Thus it was, softened and illuminated by the last pale glow of this
+summer evening, that Adrian first saw the face of Elsa Brant, the woman
+upon whom, in the name of love, he was destined to bring so much sorrow.
+
+The hero Adrian, overthrower of robbers, looked at the kneeling Elsa,
+and knew that she was lovely, as, under the circumstances, was right and
+fitting, and the rescued Elsa, gazing at the hero Adrian, admitted to
+herself that he was handsome, also that his appearance on the scene had
+been opportune, not to say providential.
+
+Elsa Brant, the only child of that Hendrik Brant, the friend and cousin
+of Dirk van Goorl, who was already figured in this history, was
+just nineteen. Her eyes, and her hair which curled, were brown, her
+complexion was pale, suggesting delicacy of constitution, her mouth
+small, with a turn of humour about it, and her chin rather large and
+firm. She was of middle height, if anything somewhat under it, with an
+exquisitely rounded and graceful figure and perfect hands. Lacking the
+stateliness of a Spanish beauty, and the coarse fulness of outline which
+has always been admired in the Netherlands, Elsa was still without doubt
+a beautiful woman, though how much of her charm was owing to her bodily
+attractions, and how much to her vivacious mien and to a certain stamp
+of spirituality that was set upon her face in repose, and looked out of
+her clear large eyes when she was thoughtful, it would not be easy to
+determine. At any rate, her charms were sufficient to make a powerful
+impression upon Adrian, who, forgetting all about the Marchioness
+d'Ovanda, inspirer of sonnets, became enamoured of her then and there;
+partly for her own sake and partly because it was the right kind of
+thing for a deliverer to do.
+
+But it cannot be said, however deep her feelings of gratitude, that Elsa
+became enamoured of Adrian. Undoubtedly, as she had recognised, he was
+handsome, and she much admired the readiness and force with which he had
+smitten that singularly loathsome-looking individual who had dragged her
+from the mule. But as it chanced, standing where he did, the shadow of
+his face lay on the grass beside her. It was a faint shadow, for the
+light faded, still it was there, and it fascinated her, for seen thus
+the fine features became sinister and cruel, and their smile of courtesy
+and admiration was transformed into a most unpleasant sneer. A trivial
+accident of light, no doubt, and foolish enough that Elsa should notice
+it under such circumstances. But notice it she did, and what is more,
+so quickly are the minds of women turned this way or that, and so
+illogically do they draw a right conclusion from some pure freak of
+chance, it raised her prejudice against him.
+
+"Oh! Senor," said Elsa, clasping her hands, "how can I thank you
+enough?"
+
+This speech was short and not original. Yet there were two things about
+it that Adrian noted with satisfaction; first, that it was uttered in a
+soft and most attractive voice, and secondly, that the speaker supposed
+him to be a Spaniard of noble birth.
+
+"Do not thank me at all, gracious lady," he replied, making his lowest
+bow. "To put to flight two robber rogues and a woman was no great feat,
+although I had but this staff for weapon," he added, perhaps with a view
+to impressing upon the maiden's mind that her assailants had been armed
+while he, the deliverer, was not.
+
+"Ah!" she answered, "I daresay that a brave knight like you thinks
+nothing of fighting several men at once, but when that wretch with the
+big hands and the flat face caught hold of me I nearly died of fright.
+At the best of times I am a dreadful coward, and--no, I thank you,
+Senor, I can stand now and alone. See, here comes the Heer van
+Broekhoven under whose escort I am travelling, and look, he is bleeding.
+Oh! worthy friend, are you hurt?"
+
+"Not much, Elsa," gasped the Heer, for he was still breathless with
+fright and exhaustion, "but that ruffian--may the hangman have him--gave
+me a dig in the shoulder with his knife as he rose to run. However,"
+he added with satisfaction, "he got nothing from me, for I am an old
+traveller, and he never thought to look in my hat."
+
+"I wonder why they attacked us," said Elsa.
+
+The Heer van Broekhoven rubbed his head thoughtfully. "To rob us, I
+suppose, for I heard the woman say, 'Here they are; look for the letter
+on the girl, Butcher.'"
+
+As he spoke Elsa's face turned grave, and Adrian saw her glance at the
+animal she had been riding and slip her arm through its rein.
+
+"Worthy sir," went on Van Broekhoven, "tell us whom we have to thank."
+
+"I am Adrian, called Van Goorl," Adrian replied with dignity.
+
+"Van Goorl!" said the Heer. "Well, this is strange; Providence could not
+have arranged it better. Listen, wife," he went on, addressing the stout
+lady, who all this while had sat still upon the horse, so alarmed and
+bewildered that she could not speak, "here is a son of Dirk van Goorl,
+to whom we are charged to deliver Elsa."
+
+"Indeed," answered the good woman, recovering herself somewhat, "I
+thought from the look of him that he was a Spanish nobleman. But whoever
+he is I am sure that we are all very much obliged to him, and if he
+could show us the way out of this dreadful wood, which doubtless is full
+of robbers, to the house of our kinsfolk, the Broekhovens of Leyden, I
+should be still more grateful."
+
+"Madam, you have only to accept my escort, and I assure you that you
+need fear no more robbers. Might I in turn ask this lady's name?"
+
+"Certainly, young sir, she is Elsa Brant, the only child of Hendrik
+Brant, the famous goldsmith of The Hague, but doubtless now that you
+know her name you know all that also, for she must be some kind of
+cousin to you. Husband, help Elsa on to her mule."
+
+"Let that be my duty," said Adrian, and, springing forward, he lifted
+Elsa to the saddle gracefully enough. Then, taking her mule by the
+bridle, he walked onwards through the wood praying in his heart that the
+Butcher and his companions would not find courage to attack them again
+before they were out of its depths.
+
+"Tell me, sir, are you Foy?" asked Elsa in a puzzled voice.
+
+"No," answered Adrian, shortly, "I am his brother."
+
+"Ah! that explains it. You see I was perplexed, for I remember Foy when
+I was quite little; a beautiful boy, with blue eyes and yellow hair, who
+was always very kind to me. Once he stopped at my father's house at The
+Hague with his father."
+
+"Indeed," said Adrian, "I am glad to hear that Foy was ever beautiful.
+I can only remember that he was very stupid, for I used to try to teach
+him. At any rate, I am afraid you will not think him beautiful now--that
+is, unless you admire young men who are almost as broad as they are
+long."
+
+"Oh! Heer Adrian," she answered, laughing, "I am afraid that fault
+can be found with most of us North Holland folk, and myself among
+the number. You see it is given to very few of us to be tall and
+noble-looking like high-born Spaniards--not that I should wish to
+resemble any Spaniard, however lovely she might be," Elsa added, with a
+slight hardening of her voice and face. "But," she went on hurriedly,
+as though sorry that the remark had escaped her, "you, sir, and Foy are
+strangely unlike to be brothers; is it not so?"
+
+"We are half-brothers," said Adrian looking straight before him; "we
+have the same mother only; but please do not call me 'sir,' call me
+'cousin.'"
+
+"No, I cannot do that," she replied gaily, "for Foy's mother is no
+relation of mine. I think that I must call you 'Sir Prince,' for, you
+see, you appeared at exactly the right time; just like the Prince in the
+fairy-tales, you know."
+
+Here was an opening not to be neglected by a young man of Adrian's
+stamp.
+
+"Ah!" he said in a tender voice, and looking up at the lady with his
+dark eyes, "that is a happy name indeed. I would ask no better lot
+than to be your Prince, now and always charged to defend you from every
+danger." (Here, it may be explained, that, however exaggerated his
+language, Adrian honestly meant what he said, seeing that already he was
+convinced that to be the husband of the beautiful heiress of one of the
+wealthiest men in the Netherlands would be a very satisfactory walk in
+life for a young man in his position.)
+
+"Oh! Sir Prince," broke in Elsa hurriedly, for her cavalier's ardour was
+somewhat embarrassing, "you are telling the story wrong; the tale I mean
+did not go on like that at all. Don't you remember? The hero rescued the
+lady and handed her over--to--to--her father."
+
+"Of whom I think he came to claim her afterwards," replied Adrian with
+another languishing glance, and a smile of conscious vanity at the
+neatness of his answer. Their glances met, and suddenly Adrian became
+aware that Elsa's face had undergone a complete change. The piquante,
+half-amused smile had passed out of it; it was strained and hard and the
+eyes were frightened.
+
+"Oh! now I understand the shadow--how strange," she exclaimed in a new
+voice.
+
+"What is the matter? What is strange?" he asked.
+
+"Oh!--only that your face reminded me so much of a man of whom I am
+terrified. No, no, I am foolish, it is nothing, those footpads have
+upset me. Praise be to God that we are out of that dreadful wood! Look,
+neighbour Broekhoven, here is Leyden before us. Are not those red roofs
+pretty in the twilight, and how big the churches seem. See, too, there
+is water all round the walls; it must be a very strong town. I should
+think that even the Spaniards could not take it, and oh! I am sure that
+it would be a good thing if we might find a city which we were quite,
+quite certain the Spaniards could never take--all, all of us," and she
+sighed heavily.
+
+"If I were a Spanish general with a proper army," began Adrian
+pompously, "I would take Leyden easily enough. Only this afternoon I
+studied its weak spots, and made a plan of attack which could scarcely
+fail, seeing that the place would only be defended by a mob of
+untrained, half-armed burghers."
+
+Again that curious look returned into Elsa's eyes.
+
+"If you were a Spanish general," she said slowly. "How can you jest
+about such a thing as the sacking of a town by Spaniards? Do you know
+what it means? That is how they talk; I have heard them," and she
+shuddered, then went on: "You are not a Spaniard, are you, sir, that you
+can speak like that?" And without waiting for an answer Elsa urged her
+mule forward, leaving him a little behind.
+
+Presently as they passed through the Witte Poort, he was at her side
+again and chatting to her, but although she replied courteously enough,
+he felt that an invisible barrier had arisen between them. Yes, she
+had read his secret heart; it was as though she had been a party to his
+thoughts when he stood by the bridge this afternoon designing plans
+for the taking of Leyden, and half wishing that he might share in its
+capture. She mistrusted him, and was half afraid of him, and Adrian knew
+that it was so.
+
+Ten minutes' ride through the quiet town, for in those days of terror
+and suspicion unless business took them abroad people did not frequent
+the streets much after sundown, brought the party to the van Goorl's
+house in the Bree Straat. Here Adrian dismounted and tried to open
+the door, only to find that it was locked and barred. This seemed to
+exasperate a temper already somewhat excited by the various events and
+experiences of the day, and more especially by the change in Elsa's
+manner; at any rate he used the knocker with unnecessary energy. After
+a while, with much turning of keys and drawing of bolts, the door was
+opened, revealing Dirk, his stepfather, standing in the passage, candle
+in hand, while behind, as though to be ready for any emergency, loomed
+the great stooping shape of Red Martin.
+
+"Is that you, Adrian?" asked Dirk in a voice at once testy and relieved.
+"Then why did you not come to the side entrance instead of forcing us to
+unbar here?"
+
+"Because I bring you a guest," replied Adrian pointing to Elsa and her
+companions. "It did not occur to me that you would wish guests to be
+smuggled in by a back door as though--as though they were ministers of
+our New Religion."
+
+The bow had been drawn at a venture but the shaft went home, for Dirk
+started and whispered: "Be silent, fool." Then he added aloud, "Guest!
+What guest?"
+
+"It is I, cousin Dirk, I, Elsa, Hendrik Brant's daughter," she said,
+sliding from her mule.
+
+"Elsa Brant!" ejaculated Dirk. "Why, how came you here?"
+
+"I will tell you presently," she answered; "I cannot talk in the
+street," and she touched her lips with her finger. "These are my
+friends, the van Broekhovens, under whose escort I have travelled from
+The Hague. They wish to go on to the house of their relations, the other
+Broekhovens, if some one will show them the way."
+
+Then followed greetings and brief explanations. After these the
+Broekhovens departed to the house of their relatives, under the care of
+Martin, while, its saddle having been removed and carried into the house
+at Elsa's express request, Adrian led the mule round to the stable.
+
+
+
+When Dirk had kissed and welcomed his young cousin he ushered her, still
+accompanied by the saddle, into the room where his wife and Foy were at
+supper, and with them the Pastor Arentz, that clergyman who had preached
+to them on the previous night. Here he found Lysbeth, who had risen from
+the table anxiously awaiting his return. So dreadful were the times that
+a knocking on the door at an unaccustomed hour was enough to throw those
+within into a paroxysm of fear, especially if at the moment they chanced
+to be harbouring a pastor of the New Faith, a crime punishable with
+death. That sound might mean nothing more than a visit from a neighbour,
+or it might be the trump of doom to every soul within the house,
+signifying the approach of the familiars of the Inquisition and of a
+martyr's crown. Therefore Lysbeth uttered a sigh of joy when her husband
+appeared, followed only by a girl.
+
+"Wife," he said, "here is our cousin, Elsa Brant, come to visit us from
+The Hague, though why I know not as yet. You remember Elsa, the little
+Elsa, with whom we used to play so many years ago."
+
+"Yes, indeed," answered Lysbeth, as she put her arms about her and
+embraced her, saying, "welcome, child, though," she added, glancing at
+her, "you should no longer be called child who have grown into so fair
+a maid. But look, here is the Pastor Arentz, of whom you may have heard,
+for he is the friend of your father and of us all."
+
+"In truth, yes," answered Elsa curtseying, a salute which Arentz
+acknowledged by saying gravely,
+
+"Daughter, I greet you in the name of the Lord, who has brought you to
+this house safely, for which give thanks."
+
+"Truly, Pastor, I have need to do so since--" and suddenly she stopped,
+for her eyes met those of Foy, who was gazing at her with such wonder
+and admiration stamped upon his open face that Elsa coloured at the
+sight. Then, recovering herself, she held out her hand, saying, "Surely
+you are my cousin Foy; I should have known you again anywhere by your
+hair and eyes."
+
+"I am glad," he answered simply, for it flattered him to think that this
+beautiful young lady remembered her old playmate, whom she had not seen
+for at least eleven years, adding, "but I do not think I should have
+known you."
+
+"Why?" she asked, "have I changed so much?"
+
+"Yes," Foy answered bluntly, "you used to be a thin little girl with red
+arms, and now you are the most lovely maiden I ever saw."
+
+At this speech everybody laughed, including the Pastor, while Elsa,
+reddening still more, replied, "Cousin, I remember that _you_ used to be
+rude, but now you have learned to flatter, which is worse. Nay, I beg of
+you, spare me," for Foy showed signs of wishing to argue the point. Then
+turning from him she slipped off her cloak and sat down on the chair
+which Dirk had placed for her at the table, reflecting in her heart that
+she wished it had been Foy who rescued her from the wood thieves, and
+not the more polished Adrian.
+
+Afterwards as the meal went on she told the tale of their adventure.
+Scarcely was it done when Adrian entered the room. The first thing
+he noticed was that Elsa and Foy were seated side by side, engaged in
+animated talk, and the second, that there was no cover for him at the
+table.
+
+"Have I your permission to sit down, mother?" he asked in a loud voice,
+for no one had seen him come in.
+
+"Certainly, son, why not?" answered Lysbeth, kindly. Adrian's voice
+warned her that his temper was ruffled.
+
+"Because there is no place for me, mother, that is all, though doubtless
+it is more worthily filled by the Rev. Pastor Arentz. Still, after a man
+has been fighting for his life with armed thieves, well--a bit of food
+and a place to eat it in would have been welcome."
+
+"Fighting for your life, son!" said Lysbeth astonished. "Why, from what
+Elsa has just been telling us, I gathered that the rascals ran away at
+the first blow which you struck with your staff."
+
+"Indeed, mother; well, doubtless if the lady says that, it was so. I
+took no great note; at the least they ran and she was saved, with the
+others; a small service not worth mentioning, still useful in its way."
+
+"Oh! take my chair, Adrian," said Foy rising, "and don't make such a
+stir about a couple of cowardly footpads and an old hag. You don't want
+us to think you a hero because you didn't turn tail and leave Elsa and
+her companions in their hands, do you?"
+
+"What you think, or do not think, is a matter of indifference to me,"
+replied Adrian, seating himself with an injured air.
+
+"Whatever my cousin Foy may think, Heer Adrian," broke in Elsa
+anxiously, "I am sure I thank God who sent so brave a gentleman to help
+us. Yes, yes, I mean it, for it makes me sick to remember what might
+have happened if you had not rushed at those wicked men like--like----"
+
+"Like David on the Philistines," suggested Foy.
+
+"You should study your Bible, lad," put in Arentz with a grave smile.
+"It was Samson who slew the Philistines; David conquered the giant
+Goliath, though it is true that he also was a Philistine."
+
+"Like Samson--I mean David--on Goliath," continued Elsa confusedly. "Oh!
+please, cousin Foy, do not laugh; I believe that you would have left me
+at the mercy of that dreadful man with a flat face and the bald head,
+who was trying to steal my father's letter. By the way, cousin Dirk,
+I have not given it to you yet, but it is quite safe, sewn up in the
+lining of the saddle, and I was to tell you that you must read it by the
+old cypher."
+
+"Man with a flat face," said Dirk anxiously, as he slit away at the
+stitches of the saddle to find the letter; "tell me about him. What was
+he like, and what makes you think he wished to take the paper from you?"
+
+So Elsa described the appearance of the man and of the black-eyed hag,
+his companion, and repeated also the words that the Heer van Broekhoven
+had heard the woman utter before the attack took place.
+
+"That sounds like the spy, Hague Simon, him whom they call the Butcher,
+and his wife, Black Meg," said Dirk. "Adrian, you must have seen these
+people, was it they?"
+
+For a moment Adrian considered whether he should tell the truth; then,
+for certain reasons of his own, decided that he would not. Black Meg, it
+may be explained, in the intervals of graver business was not averse to
+serving as an emissary of Venus. In short, she arranged assignations,
+and Adrian was fond of assignations. Hence his reticence.
+
+"How should I know?" he answered, after a pause; "the place was gloomy,
+and I have only set eyes upon Hague Simon and his wife about twice in my
+life."
+
+"Softly, brother," said Foy, "and stick to the truth, however gloomy the
+wood may have been. You know Black Meg pretty well at any rate, for I
+have often seen you--" and he stopped suddenly, as though sorry that the
+words had slipped from his tongue.
+
+"Adrian, is this so?" asked Dirk in the silence which followed.
+
+"No, stepfather," answered Adrian.
+
+"You hear," said Dirk addressing Foy. "In future, son, I trust that you
+will be more careful with your words. It is no charge to bring lightly
+against a man that he has been seen in the fellowship of one of the most
+infamous wretches in Leyden, a creature whose hands are stained red with
+the blood of innocent men and women, and who, as your mother knows, once
+brought me near to the scaffold."
+
+Suddenly the laughing boyish look passed out of the face of Foy, and it
+grew stern.
+
+"I am sorry for my words," he said, "since Black Meg does other things
+besides spying, and Adrian may have had business of his own with her
+which is no affair of mine. But, as they are spoke, I can't eat them, so
+you must decide which of us is--not truthful."
+
+"Nay, Foy, nay," interposed Arentz, "do not put it thus. Doubtless there
+is some mistake, and have I not told you before that you are over rash
+of tongue?"
+
+"Yes, and a great many other things," answered Foy, "every one of them
+true, for I am a miserable sinner. Well, all right, there is a mistake,
+and it is," he added, with an air of radiant innocency that somehow was
+scarcely calculated to deceive, "that I was merely poking a stick into
+Adrian's temper. I never saw him talking to Black Meg. Now, are you
+satisfied?"
+
+Then the storm broke, as Elsa, who had been watching the face of Adrian
+while he listened to Foy's artless but somewhat fatuous explanation, saw
+that it must break.
+
+"There is a conspiracy against me," said Adrian, who had grown white
+with rage; "yes, everything has conspired against me to-day. First the
+ragamuffins in the street make a mock of me, and then my hawk is killed.
+Next it chances that I rescue this lady and her companions from robbers
+in the wood. But, do I get any thanks for this? No, I come home to find
+that I am so much forgotten that no place is even laid for me at table;
+more, to be jeered at for the humble services that I have done. Lastly,
+I have the lie given to me, and without reproach, by my brother, who,
+were he not my brother, should answer for it at the sword's point."
+
+"Oh! Adrian, Adrian," broke in Foy, "don't be a fool; stop before you
+say something you will be sorry for."
+
+"That isn't all," went on Adrian, taking no heed. "Whom do I find at
+this table? The worthy Heer Arentz, a minister of the New Religion.
+Well, I protest. I belong to the New Religion myself, having been
+brought up in that faith, but it must be well known that the presence of
+a pastor here in our house exposes everybody to the risk of death. If
+my stepfather and Foy choose to take that risk, well and good, but I
+maintain that they have no right to lay its consequences upon my mother,
+whose eldest son I am, nor even upon myself."
+
+Now Dirk rose and tapped Adrian on the shoulder. "Young man," he said
+coldly and with glittering eyes, "listen to me. The risks which I and
+my son, Foy, and my wife, your mother, take, we run for conscience sake.
+You have nothing to do with them, it is our affair. But since you have
+raised the question, if your faith is not strong enough to support you
+I acknowledge that I have no right to bring you into danger. Look you,
+Adrian, you are no son of mine; in you I have neither part nor lot, yet
+I have cared for you and supported you since you were born under very
+strange and unhappy circumstances. Yes, you have shared whatever I had
+to give with my own son, without preference or favour, and should have
+shared it even after my death. And now, if these are your opinions, I am
+tempted to say to you that the world is wide and that, instead of idling
+here upon my bounty, you would do well to win your own way through it as
+far from Leyden as may please you."
+
+"You throw your benefits in my teeth, and reproach me with my birth,"
+broke in Adrian, who by now was almost raving with passion, "as though
+it were a crime in me to have other blood running in my veins than that
+of Netherlander tradesfolk. Well, if so, it would seem that the crime
+was my mother's, and not mine, who----"
+
+"Adrian, Adrian!" cried Foy, in warning, but the madman heeded not.
+
+"Who," he went on furiously, "was content to be the companion, for
+I understand that she was never really married to him, of some noble
+Spaniard before she became the wife of a Leyden artisan."
+
+He ceased, and at this moment there broke from Lysbeth's lips a low wail
+of such bitter anguish that it chilled even his mad rage to silence.
+
+"Shame on thee, my son," said the wail, "who art not ashamed to speak
+thus of the mother that bore thee."
+
+"Ay," echoed Dirk, in the stillness that followed, "shame on thee! Once
+thou wast warned, but now I warn no more."
+
+Then he stepped to the door, opened it, and called, "Martin, come
+hither."
+
+Presently, still in that heavy silence, which was broken only by the
+quick breath of Adrian panting like some wild beast in a net, was heard
+the sound of heavy feet shuffling down the passage. Then Martin entered
+the room, and stood there gazing about him with his large blue eyes,
+that were like the eyes of a wondering child.
+
+"Your pleasure, master," he said at length.
+
+"Martin Roos," replied Dirk, waving back Arentz who rose to speak,
+"take that young man, my stepson, the Heer Adrian, and lead him from my
+house--without violence if possible. My order is that henceforth you are
+not to suffer him to set foot within its threshold; see that it is not
+disobeyed. Go, Adrian, to-morrow your possessions shall be sent to you,
+and with them such money as shall suffice to start you in the world."
+
+Without comment or any expression of surprise, the huge Martin shuffled
+forward towards Adrian, his hand outstretched as though to take him by
+the arm.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Adrian, as Martin advanced down the room, "you set
+your mastiff on me, do you? Then I will show you how a gentleman treats
+dogs," and suddenly, a naked dagger shining in his hand, he leaped
+straight at the Frisian's throat. So quick and fierce was the onslaught
+that only one issue to it seemed possible. Elsa gasped and closed her
+eyes, thinking when she opened them to see that knife plunged to the
+hilt in Martin's breast, and Foy sprang forward. Yet in this twinkling
+of an eye the danger was done with, for by some movement too quick to
+follow, Martin had dealt his assailant such a blow upon the arm that the
+poniard, jarred from his grasp, flew flashing across the room to fall in
+Lysbeth's lap. Another second and the iron grip had closed upon Adrian's
+shoulder, and although he was strong and struggled furiously, yet he
+could not loose the hold of that single hand.
+
+"Please cease fighting, Mynheer Adrian, for it is quite useless," said
+Martin to his captive in a voice as calm as though nothing unusual had
+happened. Then he turned and walked with him towards the door.
+
+On the threshold Martin stopped, and looking over his shoulder said,
+"Master, I think that the Heer is dead, do you still wish me to put him
+into the street?"
+
+They crowded round and stared. It was true, Adrian seemed to be dead; at
+least his face was like that of a corpse, while from the corner of his
+mouth blood trickled in a thin stream.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SUMMONS
+
+"Wretched man!" said Lysbeth wringing her hands, and with a shudder
+shaking the dagger from her lap as though it had been a serpent, "you
+have killed my son."
+
+"Your pardon, mistress," replied Martin placidly; "but that is not so.
+The master ordered me to remove the Heer Adrian, whereon the Heer Adrian
+very naturally tried to stab me. But I, having been accustomed to such
+things in my youth," and he looked deprecatingly towards the Pastor
+Arentz, "struck the Heer Adrian upon the bone of his elbow, causing the
+knife to jump from his hand, for had I not done so I should have been
+dead and unable to execute the commands of my master. Then I took the
+Heer Adrian by the shoulder, gently as I might, and walked away with
+him, whereupon he died of rage, for which I am very sorry but not to
+blame."
+
+"You are right, man," said Lysbeth, "it is you who are to blame, Dirk;
+yes, you have murdered my son. Oh! never mind what he said, his temper
+was always fierce, and who pays any heed to the talk of a man in a mad
+passion?"
+
+"Why did you let your brother be thus treated, cousin Foy?" broke in
+Elsa quivering with indignation. "It was cowardly of you to stand still
+and see that great red creature crush the life out of him when you know
+well that it was because of your taunts that he lost his temper and said
+things that he did not mean, as I do myself sometimes. No, I will
+never speak to you again--and only this afternoon he saved me from the
+robbers!" and she burst into weeping.
+
+"Peace, peace! this is no time for angry words," said the Pastor Arentz,
+pushing his way through the group of bewildered men and overwrought
+women. "He can scarcely be dead; let me look at him, I am something of
+a doctor," and he knelt by the senseless and bleeding Adrian to examine
+him.
+
+"Take comfort, Vrouw van Goorl," he said presently, "your son is not
+dead, for his heart beats, nor has his friend Martin injured him in any
+way by the exercise of his strength, but I think that in his fury he has
+burst a blood-vessel, for he bleeds fast. My counsel is that he should
+be put to bed and his head cooled with cold water till the surgeon can
+be fetched to treat him. Lift him in your arms, Martin."
+
+So Martin carried Adrian, not to the street, but to his bed, while Foy,
+glad of an excuse to escape the undeserved reproaches of Elsa and the
+painful sight of his mother's grief, went to seek the physician. In due
+course he returned with him, and, to the great relief of all of them,
+the learned man announced that, notwithstanding the blood which he had
+lost, he did not think that Adrian would die, though, at the best, he
+must keep his bed for some weeks, have skilful nursing and be humoured
+in all things.
+
+While his wife Lysbeth and Elsa were attending to Adrian, Dirk and his
+son, Foy, for the Pastor Arentz had gone, sat upstairs talking in the
+sitting-room, that same balconied chamber in which once Dirk had been
+refused while Montalvo hid behind the curtain. Dirk was much disturbed,
+for when his wrath had passed he was a tender-hearted man, and his
+stepson's plight distressed him greatly. Now he was justifying himself
+to Foy, or, rather, to his own conscience.
+
+"A man who could speak so of his own mother, was not fit to stop in the
+same house with her," he said; "moreover, you heard his words about the
+pastor. I tell you, son, I am afraid of this Adrian."
+
+"Unless that bleeding from his mouth stops soon you will not have cause
+to fear him much longer," replied Foy sadly, "but if you want my opinion
+about the business, father, why here it is--I think that you have made
+too much of a small matter. Adrian is--Adrian; he is not one of us, and
+he should not be judged as though he were. You cannot imagine me flying
+into a fury because the women forgot to set my place at table, or trying
+to stab Martin and bursting a blood vessel because you told him to lead
+me out of the room. No, I should know better, for what is the use of any
+ordinary man attempting to struggle against Martin? He might as well try
+to argue with the Inquisition. But then I am I, and Adrian is Adrian."
+
+"But the words he used, son. Remember the words."
+
+"Yes, and if I had spoken them they would have meant a great deal, but
+in Adrian's mouth I think no more of them than if they came from some
+angry woman. Why, he is always sulking, or taking offence, or flying
+into rages over something or other, and when he is like that it all
+means--just nothing except that he wants to use fine talk and show off
+and play the Don over us. He did not really mean to lie to me when he
+said that I had not seen him talking to Black Meg, he only meant to
+contradict, or perhaps to hide something up. As a matter of fact, if you
+want to know the truth, I believe that the old witch took notes for him
+to some young lady, and that Hague Simon supplied him with rats for his
+hawks."
+
+"Yes, Foy, that may be so, but how about his talk of the pastor? It
+makes me suspicious, son. You know the times we live in, and if he
+should go that way--remember it is in his blood--the lives of every one
+of us are in his hand. The father tried to burn me once, and I do not
+wish the child to finish the work."
+
+"Then when they come out of his hand, you are at liberty to cut off
+mine," answered Foy hotly. "I have been brought up with Adrian, and I
+know what he is; he is vain and pompous, and every time he looks at
+you and me he thanks God that he was not made like that. Also he has
+failings and vices, and he is lazy, being too fine a gentleman to work
+like a common Flemish burgher, and all the rest of it. But, father, he
+has a good heart, and if any man outside this house were to tell me that
+Adrian is capable of playing the traitor and bringing his own family to
+the scaffold, well, I would make him swallow his words, or try to, that
+is all. As regards what he said about my mother's first marriage"--and
+Foy hung his head--"of course it is a subject on which I have no right
+to talk, but, father, speaking as one man to another--he _is_ sadly
+placed and innocent, whatever others may have been, and I don't wonder
+that he feels sore about the story."
+
+As he spoke the door opened and Lysbeth entered.
+
+"How goes it with Adrian, wife?" Dirk asked hastily.
+
+"Better, husband, thank God, though the doctor stays with him for this
+night. He has lost much blood, and at the best must lie long abed; above
+all none must cross his mood or use him roughly," and she looked at her
+husband with meaning.
+
+"Peace, wife," Dirk answered with irritation. "Foy here has just read
+me one lecture upon my dealings with your son, and I am in no mood to
+listen to another. I served the man as he deserved, neither less nor
+more, and if he chose to go mad and vomit blood, why it is no fault of
+mine. You should have brought him up to a soberer habit."
+
+"Adrian is not as other men are, and ought not to be measured by the
+same rule," said Lysbeth, almost repeating Foy's words.
+
+"So I have been told before, wife, though I, who have but one standard
+of right and wrong, find the saying hard. But so be it. Doubtless the
+rule for Adrian is that which should be used to measure angels--or
+Spaniards, and not one suited to us poor Hollanders who do our work, pay
+our debts, and don't draw knives on unarmed men!"
+
+"Have you read the letter from your cousin Brant?" asked Lysbeth,
+changing the subject.
+
+"No," answered Dirk, "what with daggers, swoonings, and scoldings it
+slipped my mind," and drawing the paper from his tunic he cut the silk
+and broke the seals. "I had forgotten," he went on, looking at the
+sheets of words interspersed with meaningless figures; "it is in our
+private cypher, as Elsa said, or at least most of it is. Get the key
+from my desk, son, and let us set to work, for our task is likely to be
+long."
+
+Foy obeyed, returning presently with an old Testament of a very scarce
+edition. With the help of this book and an added vocabulary by slow
+degrees they deciphered the long epistle, Foy writing it down sentence
+by sentence as they learned their significance. When at length the task
+was finished, which was not till well after midnight, Dirk read the
+translation aloud to Lysbeth and his son. It ran thus:
+
+
+"Well-beloved cousin and old friend, you will be astonished to see my
+dear child Elsa, who brings you this paper sewn in her saddle, where
+I trust none will seek it, and wonder why she comes to you without
+warning. I will tell you.
+
+"You know that here the axe and the stake are very busy, for at The
+Hague the devil walks loose; yes, he is the master in this land. Well,
+although the blow has not yet fallen on me, since for a while I have
+bought off the informers, hour by hour the sword hangs over my head, nor
+can I escape it in the end. That I am suspected of the New Faith is not
+my real crime. You can guess it. Cousin, they desire my wealth. Now I
+have sworn that no Spaniard shall have this, no, not if I must sink it
+in the sea to save it from them, since it has been heaped up to another
+end. Yet they desire it sorely, and spies are about my path and about my
+bed. Worst among them all, and at the head of them, is a certain Ramiro,
+a one-eyed man, but lately come from Spain, it is said as an agent of
+the Inquisition, whose manners are those of a person who was once a
+gentleman, and who seems to know this country well. This fellow has
+approached me, offering if I will give him three-parts of my wealth to
+secure my escape with the rest, and I have told him that I will consider
+the offer. For this reason only I have a little respite, since he
+desires that my money should go into his pocket and not into that of the
+Government. But, by the help of God, neither of them shall touch it.
+
+"See you, Dirk, the treasure is not here in the house as they think. It
+is hidden, but in a spot where it cannot stay.
+
+"Therefore, if you love me, and hold that I have been a good friend
+to you, send your son Foy with one other strong and trusted man--your
+Frisian servant, Martin, if possible--on the morrow after you receive
+this. When night falls he should have been in The Hague some hours, and
+have refreshed himself, but let him not come near me or my house. Half
+an hour after sunset let him, followed by his serving man, walk up and
+down the right side of the Broad Street in The Hague, as though seeking
+adventures, till a girl, also followed by a servant, pushes up against
+him as if on purpose, and whispers in his ear, 'Are you from Leyden,
+sweetheart?' Then he must say 'Yes,' and accompany her till he comes to
+a place where he will learn what must be done and how to do it. Above
+all, he must follow no woman who may accost him and does not repeat
+these words. The girl who addresses him will be short, dark, pretty, and
+gaily dressed, with a red bow upon her left shoulder. But let him not be
+misled by look or dress unless she speaks the words.
+
+"If he reaches England or Leyden safely with the stuff let him hide it
+for the present, friend, till your heart tells you it is needed. I care
+not where, nor do I wish to know, for if I knew, flesh and blood are
+weak, and I might give up the secret when they stretch me on the rack.
+
+"Already you have my will sent to you three months ago, and enclosed
+in it a list of goods. Open it now and you will find that under it my
+possessions pass to you and your heirs absolutely as my executors, for
+such especial trusts and purposes as are set out therein. Elsa has
+been ailing, and it is known that the leech has ordered her a change.
+Therefore her journey to Leyden will excite no wonder, neither, or so I
+hope, will even Ramiro guess that I should enclose a letter such as this
+in so frail a casket. Still, there is danger, for spies are many, but
+having no choice, and my need being urgent, I must take the risks. If
+the paper is seized they cannot read it, for they will never make out
+the cypher, since, even did they know of them, no copies of our books
+can be found in Holland. Moreover, were this writing all plain Dutch
+or Spanish, it tells nothing of the whereabouts of the treasure, of its
+destination, or of the purpose to which it is dedicate. Lastly, should
+any Spaniard chance to find that wealth, it will vanish, and, mayhap, he
+with it."
+
+
+"What can he mean by that?" interrupted Foy.
+
+"I know not," answered Dirk. "My cousin Brant is not a person who speaks
+at random, so perhaps we have misinterpreted the passage." Then he went
+on reading:
+
+
+"Now I have done with the pelf, which must take its chance. Only, I pray
+you--I trust it to your honour and to your love of an old friend to bury
+it, burn it, cast it to the four winds of heaven before you suffer a
+Spaniard to touch a gem or a piece of gold.
+
+"I send to you to-day Elsa, my only child. You will know my reason. She
+will be safer with you in Leyden than here at The Hague, since if they
+take me they might take her also. The priests and their tools do not
+spare the young, especially if their rights stand between them and
+money. Also she knows little of my desperate strait; she is ignorant
+even of the contents of this letter, and I do not wish that she should
+share these troubles. I am a doomed man, and she loves me, poor child.
+One day she will hear that it is over, and that will be sad for her,
+but it would be worse if she knew all from the beginning. When I bid her
+good-bye to-morrow, it will be for the last time--God give me strength
+to bear the blow.
+
+"You are her guardian, as you deal with her--nay, I must be crazy with
+my troubles, for none other would think it needful to remind Dirk van
+Goorl or his son of their duty to the dead. Farewell, friend and cousin.
+God guard you and yours in these dreadful times with which it has
+pleased Him to visit us for a season, that through us perhaps this
+country and the whole world may be redeemed from priestcraft and
+tyranny. Greet your honoured wife, Lysbeth, from me; also your son Foy,
+who used to be a merry lad, and whom I hope to see again within a night
+or two, although it may be fated that we shall not meet. My blessing
+on him, especially if he prove faithful in all these things. May the
+Almighty who guards us give us a happy meeting in the hereafter which is
+at hand. Pray for me. Farewell, farewell.--Hendrik Brant.
+
+"P.S. I beg the dame Lysbeth to see that Elsa wears woollen when the
+weather turns damp or cold, since her chest is somewhat delicate. This
+was my wife's last charge, and I pass it on to you. As regards her
+marriage, should she live, I leave that to your judgment with this
+command only, that her inclination shall not be forced, beyond what is
+right and proper. When I am dead, kiss her for me, and tell her that I
+loved her beyond any creature now living on the earth, and that wherever
+I am from day to day I wait to welcome her, as I shall wait to welcome
+you and yours, Dirk van Goorl. In case these presents miscarry, I will
+send duplicates of them, also in mixed cypher, whenever chance may
+offer."
+
+
+
+Having finished reading the translation of this cypher document, Dirk
+bent his head while he folded it, not wishing that his face should be
+seen. Foy also turned aside to hide the tears which gathered in his
+eyes, while Lysbeth wept openly.
+
+"A sad letter and sad times!" said Dirk at length.
+
+"Poor Elsa," muttered Foy, then added, with a return of hopefulness,
+"perhaps he is mistaken, he may escape after all."
+
+Lysbeth shook her head as she answered,
+
+"Hendrik Brant is not the man to write like that if there was any hope
+for him, nor would he part with his daughter unless he knew that the end
+must be near at hand."
+
+"Why, then, does he not fly?" asked Foy.
+
+"Because the moment he stirred the Inquisition would pounce upon him, as
+a cat pounces upon a mouse that tries to run from its corner," replied
+his father. "While the mouse sits still the cat sits also and purrs;
+when it moves----"
+
+There was a silence in which Dirk, having fetched the will of Hendrik
+Brant from a safe hiding place, where it had lain since it reached his
+hands some months before, opened the seals and read it aloud.
+
+It proved to be a very short document, under the terms of which Dirk van
+Goorl and his heirs inherited all the property, real and personal, of
+Hendrik Brant, upon trust, (1) to make such ample provision for his
+daughter Elsa as might be needful or expedient; (2) to apply the
+remainder of the money "for the defence of our country, the freedom of
+religious Faith, and the destruction of the Spaniards in such fashion
+and at such time or times as God should reveal to them, which," added
+the will, "assuredly He will do."
+
+Enclosed in this document was an inventory of the property that
+constituted the treasure. At the head came an almost endless list of
+jewels, all of them carefully scheduled. These were the first three
+items:
+
+"Item: The necklace of great pearls that I exchanged with the Emperor
+Charles when he took a love for sapphires, enclosed in a watertight
+copper box.
+
+"Item: A coronet and stomacher of rubies mounted in my own gold work,
+the best that ever I did, which three queens have coveted, and none was
+rich enough to buy.
+
+"Item: The great emerald that my father left me, the biggest known,
+having magic signs of ancients engraved upon the back of it, and
+enclosed in a chased case of gold."
+
+Then came other long lists of precious stones, too numerous to mention,
+but of less individual value, and after them this entry:
+
+"Item: Four casks filled with gold coin (I know not the exact weight or
+number)."
+
+At the bottom of this schedule was written, "A very great treasure, the
+greatest of all the Netherlands, a fruit of three generations of honest
+trading and saving, converted by me for the most part into jewels, that
+it may be easier to move. This is the prayer of me, Hendrik Brant, who
+owns it for his life; that this gold may prove the earthly doom of any
+Spaniard who tries to steal it, and as I write it comes into my mind
+that God will grant this my petition. Amen. Amen. Amen! So say I,
+Hendrik Brant, who stand at the Gate of Death."
+
+All of this inventory Dirk read aloud, and when he had finished Lysbeth
+gasped with amazement.
+
+"Surely," she said, "this little cousin of ours is richer than many
+princes. Yes, with such a dowry princes would be glad to take her in
+marriage."
+
+"The fortune is large enough," answered Dirk. "But, oh! what a burden
+has Hendrik Brant laid upon our backs, for under this will the wealth is
+left, not straight to the lawful heiress, Elsa, but to me and my heirs
+on the trusts started, and they are heavy. Look you, wife, the Spaniards
+know of this vast hoard, and the priests know of it, and no stone on
+earth or hell will they leave unturned to win that money. I say that,
+for his own sake, my cousin Hendrik would have done better to accept the
+offer of the Spanish thief Ramiro and give him three-fourths and escape
+to England with the rest. But that is not his nature, who was ever
+stubborn, and who would die ten times over rather than enrich the men
+he hates. Moreover, he, who is no miser, has saved this fortune that
+the bulk of it may be spent for his country in the hour of her need,
+and alas! of that need we are made the judges, since he is called away.
+Wife, I foresee that these gems and gold will breed bloodshed and misery
+to all our house. But the trust is laid upon us and it must be borne.
+Foy, to-morrow at dawn you and Martin will start for The Hague to carry
+out the command of your cousin Brant."
+
+"Why should my son's life be risked on this mad errand?" asked Lysbeth.
+
+"Because it is a duty, mother," answered Foy cheerfully, although he
+tried to look depressed. He was young and enterprising; moreover, the
+adventure promised to be full of novelty.
+
+In spite of himself Dirk smiled and bade him summon Martin.
+
+A minute later Foy was in the great man's den and kicking at his
+prostrate form. "Wake up, you snoring bull," he said, "awake!"
+
+Martin sat up, his red beard showing like a fire in the shine of the
+taper. "What is it now, Master Foy?" he asked yawning. "Are they after
+us about those two dead soldiers?"
+
+"No, you sleepy lump, it's treasure."
+
+"I don't care about treasure," replied Martin, indifferently.
+
+"It's Spaniards."
+
+"That sounds better," said Martin, shutting his mouth. "Tell me about
+it, Master Foy, while I pull on my jerkin."
+
+So Foy told him as much as he could in two minutes.
+
+"Yes, it sounds well," commented Martin, critically. "If I know anything
+of those Spaniards, we shan't get back to Leyden without something
+happening. But I don't like that bit about the women; as likely as not
+they will spoil everything."
+
+Then he accompanied Foy to the upper room, and there received his
+instructions from Dirk with a solemn and unmoved countenance.
+
+"Are you listening?" asked Dirk, sharply. "Do you understand?"
+
+"I think so, master," replied Martin. "Hear;" and he repeated sentence
+by sentence every word that had fallen from Dirk's lips, for when
+he chose to use it Martin's memory was good. "One or two questions,
+master," he said. "This stuff must be brought through at all hazards?"
+
+"At all hazards?" answered Dirk.
+
+"And if we cannot bring it through, it must be hidden in the best way
+possible?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And if people should try to interfere with us, I understand that we
+must fight?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And if in the fighting we chance to kill anybody I shall not be
+reproached and called a murderer by the pastor or others?"
+
+"I think not," replied Dirk.
+
+"And if anything should happen to my young master here, his blood will
+not be laid upon my head?"
+
+Lysbeth groaned. Then she stood up and spoke.
+
+"Martin, why do you ask such foolish questions? Your peril my son must
+share, and if harm should come to him as may chance, we shall know
+well that it is no fault of yours. You are not a coward or a traitor,
+Martin."
+
+"Well, I think not, mistress, at least not often; but you see here are
+two duties: the first, to get this money through, the second, to protect
+the Heer Foy. I wish to know which of these is the more important."
+
+It was Dirk who answered.
+
+"You go to carry out the wishes of my cousin Brant; they must be
+attended to before anything else."
+
+"Very good," replied Martin; "you quite understand, Heer Foy?"
+
+"Oh! perfectly," replied that young man, grinning.
+
+"Then go to bed for an hour or two, as you may have to keep awake
+to-morrow night; I will call you at dawn. Your servant, master and
+mistress, I hope to report myself to you within sixty hours, but if I do
+not come within eighty, or let us say a hundred, it may be well to make
+inquiries," and he shuffled back to his den.
+
+
+
+Youth sleeps well whatever may be behind or before it, and it was not
+until Martin had called to him thrice next morning that Foy opened his
+eyes in the grey light, and, remembering, sprang from his bed.
+
+"There's no hurry," said Martin, "but it will be as well to get out of
+Leyden before many people are about."
+
+As he spoke Lysbeth entered the room fully dressed, for she had not
+slept that night, carrying in her hand a little leathern bag.
+
+"How is Adrian, mother?" asked Foy, as she stooped down to kiss him.
+
+"He sleeps, and the doctor, who is still with him, says that he does
+well," she answered. "But see here, Foy, you are about to start upon
+your first adventure, and this is my present to you--this and my
+blessing." Then she untied the neck of the bag and poured from it
+something that lay upon the table in a shining heap no larger than
+Martin's fist. Foy took hold of the thing and held it up, whereon the
+little heap stretched itself out marvellously, till it was as large
+indeed as the body garment of a man.
+
+"Steel shirt!" exclaimed Martin, nodding his head in approval, and
+adding, "good wear for those who mix with Spaniards."
+
+"Yes," said Lysbeth, "my father brought this from the East on one of his
+voyages. I remember he told me that he paid for it its weight in gold
+and silver, and that even then it was sold to him only by the special
+favour of the king of that country. The shirt, they said, was ancient,
+and of such work as cannot now be made. It had been worn from father to
+son in one family for three hundred years, but no man that wore it ever
+died by body-cut or thrust, since sword or dagger cannot pierce that
+steel. At least, son, this is the story, and, strangely enough, when I
+lost all the rest of my heritage--" and she sighed, "this shirt was left
+to me, for it lay in its bag in the old oak chest, and none noticed it
+or thought it worth the taking. So make the most of it, Foy; it is all
+that remains of your grandfather's fortune, since this house is now your
+father's."
+
+Beyond kissing his mother in thanks, Foy made no answer; he was too
+much engaged in examining the wonders of the shirt, which as a worker in
+metals he could well appreciate. But Martin said again:
+
+"Better than money, much better than money. God knew that and made them
+leave the mail."
+
+"I never saw the like of it," broke in Foy; "look, it runs together like
+quicksilver and is light as leather. See, too, it has stood sword and
+dagger stroke before to-day," and holding it in a sunbeam they perceived
+in many directions faint lines and spots upon the links caused in past
+years by the cutting edge of swords and the points of daggers. Yet never
+a one of those links was severed or broken.
+
+"I pray that it may stand them again if your body be inside of it," said
+Lysbeth. "Yet, son, remember always that there is One who can guard you
+better than any human mail however perfect," and she left the room.
+
+Then Foy drew on the coat over his woollen jersey, and it fitted him
+well, though not so well as in after years, when he had grown thicker.
+Indeed, when his linen shirt and his doublet were over it none could
+have guessed that he was clothed in armour of proof.
+
+"It isn't fair, Martin," he said, "that I should be wrapped in steel and
+you in nothing."
+
+Martin smiled. "Do you take me for a fool, master," he said, "who have
+seen some fighting in my day, private and public? Look here," and,
+opening his leathern jerkin, he showed that he was clothed beneath in a
+strange garment of thick but supple hide.
+
+"Bullskin," said Martin, "tanned as we know how up in Friesland. Not as
+good as yours, but will turn most cuts or arrows. I sat up last night
+making one for you, it was almost finished before, but the steel is
+cooler and better for those who can afford it. Come, let us go and eat;
+we should be at the gates at eight when they open."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MOTHER'S GIFTS ARE GOOD GIFTS
+
+At a few minutes to eight that morning a small crowd of people had
+gathered in front of the Witte Poort at Leyden waiting for the gate to
+be opened. They were of all sorts, but country folk for the most part,
+returning to their villages, leading mules and donkeys slung with
+empty panniers, and shouting greetings through the bars of the gate
+to acquaintances who led in other mules laden with vegetables and
+provisions. Among these stood some priests, saturnine and silent, bent,
+doubtless, upon dark business of their own. A squad of Spanish soldiers
+waited also, the insolence of the master in their eyes; they were
+marching to some neighbouring city. There, too, appeared Foy van Goorl
+and Red Martin, who led a pack mule; Foy dressed in the grey jerkin of
+a merchant, but armed with a sword and mounted on a good mare; Martin
+riding a Flemish gelding that nowadays would only have been thought fit
+for the plough, since no lighter-boned beast could carry his weight.
+Among these moved a dapper little man, with sandy whiskers and sly face,
+asking their business and destination of the various travellers, and
+under pretence of guarding against the smuggling of forbidden goods,
+taking count upon his tablets of their merchandise and baggage.
+
+Presently he came to Foy.
+
+"Name?" he said, shortly, although he knew him well enough.
+
+"Foy van Goorl and Martin, his father's servant, travelling to The Hague
+with specimens of brassware, consigned to the correspondents of our
+firm," answered Foy, indifferently.
+
+"You are very glib," sneered the sandy-whiskered man; "what is the mule
+laden with? It may be Bibles for all I know."
+
+"Nothing half so valuable, master," replied Foy; "it is a church
+chandelier in pieces."
+
+"Unpack it and show me the pieces," said the officer.
+
+Foy flushed with anger and set his teeth, but Martin, administering to
+him a warning nudge in the ribs, submitted with prompt obedience.
+
+It was a long business, for each arm of the chandelier had been
+carefully wrapped in hay bands, and the official would not pass them
+until every one was undone, after which they must be done up again.
+While the pair of them were engaged upon this tedious and unnecessary
+task, two fresh travellers arrived at the gate, a long, bony person,
+clothed in a priest-like garb with a hood that hid the head, and a
+fierce, dissolute-looking individual of military appearance and armed to
+the teeth. Catching sight of young van Goorl and his servant, the long
+person, who seemed to ride very awkwardly with legs thrust forward,
+whispered something to the soldier man, and they passed on without
+question through the gate.
+
+When Foy and Martin followed them twenty minutes later, they were out of
+sight, for the pair were well mounted and rode hard.
+
+"Did you recognise them?" asked Martin so soon as they were clear of the
+crowd.
+
+"No," said Foy; "who are they?"
+
+"The papist witch, Black Meg, dressed like a man, and the fellow who
+came here from The Hague yesterday, whither they are going to report
+that the Heer Adrian routed them, and that the Broekhovens with the
+Jufvrouw Elsa got through unsearched."
+
+"What does it all mean, Martin?"
+
+"It means, master, that we shall have a warm welcome yonder; it means
+that some one guesses we know about this treasure, and that we shan't
+get the stuff away without trouble."
+
+"Will they waylay us?"
+
+Martin shrugged his shoulders as he answered, "It is always well to be
+ready, but I think not. Coming back they may waylay us, not going. Our
+lives are of little use without the money; also they cannot be had for
+the asking."
+
+Martin was right, for travelling slowly they reached the city without
+molestation, and, riding to the house of Dirk's correspondent, put
+up their horses; ate, rested, delivered the sample chandelier, and
+generally transacted the business which appeared to be the object of
+their journey. In the course of conversation they learned from their
+host that things were going very ill here at The Hague for all who were
+supposed to favour the New Religion. Tortures, burnings, abductions, and
+murders were of daily occurrence, nor were any brought to judgment
+for these crimes. Indeed, soldiers, spies, and government agents were
+quartered on the citizens, doing what they would, and none dared to lift
+a hand against them. Hendrik Brant, they heard also, was still at large
+and carrying on business as usual in his shop, though rumour said that
+he was a marked man whose time would be short.
+
+Foy announced that they would stay the night, and a little after sunset
+called to Martin to accompany him, as he wished to walk in the Broad
+Street to see the sights of the town.
+
+"Be careful, Mynheer Foy," said their host in warning, "for there are
+many strange characters about, men and women. Oh! yes, this mere is full
+of pike, and fresh bait is snapped up sharply."
+
+"We will be wary," replied Foy, with the cheerful air of a young man
+eager for excitement. "Hague pike don't like Leyden perch, you know;
+they stick in their throats."
+
+"I hope so, I hope so," said the host, "still I pray you be careful. You
+will remember where to find the horses if you want them; they are fed
+and I will keep them saddled. Your arrival here is known, and for some
+reason this house is being watched."
+
+Foy nodded and they started out; Foy going first, and Red Martin,
+staring round him like a bewildered bumpkin, following at his heel, with
+his great sword, which was called Silence, girt about his middle, and
+hidden as much as possible beneath his jerkin.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't look so big, Martin," Foy whispered over his
+shoulder; "everybody is staring at you and that red beard of yours,
+which glows like a kitchen fire."
+
+"I can't help it, master," said Martin, "my back aches with stooping as
+it is, and, as for the beard, well, God made it so."
+
+"At least you might dye it," answered Foy; "if it were black you would
+be less like a beacon on a church tower."
+
+"Another day, master; it is a long business dyeing a beard like mine; I
+think it would be quicker to cut it off." Then he stopped, for they were
+in the Broad Street.
+
+Here they found many people moving to and fro, but although the company
+were so numerous it was difficult to distinguish them, for no moon
+shone, and the place was lighted by lanterns set up on poles at long
+distances from each other. Foy could see, however, that they were for
+the most part folk of bad character, disreputable women, soldiers of the
+garrison, half-drunk sailors from every country, and gliding in and out
+among them all, priests and other observers of events. Before they had
+been long in the crowd a man stumbled against Foy rudely, at the same
+time telling him to get out of the path. But although his blood leapt at
+the insult and his hand went to his sword hilt, Foy took no notice, for
+he understood at once that it was sought to involve him in a quarrel.
+Next a woman accosted him, a gaily-dressed woman, but she had no bow
+upon her shoulder, so Foy merely shook his head and smiled. For the rest
+of that walk, however, he was aware that this woman was watching him,
+and with her a man whose figure he could not distinguish, for he was
+wrapped in a black cloak.
+
+Thrice did Foy, followed by Martin, thus promenade the right side of the
+Broad Street, till he was heartily weary of the game indeed, and began
+to wonder if his cousin Brant's plans had not miscarried.
+
+As he turned for the fourth time his doubts were answered, for he found
+himself face to face with a small woman who wore upon her shoulder a
+large red bow, and was followed by another woman, a buxom person dressed
+in a peasant's cap. The lady with the red bow, making pretence to
+stumble, precipitated herself with an affected scream right into
+his arms, and as he caught her, whispered, "Are you from Leyden,
+sweetheart?" "Yes." "Then treat me as I treat you, and follow always
+where I lead. First make pretence to be rid of me."
+
+As she finished whispering Foy heard a warning stamp from Martin,
+followed by the footsteps of the pair who he knew were watching them,
+which he could distinguish easily, for here at the end of the street
+there were fewer people. So he began to act as best he could--it was not
+very well, but his awkwardness gave him a certain air of sincerity.
+
+"No, no," he said, "why should I pay for your supper? Come, be going, my
+good girl, and leave me and my servant to see the town in peace."
+
+"Oh! Mynheer, let me be your guide, I beg you," answered she of the red
+bow clasping her hands and looking up into his face. Just then he heard
+the first woman who had accosted him speaking to her companion in a loud
+voice.
+
+"Look," she said, "Red Bow is trying her best. Ah! my dear, do you think
+that you'll get a supper out of a holy Leyden ranter, or a skin off an
+eel for the asking?"
+
+"Oh! he isn't such a selfish fish as he looks," answered Red Bow over
+her shoulder, while her eyes told Foy that it was his turn to play.
+
+So he played to the best of his ability, with the result that ten
+minutes later any for whom the sight had interest might have observed a
+yellow-haired young gallant and a black-haired young woman walking down
+the Broad Street with their arms affectionately disposed around each
+other's middles. Following them was a huge and lumbering serving man
+with a beard like fire, who, in a loyal effort to imitate the actions
+of his master, had hooked a great limb about the neck of Red Bow's stout
+little attendant, and held her thus in a chancery which, if flattering,
+must have been uncomfortable. As Martin explained to the poor woman
+afterwards, it was no fault of his, since in order to reach her waist he
+must have carried her under his arm.
+
+Foy and his companion chatted merrily enough, if in a somewhat jerky
+fashion, but Martin attempted no talk. Only as he proceeded he was heard
+to mutter between his teeth, "Lucky the Pastor Arentz can't see us now.
+He would never understand, he is so one-sided." So at least Foy declared
+subsequently in Leyden.
+
+Presently, at a hint from his lady, Foy turned down a side street,
+unobserved, as he thought, till he heard a mocking voice calling after
+them, "Good-night, Red Bow, hope you will have a fine supper with your
+Leyden shopboy."
+
+"Quick," whispered Red Bow, and they turned another corner, then
+another, and another. Now they walked down narrow streets, ill-kept and
+unsavoury, with sharp pitched roofs, gabled and overhanging so much
+that here and there they seemed almost to meet, leaving but a ribbon
+of star-specked sky winding above their heads. Evidently it was a low
+quarter of the town and a malodourous quarter, for the canals, spanned
+by picturesque and high-arched bridges, were everywhere, and at this
+summer season the water in them was low, rotten, and almost stirless.
+
+At length Red Bow halted and knocked upon a small recessed door, which
+instantly was opened by a man who bore no light.
+
+"Come in," he whispered, and all four of them passed into a darksome
+passage. "Quick, quick!" said the man, "I hear footsteps."
+
+Foy heard them also echoing down the empty street, and as the door
+closed it seemed to him that they stopped in the deep shadow of the
+houses. Then, holding each other by the hand, they crept along black
+passages and down stairs till at length they saw light shining through
+the crevices of an ill-fitting door. It opened mysteriously at their
+approach, and when they had all entered, shut behind them.
+
+Foy uttered a sigh of relief for he was weary of this long flight,
+and looked round him to discover that they were in a large windowless
+cellar, well furnished after a fashion by oak benches and a table set
+out with cold meats and flagons of wine. At the foot of this table stood
+a middle-aged man, prematurely grey, and with a face worn as though by
+constant care.
+
+"Welcome, Foy van Goorl," said the man in a gentle voice. "Many years
+have passed since last we met; still I should have known you anywhere,
+though I think you would not have known me."
+
+Foy looked at him and shook his head.
+
+"I thought so," went on the man with a smile. "Well, I am Hendrik Brant,
+your cousin, once the burgomaster of The Hague and its richest citizen,
+but to-day a hunted rat who must receive his guests in secret cellars.
+Tell me now, did my daughter, Elsa, reach your good father's house in
+safety, and is she well?"
+
+So Foy told him all that story.
+
+"As I thought, as I thought," said Hendrik. "Ramiro knew of her journey
+and guessed that she might carry some letter. Oh!" he went on, shaking
+his fist in a kind of frenzy, and addressing the two women who had
+played the parts of Red Bow and her servant, "who among you is the
+traitor? Can it be that you, whom my bounty has fed, betray me? Nay,
+girls, do not weep, I know that it is not so, and yet, in this city, the
+very walls have ears, yes, even this deep vault gives up its secrets.
+Well, if only I can save my fortune from those wolves, what do I care?
+Then they may take my carcase and tear it. At least, my daughter is
+safe--for a while, and now I have but one desire left on earth--to rob
+them of my wealth also."
+
+Then he turned to the girl decked out in the gay clothes, who, now that
+the chase was over, sat upon a bench with her face hidden in her hand,
+and said, "Tell me your story, Gretchen," whereon she lifted her head
+and repeated all that happened.
+
+"They press us hard," muttered Brant, "but, friends, we will beat them
+yet. Eat now, and drink while you may."
+
+So they sat down and ate and drank while Hendrik watched them, and the
+man who had led them to the vault listened without the door.
+
+When they had finished, Brant bade the two women, Red Bow and the other,
+leave the cellar and send in the sentry, replacing him as guards. He
+entered, a hard-faced, grizzled man, and, taking a seat at the table,
+began to fill himself with food and wine.
+
+"Hearken, my cousin Foy," said Brant presently, "this is the plan. A
+league away, near to the mouth of the great canal, lie certain boats,
+a score or over of them, laden with trading goods and timber, in the
+charge of honest men who know nothing of their cargo, but who have
+orders to fire them if they should be boarded. Among these boats is one
+called the _Swallow_, small, but the swiftest on this coast, and handy
+in a sea. Her cargo is salt, and beneath it eight kegs of powder, and
+between the powder and the salt certain barrels, which barrels are
+filled with treasure. Now, presently, if you have the heart for it--and
+if you have not, say so, and I will go myself--this man here, Hans,
+under cover of the darkness, will row you down to the boat _Swallow_.
+Then you must board her, and at the first break of dawn hoist her sail
+and stand out to sea, and away with her where the wind drives, tying
+the skiff behind. Like enough you will find foes waiting for you at
+the mouth of the canal, or elsewhere. Then I can give you only one
+counsel--get out with the _Swallow_ if you can, and if you cannot,
+escape in the skiff or by swimming, but before you leave her fire the
+slow-matches that are ready at the bow and the stern, and let the powder
+do its work and blow my wealth to the waters and the winds. Will you do
+it? Think, think well before you answer."
+
+"Did we not come from Leyden to be at your command, cousin?" said
+Foy smiling. Then he added, "But why do you not accompany us on this
+adventure? You are in danger here, and even if we get clear with the
+treasure, what use is money without life?"
+
+"To me none, any way," answered Brant; "but you do not understand. I
+live in the midst of spies, I am watched day and night; although I came
+here disguised and secretly, it is probable that even my presence in
+this house is known. More, there is an order out that if I attempt to
+leave the town by land or water, I am to be seized, whereon my house
+will be searched instantly, and it will be found that my bullion is
+gone. Think, lad, how great is this wealth, and you will understand why
+the crows are hungry. It is talked of throughout the Netherlands, it has
+been reported to the King in Spain, and I learn that orders have come
+from him concerning its seizure. But there is another band who would get
+hold of it first, Ramiro and his crew, and that is why I have been left
+safe so long, because the thieves strive one against the other and watch
+each other. Most of all, however, they watch me and everything that is
+mine. For though they do not believe that I should send the treasure
+away and stay behind, yet they are not sure."
+
+"You think that they will pursue us, then?" asked Foy.
+
+"For certain. Messengers arrived from Leyden to announce your coming two
+hours before you set foot in the town, and it will be wonderful indeed
+if you leave it without a band of cut-throats at your heels. Be not
+deceived, lad, this business is no light one."
+
+"You say the little boat sails fast, master?" queried Martin.
+
+"She sails fast, but perhaps others are as swift. Moreover, it may
+happen that you will find the mouth of the canal blocked by the
+guardship, which was sent there a week ago with orders to search every
+craft that passes from stem to stern. Or--you may slip past her."
+
+"My master and I are not afraid of a few blows," said Martin, "and we
+are ready to take our risks like brave men; still, Mynheer Brant, this
+seems to me a hazardous business, and one in which your money may well
+get itself lost. Now, I ask you, would it not be better to take this
+treasure out of the boat where you have hidden it, and bury it, and
+convey it away by land?"
+
+Brant shook his head. "I have thought of that," he said, "as I have
+thought of everything, but it cannot now be done; also there is no time
+to make fresh plans."
+
+"Why?" asked Foy.
+
+"Because day and night men are watching the boats which are known to
+belong to me, although they are registered in other names, and only this
+evening an order was signed that they must be searched within an hour
+of dawn. My information is good, as it should be since I pay for it
+dearly."
+
+"Then," said Foy, "there is nothing more to be said. We will try to get
+to the boat and try to get her away; and if we can get her away we will
+try to hide the treasure, and if we can't we will try to blow her up
+as you direct and try to escape ourselves. Or--" and he shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+Martin said nothing, only he shook his great red head, nor did the
+silent pilot at the table speak at all.
+
+Hendrik Brant looked at them, and his pale, careworn face began to work.
+"Have I the right?" he muttered to himself, and for an instant or two
+bent his head as though in prayer. When he lifted it again his mind
+seemed to be made up.
+
+"Foy van Goorl," he said, "listen to me, and tell your father, my cousin
+and executor, what I say, since I have no time to write it; tell him
+word for word. You are wondering why I do not let this pelf take its
+chance without risking the lives of men to save it. It is because
+something in my heart pushes me to another path. It may be imagination,
+but I am a man standing on the edge of the grave, and to such I have
+known it given to see the future. I think that you will win through with
+the treasure, Foy, and that it will be the means of bringing some wicked
+ones to their doom. Yes, and more, much more, but what it is I cannot
+altogether see. Yet I am quite certain that thousands and tens of
+thousands of our folk will live to bless the gold of Hendrik Brant, and
+that is why I work so hard to save it from the Spaniards. Also that is
+why I ask you to risk your lives to-night; not for the wealth's sake,
+for wealth is dross, but for what the wealth will buy in days to come."
+
+He paused a while, then went on: "I think also, cousin, that being, they
+tell me, unaffianced, you will learn to love, and not in vain, that dear
+child of mine, whom I leave in your father's keeping and in yours. More,
+since time is short and we shall never meet again, I say to you plainly,
+that the thought is pleasing to me, young cousin Foy, for I have a good
+report of you and like your blood and looks. Remember always, however
+dark may be your sky, that before he passed to doom Hendrik Brant had
+this vision concerning you and the daughter whom he loves, and whom you
+will learn to love as do all who know her. Remember also that priceless
+things are not lightly won, and do not woo her for her fortune, since,
+I tell you, this belongs not to her but to our people and our cause, and
+when the hour comes, for them it must be used."
+
+Foy listened, wondering, but he made no answer, for he knew not what to
+say. Yet now, on the edge of his first great adventure, these words were
+comfortable to him who had found already that Elsa's eyes were bright.
+Brant next turned towards Martin, but that worthy shook his red head and
+stepped back a pace.
+
+"Thank you kindly, master," he said, "but I will do without the
+prophecies, which, good or ill, are things that fasten upon a man's
+mind. Once an astrologer cast my nativity, and foretold that I should
+be drowned before I was twenty-five. I wasn't, but, my faith! the miles
+which I have walked round to bridges on account of that astrologer."
+
+Brant smiled. "I have no foresight concerning you, good friend, except
+that I judge your arm will be always strong in battle; that you will
+love your masters well, and use your might to avenge the cause of God's
+slaughtered saints upon their murderers."
+
+Martin nodded his head vigorously, and fumbled at the handle of the
+sword Silence, while Brant went on:
+
+"Friend, you have entered on a dangerous quarrel on behalf of me and
+mine, and if you live through it you will have earned high pay."
+
+Then he went to the table, and, taking writing materials, he wrote as
+follows: "To the Heer Dirk van Goorl and his heirs, the executors of my
+will, and the holders of my fortune, which is to be used as God shall
+show them. This is to certify that in payment of this night's work
+Martin, called the Red, the servant of the said Dirk van Goorl, or
+those heirs whom he may appoint, is entitled to a sum of five thousand
+florins, and I constitute such sum a first charge upon my estate, to
+whatever purpose they may put it in their discretion." This document he
+dated, signed, and caused the pilot Hans to sign also as a witness.
+Then he gave it to Martin, who thanked him by touching his forehead,
+remarking at the same time--
+
+"After all, fighting is not a bad trade if you only stick to it long
+enough. Five thousand florins! I never thought to earn so much."
+
+"You haven't got it yet," interrupted Foy. "And now, what are you going
+to do with that paper?"
+
+Martin reflected. "Coat?" he said, "no, a man takes off his coat if it
+is hot, and it might be left behind. Boots?--no, that would wear it
+out, especially if they got wet. Jersey?--sewn next the skin, no, same
+reason. Ah! I have it," and, drawing out the great sword Silence, he
+took the point of his knife and began to turn a little silver screw in
+the hilt, one of many with which the handle of walrus ivory was fastened
+to its steel core. The screw came out, and he touched a spring, whereon
+one quarter of the ivory casing fell away, revealing a considerable
+hollow in the hilt, for, although Martin grasped it with one hand, the
+sword was made to be held by two.
+
+"What is that hole for?" asked Foy.
+
+"The executioner's drug," replied Martin, "which makes a man happy
+while he does his business with him, that is, if he can pay the fee. He
+offered his dose to me, I remember, before--" Here Martin stopped, and,
+having rolled up the parchment, hid it in the hollow.
+
+"You might lose your sword," suggested Foy.
+
+"Yes, master, when I lose my life and exchange the hope of florins for a
+golden crown," replied Martin with a grin. "Till then I do not intend to
+part with Silence."
+
+Meanwhile Hendrik Brant had been whispering to the quiet man at the
+table, who now rose and said:
+
+"Foster-brother, do not trouble about me; I take my chance and I do
+not wish to survive you. My wife is burnt, one of my girls out there is
+married to a man who knows how to protect them both, also the dowries
+you gave them are far away and safe. Do not trouble about me who
+have but one desire--to snatch the great treasure from the maw of the
+Spaniard that in a day to come it may bring doom upon the Spaniard."
+Then he relapsed into a silence, which spread over the whole company.
+
+"It is time to be stirring," said Brant presently. "Hans, you will lead
+the way. I must bide here a while before I go abroad and show myself."
+
+The pilot nodded. "Ready?" he asked, addressing Foy and Martin. Then
+he went to the door and whistled, whereon Red Bow with her pretended
+servant entered the vault. He spoke a word or two to them and kissed
+them each upon the brow. Next he went to Hendrik Brant, and throwing
+his arms about him, embraced him with far more passion than he had shown
+towards his own daughters.
+
+"Farewell, foster-brother," he said, "till we meet again here or
+hereafter--it matters little which. Have no fear, we will get the stuff
+through to England if may be, or send it to hell with some Spaniards to
+seek it there. Now, comrades, come on and stick close to me, and if any
+try to stop us cut them down. When we reach the boat do you take the
+oars and row while I steer her. The girls come with us to the canal,
+arm-in-arm with the two of you. If anything happens to me either of them
+can steer you to the skiff called _Swallow_, but if naught happens we
+will put them ashore at the next wharf. Come," and he led the way from
+the cellar.
+
+At the threshold Foy turned to look at Hendrik Brant. He was standing by
+the table, the light shining full upon his pale face and grizzled head,
+about which it seemed to cast a halo. Indeed, at that moment, wrapped in
+his long, dark cloak, his lips moving in prayer, and his arms uplifted
+to bless them as they went, he might well have been, not a man, but some
+vision of a saint come back to earth. The door closed and Foy never
+saw him again, for ere long the Inquisition seized him and a while
+afterwards he died beneath their cruel hands. One of the charges against
+him was, that more than twenty years before, he had been seen reading
+the Bible at Leyden by Black Meg, who appeared and gave the evidence.
+But they did not discover where his treasure was hidden away. To win an
+easier death, indeed, he made them a long confession that took them a
+still longer journey, but of the truth of the matter he knew nothing,
+and therefore could tell them nothing.
+
+Now this scene, so strange and pathetic, ended at last, the five of them
+were in the darkness of the street. Here once more Foy and Red Bow clung
+to each other, and once more the arm of Martin was about the neck of her
+who seemed to be the serving-maid, while ahead, as though he were paid
+to show the way, went the pilot. Soon footsteps were heard, for folk
+were after them. They turned once, they turned twice, they reached the
+bank of a canal, and Hans, followed by Red Bow and her sister, descended
+some steps and climbed into a boat which lay there ready. Next came
+Martin, and, last of all, Foy. As he set foot upon the first step, a
+figure shot out of the gloom towards him, a knife gleamed in the air and
+a blow took him between the shoulders that sent him stumbling headlong,
+for he was balanced upon the edge of the step.
+
+But Martin had heard and seen. He swung round and struck out with the
+sword Silence. The assassin was far from him, still the tip of the long
+steel reached the outstretched murderous hand, and from it fell a broken
+knife, while he who held it sped on with a screech of pain. Martin
+darted back and seized the knife, then he leapt into the boat and pushed
+off. At the bottom of it lay Foy, who had fallen straight into the arms
+of Red Bow, dragging her down with him.
+
+"Are you hurt, master?" asked Martin.
+
+"Not a bit," replied Foy, "but I am afraid the lady is. She went
+undermost."
+
+"Mother's gifts are good gifts!" muttered Martin as he pulled him and
+the girl, whose breath had been knocked out of her, up to a seat. "You
+ought to have an eight-inch hole through you, but that knife broke upon
+the shirt. Look here," and he threw the handle of the dagger on to his
+knees and snatched at the sculls.
+
+Foy examined it in the faint light, and there, still hooked above the
+guard, was a single severed finger, a long and skinny finger, to which
+the point of the sword Silence had played surgeon, and on it a gold
+ring. "This may be useful," thought Foy, as he slipped handle and finger
+into the pocket of his cloak.
+
+Then they all took oars and rowed till presently they drew near a wharf.
+
+"Now, daughters, make ready," said Hans, and the girls stood up. As they
+touched the wharf Red Bow bent down and kissed Foy.
+
+"The rest were in play, this is in earnest," she said, "and for luck.
+Good-night, companion, and think of me sometimes."
+
+"Good-night, companion," answered Foy, returning the kiss. Then she
+leapt ashore. They never met again.
+
+"You know what to do, girls," said Hans; "do it, and in three days you
+should be safe in England, where, perhaps, I may meet you, though do not
+count on that. Whatever happens, keep honest, and remember me till we
+come together again, here or hereafter, but, most of all, remember your
+mother and your benefactor Hendrik Brant. Farewell."
+
+"Farewell, father," they answered with a sob, and the boat drifted
+off down the dark canal, leaving the two of them alone upon the wharf.
+Afterwards Foy discovered that it was the short sister who walked with
+Martin that was married. Gallant little Red Bow married also, but later.
+Her husband was a cloth merchant in London, and her grandson became Lord
+Mayor of that city.
+
+And now, having played their part in it, these two brave girls are out
+of the story.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SWORD SILENCE RECEIVES THE SECRET
+
+For half an hour or more they glided down the canal unmolested and
+in silence. Now it ran into a broader waterway along which they slid
+towards the sea, keeping as much as possible under the shadow of one
+bank, for although the night was moonless a faint grey light lay upon
+the surface of the stream. At length Foy became aware that they were
+bumping against the sides of a long line of barges and river boats laden
+with timber and other goods. To one of these--it was the fourth--the
+pilot Hans made fast, tying their row-boat to her stern. Then he climbed
+to the deck, whispering to them to follow.
+
+As they scrambled on board, two grey figures arose and Foy saw the flash
+of steel. Then Hans whistled like a plover, and, dropping their swords
+they came to him and fell into talk. Presently Hans left them, and,
+returning to Foy and Martin, said:
+
+"Listen: we must lie here a while, for the wind is against us, and it
+would be too dangerous for us to try to row or pole so big a boat down
+to the sea and across the bar in the darkness, for most likely we should
+set her fast upon a shoal. Before dawn it will turn, and, if I read the
+sky aright, blow hard off land."
+
+"What have the bargemen to say?" asked Foy.
+
+"Only that for these four days they have been lying here forbidden to
+move, and that their craft are to be searched to-morrow by a party of
+soldiers, and the cargo taken out of them piecemeal."
+
+"So," said Foy, "well, I hope that by then what they seek will be far
+away. Now show us this ship."
+
+Then Hans took them down the hatchway, for the little vessel was decked,
+being in shape and size not unlike a modern Norfolk herring boat, though
+somewhat more slightly built. Then having lit a lantern, he showed them
+the cargo. On the top were bags of salt. Dragging one or two of these
+aside, Hans uncovered the heads of five barrels, each of them marked
+with the initial _B_ in white paint.
+
+"That is what men will die for before to-morrow night," he said.
+
+"The treasure?" asked Foy.
+
+He nodded. "These five, none of the others." Then still lower down
+he pointed out other barrels, eight of them, filled with the best
+gunpowder, and showed them too where the slow matches ran to the little
+cabin, the cook's galley, the tiller and the prow, by means of any one
+of which it could be fired. After this and such inspection of the ropes
+and sails as the light would allow, they sat in the cabin waiting till
+the wind should change, while the two watching men unmoored the vessel
+and made her sails ready for hoisting. An hour passed, and still the
+breeze blew from the sea, but in uncertain chopping gusts. Then it fell
+altogether.
+
+"Pray God it comes soon," said Martin, "for the owner of that finger
+in your pocket will have laid the hounds on to our slot long ago, and,
+look! the east grows red."
+
+The silent, hard-faced Hans leant forward and stared up the darkling
+water, his hand behind his ear.
+
+"I hear them," he said presently.
+
+"Who?" asked Foy.
+
+"The Spaniards and the wind--both," he answered. "Come, up with the
+mainsail and pole her out to midstream."
+
+So the three of them took hold of the tackle and ran aft with it, while
+the rings and booms creaked and rattled as the great canvas climbed the
+mast. Presently it was set, and after it the jib. Then, assisted by
+the two watchmen thrusting from another of the boats, they pushed the
+_Swallow_ from her place in the line out into mid-stream. But all this
+made noise and took time, and now men appeared upon the bank, calling to
+know who dared to move the boats without leave. As no one gave them any
+answer, they fired a shot, and presently a beacon began to burn upon a
+neighbouring mound.
+
+"Bad business," said Hans, shrugging his shoulders. "They are warning
+the Government ship at the harbour mouth. Duck, masters, duck; here
+comes the wind," and he sprang to the tiller as the boom swung over and
+the little vessel began to gather way.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, "and here with it come the Spaniards."
+
+Foy looked. Through the grey mist that was growing lighter every moment,
+for the dawn was breaking, he caught sight of a long boat with her
+canvas spread which was sweeping round the bend of the stream towards
+them and not much more than a quarter of a mile away.
+
+"They had had to pole down stream in the dark, and that is why they have
+been so long in coming," said Hans over his shoulder.
+
+"Well, they are here now at any rate," answered Foy, "and plenty of
+them," he added, as a shout from a score of throats told them that they
+were discovered.
+
+But now the _Swallow_ had begun to fly, making the water hiss upon
+either side of her bows.
+
+"How far is it to the sea?" asked Foy.
+
+"About three miles," Hans called back from the tiller. "With this wind
+we should be there in fifteen minutes. Master," he added presently, "bid
+your man light the fire in the galley."
+
+"What for," asked Foy, "to cook breakfast?"
+
+The pilot shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "Yes, if we live to eat
+it." But Foy saw that he was glancing at the slow-match by his side, and
+understood.
+
+Ten minutes passed, and they had swept round the last bend and were in
+the stretch of open water which ran down to the sea. By now the light
+was strong, and in it they saw that the signal fire had not been lit in
+vain. At the mouth of the cutting, just where the bar began, the channel
+was narrowed in with earth to a width of not more than fifty paces, and
+on one bank of it stood a foot armed with culverins. Out of the little
+harbour of this fort a large open boat was being poled, and in it a
+dozen or fifteen soldiers were hastily arming themselves.
+
+"What now?" cried Martin. "They are going to stop the mouth of the
+channel."
+
+The hard-featured Hans set his teeth and made no answer. Only he
+looked backward at his pursuers and onward at those who barred the way.
+Presently he called aloud:
+
+"Under hatches, both of you. They are going to fire from the fort," and
+he flung himself upon his back, steering with his uplifted arms.
+
+Foy and Martin tumbled down the hatchway, for they could do no good on
+deck. Only Foy kept one eye above its level.
+
+"Look out!" he said, and ducked.
+
+As he spoke there was a puff of white smoke from the fort, followed by
+the scream of a shot which passed ahead of them. Then came another puff
+of smoke, and a hole appeared in their brown sail. After this the fort
+did not fire again, for the gunners found no time to load their pieces,
+only some soldiers who were armed with arquebuses began to shoot as the
+boat swept past within a few yards of them. Heedless of their bullets,
+Hans the pilot rose to his feet again, for such work as was before him
+could not be done by a man lying on his back. By now the large open boat
+from the fort was within two hundred yards of them, and, driven by the
+gathering pale, the _Swallow_ rushed towards it with the speed of a
+dart. Foy and Martin crawled from the hatchway and lay down near the
+steersman under the shelter of the little bulwarks, watching the enemy's
+boat, which was in midstream just where the channel was narrowest, and
+on the hither side of the broken water of the bar.
+
+"See," said Foy, "they are throwing out anchors fore and aft. Is there
+room to go past them?"
+
+"No," answered Hans, "the water is too shallow under the bank, and they
+know it. Bring me a burning brand."
+
+Foy crept forward, and returned with the fire.
+
+"Now light the slow-match, master."
+
+Foy opened his blue eyes and a cold shiver went down his back. Then he
+set his teeth and obeyed. Martin looked at Hans, muttering,
+
+"Good for a young one!"
+
+Hans nodded and said, "Have no fear. Till that match burns to the level
+of the deck we are safe. Now, mates, hold fast. I can't go past that
+boat, so I am going through her. We may sink on the other side, though I
+am sure that the fire will reach the powder first. In that case you can
+swim for it if you like, but I shall go with the _Swallow_."
+
+"I will think about it when the time comes. Oh! that cursed astrologer,"
+growled Martin, looking back at the pursuing ship, which was not more
+than seven or eight hundred yards away.
+
+Meanwhile the officer in command of the boat, who was armed with a
+musket, was shouting to them to pull down their sail and surrender;
+indeed, not until they were within fifty yards of him did he seem to
+understand their desperate purpose. Then some one in the boat called
+out: "The devils are going to sink us," and there was a rush to bow and
+stern to get up the anchors. Only the officer stood firm, screaming at
+them like a madman. It was too late; a strong gust of wind caught the
+_Swallow_, causing her to heel over and sweep down on the boat like a
+swooping falcon.
+
+Hans stood and shifted the tiller ever so little, calculating all things
+with his eye. Foy watched the boat towards which they sprang like a
+thing alive, and Martin, lying at his side, watched the burning match.
+
+Suddenly the Spanish officer, when their prow was not more than twenty
+paces from him, ceased to shout, and lifting his piece fired. Martin,
+looking upwards with his left eye, thought that he saw Hans flinch, but
+the pilot made no sound. Only he did something to the tiller, putting
+all his strength on to it, and it seemed to the pair of them as though
+the _Swallow_ was for an instant checked in her flight--certainly her
+prow appeared to lift itself from the water. Suddenly there was a sound
+of something snapping--a sound that could be heard even through the yell
+of terror from the soldiers in the boat. It was the bowsprit which had
+gone, leaving the jib flying loose like a great pennon.
+
+Then came the crash. Foy shut his eyes for a moment, hanging on with
+both hands till the scraping and the trembling were done with. Now he
+opened again, and the first thing he saw was the body of the Spanish
+officer hanging from the jagged stump of the bowsprit. He looked behind.
+The boat had vanished, but in the water were to be seen the heads of
+three or four men swimming. As for themselves they seemed to be clear
+and unhurt, except for the loss of their bowsprit; indeed, the little
+vessel was riding over the seas on the bar like any swan. Hans glanced
+at the slow-match which was smouldering away perilously near to the
+deck, whereon Martin stamped upon it, saying:
+
+"If we sink now it will be in deep water, so there is no need to fly up
+before we go down."
+
+"Go and see if she leaks," said Hans.
+
+They went and searched the forehold but could not find that the
+_Swallow_ had taken any harm worth noting. Indeed, her massive oaken
+prow, with the weight of the gale-driven ship behind it, had crashed
+through the frail sides of the open Spanish boat like a knife through an
+egg.
+
+"That was good steering," said Foy to Hans, when they returned, "and
+nothing seems to be amiss."
+
+Hans nodded. "I hit him neatly," he muttered. "Look. He's gone." As he
+spoke the _Swallow_ gave a sharp pitch, and the corpse of the Spaniard
+fell with a heavy splash into the sea.
+
+"I am glad it has sunk," said Foy; "and now let's have some breakfast,
+for I am starving. Shall I bring you some, friend Hans?"
+
+"No, master, I want to sleep."
+
+Something in the tone of the man's voice caused Foy to scrutinise his
+face. His lips were turning blue. He glanced at his hands. Although
+they still grasped the tiller tightly, these also were turning blue, as
+though with cold; moreover, blood was dropping on the deck.
+
+"You are hit," he said. "Martin, Martin, Hans is hit!"
+
+"Yes," replied the man, "he hit me and I hit him, and perhaps presently
+we shall be talking it over together. No, don't trouble, it is through
+the body and mortal. Well, I expected nothing less, so I can't complain.
+Now, listen, while my strength holds. Can you lay a course for Harwich
+in England?"
+
+Martin and Foy shook their heads. Like most Hollanders they were good
+sailormen, but they only knew their own coasts.
+
+"Then you had best not try it," said Hans, "for there is a gale brewing,
+and you will be driven on the Goodwin Sands, or somewhere down that
+shore, and drowned and the treasure lost. Run up to the Haarlem Mere,
+comrades. You can hug the land with this small boat, while that big
+devil after you," and he nodded towards the pursuing vessel, which by
+now was crossing the bar, "must stand further out beyond the shoals.
+Then slip up through the small gut--the ruined farmstead marks it--and
+so into the mere. You know Mother Martha, the mad woman who is nicknamed
+the Mare? She will be watching at the mouth of it; she always is.
+Moreover, I caused her to be warned that we might pass her way, and if
+you hoist the white flag with a red cross--it lies in the locker--or,
+after nightfall, hang out four lamps upon your starboard side, she will
+come aboard to pilot you, for she knows this boat well. To her also you
+can tell your business without fear, for she will help you, and be as
+secret as the dead. Then bury the treasure, or sink it, or blow it up,
+or do what you can, but, in the name of God, to whom I go, I charge you
+do not let it fall into the hands of Ramiro and his Spanish rats who are
+at your heels."
+
+As Hans spoke he sank down upon the deck. Foy ran to support him, but he
+pushed him aside with a feeble hand. "Let me be," he whispered. "I wish
+to pray. I have set you a course. Follow it to the end."
+
+Then Martin took the tiller while Foy watched Hans. In ten minutes he
+was dead.
+
+Now they were running northwards with a fierce wind abeam of them, and
+the larger Spanish ship behind, but standing further out to sea to avoid
+the banks. Half an hour later the wind, which was gathering to a gale,
+shifted several points to the north, so that they must beat up against
+it under reefed canvas. Still they held on without accident, Foy
+attending to the sail and Martin steering. The _Swallow_ was a good sea
+boat, and if their progress was slow so was that of their pursuer, which
+dogged them continually, sometimes a mile away and sometimes less. At
+length, towards evening, they caught sight of a ruined house that marked
+the channel of the little gut, one of the outlets of the Haarlem Mere.
+
+"The sea runs high upon the bar and it is ebb tide," said Foy.
+
+"Even so we must try it, master," answered Martin. "Perhaps she will
+scrape through," and he put the _Swallow_ about and ran for the mouth of
+the gut.
+
+Here the waves were mountainous and much water came aboard. Moreover,
+three times they bumped upon the bar, till at length, to their joy, they
+found themselves in the calm stream of the gut, and, by shifting the
+sail, were able to draw it up, though very slowly.
+
+"At least we have got a start of them," said Foy, "for they can never
+get across until the tide rises."
+
+"We shall need it all," answered Martin; "so now hoist the white flag
+and let us eat while we may."
+
+While they ate the sun sank, and the wind blew so that scarcely could
+they make a knot an hour, shift the sail as they might. Then, as there
+was no sign of Mother Martha, or any other pilot, they hung out the four
+lamps upon the starboard side, and, with a flapping sail, drifted on
+gradually, till at length they reached the mouth of the great mere, an
+infinite waste of waters--deep in some places, shallow in others,
+and spotted everywhere with islets. Now the wind turned against them
+altogether, and, the darkness closing in, they were forced to drop
+anchor, fearing lest otherwise they should go ashore. One comfort they
+had, however: as yet nothing could be seen of their pursuers.
+
+Then, for the first time, their spirits failed them a little, and they
+stood together near the stern wondering what they should do. It was
+while they rested thus that suddenly a figure appeared before them
+as though it had risen from the deck of the ship. No sound of oars or
+footsteps had reached their ears, yet there, outlined against the dim
+sky, was the figure.
+
+"I think that friend Hans has come to life again," said Martin with a
+slight quaver in his voice, for Martin was terribly afraid of ghosts.
+
+"And I think that a Spaniard has found us," said Foy, drawing his knife.
+
+Then a hoarse voice spoke, saying, "Who are you that signal for a pilot
+on my waters?"
+
+"The question is--who are you?" answered Foy, "and be so good as to tell
+us quickly."
+
+"I am the pilot," said the voice, "and this boat by the rig of her and
+her signals should be the _Swallow_ of The Hague, but why must I crawl
+aboard of her across the corpse of a dead man?"
+
+"Come into the cabin, pilot, and we will tell you," said Foy.
+
+"Very well, Mynheer." So Foy led the way to the cabin, but Martin
+stopped behind a while.
+
+"We have found our guide, so what is the use of the lamps?" he said to
+himself as he extinguished them all, except one which he brought with
+him into the cabin. Foy was waiting for him by the door and they entered
+the place together. At the end of it the light of the lamp showed them
+a strange figure clad in skins so shapeless and sack-like that it was
+impossible to say whether the form beneath were male or female. The
+figure was bareheaded, and about the brow locks of grizzled hair hung
+in tufts. The face, in which were set a pair of wandering grey eyes,
+was deep cut, tanned brown by exposure, scarred, and very ugly, with
+withered lips and projecting teeth.
+
+"Good even to you, Dirk van Goorl's son, and to you, Red Martin. I am
+Mother Martha, she whom the Spaniards call the Mare and the Lake-witch."
+
+"Little need to tell us that, mother," said Foy, "although it is true
+that many years have gone by since I set eyes on you."
+
+Martha smiled grimly as she answered, "Yes, many years. Well, what
+have you fat Leyden burghers to do with a poor old night-hag, except
+of course in times of trouble? Not that I blame you, for it is not well
+that you, or your parents either, should be known to traffic with such
+as I. Now, what is your business with me, for the signals show that you
+have business, and why does the corpse of Hendrik Brant's foster-brother
+lie there in the stern?"
+
+"Because, to be plain, we have Hendrik Brant's treasure on board,
+mother, and for the rest look yonder--" and he pointed to what his eye
+had just caught sight of two or three miles away, a faint light, too low
+and too red for a star, that could only come from a lantern hung at the
+masthead of a ship.
+
+Martha nodded. "Spaniards after you, poling through the gut against the
+wind. Come on, there is no time to lose. Bring your boat round, and we
+will tow the _Swallow_ to where she will lie safe to-night."
+
+Five minutes later they were all three of them rowing the oar boat in
+which they had escaped from The Hague towards some unknown point in the
+darkness, slowly dragging after them the little ship _Swallow_. As they
+went, Foy told Martha all the story of their mission and escape.
+
+"I have heard of this treasure before," she said, "all the Netherlands
+has heard of Brant's hoard. Also dead Hans there let me know that
+perhaps it might come this way, for in such matters he thought that I
+could be trusted," and she smiled grimly. "And now what would you do?"
+
+"Fulfil our orders," said Foy. "Hide it if we can; if not, destroy it."
+
+"Better the first than the last," interrupted Martin. "Hide the
+treasure, say I, and destroy the Spaniards, if Mother Martha here can
+think of a plan."
+
+"We might sink the ship," suggested Foy.
+
+"And leave her mast for a beacon," added Martin sarcastically.
+
+"Or put the stuff into the boat and sink that."
+
+"And never find it again in this great sea," objected Martin.
+
+All this while Martha steered the boat as calmly as though it were
+daylight. They had left the open water, and were passing slowly in and
+out among islets, yet she never seemed to be doubtful or to hesitate. At
+length they felt the _Swallow_ behind them take the mud gently, whereon
+Martha led the way aboard of her and threw out the anchor, saying that
+here was her berth for the night.
+
+"Now," she said, "bring up this gold and lay it in the boat, for if you
+would save it there is much to do before dawn."
+
+So Foy and Martin went down while Martha, hanging over the hatchway,
+held the lighted lamp above them, since they dared not take it near the
+powder. Moving the bags of salt, soon they came to the five barrels of
+treasure marked B, and, strong though they were, it was no easy task for
+the pair of them by the help of a pulley to sling them over the ship's
+side into the boat. At last it was done, and the place of the barrels
+having been filled with salt bags, they took two iron spades which
+were provided for such a task as this, and started, Martha steering as
+before. For an hour or more they rowed in and out among endless islands,
+at the dim shores of which Martha stared as they passed, till at length
+she motioned to them to ship their oars, and they touched ground.
+
+Leaping from the boat she made it fast and vanished among the reeds
+to reconnoitre. Presently she returned again, saying that this was the
+place. Then began the heavy labour of rolling the casks of treasure for
+thirty yards or more along otter paths that pierced the dense growth of
+reeds.
+
+Now, having first carefully cut out reed sods in a place chosen by
+Martha, Foy and Martin set to their task of digging a great hole by the
+light of the stars. Hard indeed they toiled at it, yet had it not been
+for the softness of the marshy soil, they could not have got done while
+the night lasted, for the grave that would contain those barrels must
+be both wide and deep. After three feet of earth had been removed, they
+came to the level of the lake, and for the rest of the time worked in
+water, throwing up shovelfuls of mud. Still at last it was done, and
+the five barrels standing side by side in the water were covered up with
+soil and roughly planted over with the reed turf.
+
+"Let us be going," said Martha. "There is no time to lose." So they
+straightened their backs and wiped the sweat from their brows.
+
+"There is earth lying about, which may tell its story," said Martin.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "if any see it within the next ten days, after which
+in this damp place the mosses will have hidden it."
+
+"Well, we have done our best," said Foy, as he washed his mud-stained
+boots in the water, "and now the stuff must take its chance."
+
+Then once more they entered the boat and rowed away somewhat wearily,
+Martha steering them.
+
+On they went and on, till Foy, tired out, nearly fell asleep at his oar.
+Suddenly Martha tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up and there, not
+two hundred yards away, its tapering mast showing dimly against the sky,
+was the vessel that had pursued them from The Hague, a single lantern
+burning on its stern. Martha looked and grunted; then she leant forward
+and whispered to them imperiously.
+
+"It is madness," gasped Martin.
+
+"Do as I bid you," she hissed, and they let the boat drift with the
+wind till it came to a little island within thirty yards of the anchored
+vessel, an island with a willow tree growing upon its shore. "Hold to
+the twigs of the tree," she muttered, "and wait till I come again." Not
+knowing what else to do, they obeyed.
+
+Then Martha rose and they saw that she had slipped off her garment of
+skins, and stood before them, a gaunt white figure armed with a gleaming
+knife. Next she put the knife to her mouth, and, nipping it between her
+teeth, slid into the water silently as a diving bird. A minute passed,
+not more, and they saw that something was climbing up the cable of the
+ship.
+
+"What is she going to do?" whispered Foy.
+
+"God in Heaven knows," answered Martin, "but if she does not come back
+good-bye to Heer Brant's treasure, for she alone can find it again."
+
+They waited, holding their breaths, till presently a curious choking
+sound floated to them, and the lantern on the ship vanished. Two minutes
+later a hand with a knife in it appeared over the gunwale of the boat,
+followed by a grey head. Martin put out his great arm and lifted, and,
+lo! the white form slid down between them like a big salmon turned out
+of a net.
+
+"Put about and row," it gasped, and they obeyed while the Mare clothed
+herself again in her skin garment.
+
+"What have you done?" asked Foy.
+
+"Something," she replied with a fierce chuckle. "I have stabbed the
+watchman--he thought I was a ghost, and was too frightened to call out.
+I have cut the cable, and I think that I have fired the ship. Ah! look!
+but row--row round the corner of the island."
+
+They gave way, and as they turned the bank of reeds glanced behind them,
+to see a tall tongue of fire shooting up the cordage of the ship, and to
+hear a babel of frightened and angry voices.
+
+Ten minutes later they were on board the _Swallow_, and from her deck
+watching the fierce flare of the burning Spanish vessel nearly a mile
+away. Here they ate and drank, for they needed food badly.
+
+"What shall we do now?" asked Foy when they had finished.
+
+"Nothing at present," answered Martha, "but give me pen and paper."
+
+They found them, and having shrouded the little window of the cabin,
+she sat at the table and very slowly but with much skill drew a plan, or
+rather a picture, of this portion of the Haarlem Mere. In that plan were
+marked many islands according to their natural shapes, twenty of them
+perhaps, and upon one of these she set a cross.
+
+"Take it and hide it," said Martha, when it was finished, "so that if I
+die you may know where to dig for Brant's gold. With this in your hand
+you cannot fail to find it, for I draw well. Remember that it lies
+thirty paces due south of the only spot where it is easy to land upon
+that island."
+
+"What shall I do with this picture which is worth so much?" said Foy
+helplessly, "for in truth I fear to keep the thing."
+
+"Give it to me, master," said Martin; "the secret of the treasure may
+as well lie with the legacy that is charged on it." Then once more he
+unscrewed the handle of the sword Silence, and having folded up the
+paper and wrapped it round with a piece of linen, he thrust it away into
+the hollow hilt.
+
+"Now that sword is worth more than some people might think," Martin said
+as he restored it to the scabbard, "but I hope that those who come to
+seek its secret may have to travel up its blade. Well, when shall we be
+moving?"
+
+"Listen," said Martha. "Would you two men dare a great deed upon those
+Spaniards? Their ship is burnt, but there are a score or over of them,
+and they have two large boats. Now at the dawn they will see the mast
+of this vessel and attack it in the boats thinking to find the treasure.
+Well, if as they win aboard we can manage to fire the matches----"
+
+"There may be fewer Spaniards left to plague us," suggested Foy.
+
+"And believing it to be blown up no one will trouble about that money
+further," added Martin. "Oh! the plan is good, but dangerous. Come, let
+us talk it over."
+
+
+
+The dawn broke in a flood of yellow light on the surface of the Haarlem
+Mere. Presently from the direction of the Spanish vessel, which was
+still burning sullenly, came a sound of beating oars. Now the three
+watchers in the _Swallow_ saw two boatloads of armed men, one of them
+with a small sail set, swooping down towards them. When they were within
+a hundred yards Martha muttered, "It is time," and Foy ran hither and
+thither with a candle firing the slow-matches; also to make sure he cast
+the candle among a few handfuls of oil-soaked shreds of canvas that lay
+ready at the bottom of the hatchway. Then with the others, without the
+Spaniards being able to see them, he slipped over the side of the little
+vessel into the shallow water that was clothed with tall reeds, and
+waded through it to the island.
+
+Once on firm land, they ran a hundred yards or so till they reached a
+clump of swamp willows, and took shelter behind them. Indeed, Foy did
+more, for he climbed the trunk of one of the willows high enough to see
+over the reeds to the ship _Swallow_ and the lake beyond. By this time
+the Spaniards were alongside the _Swallow_, for he could hear their
+captain hailing him who leant over the taffrail, and commanding all on
+board to surrender under pain of being put to death. But from the man in
+the stern came no answer, which was scarcely strange, seeing that it was
+the dead pilot, Hans, to whom they talked in the misty dawn, whose body
+Martin had lashed thus to deceive them. So they fired at the pilot, who
+took no notice, and then began to clamber on board the ship. Presently
+all the men were out of the first boat--that with the sail set on
+it--except two, the steersman and the captain, whom, from his dress and
+demeanour, Foy took to be the one-eyed Spaniard, Ramiro, although of
+this he was too far off to make sure. It was certain, however, that this
+man did not mean to board the _Swallow_, for of a sudden he put his boat
+about, and the wind catching the sail soon drew him clear of her.
+
+"That fellow is cunning," said Foy to Martin and Martha below, "and I
+was a fool to light the tarred canvas, for he has seen the smoke drawing
+up the hatchway."
+
+"And having had enough fire for one night, thinks that he will leave his
+mates to quench it," added Martin.
+
+"The second boat is coming alongside," went on Foy, "and surely the mine
+should spring."
+
+"Scarcely time yet," answered Martin, "the matches were set for six
+minutes."
+
+Then followed a silence in which the three of them watched and listened
+with beating hearts. In it they heard a voice call out that the
+steersman was dead, and the answering voice of the officer in the boat,
+whom Foy had been right in supposing to be Ramiro, warning them to
+beware of treachery. Now suddenly arose a shout of "A mine! a mine!" for
+they had found one of the lighted fuses.
+
+"They are running for their boat," said Foy, "and the captain is sailing
+farther off. Heavens! how they scream."
+
+As the words passed his lips a tongue of flame shot to the very skies.
+The island seemed to rock, a fierce rush of air struck Foy and shook him
+from the tree. Then came a dreadful, thunderous sound, and lo! the sky
+was darkened with fragments of wreck, limbs of men, a grey cloud of
+salt and torn shreds of sail and cargo, which fell here, there, and
+everywhere about and beyond them.
+
+In five seconds it was over, and the three of them, shaken but unhurt,
+were clinging to each other on the ground. Then as the dark pall of
+smoke drifted southward Foy scrambled up his tree again. But now there
+was little to be seen, for the _Swallow_ had vanished utterly, and for
+many yards round where she lay the wreckage-strewn water was black as
+ink with the stirred mud. The Spaniards had gone also, nothing of them
+was left, save the two men and the boat which rode unhurt at a distance.
+Foy stared at them. The steersman was seated and wringing his hands,
+while the captain, on whose armour the rays of the rising sun now shone
+brightly, held to the mast like one stunned, and gazed at the place
+where, a minute before, had been a ship and a troop of living men.
+Presently he seemed to recover himself, for he issued an order, whereon
+the boat's head went about, and she began to glide away.
+
+"Now we had best try to catch him," said Martha, who, by standing up,
+could see this also.
+
+"Nay, let him be," answered Foy, "we have sent enough men to their
+account," and he shuddered.
+
+"As you will, master," grumbled Martin, "but I tell you it is not
+wise. That man is too clever to be allowed to live, else he would have
+accompanied the others on board and perished with them."
+
+"Oh! I am sick," replied Foy. "The wind from that powder has shaken me.
+Settle it as you will with Mother Martha and leave me in peace."
+
+So Martin turned to speak with Martha, but she was not there. Chuckling
+to herself in the madness of her hate and the glory of this great
+revenge, she had slipped away, knife in hand, to discover whether
+perchance any of the powder-blasted Spaniards still lived. Fortunately
+for them they did not, the shock had killed them all, even those who at
+the first alarm had thrown themselves into the water. At length
+Martin found her clapping her hands and crooning above a dead body, so
+shattered that no one could tell to what manner of man it had belonged,
+and led her away.
+
+But although she was keen enough for the chase, by now it was too
+late, for, travelling before the strong wind, Ramiro and his boat had
+vanished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SENOR RAMIRO
+
+If Foy van Goorl, by some magic, could have seen what was passing in
+the mind of that fugitive in the boat as he sailed swiftly away from the
+scene of death and ruin, bitterly indeed would he have cursed his folly
+and inexperience which led him to disregard the advice of Red Martin.
+
+Let us look at this man as he goes gnawing his hand in rage and
+disappointment. There is something familiar about his face and bearing,
+still gallant enough in a fashion, yet the most observant would find
+it difficult to recognise in the Senor Ramiro the handsome and courtly
+Count Juan de Montalvo of over twenty years before. A long spell of the
+galleys changes the hardiest man, and by ill luck Montalvo, or Ramiro,
+to call him by his new name, had been forced to serve nearly his full
+time. He would have escaped earlier indeed, had he not been foolish
+enough to join in a mutiny, which was discovered and suppressed. It was
+in the course of this savage struggle for freedom that he lost his eye,
+knocked out with a belaying pin by an officer whom he had just stabbed.
+The innocent officer died and the rascal Ramiro died, but without his
+good looks.
+
+To a person of gentle birth, however great a scoundrel he might be, the
+galleys, which represented penal servitude in the sixteenth century,
+were a very rough school. Indeed for the most part the man who went into
+them blameless became bad, and the man who went into them bad became
+worse, for, as the proverb says, those who have dwelt in hell always
+smell of brimstone. Who can imagine the awfulness of it--the chains,
+the arduous and continual labour, the whip of the quarter-masters, the
+company of thieves and outcast ruffians, all dreadful in its squalid
+sameness?
+
+Well, his strength and constitution, coupled with a sort of grim
+philosophy, brought him through, and at length Ramiro found himself
+a free man, middle-aged indeed, but intelligent and still strong, the
+world once more before him. Yet what a world! His wife, believing him
+dead, or perhaps wishing to believe it, had remarried and gone with her
+husband to New Spain, taking his children with her, and his friends,
+such of them as lived, turned their backs upon him. But although he had
+been an unlucky man, for with him wickedness had not prospered, he still
+had resource and courage.
+
+The Count Montalvo was a penniless outlaw, a byword and a scorn, and so
+the Count Montalvo--died, and was buried publicly in the church of his
+native village. Strangely enough, however, about the same time the
+Senor Ramiro appeared in another part of Spain, where with success he
+practised as a notary and man of affairs. Some years went by thus, till
+at length, having realised a considerable sum of money by the help of
+an ingenious fraud, of which the details are superfluous, an inspiration
+took him and he sailed for the Netherlands.
+
+In those dreadful days, in order to further the ends of religious
+persecution and of legalised theft, informers were rewarded with a
+portion of the goods of heretics. Ramiro's idea--a great one in its
+way--was to organise this informing business, and, by interesting a
+number of confederates who practically were shareholders in the venture,
+to sweep into his net more fortunes, or shares of fortunes, than a
+single individual, however industrious, could hope to secure. As he had
+expected, soon he found plenty of worthy companions, and the company was
+floated. For a while, with the help of local agencies and spies, such as
+Black Meg and the Butcher, with whom, forgetting past injuries, he had
+secretly renewed his acquaintance, it did very well, the dividends being
+large and regular. In such times handsome sums were realised, without
+risk, out of the properties of unfortunates who were brought to the
+stake, and still more was secured by a splendid system of blackmail
+extracted from those who wished to avoid execution, and who, when they
+had been sucked dry, could either be burnt or let go, as might prove
+most convenient.
+
+Also there were other methods of making money--by an intelligent method
+of robbery, by contracts to collect fines and taxes and so forth. Thus
+things went well, and, at length, after many years of suffering and
+poverty, the Senor Ramiro, that experienced man of affairs, began
+to grow rich, until, indeed, driven forward by a natural but unwise
+ambition, a fault inherent to daring minds, he entered upon a dangerous
+path.
+
+The wealth of Hendrik Brant, the goldsmith, was a matter of common
+report, and glorious would be the fortune of him who could secure its
+reversion. This Ramiro wished to win; indeed, there was no ostensible
+reason why he should not do so, since Brant was undoubtedly a heretic,
+and, therefore, legitimate game for any honourable servant of the Church
+and King. Yet there were lions in the path, two large and formidable
+lions, or rather a lion and the ghost of a lion, for one was material
+and the other spiritual. The material lion was that the Government,
+or in other words, his august kingship Philip, desired the goldsmith's
+thousands for himself, and was therefore likely to be irritated by an
+interloper. The spiritual lion was that Brant was connected with Lysbeth
+van Goorl, once known as Lysbeth de Montalvo, a lady who had brought
+her reputed husband no luck. Often and often during dreary hours of
+reflection beneath tropic suns, for which the profession of galley-slave
+gave great leisure, the Senor Ramiro remembered that very energetic
+curse which his new affianced wife had bestowed upon him, a curse in
+which she prayed that through her he might live in heavy labour, that
+through her and hers he might be haunted by fears and misfortunes, and
+at the last die in misery. Looking back upon the past it would certainly
+seem that there had been virtue in this curse, for already through
+Lysbeth and his dealings with her, he had suffered the last degradation
+and the toil, which could not be called light, of nearly fourteen years
+of daily occupation in the galleys.
+
+Well, he was clear of them, and thenceforward, the curse having
+exhausted itself for the time being, he had prospered--at any rate to a
+moderate extent. But if once more he began to interfere with Lysbeth van
+Goorl and her relatives, might it not re-assert its power? That was one
+question. Was it worth while to take his risk on the chance of securing
+Brant's fortune? That was another. Brant, it was true, was only a cousin
+of Lysbeth's husband, but when once you meddled with a member of the
+family, it was impossible to know how soon other members would become
+mixed up in the affair.
+
+The end may be guessed. The treasure was at hand and enormous, whereas
+the wrath of a Heavenly or an earthly king was problematical and far
+away. So greed, outstripping caution and superstitious fear, won the
+race, and Ramiro threw himself into the adventure with a resource and
+energy which in their way were splendid.
+
+Now, as always, he was a man who hated violence for its own sake. It was
+no wish of his that the worthy Heer Brant should be unnecessarily burnt
+or tortured. Therefore through his intermediaries, as Brant had narrated
+in his letter, he approached him with a proposal which, under the
+circumstances, was liberal enough--that Brant should hand over
+two-thirds of his fortune to him and his confederates, on condition
+that he was assisted to escape with the remaining third. To his disgust,
+however, this obstinate Dutchman refused to buy his safety at the price
+of a single stiver. Indeed, he answered with rude energy that now as
+always he was in the hands of God, and if it pleased God that his life
+should be sacrificed and his great wealth divided amongst thieves, well,
+it must be so, but he, at least, would be no party to the arrangement.
+
+The details of the plots and counter-plots, the attack of the Ramiro
+company, the defences of Brant, the internecine struggles between the
+members of the company and the agents of the Government, if set out
+at length, would fill a considerable book. Of these we already know
+something, and the rest may be divined.
+
+In the course of the affair Ramiro had made but one mistake, and that
+sprang from what he was wont to consider the weakness of his nature.
+Needless to say, it was that he had winked at the escape of Brant's
+daughter, Elsa. It may have been superstition that prompted him, or it
+may have been pity, or perhaps it was a certain oath of mercy which he
+had taken in an hour of need; at any rate, he was content that the girl
+should not share the doom which overshadowed her father. He did not
+think it at all likely that she would take with her any documents of
+importance, and the treasure, of course, she could not take; still, to
+provide against accidents he arranged for her to be searched upon the
+road.
+
+As we know this search was a failure, and when on the morrow Black Meg
+arrived to make report and to warn him that Dirk van Goorl's son and his
+great serving-man, whose strength was known throughout the Netherlands,
+were on their road to The Hague, he was sure that after all the girl had
+carried with her some paper or message.
+
+By this time the whereabouts of Brant's treasure had been practically
+solved. It was believed to lie in the string of vessels, although it was
+not known that one of these was laden with powder as well as gold. The
+plan of the Government agents was to search the vessels as they passed
+out to sea and seize the treasure as contraband, which would save much
+legal trouble, since under the law or the edicts wealth might not be
+shipped abroad by heretics. The plan of Ramiro and his friends was
+to facilitate the escape of the treasure to the open sea, where they
+proposed to swoop down upon it and convey it to more peaceful shores.
+
+When Foy and his party started down the canal in the boat Ramiro knew
+that his opportunity had come, and at once unmoored the big ship and
+followed. The attempted stabbing of Foy was not done by his orders, as
+he wished the party to go unmolested and to be kept in sight. That was a
+piece of private malice on the part of Black Meg, for it was she who was
+dressed as a man. On various occasions in Leyden Foy had made remarks
+upon Meg's character which she resented, and about her personal
+appearance, which she resented much more, and this was an attempt to pay
+off old scores that in the issue cost her a finger, a good knife, and a
+gold ring which had associations connected with her youth.
+
+At first everything had gone well. By one of the most daring and
+masterly manoeuvres that Ramiro had ever seen in his long and varied
+experience upon the seas, the little _Swallow_, with her crew of three
+men, had run the gauntlet of the fort which was warned and waiting for
+her; had sunk and sailed through the big Government boat and her crew of
+lubberly soldiers, many of whom, he was glad to reflect, were drowned;
+had crushed the officer, against whom he had a personal grudge, like an
+egg-shell, and won through to the open sea. There he thought he was sure
+of her, for he took it for granted that she would run for the Norfolk
+coast, and knew that in the gale of wind which was blowing his larger
+and well-manned vessel could pull her down. But then the ill-luck--that
+ancient ill-luck which always dogged him when he began to interfere with
+the affairs of Lysbeth and her relatives--declared itself.
+
+Instead of attempting to cross the North Sea the little _Swallow_ hugged
+the coast, where, for various nautical reasons connected with the wind,
+the water, and the build of their respective ships, she had the legs of
+him. Next he lost her in the gut, and after that we know what happened.
+There was no disguising it; it was a most dreadful fiasco. To have one's
+vessel boarded, the expensive vessel in which so large a proportion of
+the gains of his honourable company had been invested, not only boarded,
+but fired, and the watchman stabbed by a single naked devil of unknown
+sex or character was bad enough. And then the end of it!
+
+To have found the gold-laden ship, to have been gulled into attacking
+her, and--and--oh! he could scarcely bear to think of it! There was but
+one consolation. Although too late to save the others, even through the
+mist he had seen that wisp of smoke rising from the hold; yes, he, the
+experienced, had smelt a rat, and, warned by some half-divine intuition,
+had kept his distance with the result that he was still alive.
+
+But the others! Those gallant comrades in adventure, where were they?
+Well, to be frank, he did not greatly care. There was another question
+of more moment. Where was the treasure? Now that his brain had cleared
+after the shock and turmoil it was evident to him that Foy van Goorl,
+Red Martin, and the white devil who had boarded his ship, would not have
+destroyed so much wealth if they could help it, and still less would
+they have destroyed themselves. Therefore, to pursue the matter to a
+logical conclusion, it seemed probable that they had spent the night in
+sinking or burying the money, and preparing the pretty trap into which
+he had walked. So the secret was in their hands, and as they were still
+alive very possibly means could be found to induce them to reveal its
+hiding-place. There was still hope; indeed, now that he came to weigh
+things, they were not so bad.
+
+To begin with, almost all the shareholders in the affair had perished
+by the stern decree of Providence, and he was the natural heir of
+their interests. In other words, the treasure, if it was recovered, was
+henceforth his property. Further, when they came to hear the story, the
+Government would set down Brant's fortune as hopelessly lost, so that
+the galling competition from which he had suffered so much was at an
+end.
+
+Under these circumstances what was to be done? Very soon, as he sailed
+away over the lake in the sweet air of the morning, the Senor Ramiro
+found an answer to the question.
+
+The treasure had left The Hague, he must leave The Hague. The secret of
+its disposal was at Leyden, henceforth he must live at Leyden. Why not?
+He knew Leyden well. It was a pleasant place, but, of course, he might
+be recognised there; though, after so long, this was scarcely probable,
+for was not the Count de Montalvo notoriously dead and buried? Time and
+accident had changed him; moreover, he could bring art to the assistance
+of nature. In Leyden, too, he had confederates--Black Meg to wit, for
+one; also he had funds, for was he not the treasurer of the company
+that this very morning had achieved so remarkable and unsought-for an
+ascension?
+
+There was only one thing against the scheme. In Leyden lived Lysbeth van
+Goorl and her husband, and with them a certain young man whose parentage
+he could guess. More, her son Foy knew the hiding-place of Brant's
+hoard, and from him or his servant Martin that secret must be won.
+So once again he was destined to match himself against Lysbeth--the
+wronged, the dreaded, the victorious Lysbeth, whose voice of
+denunciation still rang in his ear, whose eyes of fire still scorched
+his soul, the woman whom he feared above everything on earth. He fought
+her once for money, and, although he won the money, it had done him
+little good, for in the end she worsted him. Now, if he went to Leyden,
+he must fight her again for money, and what would be the issue of that
+war? Was it worth while to take the risk? Would not history repeat
+itself? If he hurt her, would she not crush him? But the treasure, that
+mighty treasure, which could give him so much, and, above all, could
+restore to him the rank and station he had forfeited, and which he
+coveted more than anything in life. For, low as he had fallen, Montalvo
+could not forget that he had been born a gentleman.
+
+He would take his chance; he would go to Leyden. Had he weighed the
+matter in the gloom of night, or even in a dull and stormy hour,
+perhaps--nay probably--he would have decided otherwise. But this morning
+the sun shone brightly, the wind made a merry music in the reeds; on the
+rippling surface of the lake the marsh-birds sang, and from the shore
+came a cheerful lowing of kine. In such surroundings his fears and
+superstitions vanished. He was master of himself, and he knew that all
+depended upon himself, the rest was dream and nonsense. Behind him lay
+the buried gold; before him rose the towers of Leyden, where he could
+find its key. A God! that haunting legend of a God of vengeance, in
+which priests and others affected to believe? Now that he came to think
+of it, what rubbish was here, for as any agent of the Inquisition knew
+well, the vengeance always fell upon those who trusted in this same God;
+a hundred torture dens, a thousand smoking fires bore witness to the
+fact. And if there was a God, why, recognising his personal merits,
+only this morning He had selected him out of many to live on and be the
+inheritor of the wealth of Hendrik Brant. Yes, he would go to Leyden and
+fight the battle out.
+
+
+
+At the entry of the gut the Senor Ramiro landed from his boat. At first
+he had thought of killing his companion, so that he might remain the
+sole survivor of the catastrophe, but on reflection he abandoned this
+idea, as the man was a faithful creature of his own who might be useful.
+So he bade him return to The Hague to tell the story of the destruction
+of the ship _Swallow_ with the treasure, her attackers and her crew,
+whoever they might have been. He was to add, moreover, that so far as
+he knew the Captain Ramiro had perished also, as he, the steersman, was
+left alone in charge of the boat when the vessel blew up. Then he was to
+come to Leyden, bringing with him certain goods and papers belonging to
+him, Ramiro.
+
+This plan seemed to have advantages. No one would continue to hunt for
+the treasure. No one except himself and perhaps Black Meg would know
+that Foy van Goorl and Martin had been on board the _Swallow_ and
+escaped; indeed as yet he was not quite sure of it himself. For the rest
+he could either lie hidden, or if it proved desirable, announce that he
+still lived. Even if his messenger should prove faithless and tell the
+truth, it would not greatly matter, seeing that he knew nothing which
+could be of service to anybody.
+
+And so the steersman sailed away, while Ramiro, filled with memories,
+reflections, and hopes, walked quietly through the Morsch Poort into the
+good city of Leyden.
+
+
+
+That evening, but not until dark had fallen, two other travellers
+entered Leyden, namely, Foy and Martin. Passing unobserved through
+the quiet streets, they reached the side door of the house in the Bree
+Straat. It was opened by a serving-woman, who told Foy that his mother
+was in Adrian's room, also that Adrian was very much better. So thither,
+followed more slowly by Martin, went Foy, running upstairs three steps
+at a time, for had he not a great story to tell!
+
+The interior of the room as he entered it made an attractive picture
+which even in his hurry caught Foy's eye and fixed itself so firmly in
+his mind that he never forgot its details. To begin with, the place
+was beautifully furnished, for his brother had a really good taste in
+tapestry, pictures, and other such adornments. Adrian himself lay upon a
+richly carved oak bed, pale from loss of blood, but otherwise little the
+worse. Seated by the side of the bed, looking wonderfully sweet in the
+lamplight, which cast shadows from the curling hair about her brows on
+to the delicate face beneath, was Elsa Brant. She had been reading to
+Adrian from a book of Spanish chivalry such as his romantic soul loved,
+and he, resting on his elbow in the snowy bed, was contemplating her
+beauty with his languishing black eyes. Yet, although he only saw her
+for a moment before she heard his entry and looked up, it was obvious
+to Foy that Elsa remained quite unconscious of the handsome Adrian's
+admiration, indeed, that her mind wandered far away from the magnificent
+adventures and highly coloured love scenes of which she was reading in
+her sweet, low voice. Nor was he mistaken, for, in fact, the poor child
+was thinking of her father.
+
+At the further end of the room, talking together earnestly in the deep
+and curtained window-place, stood his mother and his father. Clearly
+they were as much preoccupied as the younger couple, and it was not
+difficult for Foy to guess that fears for his own safety upon his
+perilous errand were what concerned them most, and behind them other
+unnumbered fears. For the dwellers in the Netherlands in those days
+must walk from year to year through a valley of shadows so grim that our
+imagination can scarcely picture them.
+
+"Sixty hours and he is not back," Lysbeth was saying.
+
+"Martin said we were not to trouble ourselves before they had been gone
+for a hundred," answered Dirk consolingly.
+
+Just then Foy, surveying them from the shadowed doorway, stepped
+forward, saying in his jovial voice:
+
+"Sixty hours to the very minute."
+
+Lysbeth uttered a little scream of joy and ran forward. Elsa let the
+book fall on to the floor and rose to do the same, then remembered and
+stood still, while Dirk remained where he was till the women had done
+their greetings, betraying his delight only by a quick rubbing of his
+hands. Adrian alone did not look particularly pleased, not, however,
+because he retained any special grudge against his brother for his share
+in the fracas of a few nights before, since, when once his furious gusts
+of temper had passed, he was no malevolently minded man. Indeed he was
+glad that Foy had come back safe from his dangerous adventure, only
+he wished that he would not blunder into the bedroom and interrupt his
+delightful occupation of listening, while the beautiful Elsa read him
+romance and poetry.
+
+Since Foy was gone upon his mission, Adrian had been treated with the
+consideration which he felt to be his due. Even his stepfather had taken
+the opportunity to mumble some words of regret for what had happened,
+and to express a hope that nothing more would be said about the matter,
+while his mother was sympathetic and Elsa most charming and attentive.
+Now, as he knew well, all this would be changed. Foy, the exuberant,
+unrefined, plain-spoken, nerve-shaking Foy, would become the centre of
+attention, and overwhelm them with long stories of very dull exploits,
+while Martin, that brutal bull of a man who was only fit to draw a cart,
+would stand behind and play the part of chorus, saying "Ja" and "Neen"
+at proper intervals. Well, he supposed that he must put up with it, but
+oh! what a weariness it was.
+
+Another minute, and Foy was wringing him by the hand, saying in his loud
+voice, "How are you, old fellow? You look as well as possible, what are
+you lying in this bed for and being fed with pap by the women?"
+
+"For the love of Heaven, Foy," interrupted Adrian, "stop crushing my
+fingers and shaking me as though I were a rat. You mean it kindly, I
+know, but--" and Adrian dropped back upon the pillow, coughed and looked
+hectic and interesting.
+
+Then both the women fell upon Foy, upbraiding him for his roughness,
+begging him to remember that if he were not careful he might kill his
+brother, whose arteries were understood to be in a most precarious
+condition, till the poor man covered his ears with his hands and waited
+till he saw their lips stop moving.
+
+"I apologise," he said. "I won't touch him, I won't speak loud near him.
+Adrian, do you hear?"
+
+"Who could help it?" moaned the prostrate Adrian.
+
+"Cousin Foy," interrupted Elsa, clasping her hands and looking up into
+his face with her big brown eyes, "forgive me, but I can wait no longer.
+Tell me, did you see or hear anything of my father yonder at The Hague?"
+
+"Yes, cousin, I saw him," answered Foy presently.
+
+"And how was he--oh! and all the rest of them?"
+
+"He was well."
+
+"And free and in no danger?"
+
+"And free, but I cannot say in no danger. We are all of us in danger
+nowadays, cousin," replied Foy in the same quiet voice.
+
+"Oh! thank God for that," said Elsa.
+
+"Little enough to thank God for," muttered Martin, who had entered the
+room and was standing behind Foy looking like a giant at a show. Elsa
+had turned her face away, so Foy struck backwards with all his force,
+hitting Martin in the pit of the stomach with the point of his elbow.
+Martin doubled himself up, recoiled a step and took the hint.
+
+"Well, son, what news?" said Dirk, speaking for the first time.
+
+"News!" answered Foy, escaping joyfully from this treacherous ground.
+"Oh! lots of it. Look here," and plunging his hands into his pockets he
+produced first the half of the broken dagger and secondly a long skinny
+finger of unwholesome hue with a gold ring on it.
+
+"Bah!" said Adrian. "Take that horrid thing away."
+
+"Oh! I beg your pardon," answered Foy, shuffling the finger back into
+his pocket, "you don't mind the dagger, do you? No? Well, then, mother,
+that mail shirt of yours is the best that was ever made; this knife
+broke on it like a carrot, though, by the way, it's uncommonly sticky
+wear when you haven't changed it for three days, and I shall be glad
+enough to get it off."
+
+"Evidently Foy has a story to tell," said Adrian wearily, "and the
+sooner he rids his mind of it the sooner he will be able to wash. I
+suggest, Foy, that you should begin at the beginning."
+
+So Foy began at the beginning, and his tale proved sufficiently moving
+to interest even the soul-worn Adrian. Some portions of it he softened
+down, and some of it he suppressed for the sake of Elsa--not very
+successfully, indeed, for Foy was no diplomatist, and her quick
+imagination filled the gaps. Another part--that which concerned her
+future and his own--of necessity he omitted altogether. He told them
+very briefly, however, of the flight from The Hague, of the sinking of
+the Government boat, of the run through the gale to the Haarlem Mere
+with the dead pilot on board and the Spanish ship behind, and of the
+secret midnight burying of the treasure.
+
+"Where did you bury it?" asked Adrian.
+
+"I have not the slightest idea," said Foy. "I believe there are about
+three hundred islets in that part of the Mere, and all I know is that
+we dug a hole in one of them and stuck it in. However," he went on in
+a burst of confidence, "we made a map of the place, that is--" Here he
+broke off with a howl of pain, for an accident had happened.
+
+While this narrative was proceeding, Martin, who was standing by him
+saying "Ja" and "Neen" at intervals, as Adrian foresaw he would, had
+unbuckled the great sword Silence, and in an abstracted manner was
+amusing himself by throwing it towards the ceiling hilt downwards, and
+as it fell catching it in his hand. Now, most unaccountably, he looked
+the other way and missed his catch, with the result that the handle of
+the heavy weapon fell exactly upon Foy's left foot and then clattered to
+the ground.
+
+"You awkward beast!" roared Foy, "you have crushed my toes," and he
+hopped towards a chair upon one leg.
+
+"Your pardon, master," said Martin. "I know it was careless; my mother
+always told me that I was careless, but so was my father before me."
+
+Adrian, overcome by the fearful crash, closed his eyes and sighed.
+
+"Look," said Lysbeth in a fury, "he is fainting; I knew that would be
+the end of all your noise. If you are not careful we shall have him
+breaking another vessel. Go out of the room, all of you. You can finish
+telling the story downstairs," and she drove them before her as a
+farmer's wife drives fowls.
+
+"Martin," said Foy on the stairs, where they found themselves together
+for a minute, for at the first signs of the storm Dirk had preceded
+them, "why did you drop that accursed great sword of yours upon my
+foot?"
+
+"Master," counted Martin imperturbably, "why did you hit me in the pit
+of the stomach with your elbow?"
+
+"To keep your tongue quiet."
+
+"And what is the name of my sword?"
+
+"Silence."
+
+"Well, then, I dropped the sword 'Silence' for the same reason. I hope
+it hasn't hurt you much, but if it did I can't help it."
+
+Foy wheeled round. "What do you mean, Martin?"
+
+"I mean," answered the great man with energy, "that you have no right to
+tell what became of that paper which Mother Martha gave us."
+
+"Why not? I have faith in my brother."
+
+"Very likely, master, but that isn't the point. We carry a great secret,
+and this secret is a trust, a dangerous trust; it would be wrong to lay
+its burden upon the shoulders of other folk. What people don't know they
+can't tell, master."
+
+Foy still stared at him, half in question, half in anger, but Martin
+made no further reply in words. Only he went through certain curious
+motions, motions as of a man winding slowly and laboriously at something
+like a pump wheel. Foy's lips turned pale.
+
+"The rack?" he whispered. Martin nodded, and answered beneath his
+breath,
+
+"They may all of them be on it yet. You let the man in the boat escape,
+and that man was the Spanish spy, Ramiro; I am sure of it. If they don't
+know they can't tell, and though we know we shan't tell; we shall die
+first, master."
+
+Now Foy trembled and leaned against the wall. "What would betray us?" he
+asked.
+
+"Who knows, master? A woman's torment, a man's--" and he put a strange
+meaning into his voice, "a man's--jealousy, or pride, or vengeance. Oh!
+bridle your tongue and trust no one, no, not your father or mother,
+or sweetheart, or--" and again that strange meaning came into Martin's
+voice, "or brother."
+
+"Or you?" queried Foy, looking up.
+
+"I am not sure. Yes, I think you may trust me, though there is no
+knowing how the rack might change a man's mind."
+
+"If all this be so," said Foy, with a flush of sudden passion, "I have
+said too much already."
+
+"A great deal too much, master. If I could have managed it I should have
+dropped the sword Silence on your toe long before. But I couldn't, for
+the Heer Adrian was watching me, and I had to wait till he closed his
+eyes, which he did to hear the better without seeming to listen."
+
+"You are unjust to Adrian, Martin, as you always have been, and I am
+angry with you. Say, what is to be done now?"
+
+"Now, master," replied Martin cheerfully, "you must forget the teaching
+of the Pastor Arentz, and tell a lie. You must take up your tale where
+you left it off, and say that we made a map of the hiding-place, but
+that--I--being a fool--managed to drop it while we were lighting the
+fuses, so that it was blown away with the ship. I will tell the same
+story."
+
+"Am I to say this to my father and mother?"
+
+"Certainly, and they will quite understand why you say it. My mistress
+was getting uneasy already, and that was why she drove us from the room.
+You will tell them that the treasure is buried but that the secret of
+its hiding-place was lost."
+
+"Even so, Martin, it is not lost; Mother Martha knows it, and they all
+will guess that she does know it."
+
+"Why, master, as it happened you were in such a hurry to get on with
+your story that I think you forgot to mention that she was present at
+the burying of the barrels. Her name was coming when I dropped the sword
+upon your foot."
+
+"But she boarded and fired the Spanish ship--so the man Ramiro and his
+companion would probably have seen her."
+
+"I doubt, master, that the only person who saw her was he whose gizzard
+she split, and he will tell no tales. Probably they think it was you or
+I who did that deed. But if she was seen, or if they know that she
+has the secret, then let them get it from Mother Martha. Oh! mares can
+gallop and ducks can dive and snakes can hide in the grass. When they
+can catch the wind and make it give up its secrets, when they can charm
+from sword Silence the tale of the blood which it has drunk throughout
+the generations, when they can call back the dead saints from heaven and
+stretch them anew within the torture-pit, then and not before, they will
+win knowledge of the hoard's hiding-place from the lips of the witch of
+Haarlem Meer. Oh! master, fear not for her, the grave is not so safe."
+
+"Why did you not caution me before, Martin?"
+
+"Because, master," answered Martin stolidly, "I did not think that you
+would be such a fool. But I forgot that you are young--yes, I forget
+that you are young and good, too good for the days we live in. It is my
+fault. On my head be it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE MASTER
+
+In the sitting-room, speaking more slowly and with greater caution, Foy
+continued the story of their adventures. When he came to the tale of
+how the ship _Swallow_ was blown up with all the Spanish boarders,
+Elsa clasped her hands, saying, "Horrible! Horrible! Think of the poor
+creatures hurled thus into eternity."
+
+"And think of the business they were on," broke in Dirk grimly, adding,
+"May God forgive me who cannot feel grieved to hear of the death of
+Spanish cut-throats. It was well managed, Foy, excellently well managed.
+But go on."
+
+"I think that is about all," said Foy shortly, "except that two of the
+Spaniards got away in a boat, one of whom is believed to be the head spy
+and captain, Ramiro."
+
+"But, son, up in Adrian's chamber just now you said something about
+having made a map of the hiding-place of the gold. Where is it, for it
+should be put in safety?"
+
+"Yes, I know I did," answered Foy, "but didn't I tell you?" he went
+on awkwardly. "Martin managed to drop the thing in the cabin of the
+_Swallow_ while we were lighting the fuses, so it was blown up with the
+ship, and there is now no record of where the stuff was buried."
+
+"Come, come, son," said Dirk. "Martha, who knows every island on the
+great lake, must remember the spot."
+
+"Oh! no, she doesn't," answered Foy. "The truth is that she didn't come
+with us when we buried the barrels. She stopped to watch the Spanish
+ship, and just told us to land on the first island we came to and dig a
+hole, which we did, making a map of the place before we left, the same
+that Martin dropped."
+
+All this clumsy falsehood Foy uttered with a wooden face and in a voice
+which would not have convinced a three-year-old infant, priding himself
+the while upon his extraordinary cleverness.
+
+"Martin," asked Dirk, suspiciously, "is this true?"
+
+"Absolutely true, master," replied Martin; "it is wonderful how well he
+remembers."
+
+"Son," said Dirk, turning white with suppressed anger, "you have always
+been a good lad, and now you have shown yourself a brave one, but I pray
+God that I may not be forced to add that you are false-tongued. Do you
+not see that this looks black? The treasure which you have hidden is the
+greatest in all the Netherlands. Will not folk say, it is not wonderful
+that you should have forgotten its secret until--it suits you to
+remember?"
+
+Foy took a step forward, his face crimson with indignation, but the
+heavy hand of Martin fell upon his shoulder and dragged him back as
+though he were but a little child.
+
+"I think, Master Foy," he said, fixing his eyes upon Lysbeth, "that your
+lady mother wishes to say something."
+
+"You are right, Martin; I do. Do you not think, husband, that in these
+days of ours a man might have other reasons for hiding the truth than a
+desire to enrich himself by theft?"
+
+"What do you mean, wife?" asked Dirk. "Foy here says that he has buried
+this great hoard with Martin, but that he and Martin do not know where
+they buried it, and have lost the map they made. Whatever may be the
+exact wording of the will, that hoard belongs to my cousin here, subject
+to certain trusts which have not yet arisen, and may never arise, and I
+am her guardian while Hendrik Brant lives and his executor when he dies.
+Therefore, legally, it belongs to me also. By what right, then, do my
+son and my servant hide the truth from me, if, indeed, they are hiding
+the truth? Say what you have to say straight out, for I am a plain man
+and cannot read riddles."
+
+"Then I will say it, husband, though it is but my guess, for I have had
+no words with Foy or Martin, and if I am wrong they can correct me. I
+know their faces, and I think with you that they are not speaking the
+truth. I think that they do not wish us to know it--not that they may
+keep the secret of this treasure for themselves, but because such a
+secret might well bring those who know of it to the torment and the
+stake. Is it not so, my son?"
+
+"Mother," answered Foy, almost in a whisper, "it is so. The paper is not
+lost, but do not seek to learn its hiding-place, for there are wolves
+who would tear your bodies limb from limb to get the knowledge out of
+you; yes, even Elsa's, even Elsa's. If the trial must come let it fall
+on me and Martin, who are fitter to bear it. Oh! father, surely you know
+that, whatever we may be, neither of us is a thief."
+
+Dirk advanced to his son, and kissed him on the forehead.
+
+"My son," he said, "pardon me, and you, Red Martin, pardon me also. I
+spoke in my haste. I spoke as a fool, who, at my age, should have known
+better. But, oh! I tell you that I wish that this cursed treasure, these
+cases of precious gems and these kegs of hoarded gold, had been shivered
+to the winds of heaven with the timbers of the ship _Swallow_. For, mark
+you, Ramiro has escaped, and with him another man, and they will know
+well that having the night to hide it, you did not destroy those jewels
+with the ship. They will track you down, these Spanish sleuthhounds,
+filled with the lust of blood and gold, and it will be well if the
+lives of every one of us do not pay the price of the secret of the
+burying-place of the wealth of Hendrik Brant."
+
+He ceased, pale and trembling, and a silence fell upon the room and all
+in it, a sad and heavy silence, for in his voice they caught the note of
+prophecy. Martin broke it.
+
+"It may be so, master," he said; "but, your pardon, you should have
+thought of that before you undertook this duty. There was no call upon
+you to send the Heer Foy and myself to The Hague to bring away this
+trash, but you did it as would any other honest man. Well, now it is
+done, and we must take our chance, but I say this--if you are wise, my
+masters, yes, and you ladies also, before you leave this room you
+will swear upon the Bible, every one of you, never to whisper the word
+treasure, never to think of it except to believe that it is gone--lost
+beneath the waters of the Haarlemer Meer. Never to whisper it, no,
+mistress, not even to the Heer Adrian, your son who lies sick abed
+upstairs."
+
+"You have learnt wisdom somewhere of late years, Martin, since you
+stopped drinking and fighting," said Dirk drily, "and for my part before
+God I swear it."
+
+"And so do I." "And I." "And I." "And I," echoed the others, Martin,
+who spoke last, adding, "Yes, I swear that I will never speak of it; no,
+_not even to my young master, Adrian, who lies sick abed upstairs._"
+
+
+
+Adrian made a good, though not a very quick recovery. He had lost
+a great deal of blood, but the vessel closed without further
+complications, so that it remained only to renew his strength by rest
+and ample food. For ten days or so after the return of Foy and Martin,
+he was kept in bed and nursed by the women of the house. Elsa's share
+in this treatment was to read to him from the Spanish romances which he
+admired. Very soon, however, he found that he admired Elsa herself even
+more than the romances, and would ask her to shut the book that he might
+talk to her. So long as his conversation was about himself, his dreams,
+plans and ambitions, she fell into it readily enough; but when he began
+to turn it upon _herself_, and to lard it with compliment and amorous
+innuendo, then she demurred, and fled to the romances for refuge.
+
+Handsome as he might be, Adrian had no attractions for Elsa. About
+him there was something too exaggerated for her taste; moreover he was
+Spanish, Spanish in his beauty, Spanish in the cast of his mind, and all
+Spaniards were hateful to her. Deep down in her heart also lay a second
+reason for this repugnance; the man reminded her of another man who for
+months had been a nightmare to her soul, the Hague spy, Ramiro. This
+Ramiro she had observed closely. Though she had not seen him very often
+his terrible reputation was familiar to her. She knew also, for her
+father had told her as much, that it was he who was drawing the nets
+about him at The Hague, and who plotted day and night to rob him of his
+wealth.
+
+At first sight there was no great resemblance between the pair. How
+could there be indeed between a man on the wrong side of middle age,
+one-eyed, grizzled, battered, and bearing about with him an atmosphere
+of iniquity, and a young gentleman, handsome, distinguished, and
+wayward, but assuredly no criminal? Yet the likeness existed. She
+had seen it first when Adrian was pointing out to her how, were he a
+general, he would dispose his forces for the capture of Leyden, and from
+that moment her nature rose in arms against him. Also it came out in
+other ways, in little tricks of voice and pomposities of manner which
+Elsa caught at unexpected moments, perhaps, as she told herself, because
+she had trained her mind to seek these similarities. Yet all the while
+she knew that the fancy was ridiculous, for what could these two men
+have in common with each other?
+
+In those days, however, Elsa did not think much of Adrian, or of anybody
+except her beloved father, whose only child she was, and whom she adored
+with all the passion of her heart. She knew the terrible danger in which
+he stood, and guessed that she had been sent away that she should not
+share his perils. Now she had but one desire and one prayer--that he
+might escape in safety, and that she might return to him again. Once
+only a message came from him, sent through a woman she had never seen,
+the wife of a fisherman, who delivered it by word of mouth. This was the
+message:
+
+"Give my love and blessing to my daughter Elsa, and tell her that so far
+I am unharmed. To Foy van Goorl say, I have heard the news. Well done,
+thou good and faithful servant! Let him remember what I told him, and be
+sure that he will not strive in vain, and that he shall not lack for his
+reward here or hereafter."
+
+That was all. Tidings reached them that the destruction of so many men
+by the blowing up of the _Swallow_, and by her sinking of the Government
+boat as she escaped, had caused much excitement and fury among the
+Spaniards. But, as those who had been blown up were free-lances, and as
+the boat was sunk while the _Swallow_ was flying from them, nothing had
+been done in the matter. Indeed, nothing could be done, for it was not
+known who manned the _Swallow_, and, as Ramiro had foreseen, her crew
+were supposed to have been destroyed with her in the Haarlemer Meer.
+
+Then, after a while, came other news that filled Elsa's heart with a
+wild hope, for it was reported that Hendrik Brant had disappeared, and
+was believed to have escaped from The Hague. Nothing more was heard of
+him, however, which is scarcely strange, for the doomed man had
+gone down the path of rich heretics into the silent vaults of the
+Inquisition. The net had closed at last, and through the net fell the
+sword.
+
+But if Elsa thought seldom of Adrian, except in gusts of spasmodic
+dislike, Adrian thought of Elsa, and little besides. So earnestly did
+he lash his romantic temperament, and so deeply did her beauty and charm
+appeal to him, that very soon he was truly in love with her. Nor did the
+fact that, as he believed, she was, potentially, the greatest heiress
+in the Netherlands, cool Adrian's amorous devotion. What could suit him
+better in his condition, than to marry this rich and lovely lady?
+
+So Adrian made up his mind that he would marry her, for, in his vanity,
+it never occurred to him that she might object. Indeed, the only thought
+that gave him trouble was the difficulty of reducing her wealth into
+possession. Foy and Martin had buried it somewhere in the Haarlemer
+Meer. But they said, for this he had ascertained by repeated inquiries,
+although the information was given grudgingly enough, that the map of
+the hiding-place had been destroyed in the explosion on the _Swallow_.
+Adrian did not believe this story for a moment. He was convinced that
+they were keeping the truth from him, and as the prospective master of
+that treasure he resented this reticence bitterly. Still, it had to be
+overcome, and so soon as he was engaged to Elsa he intended to speak
+very clearly upon this point. Meanwhile, the first thing was to find a
+suitable opportunity to make his declaration in due form, which done he
+would be prepared to deal with Foy and Martin.
+
+Towards evening it was Elsa's custom to walk abroad. As at that hour Foy
+left the foundry, naturally he accompanied her in these walks, Martin
+following at a little distance in case he should be wanted. Soon those
+excursions became delightful to both of them. To Elsa, especially, it
+was pleasant to escape from the hot house into the cool evening air,
+and still more pleasant to exchange the laboured tendernesses and
+highly coloured compliments of Adrian for the cheerful honesty of Foy's
+conversation.
+
+Foy admired his cousin as much as did his half-brother, but his attitude
+towards her was very different. He never said sweet things; he never
+gazed up into her eyes and sighed, although once or twice, perhaps by
+accident, he did squeeze her hand. His demeanour towards her was that of
+a friend and relative, and the subject of their talk for the most part
+was the possibility of her father's deliverance from the dangers which
+surrounded him, and other matters of the sort.
+
+The time came at last when Adrian was allowed to leave his room, and
+as it chanced it fell to Elsa's lot to attend him on this first journey
+downstairs. In a Dutch home of the period and of the class of the Van
+Goorl's, all the women-folk of whatever degree were expected to take
+a share in the household work. At present Elsa's share was to nurse to
+Adrian, who showed so much temper at every attempt which was made
+to replace her by any other woman, that, in face of the doctor's
+instructions, Lysbeth did not dare to cross his whim.
+
+It was with no small delight, therefore, that Elsa hailed the prospect
+of release, for the young man with his grandiose bearing and amorous
+sighs wearied her almost beyond endurance. Adrian was not equally
+pleased; indeed he had feigned symptoms which caused him to remain in
+bed an extra week, merely in order that he might keep her near him. But
+now the inevitable hour had come, and Adrian felt that it was incumbent
+upon him to lift the veil and let Elsa see some of the secret of
+his soul. He had prepared for the event; indeed the tedium of his
+confinement had been much relieved by the composition of lofty and
+heart-stirring addresses, in which he, the noble cavalier, laid his
+precious self and fortune at the feet of this undistinguished, but rich
+and attractive maid.
+
+Yet now when the moment was with him, and when Elsa gave him her hand
+to lead him from the room, behold! all these beautiful imaginings had
+vanished, and his knees shook with no fancied weakness. Somehow Elsa did
+not look as a girl ought to look who was about to be proposed to; she
+was too cold and dignified, too utterly unconscious of anything unusual.
+It was disconcerting--but--it must be done.
+
+By a superb effort Adrian recovered himself and opened with one of the
+fine speeches, not the best by any means, but the only specimen which he
+could remember.
+
+"Without," he began, "the free air waits to be pressed by my cramped
+wings, but although my heart bounds wild as that of any haggard hawk, I
+tell you, fairest Elsa, that in yonder gilded cage," and he pointed to
+the bed, "I----"
+
+"Heaven above us! Heer Adrian," broke in Elsa in alarm, "are you--are
+you--getting giddy?"
+
+"She does not understand. Poor child, how should she?" he murmured in a
+stage aside. Then he started again. "Yes, most adorable, best beloved,
+I am giddy, giddy with gratitude to those fair hands, giddy with worship
+of those lovely eyes----"
+
+Now Elsa, unable to contain her merriment any longer, burst out
+laughing, but seeing that her adorer's face was beginning to look as
+it did in the dining-room before he broke the blood vessel, she checked
+herself, and said:
+
+"Oh! Heer Adrian, don't waste all this fine poetry upon me. I am too
+stupid to understand it."
+
+"Poetry!" he exclaimed, becoming suddenly natural, "it isn't poetry."
+
+"Then what is it?" she asked, and next moment could have bitten her
+tongue out.
+
+"It is--it is--love!" and he sank upon his knees before her, where, she
+could not but notice, he looked very handsome in the subdued light of
+the room, with his upturned face blanched by sickness, and his southern
+glowing eyes. "Elsa, I love you and no other, and unless you return that
+love my heart will break and I shall die."
+
+Now, under ordinary circumstances, Elsa would have been quite competent
+to deal with the situation, but the fear of over-agitating Adrian
+complicated it greatly. About the reality of his feelings at the moment,
+at any rate, it seemed impossible to be mistaken, for the man was
+shaking like a leaf. Still, she must make an end of these advances.
+
+"Rise, Heer Adrian," she said gently, holding out her hand to help him
+to his feet.
+
+He obeyed, and glancing at her face, saw that it was very calm and cold
+as winter ice.
+
+"Listen, Heer Adrian," she said. "You mean this kindly, and doubtless
+many a maid would be flattered by your words, but I must tell you that I
+am in no mood for love-making."
+
+"Because of another man?" he queried, and suddenly becoming theatrical
+again, added, "Speak on, let me hear the worst; I will not quail."
+
+"There is no need to," replied Elsa in the same quiet voice, "because
+there is no other man. I have never yet thought of marriage, I have no
+wish that way, and if I had, I should forget it now when from hour to
+hour I do not know where my dear father may be, or what fate awaits him.
+He is my only lover, Heer Adrian," and as Elsa spoke her soft brown eyes
+filled with tears.
+
+"Ah!" said Adrian, "would that I might fly to save him from all dangers,
+as I rescued you, lady, from the bandits of the wood."
+
+"I would you might," she replied, smiling sadly at the double meaning of
+the words, "but, hark, your mother is calling us. I know, Heer Adrian,"
+she added gently, "that you will understand and respect my dreadful
+anxiety, and will not trouble me again with poetry and love-talk, for if
+you do I shall be--angry."
+
+"Lady," he answered, "your wishes are my law, and until these clouds
+have rolled from the blue heaven of your life I will be as silent as the
+watching moon. And, by the way," he added rather nervously, "perhaps
+you will be silent also--about our talk, I mean, as we do not want that
+buffoon, Foy, thrusting his street-boy fun at us."
+
+Elsa bowed her head. She was inclined to resent the "we" and other
+things in this speech, but, above all, she did not wish to prolong this
+foolish and tiresome interview, so, without more words, she took her
+admirer by the hand and guided him down the stairs.
+
+
+
+It was but three days after this ridiculous scene, on a certain
+afternoon, when Adrian had been out for the second time, that the
+evil tidings came. Dirk had heard them in the town, and returned home
+well-nigh weeping. Elsa saw his face and knew at once.
+
+"Oh! is he dead?" she gasped.
+
+He nodded, for he dared not trust himself to speak.
+
+"How? Where?"
+
+"In the Poort prison at The Hague."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I have seen a man who helped to bury him."
+
+She looked up as though to ask for further details, but Dirk turned away
+muttering, "He is dead, he is dead, let be."
+
+Then she understood, nor did she ever seek to know any more. Whatever he
+had suffered, at least now he was with the God he worshipped, and with
+the wife he lost. Only the poor orphan, comforted by Lysbeth, crept from
+the chamber, and for a week was seen no more. When she appeared again
+she seemed to be herself in all things, only she never smiled and was
+very indifferent to what took place about her. Thus she remained for
+many days.
+
+Although this demeanour on Elsa's part was understood and received with
+sympathy and more by the rest of the household, Adrian soon began to
+find it irksome and even ridiculous. So colossal was this young man's
+vanity that he was unable quite to understand how a girl could be so
+wrapped up in the memories of a murdered father, that no place was left
+in her mind for the tendernesses of a present adorer. After all, this
+father, what was he? A middle-aged and, doubtless, quite uninteresting
+burgher, who could lay claim to but one distinction, that of great
+wealth, most of which had been amassed by his ancestors.
+
+Now a rich man alive has points of interest, but a rich man dead is
+only interesting to his heirs. Also, this Brant was one of these
+narrow-minded, fanatical, New Religion fellows who were so wearisome to
+men of intellect and refinement. True, he, Adrian, was himself of that
+community, for circumstances had driven him into the herd, but oh! he
+found them a dreary set. Their bald doctrines of individual effort, of
+personal striving to win a personal redemption, did not appeal to him;
+moreover, they generally ended at the stake. Now about the pomp and
+circumstance of the Mother Church there was something attractive. Of
+course, as a matter of prejudice he attended its ceremonials from time
+to time and found them comfortable and satisfying. Comfortable also
+were the dogmas of forgiveness to be obtained by an act of penitential
+confession, and the sense of a great supporting force whose whole weight
+was at the disposal of the humblest believer.
+
+In short, there was nothing picturesque about the excellent departed
+Hendrik, nothing that could justify the young woman in wrapping herself
+up in grief for him to the entire exclusion of a person who _was_
+picturesque and ready, at the first opportunity, to wrap himself up in
+her.
+
+After long brooding, assisted by a close study of the romances of the
+period, Adrian convinced himself that in all this there was something
+unnatural, that the girl must be under a species of spell which in her
+own interest ought to be broken through. But how? That was the question.
+Try as he would he could do nothing. Therefore, like others in a
+difficulty, he determined to seek the assistance of an expert, namely,
+Black Meg, who, among her other occupations, for a certain fee payable
+in advance, was ready to give advice as a specialist in affairs of the
+heart.
+
+To Black Meg accordingly he went, disguised, secretly and by night, for
+he loved mystery, and in truth it was hardly safe that he should visit
+her by the light of day. Seated in a shadowed chamber he poured out his
+artless tale to the pythoness, of course concealing all names. He might
+have spared himself this trouble, as he was an old client of Meg's, a
+fact that no disguise could keep from her. Before he opened his lips
+she knew perfectly what was the name of his inamorata and indeed all the
+circumstances connected with the pair of them.
+
+The wise woman listened in patience, and when he had done, shook her
+head, saying that the case was too hard for her. She proposed, however,
+to consult a Master more learned than herself, who, by great good
+fortune, was at that moment in Leyden, frequenting her house in fact,
+and begged that Adrian would return at the same hour on the morrow.
+
+Now, as it chanced, oddly enough Black Meg had been commissioned by the
+said Master to bring about a meeting between himself and this very young
+man.
+
+Adrian returned accordingly, and was informed that the Master, after
+consulting the stars and other sources of divination, had become so
+deeply interested in the affair that, for pure love of the thing and
+not for any temporal purpose of gain, he was in attendance to advise in
+person. Adrian was overjoyed, and prayed that he might be introduced.
+Presently a noble-looking form entered the room, wrapped in a
+long cloak. Adrian bowed, and the form, after contemplating him
+earnestly--very earnestly, if he had known the truth--acknowledged
+the salute with dignity. Adrian cleared his throat and began to speak,
+whereon the sage stopped him.
+
+"Explanations are needless, young man," he said, in a measured and
+melodious voice, "for my studies of the matter have already informed
+me of more than you can tell. Let me see; your name is Adrian van
+Goorl--no, called Van Goorl; the lady you desire to win is Elsa Brant,
+the daughter of Hendrik Brant, a heretic and well-known goldsmith, who
+was recently executed at The Hague. She is a girl of much beauty, but
+one unnaturally insensible to the influence of love, and who does not
+at present recognise your worth. There are, also, unless I am mistaken,
+other important circumstances connected with the case.
+
+"This lady is a great heiress, but her fortune is at present missing;
+it is, I have reason to believe, hidden in the Haarlemer Meer. She
+is surrounded with influences that are inimical to you, all of which,
+however, can be overcome if you will place yourself unreservedly in my
+hands, for, young man, I accept no half-confidences, nor do I ask for
+any fee. When the fortune is recovered and the maiden is your happy
+wife, then we will talk of payment for services rendered, and not
+before."
+
+"Wonderful, wonderful!" gasped Adrian; "most learned senor, every word
+you say is true."
+
+"Yes, friend Adrian, and I have not told you all the truth. For
+instance--but, no, this is not the time to speak. The question is, do
+you accept my terms?"
+
+"What terms, senor?"
+
+"The old terms, without which no wonder can be worked--faith, absolute
+faith."
+
+Adrian hesitated a little. Absolute faith seemed a large present to give
+a complete stranger at a first interview.
+
+"I read your thought and I respect it," went on the sage, who, to tell
+truth, was afraid he had ventured a little too far. "There is no hurry;
+these affairs cannot be concluded in a day."
+
+Adrian admitted that they could not, but intimated that he would be glad
+of a little practical and immediate assistance. The sage buried his face
+in his hands and thought.
+
+"The first thing to do," he said presently, "is to induce a favourable
+disposition of the maiden's mind towards yourself, and this, I think,
+can best be brought about--though the method is one which I do not
+often use--by means of a love philtre carefully compounded to suit the
+circumstances of the case. If you will come here to-morrow at dusk, the
+lady of this house--a worthy woman, though rough of speech and no true
+adept--will hand it to you."
+
+"It isn't poisonous?" suggested Adrian doubtfully.
+
+"Fool, do I deal in poisons? It will poison the girl's heart in your
+favour, that is all."
+
+"And how is it to be administered?" asked Adrian.
+
+"In the water or the wine she drinks, and afterwards you must speak to
+her again as soon as possible. Now that is settled," he went on airily,
+"so, young friend, good-bye."
+
+"Are you sure that there is no fee?" hesitated Adrian.
+
+"No, indeed," answered the sage, "at any rate until all is accomplished.
+Ah!" and he sighed, "did you but know what a delight it is to a weary
+and world-worn traveller to help forward the bright ambitions of youth,
+to assist the pure and soaring soul to find the mate destined to it by
+heaven--ehem!--you wouldn't talk of fees. Besides, I will be frank; from
+the moment that I entered this room and saw you, I recognised in you a
+kindred nature, one which under my guidance is capable of great things,
+of things greater than I care to tell. Ah! what a vision do I see. You,
+the husband of the beautiful Elsa and master of her great wealth, and I
+at your side guiding you with my wisdom and experience--then what might
+not be achieved? Dreams, doubtless dreams, though how often have my
+dreams been prophetic! Still, forget them, and at least, young man, we
+will be friends," and he stretched out his hand.
+
+"With all my heart," answered Adrian, taking those cool, agile-looking
+fingers. "For years I have sought someone on whom I could rely, someone
+who would understand me as I feel you do."
+
+"Yes, yes," sighed the sage, "I do indeed understand you."
+
+"To think," he said to himself after the door had closed behind the
+delighted and flattered Adrian, "to think that I can be the father
+of such a fool as that. Well, it bears out my theories about
+cross-breeding, and, after all, in this case a good-looking, gullible
+fool will be much more useful to me than a young man of sense. Let me
+see; the price of the office is paid and I shall have my appointment
+duly sealed as the new Governor of the Gevangenhuis by next week at
+furthest, so I may as well begin to collect evidence against my worthy
+successor, Dirk van Goorl, his adventurous son Foy, and that red-headed
+ruffian, Martin. Once I have them in the Gevangenhuis it will go hard if
+I can't squeeze the secret of old Brant's money out of one of the three
+of them. The women wouldn't know, they wouldn't have told the women,
+besides I don't want to meddle with them, indeed nothing would persuade
+me to that"--and he shivered as though at some wretched recollection.
+"But there must be evidence; there is such noise about these executions
+and questionings that they won't allow any more of them in Leyden
+without decent evidence; even Alva and the Blood Council are getting
+a bit frightened. Well, who can furnish better testimony than that
+jackass, my worthy son, Adrian? Probably, however, he has a conscience
+somewhere, so it may be as well not to let him know that when he thinks
+himself engaged in conversation he is really in the witness box. Let me
+see, we must take the old fellow, Dirk, on the ground of heresy, and
+the youngster and the serving man on a charge of murdering the king's
+soldiers and assisting the escape of heretics with their goods. Murder
+sounds bad, and, especially in the case of a young man, excites less
+sympathy than common heresy."
+
+Then he went to the door, calling, "Meg, hostess mine, Meg."
+
+He might have saved himself the trouble, however, since, on opening it
+suddenly, that lady fell almost into his arms.
+
+"What!" he said, "listening, oh, fie! and all for nothing. But there,
+ladies will be curious and"--this to himself--"I must be more careful.
+Lucky I didn't talk aloud."
+
+Then he called her in, and having inspected the chamber narrowly,
+proceeded to make certain arrangements.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+BETROTHED
+
+At nightfall on the morrow Adrian returned as appointed, and was
+admitted into the same room, where he found Black Meg, who greeted him
+openly by name and handed to him a tiny phial containing a fluid clear
+as water. This, however, was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that it
+was water and nothing else.
+
+"Will it really work upon her heart?" asked Adrian, eyeing the stuff.
+
+"Ay," answered the hag, "that's a wondrous medicine, and those who drink
+it go crazed with love for the giver. It is compounded according to the
+Master's own receipt, from very costly tasteless herbs that grow only in
+the deserts of Arabia."
+
+Adrian understood, and fumbled in his pocket. Meg stretched out her hand
+to receive the honorarium. It was a long, skinny hand, with long, skinny
+fingers, but there was this peculiarity about it, that one of these
+fingers chanced to be missing. She saw his eyes fixed upon the gap, and
+rushed into an explanation.
+
+"I have met with an accident," Meg explained. "In cutting up a pig the
+chopper caught this finger and severed it."
+
+"Did you wear a ring on it?" asked Adrian.
+
+"Yes," she replied, with sombre fury.
+
+"How very strange!" ejaculated Adrian.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I have seen a finger, a woman's long finger with a gold ring
+on it, that might have come off your hand. I suppose the pork-butcher
+picked it up for a keepsake."
+
+"May be, Heer Adrian, but where is it now?"
+
+"Oh! it is, or was, in a bottle of spirits tied by a thread to the
+cork."
+
+Meg's evil face contorted itself. "Get me that bottle," she said
+hoarsely. "Look you, Heer Adrian, I am doing much for you, do this for
+me."
+
+"What do you want it for?"
+
+"To give it Christian burial," she replied sourly. "It is not fitting or
+lucky that a person's finger should stand about in a bottle like a caul
+or a lizard. Get it, I say get it--I ask no question where--or, young
+man, you will have little help in your love affairs from me."
+
+"Do you wish the dagger hilt also?" he asked mischievously.
+
+She looked at him out of the corners of her black eyes. This Adrian knew
+too much.
+
+"I want the finger and the ring on it which I lost in chopping up the
+pig."
+
+"Perhaps, mother, you would like the pig, too. Are you not making a
+mistake? Weren't you trying to cut his throat, and didn't he bite off
+the finger?"
+
+"If I want the pig, I'll search his stye. You bring that bottle, or----"
+
+She did not finish her sentence, for the door opened, and through it
+came the sage.
+
+"Quarrelling," he said in a tone of reproof. "What about? Let me guess,"
+and he passed his hand over his shadowed brow. "Ah! I see, there is a
+finger in it, a finger of fate? No, not that," and, moved by a fresh
+inspiration, he grasped Meg's hand, and added, "Now I have it. Bring it
+back, friend Adrian, bring it back; a dead finger is most unlucky to all
+save its owner. As a favour to me."
+
+"Very well," said Adrian.
+
+"My gifts grow," mused the master. "I have a vision of this honest hand
+and of a great sword--but, there, it is not worth while, too small a
+matter. Leave us, mother. It shall be returned, my word on it. Yes, gold
+ring and all. And now, young friend, let us talk. You have the philtre?
+Well, I can promise you that it is a good one, it would almost bring
+Galatea from her marble. Pygmalion must have known that secret. But tell
+me something of your life, your daily thoughts and daily deeds, for when
+I give my friendship I love to live in the life of my friends."
+
+Thus encouraged, Adrian told him a great deal, so much, indeed, that the
+Senor Ramiro, nodding in the shadow of his hood, began to wonder whether
+the spy behind the cupboard door, expert as he was, could possibly make
+his pen keep pace with these outpourings. Oh! it was a dreary task,
+but he kept to it, and by putting in a sentence here and there artfully
+turned the conversation to matters of faith.
+
+"No need to fence with me," he said presently. "I know how you have been
+brought up, how through no fault of your own you have wandered out
+of the warm bosom of the true Church to sit at the clay feet of the
+conventicle. You doubt it? Well, let me look again, let me look. Yes,
+only last week you were seated in a whitewashed room overhanging the
+market-place. I see it all--an ugly little man with a harsh voice is
+preaching, preaching what I think blasphemy. Baskets--baskets? What have
+baskets to do with him?"
+
+"I believe he used to make them," interrupted Adrian, taking the bait.
+
+"That may be it, or perhaps he will be buried in one; at any rate he
+is strangely mixed up with baskets. Well, there are others with you, a
+middle-aged, heavy-faced man, is he not Dirk van Goorl, your stepfather?
+And--wait--a young fellow with rather a pleasant face, also a relation.
+I see his name, but I can't spell it. F--F--o--i, faith in the French
+tongue, odd name for a heretic."
+
+"F-o-y--Foy," interrupted Adrian again.
+
+"Indeed! Strange that I should have mistaken the last letter, but in the
+spirit sight and hearing these things chance: then there is a great man
+with a red beard."
+
+"No, Master, you're wrong," said Adrian with emphasis; "Martin was not
+there; he stopped behind to watch the house."
+
+"Are you sure?" asked the seer doubtfully. "I look and I seem to see
+him," and he stared blankly at the wall.
+
+"So you might see him often enough, but not at last week's meeting."
+
+It is needless to follow the conversation further. The seer, by aid of a
+ball of crystal that he produced from the folds of his cloak, described
+his spirit visions, and the pupil corrected them from his intimate
+knowledge of the facts, until the Senor Ramiro and his confederates in
+the cupboard had enough evidence, as evidence was understood in those
+days, to burn Dirk, Foy, and Martin three times over, and, if it should
+suit him, Adrian also. Then for that night they parted.
+
+Next evening Adrian was back again with the finger in the bottle,
+which Meg grabbed as a pike snatches at a frog, and further fascinating
+conversation ensued. Indeed, Adrian found this well of mystic lore
+tempered with shrewd advice upon love affairs and other worldly matters,
+and with flattery of his own person and gifts, singularly attractive.
+
+Several times did he return thus, for as it chanced Elsa had been unwell
+and kept her room, so that he discovered no opportunity of administering
+the magic philtre that was to cause her heart to burn with love for him.
+
+At length, when even the patient Ramiro was almost worn out by the young
+gentleman's lengthy visits, the luck changed. Elsa appeared one day
+at dinner, and with great adroitness Adrian, quite unseen of anyone,
+contrived to empty the phial into her goblet of water, which, as he
+rejoiced to see, she drank to the last drop.
+
+But no opportunity such as he sought ensued, for Elsa, overcome,
+doubtless, by an unwonted rush of emotion, retired to battle it in her
+own chamber. Since it was impossible to follow and propose to her there,
+Adrian, possessing his soul in such patience as he could command, sat
+in the sitting-room to await her return, for he knew that it was not her
+habit to go out until five o'clock. As it happened, however, Elsa
+had other arrangements for the afternoon, since she had promised to
+accompany Lysbeth upon several visits to the wives of neighbours, and
+then to meet her cousin Foy at the factory and walk with him in the
+meadows beyond the town.
+
+So while Adrian, lost in dreams, waited in the sitting-room Elsa and
+Lysbeth left the house by the side door.
+
+They had paid three of their visits when their path chanced to lead them
+past the old town prison which was called the Gevangenhuis. This place
+formed one of the gateways of the city, for it was built in the walls
+and opened on to the moat, water surrounding it on all sides. In front
+of its massive door, that was guarded by two soldiers, a small crowd
+had gathered on the drawbridge and in the street beyond, apparently
+in expectation of somebody or something. Lysbeth looked at the
+three-storied frowning building and shuddered, for it was here that
+heretics were put upon their trial, and here, too, many of them were
+done to death after the dreadful fashion of the day.
+
+"Hasten," she said to Elsa, as she pushed through the crowd, "for
+doubtless some horror passes here."
+
+"Have no fear," answered an elderly and good-natured woman who overheard
+her, "we are only waiting to hear the new governor of the prison read
+his deed of appointment."
+
+As she spoke the doors were thrown open and a man--he was a well-known
+executioner named Baptiste--came out carrying a sword in one hand and a
+bunch of keys on a salver in the other. After him followed the governor
+gallantly dressed and escorted by a company of soldiers and the
+officials of the prison. Drawing a scroll from beneath his cloak he
+began to read it rapidly and in an almost inaudible voice.
+
+It was his commission as governor of the prison signed by Alva
+himself, and set out in full his powers, which were considerable, his
+responsibilities which were small, and other matters, excepting only
+the sum of money that he had paid for the office, that, given certain
+conditions, was, as a matter of fact, sold to the highest bidder. As
+may be guessed, this post of governor of a gaol in one of the large
+Netherland cities was lucrative enough to those who did not object to
+such a fashion of growing rich. So lucrative was it, indeed, that the
+salary supposed to attach to the office was never paid; at least its
+occupant was expected to help himself to it out of heretical pockets.
+
+As he finished reading through the paper the new governor looked up,
+to see, perhaps, what impression he had produced upon his audience. Now
+Elsa saw his face for the first time and gripped Lysbeth's arm.
+
+"It is Ramiro," she whispered, "Ramiro the spy, the man who dogged my
+father at The Hague."
+
+As well might she have spoken to a statue. Indeed, of a sudden Lysbeth
+seemed to be smitten into stone, for there she stood staring with a
+blanched and meaningless face at the face of the man opposite to her.
+Well might she stare, for she also knew him. Across the gulf of years,
+one-eyed, bearded, withered, scarred as he was by suffering, passion
+and evil thoughts, she knew him, for there before her stood one whom she
+deemed dead, the wretch whom she had believed to be her husband, Juan de
+Montalvo. Some magnetism drew his gaze to her; out of all the faces
+of that crowd it was hers that leapt to his eye. He trembled and grew
+white; he turned away, and swiftly was gone back into the hell of the
+Gevangenhuis. Like a demon he had come out of it to survey the human
+world beyond, and search for victims there; like a demon he went back
+into his own place. So at least it seemed to Lysbeth.
+
+"Come, come," she muttered and, drawing the girl with her, passed out of
+the crowd.
+
+Elsa began to talk in a strained voice that from time to time broke into
+a sob.
+
+"That is the man," she said. "He hounded down my father; it was his
+wealth he wanted, but my father swore that he would die before he should
+win it, and he is dead--dead in the Inquisition, and that man is his
+murderer."
+
+Lysbeth made no answer, never a word she uttered, till presently they
+halted at a mean and humble door. Then she spoke for the first time in
+cold and constrained accents.
+
+"I am going in here to visit the Vrouw Jansen; you have heard of her,
+the wife of him whom they burned. She sent to me to say that she is
+sick, I know not of what, but there is smallpox about; I have heard of
+four cases of it in the city, so, cousin, it is wisest that you should
+not enter here. Give me the basket with the food and wine. Look, yonder
+is the factory, quite close at hand, and there you will find Foy. Oh!
+never mind Ramiro. What is done is done. Go and walk with Foy, and for a
+while forget--Ramiro."
+
+At the door of the factory Elsa found Foy awaiting her, and they walked
+together through one of the gates of the city into the pleasant meadows
+that lay beyond. At first they did not speak much, for each of them was
+occupied with thoughts which pressed their tongues to silence. When they
+were clear of the town, however, Elsa could contain herself no more;
+indeed, the anguish awakened in her mind by the sight of Ramiro working
+upon nerves already overstrung had made her half-hysterical. She began
+to speak; the words broke from her like water from a dam which it has
+breached. She told Foy that she had seen the man, and more--much more.
+All the misery which she had suffered, all the love for the father who
+was lost to her.
+
+At last Elsa ceased outworn, and, standing still there upon the river
+bank she wrung her hands and wept. Till now Foy had said nothing, for
+his good spirits and cheerful readiness seemed to have forsaken him.
+Even now he said nothing. All he did was to put his arms about this
+sweet maid's waist, and, drawing her to him, to kiss her upon brow and
+eyes and lips. She did not resist; it never seemed to occur to her to
+show resentment; indeed, she let her head sink upon his shoulder like
+the head of a little child, and there sobbed herself to silence. At last
+she lifted her face and asked very simply:
+
+"What do you want with me, Foy van Goorl?"
+
+"What?" he repeated; "why I want to be your husband."
+
+"Is this a time for marrying and giving in marriage?" she asked again,
+but almost as though she were speaking to herself.
+
+"I don't know that it is," he replied, "but it seems the only thing to
+do, and in such days two are better than one."
+
+She drew away and looked at him, shaking her head sadly. "My father,"
+she began----
+
+"Yes," he interrupted brightening, "thank you for mentioning him, that
+reminds me. He wished this, so I hope now that he is gone you will take
+the same view."
+
+"It is rather late to talk about that, isn't it, Foy?" she stammered,
+looking at his shoulder and smoothing her ruffled hair with her small
+white hand. "But what do you mean?"
+
+So word for word, as nearly as he could remember it, he told her all
+that Hendrik Brant had said to him in the cellar at The Hague before
+they had entered upon the desperate adventure of their flight to the
+Haarlemer Meer. "He wished it, you see," he ended.
+
+"My thought was always his thought, and--Foy--I wish it also."
+
+"Priceless things are not lightly won," said he, quoting Brant's words
+as though by some afterthought.
+
+"There he must have been talking of the treasure, Foy," she answered,
+her face lightening to a smile.
+
+"Ay, of the treasure, sweet, the treasure of your dear heart."
+
+"A poor thing, Foy, but I think that--it rings true."
+
+"It had need, Elsa, yet the best of coin may crack with rough usage."
+
+"Mine will wear till death, Foy."
+
+"I ask no more, Elsa. When I am dead, spend it elsewhere; I shall find
+it again above where there is no marrying or giving in marriage."
+
+"There would be but small change left to spend, Foy, so look to your own
+gold and--see that you do not alter its image and superscription, for
+metal will melt in the furnace, and each queen has her stamp."
+
+"Enough," he broke in impatiently. "Why do you talk of such things, and
+in these riddles which puzzle me?"
+
+"Because, because, we are not married yet, and--the words are not
+mine--precious things are dearly won. Perfect love and perfect peace
+cannot be bought with a few sweet words and kisses; they must be earned
+in trial and tribulation."
+
+"Of which I have no doubt we shall find plenty," Foy replied cheerfully.
+"Meanwhile, the kisses make a good road to travel on."
+
+After this Elsa did not argue any more.
+
+At length they turned and walked homeward through the quiet evening
+twilight, hand clasped in hand, and were happy in their way. It was not
+a very demonstrative way, for the Dutch have never been excitable, or
+at least they do not show their excitement. Moreover, the conditions
+of this betrothal were peculiar; it was as though their hands had been
+joined from a deathbed, the deathbed of Hendrik Brant, the martyr of
+The Hague, whose new-shed blood cried out to Heaven for vengeance. This
+sense pressing on both of them did not tend towards rapturous outbursts
+of youthful passion, and even if they could have shaken it off and
+let their young blood have rein, there remained another sense--that of
+dangers ahead of them.
+
+"Two are better than one," Foy had said, and for her own reasons she
+had not wished to argue the point, still Elsa felt that to it there was
+another side. If two could comfort each other, could help each other,
+could love each other, could they not also suffer for each other?
+In short, by doubling their lives, did they not also double their
+anxieties, or if children should come, treble and quadruple them? This
+is true of all marriage, but how much more was it true in such days and
+in such a case as that of Foy and Elsa, both of them heretics, both of
+them rich, and, therefore, both liable at a moment's notice to be haled
+to the torment and the stake? Knowing these things, and having but just
+seen the hated face of Ramiro, it is not wonderful that although she
+rejoiced as any woman must that the man to whom her soul turned had
+declared himself her lover, Elsa could only drink of this joyful cup
+with a chastened and a fearful spirit. Nor is it wonderful that even in
+the hour of his triumph Foy's buoyant and hopeful nature was chilled by
+the shadow of her fears and the forebodings of his own heart.
+
+
+
+When Lysbeth parted from Elsa that afternoon she went straight to
+the chamber of the Vrouw Jansen. It was a poor place, for after the
+execution of her husband his wretched widow had been robbed of all
+her property and now existed upon the charity of her co-religionists.
+Lysbeth found her in bed, an old woman nursing her, who said that she
+thought the patient was suffering from a fever. Lysbeth leant over the
+bed and kissed the sick woman, but started back when she saw that the
+glands of her neck were swollen into great lumps, while the face was
+flushed and the eyes so bloodshot as to be almost red. Still she knew
+her visitor, for she whispered:
+
+"What is the matter with me, Vrouw van Goorl? Is it the smallpox coming
+on? Tell me, friend, the doctor would not speak."
+
+"I fear that it is worse; it is the plague," said Lysbeth, startled into
+candour.
+
+The poor girl laughed hoarsely. "Oh! I hoped it," she said. "I am glad,
+I am glad, for now I shall die and go to join him. But I wish that I
+had caught it before," she rambled on to herself, "for then I would have
+taken it to him in prison and they couldn't have treated him as they
+did." Suddenly she seemed to come to herself, for she added, "Go away,
+Vrouw van Goorl, go quickly or you may catch my sickness."
+
+"If so, I am afraid that the mischief is done, for I have kissed you,"
+answered Lysbeth. "But I do not fear such things, though perhaps if I
+took it, this would save me many a trouble. Still, there are others to
+think of, and I will go." So, having knelt down to pray awhile by the
+patient, and given the old nurse the basket of soup and food, Lysbeth
+went.
+
+Next morning she heard that the Vrouw Jansen was dead, the pest that
+struck her being of the most fatal sort.
+
+Lysbeth knew that she had run great risk, for there is no disease more
+infectious than the plague. She determined, therefore, that so soon as
+she reached home she would burn her dress and other articles of clothing
+and purify herself with the fumes of herbs. Then she dismissed the
+matter from her mind, which was already filled with another thought, a
+dominant, soul-possessing thought.
+
+Oh God, Montalvo had returned to Leyden! Out of the blackness of the
+past, out of the gloom of the galleys, had arisen this evil genius of
+her life; yes, and, by a strange fatality, of the life of Elsa Brant
+also, since it was her, she swore, who had dragged down her father.
+Lysbeth was a brave woman, one who had passed through many dangers, but
+her whole heart turned sick with terror at the sight of this man, and
+sick it must remain till she, or he, were dead. She could well guess
+what he had come to seek. It was that cursed treasure of Hendrik Brant's
+which had drawn him. She knew from Elsa that for a year at least the man
+Ramiro had been plotting to steal this money at The Hague. He had failed
+there, failed with overwhelming and shameful loss through the bravery
+and resource of her son Foy and their henchman, Red Martin. Now he had
+discovered their identity; he was aware that they held the secret of
+the hiding-place of that accursed hoard, they and no others, and he had
+established himself in Leyden to wring it out of them. It was clear,
+clear as the setting orb of the red sun before her. She knew the
+man--had she not lived with him?--and there could be no doubt about
+it, and--he was the new governor of the Gevangenhuis. Doubtless he has
+purchased that post for his own dark purposes and--to be near them.
+
+Sick and half blind with the intensity of her dread, Lysbeth staggered
+home. She must tell Dirk, that was her one thought; but no, she had been
+in contact with the plague, first she must purify herself. So she went
+to her room, and although it was summer, lit a great fire on the hearth,
+and in it burned her garments. Then she bathed and fumigated her hair
+and body over a brazier of strong herbs, such as in those days of
+frequent and virulent sickness housewives kept at hand, after which she
+dressed herself afresh and went to seek her husband. She found him at
+a desk in his private room reading some paper, which at her approach he
+shuffled into a drawer.
+
+"What is that, Dirk?" she asked with sudden suspicion.
+
+He pretended not to hear, and she repeated the query.
+
+"Well, wife, if you wish to know," he answered in his blunt fashion, "it
+is my will."
+
+"Why are you reading your will?" she asked again, beginning to tremble,
+for her nerves were afire, and this simple accident struck her as
+something awful and ominous.
+
+"For no particular reason, wife," he replied quietly, "only that we
+all must die, early or late. There is no escape from that, and in these
+times it is more often early than late, so it is as well to be sure that
+everything is in order for those who come after us. Now, since we are on
+the subject, which I have never cared to speak about, listen to me."
+
+"What about, husband?"
+
+"Why, about my will. Look you, Hendrik Brant and his treasure have
+taught me a lesson. I am not a man of his substance, or a tenth of it,
+but in some countries I should be called rich, for I have worked hard
+and God has prospered me. Well, of late I have been realising where I
+could, also the bulk of my savings is in cash. But the cash is not here,
+not in this country at all. You know my correspondents, Munt and Brown,
+of Norwich, in England, to whom we ship our goods for the English
+market. They are honest folk, and Munt owes me everything, almost to his
+life. Well, they have the money, it has reached them safely, thanks be
+to God, and with it a counterpart of this my will duly attested, and
+here is their letter of acknowledgment stating that they have laid it
+out carefully at interest upon mortgage on great estates in Norfolk
+where it lies to my order, or that of my heirs, and that a duplicate
+acknowledgment has been filed in their English registries in case this
+should go astray. Little remains here except this house and the factory,
+and even on those I have raised money. Meanwhile the business is left to
+live on, and beyond it the rents which will come from England, so that
+whether I be living or dead you need fear no want. But what is the
+matter with you, Lysbeth? You look strange."
+
+"Oh! husband, husband," she gasped, "Juan de Montalvo is here again. He
+has appeared as the new governor of the gaol. I saw him this afternoon,
+I cannot be mistaken, although he has lost an eye and is much changed."
+
+Dirk's jaw dropped and his florid face whitened. "Juan de Montalvo!" he
+said. "I heard that he was dead long ago."
+
+"You are mistaken, husband, a devil never dies. He is seeking Brant's
+treasure, and he knows that we have its secret. You can guess the rest.
+More, now that I think of it, I have heard that a strange Spaniard is
+lodging with Hague Simon, he whom they call the Butcher, and Black Meg,
+of whom we have cause to know. Doubtless it is he, and--Dirk, death
+overshadows us."
+
+"Why should he know of Brant's treasure, wife?"
+
+"Because _he is Ramiro_, the man who dogged him down, the man who
+followed the ship _Swallow_ to the Haarlemer Meer. Elsa was with me this
+afternoon, she knew him again."
+
+Dirk thought a while, resting his head upon his hand. Then he lifted it
+and said:
+
+"I am very glad that I sent the money to Munt and Brown, Heaven gave me
+that thought. Well, wife, what is your counsel now?"
+
+"My counsel is that we should fly from Leyden--all of us, yes, this very
+night before worse happens."
+
+He smiled. "That cannot be; there are no means of flight, and under the
+new laws we could not pass the gates; that trick has been played too
+often. Still, in a day or two, when I have had time to arrange, we might
+escape if you still wish to go."
+
+"To-night, to-night," she urged, "or some of us stay for ever."
+
+"I tell you, wife, it is not possible. Am I a rat that I should be
+bolted from my hole thus by this ferret of a Montalvo? I am a man of
+peace and no longer young, but let him beware lest I stop here long
+enough to pass a sword through him."
+
+"So be it, husband," she replied, "but I think it is through my heart
+that the sword will pass," and she burst out weeping.
+
+
+
+Supper that night was a somewhat melancholy meal. Dirk and Lysbeth sat
+at the ends of the table in silence. On one side of fit were placed
+Foy and Elsa, who were also silent for a very different reason, while
+opposite to them was Adrian, who watched Elsa with an anxious and
+inquiring eye.
+
+That the love potion worked he was certain, for she looked confused and
+a little flushed; also, as would be natural under the circumstances, she
+avoided his glance and made pretence to be interested in Foy, who seemed
+rather more stupid than usual. Well, so soon as he could find his
+chance all this would be cleared up, but meanwhile the general gloom and
+silence were affecting his nerves.
+
+"What have you been doing this afternoon, mother?" Adrian asked
+presently.
+
+"I, son?" she replied with a start, "I have been visiting the unhappy
+Vrouw Jansen, whom I found very sick."
+
+"What is the matter with her, mother?"
+
+Lysbeth's mind, which had wandered away, again returned to the subject
+at hand with an effort.
+
+"The matter? Oh! she has the plague."
+
+"The plague!" exclaimed Adrian, springing to his feet, "do you mean to
+say you have been consorting with a woman who has the plague?"
+
+"I fear so," she answered with a smile, "but do not be frightened,
+Adrian, I have burnt my clothes and fumigated myself."
+
+Still Adrian was frightened. His recent experience of sickness had
+been ample, and although he was no coward he had a special dislike of
+infectious diseases, which at the time were many.
+
+"It is horrible," he said, "horrible. I only hope that we--I mean
+you--may escape. The house is unbearably close. I am going to walk
+in the courtyard," and away he went, for the moment, at any rate,
+forgetting all about Elsa and the love potion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+FOY SEES A VISION
+
+Never since that day when, many years before, she had bought the safety
+of the man she loved by promising herself in marriage to his rival, had
+Lysbeth slept so ill as she did upon this night. Montalvo was alive.
+Montalvo was here, here to strike down and destroy those whom she loved,
+and triple armed with power, authority, and desire to do the deed. Well
+she knew that when there was plunder to be won, he would not step aside
+or soften until it was in his hands. Yet there was hope in this; he was
+not a cruel man, as she knew also, that is to say, he had no pleasure
+in inflicting suffering for its own sake; such methods he used only as a
+means to an end. If he could get the money, all of it, she was sure that
+he would leave them alone. Why should he not have it? Why should all
+their lives be menaced because of this trust which had been thrust upon
+them?
+
+Unable to endure the torments of her doubts and fears, Lysbeth woke her
+husband, who was sleeping peacefully at her side, and told him what was
+passing in her mind.
+
+"It is a true saying," answered Dirk with a smile, "that even the best
+of women are never quite honest when their interest pulls the other way.
+What, wife, would you have us buy our own peace with Brant's fortune,
+and thus break faith with a dead man and bring down his curse upon us?"
+
+"The lives of men are more than gold, and Elsa would consent," she
+answered sullenly; "already this pelf is stained with blood, the blood
+of Hendrik Brant himself, and of Hans the pilot."
+
+"Yes, wife, and since you mention it, with the blood of a good many
+Spaniards also, who tried to steal the stuff. Let's see; there must have
+been several drowned at the mouth of the river, and quite twenty went
+up with the _Swallow_, so the loss has not been all on our side. Listen,
+Lysbeth, listen. It was my cousin, Hendrik Brant's, belief that in the
+end this great fortune of his would do some service to our people or our
+country, for he wrote as much in his will and repeated it to Foy. I know
+not when or in what fashion this may come about; how can I know? But
+first will I die before I hand it over to the Spaniard. Moreover, I
+cannot, since its secret was never told to me."
+
+"Foy and Martin have it."
+
+"Lysbeth," said Dirk sternly, "I charge you as you love me not to work
+upon them to betray their trust; no, not even to save my life or your
+own--if we must die, let us die with honour. Do you promise?"
+
+"I promise," she answered with dry lips, "but on this condition only,
+that you fly from Leyden with us all, to-night if maybe."
+
+"Good," answered Dirk, "a halfpenny for a herring; you have made your
+promise, and I'll give you mine; that's fair, although I am old to seek
+a new home in England. But it can't be to-night, wife, for I must make
+arrangements. There is a ship sailing to-day, and we might catch her
+to-morrow at the river's mouth, after she has passed the officers, for
+her captain is a friend of mine. How will that do?"
+
+"I had rather it had been to-night," said Lysbeth. "While we are in
+Leyden with that man we are not safe from one hour to the next."
+
+"Wife, we are never safe. It is all in the hands of God, and, therefore,
+we should live like soldiers awaiting the hour to march, and rejoice
+exceedingly when it pleases our Captain to sound the call."
+
+"I know," she answered; "but, oh! Dirk, it would be hard--to part."
+
+He turned his head aside for a moment, then said in a steady voice,
+"Yes, wife, but it will be sweet to meet again and part no more."
+
+
+
+While it was still early that morning Dirk summoned Foy and Martin to
+his wife's chamber. Adrian for his own reasons he did not summon, making
+the excuse that he was still asleep, and it would be a pity to disturb
+him; nor Elsa, since as yet there was no necessity to trouble her.
+Then, briefly, for he was given to few words, he set out the gist of
+the matter, telling them that the man Ramiro whom they had beaten on the
+Haarlemer Meer was in Leyden, which Foy knew already, for Elsa had told
+him as much, and that he was no other than the Spaniard named the Count
+Juan de Montalvo, the villain who had deceived Lysbeth into a mock
+marriage by working on her fears, and who was the father of Adrian. All
+this time Lysbeth sat in a carved oak chair listening with a stony
+face to the tale of her own shame and betrayal. She made no sign at all
+beyond a little twitching of her fingers, till Foy, guessing what she
+suffered in her heart, suddenly went to his mother and kissed her. Then
+she wept a few silent tears, for an instant laid her hand upon his head
+as though in blessing, and, motioning him back to his place, became
+herself again--stern, unmoved, observant.
+
+Next Dirk, taking up his tale, spoke of his wife's fears, and of her
+belief that there was a plot to wring out of them the secret of Hendrik
+Brant's treasure.
+
+"Happily," he said, addressing Foy, "neither your mother nor I, nor
+Adrian, nor Elsa, know that secret; you and Martin know it alone, you
+and perhaps one other who is far away and cannot be caught. We do not
+know it, and we do not wish to know it, and whatever happens to any of
+us, it is our earnest hope that neither of you will betray it, even if
+our lives, or your lives, hang upon the words, for we hold it better
+that we should keep our trust with a dead man at all costs than that we
+should save ourselves by breaking faith. Is it not so, wife?"
+
+"It is so," answered Lysbeth hoarsely.
+
+"Have no fear," said Foy. "We will die before we betray."
+
+"We will try to die before we betray," grumbled Martin in his deep
+voice, "but flesh is frail and God knows."
+
+"Oh! I have no doubt of you, honest man," said Dirk with a smile, "for
+you have no mother and father to think of in this matter."
+
+"Then, master, you are foolish," replied Martin, "for I repeat it--flesh
+is frail, and I always hated the look of a rack. However, I have a
+handsome legacy charged upon this treasure, and perhaps the thought of
+that would support me. Alive or dead, I should not like to think of my
+money being spent by any Spaniard."
+
+While Martin spoke the strangeness of the thing came home to Foy. Here
+were four of them, two of whom knew a secret and two who did not, while
+those who did not implored those who did to impart to them nothing of
+the knowledge which, if they had it, might serve to save them from a
+fearful doom. Then for the first time in his young and inexperienced
+life he understood how great erring men and women can be and what
+patient majesty dwells in the human heart, that for the sake of a trust
+it does not seek can yet defy the most hideous terrors of the body
+and the soul. Indeed, that scene stamped itself upon his mind in such
+fashion that throughout his long existence he never quite forgot it for
+a single day. His mother, clad in her frilled white cap and grey gown,
+seated cold-faced and resolute in the oaken chair. His father, to whom,
+although he knew it not, he was now speaking for the last time, standing
+by her, his hand resting upon her shoulder and addressing them in his
+quiet, honest voice. Martin standing also but a little to one side and
+behind, the light of the morning playing upon his great red beard; his
+round, pale eyes glittering as was their fashion when wrathful, and
+himself, Foy, leaning forward to listen, every nerve in his body strung
+tight with excitement, love, and fear.
+
+Oh! he never forgot it, which is not strange, for so great was the
+strain upon him, so well did he know that this scene was but the prelude
+to terrible events, that for a moment, only for a moment, his steady
+reason was shaken and he saw a vision. Martin, the huge, patient,
+ox-like Martin, was changed into a red Vengeance; he saw him, great
+sword aloft, he heard the roar of his battle cry, and lo! before him
+men went down to death, and about him the floor seemed purple with their
+blood. His father and his mother, too; they were no longer human, they
+were saints--see the glory which shone over them, and look, too, the
+dead Hendrik Brant was whispering in their ears. And he, Foy, he was
+beside Martin playing his part in those red frays as best he might, and
+playing it not in vain.
+
+Then all passed, and a wave of peace rolled over him, a great sense of
+duty done, of honour satisfied, of reward attained. Lo! the play was
+finished, and its ultimate meaning clear, but before he could read and
+understand--it had gone.
+
+He gasped and shook himself, gripping his hands together.
+
+"What have you seen, son?" asked Lysbeth, watching his face.
+
+"Strange things, mother," Foy answered. "A vision of war for Martin and
+me, of glory for my father and you, and of eternal peace for us all."
+
+"It is a good omen, Foy," she said. "Fight your fight and leave us to
+fight ours. 'Through much tribulation we must enter into the Kingdom of
+God,' where at last there is a rest remaining for us all. It is a good
+omen. Your father was right and I was wrong. Now I have no more to fear;
+I am satisfied."
+
+None of them seemed to be amazed or to find these words wonderful and
+out of the common. For them the hand of approaching Doom had opened the
+gates of Distance, and they knew everyone that through these some light
+had broken on their souls, a faint flicker of dawn from beyond the
+clouds. They accepted it in thankfulness.
+
+"I think that is all I have to say," said Dirk in his usual voice. "No,
+it is not all," and he told them of his plan for flight. They listened
+and agreed to it, yet to them it seemed a thing far off and unreal. None
+of them believed that this escape would ever be carried out. All of them
+believed that here in Leyden they would endure the fiery trial of their
+faith and win each of them its separate crown.
+
+When everything was discussed, and each had learned the lesson of what
+he must do that day, Foy asked if Adrian was to be told of the scheme.
+To this his father answered hastily that the less it was spoken of the
+better, therefore he proposed to tell Adrian late that night only, when
+he could make up his mind whether he would accompany them or stay in
+Leyden.
+
+"Then he shan't go out to-night, and will come with us as far as the
+ship only if I can manage it," muttered Martin beneath his breath, but
+aloud he said nothing. Somehow it did not seem to him to be worth while
+to make trouble about it, for he knew that if he did his mistress and
+Foy, who believed so heartily in Adrian, would be angry.
+
+"Father and mother," said Foy again, "while we are gathered here there
+is something I wish to say to you."
+
+"What is it, son?" asked Dirk.
+
+"Yesterday I became affianced to Elsa Brant, and we wish to ask your
+consent and blessing."
+
+"That will be gladly given, son, for I think this very good news. Bring
+her here, Foy," answered Dirk.
+
+But although in his hurry Foy did not notice it, his mother said
+nothing. She liked Elsa well indeed--who would not?--but oh! this
+brought them a step nearer to that accursed treasure, the treasure which
+from generation to generation had been hoarded up that it might be a
+doom to men. If Foy were affianced to Elsa, it was his inheritance as
+well as hers, for those trusts of Hendrik Brant's will were to Lysbeth
+things unreal and visionary, and its curse would fall upon him as well
+as upon her. Moreover it might be said that he was marrying her to win
+the wealth.
+
+"This betrothal does not please you; you are sad, wife," said Dirk,
+looking at her quickly.
+
+"Yes, husband, for now I think that we shall never get out of Leyden. I
+pray that Adrian may not hear of it, that is all."
+
+"Why, what has he to do with the matter?"
+
+"Only that he is madly in love with the girl. Have you not seen it?
+And--you know his temper."
+
+"Adrian, Adrian, always Adrian," answered Dirk impatiently. "Well, it is
+a very fitting match, for if she has a great fortune hidden somewhere in
+a swamp, which in fact she has not, since the bulk of it is bequeathed
+to me to be used for certain purposes; he has, or will have, moneys
+also--safe at interest in England. Hark! here they come, so, wife, put
+on a pleasant face; they will think it unlucky if you do not smile."
+
+As he spoke Foy re-entered the room, leading Elsa by the hand, and she
+looked as sweet a maid as ever the sun shone on. So they told their
+story, and kneeling down before Dirk, received his blessing in the old
+fashion, and very glad were they in the after years to remember that it
+had been so received. Then they turned to Lysbeth, and she also lifted
+up her hand to bless them, but ere it touched their heads, do what she
+would to check it, a cry forced its way to her lips, and she said:
+
+"Oh! children, doubtless you love each other well, but is this a time
+for marrying and giving in marriage?"
+
+"My own words, my very words," exclaimed Elsa, springing to her feet and
+turning pale.
+
+Foy looked vexed. Then recovering himself and trying to smile, he said:
+
+"And I give them the same answer--that two are better than one;
+moreover, this is a betrothal, not a marriage."
+
+"Ay," muttered Martin behind, thinking aloud after his fashion,
+"betrothal is one thing and marriage another," but low as he spoke Elsa
+overheard him.
+
+"Your mother is upset," broke in Dirk, "and you can guess why, so do not
+disturb her more at present. Let us to our business, you and Martin to
+the factory to make arrangements there as I have told you, and I, after
+I have seen the captain, to whatever God shall call me to do. So, till
+we meet again, farewell, my son--and daughter," he added, smiling at
+Elsa.
+
+They left the room, but as Martin was following them Lysbeth called him
+back.
+
+"Go armed to the factory, Martin," she said, "and see that your young
+master wears that steel shirt beneath his jerkin."
+
+Martin nodded and went.
+
+
+
+Adrian woke up that morning in an ill mood. He had, it is true,
+administered his love potion with singular dexterity and success, but as
+yet he reaped no fruit from his labours, and was desperately afraid lest
+the effect of the magic draught might wear off. When he came downstairs
+it was to find that Foy and Martin were already departed to the factory,
+and that his stepfather had gone out, whither he knew not. This was so
+much to the good, for it left the coast clear. Still he was none the
+better off, since either his mother and Elsa had taken their breakfast
+upstairs, or they had dispensed with that meal. His mother he could
+spare, especially after her recent contact with a plague patient, but
+under the circumstances Elsa's absence was annoying. Moreover, suddenly
+the house had become uncomfortable, for every one in it seemed to be
+running about carrying articles hither and thither in a fashion so
+aimless that it struck him as little short of insane. Once or twice
+also he saw Elsa, but she, too, was carrying things, and had no time for
+conversation.
+
+At length Adrian wearied of it and departed to the factory with the
+view of making up his books, which, to tell the truth, had been somewhat
+neglected of late, to find that here, too, the same confusion reigned.
+Instead of attending to his ordinary work, Martin was marching to and
+fro bearing choice pieces of brassware, which were being packed into
+crates, and he noticed, for Adrian was an observant young man, that he
+was not wearing his usual artisan's dress. Why, he wondered to himself,
+should Martin walk about a factory upon a summer's day clad in his
+armour of quilted bull's hide, and wearing his great sword Silence
+strapped round his middle? Why, too, should Foy have removed the books
+and be engaged in going through them with a clerk? Was he auditing
+them? If so, he wished him joy of the job, since to bring them to a
+satisfactory balance had proved recently quite beyond his own powers.
+Not that there was anything wrong with the books, for he, Adrian, had
+kept them quite honestly according to his very imperfect lights, only
+things must have been left out, for balance they would not. Well, on the
+whole, he was glad, since a man filled with lover's hopes and fears was
+in no mood for arithmetical exercises, so, after hanging about for a
+while, he returned home to dinner.
+
+The meal was late, an unusual occurrence, which annoyed him; moreover,
+neither his mother nor his stepfather appeared at table. At length Elsa
+came in looking pale and worried, and they began to eat, or rather to
+go through the form of eating, since neither of them seemed to have any
+appetite. Nor, as the servant was continually in the room, and as Elsa
+took her place at one end of the long table while he was at the other,
+had their _tete-a-tete_ any of the usual advantages.
+
+At last the waiting-woman went away, and, after a few moment's pause,
+Elsa rose to follow. By this time Adrian was desperate. He would bear it
+no more; things must be brought to a head.
+
+"Elsa," he said, in an irritated voice, "everything seems to be very
+uncomfortable here to-day, there is so much disturbance in the house
+that one might imagine we were going to shut it up and leave Leyden."
+
+Elsa looked at him out of the corners of her eyes; probably by this time
+she had learnt the real cause of the disturbance.
+
+"I am sorry, Heer Adrian," she said, "but your mother is not very well
+this morning."
+
+"Indeed; I only hope she hasn't caught the plague from the Jansen woman;
+but that doesn't account for everybody running about with their hands
+full, like ants in a broken nest, especially as it is not the time
+of year when women turn all the furniture upside down and throw the
+curtains out of the windows in the pretence that they are cleaning them.
+However, we are quiet here for a while, so let us talk."
+
+Elsa became suspicious. "Your mother wants me, Heer Adrian," she said,
+turning towards the door.
+
+"Let her rest, Elsa, let her rest; there is no medicine like sleep for
+the sick."
+
+Elsa pretended not to hear him, so, as she still headed for the door, by
+a movement too active to be dignified, he placed himself in front of it,
+adding, "I have said that I want to speak with you."
+
+"And I have said that I am busy, Heer Adrian, so please let me pass."
+
+Adrian remained immovable. "Not until I have spoken to you," he said.
+
+Now as escape was impossible Elsa drew herself up and asked in a cold
+voice:
+
+"What is your pleasure? I pray you, be brief."
+
+Adrian cleared his throat, reflecting that she was keeping the workings
+of the love potion under wonderful control; indeed to look at her no
+one could have guessed that she had recently absorbed this magic Eastern
+medicine. However, something must be done; he had gone too far to draw
+back.
+
+"Elsa," he said boldly, though no hare could have been more frightened,
+"Elsa," and he clasped his hands and looked at the ceiling, "I love you
+and the time has come to say so."
+
+"If I remember right it came some time ago, Heer Adrian," she replied
+with sarcasm. "I thought that by now you had forgotten all about it."
+
+"Forgotten!" he sighed, "forgotten! With you ever before my eyes how can
+I forget?"
+
+"I am sure I cannot say," she answered, "but I know that I wish to
+forget this folly."
+
+"Folly! She calls it folly!" he mused aloud. "Oh, Heaven, folly is the
+name she gives to the life-long adoration of my bleeding heart!"
+
+"You have known me exactly five weeks, Heer Adrian----"
+
+"Which, sweet lady, makes me desire to know you for fifty years."
+
+Elsa sighed, for she found the prospect dreary.
+
+"Come," he went on with a gush, "forego this virgin coyness, you have
+done enough and more than enough for honour, now throw aside pretence,
+lay down your arms and yield. No hour, I swear, of this long fight will
+be so happy to you as that of your sweet surrender, for remember,
+dear one, that I, your conqueror, am in truth the conquered. I,
+abandoning----"
+
+He got no further, for at this point the sorely tried Elsa lost control
+of herself, but not in the fashion which he hoped for and expected.
+
+"Are you crazed, Heer Adrian," she asked, "that you should insist thus
+in pouring this high-flown nonsense into my ears when I have told you
+that it is unwelcome to me? I understand that you ask me for my love.
+Well, once for all I tell you that I have none to give."
+
+This was a blow, since it was impossible for Adrian to put a
+favourable construction upon language so painfully straightforward. His
+self-conceit was pierced at last and collapsed like a pricked bladder.
+
+"None to give!" he gasped, "none to give! You don't mean to tell me that
+you have given it to anybody else?"
+
+"Yes, I do," she answered, for by now Elsa was thoroughly angry.
+
+"Indeed," he replied loftily. "Let me see; last time it was your
+lamented father who occupied your heart. Perhaps now it is that
+excellent giant, Martin, or even--no, it is too absurd"--and he laughed
+in his jealous rage, "even the family buffoon, my worthy brother Foy."
+
+"Yes," she replied quietly, "it is Foy."
+
+"Foy! Foy! Hear her, ye gods! My successful rival, mine, is the
+yellow-headed, muddy-brained, unlettered Foy--and they say that women
+have souls! Of your courtesy answer me one question. Tell me when did
+this strange and monstrous thing happen? When did you declare yourself
+vanquished by the surpassing charms of Foy?"
+
+"Yesterday afternoon, if you want to know," she said in the same calm
+and ominous voice.
+
+Adrian heard, and an inspiration took him. He dashed his hand to his
+brow and thought a moment; then he laughed loud and shrilly.
+
+"I have it," he said. "It is the love charm which has worked perversely.
+Elsa, you are under a spell, poor woman; you do not know the truth. I
+gave you the philtre in your drinking water, and Foy, the traitor
+Foy, has reaped its fruits. Dear girl, shake yourself free from this
+delusion, it is I whom you really love, not that base thief of hearts,
+my brother Foy."
+
+"What do you say? You gave me a philtre? You dare to doctor my drink
+with your heathen nastiness? Out of the way, sir! Stand off, and never
+venture to speak to me again. Well will it be for you if I do not tell
+your brother of your infamy."
+
+What happened after this Adrian could never quite remember, but a vision
+remained of himself crouching to one side, and of a door flung back so
+violently that it threw him against the wall; a vision, too, of a lady
+sweeping past him with blazing eyes and lips set in scorn. That was all.
+
+For a while he was crushed, quite crushed; the blow had gone home.
+Adrian was not only a fool, he was also the vainest of fools. That
+any young woman on whom he chose to smile should actually reject his
+advances was bad and unexpected, but that the other man should be
+Foy--oh! this was infamous and inexplicable. He was handsomer than Foy,
+no one would dream of denying it. He was cleverer and better read, had
+he not mastered the contents of every known romance--high-souled works
+which Foy bluntly declared were rubbish and refused even to open? Was
+he not a poet? But remembering a certain sonnet he did not follow this
+comparison. In short, how was it conceivable that a woman looking
+upon himself, a very type of the chivalry of Spain, silver-tongued, a
+follower--nay, a companion of the Muses, one to whom in every previous
+adventure of the heart to love had been to conquer, could still prefer
+that broad-faced, painfully commonplace, if worthy, young representative
+of the Dutch middle classes, Foy van Goorl?
+
+It never occurred to Adrian to ask himself another question, namely,
+how it comes about that eight young women out of ten are endowed with
+an intelligence or instinct sufficiently keen to enable them to
+discriminate between an empty-headed popinjay of a man, intoxicated
+with the fumes of his own vanity, and an honest young fellow of
+stable character and sterling worth? Not that Adrian was altogether
+empty-headed, for in some ways he was clever; also beneath all this foam
+and froth the Dutch strain inherited from his mother had given a certain
+ballast and determination to his nature. Thus, when his heart was
+thoroughly set upon a thing, he could be very dogged and patient. Now
+it _was_ set upon Elsa Brant, he did truly desire to win her above any
+other woman, and that he had left a different impression upon her
+mind was owing largely to the affected air and grandiloquent style of
+language culled from his precious romances which he thought it right to
+assume when addressing a lady upon matters of the affections.
+
+For a little while he was prostrate, his heart seemed swept clean of all
+hope and feeling. Then his furious temper, the failing that, above every
+other, was his curse and bane, came to his aid and occupied it like the
+seven devils of Scripture, bringing in its train his re-awakened vanity,
+hatred, jealousy, and other maddening passions. It could not be true,
+there must be an explanation, and, of course, the explanation was that
+Foy had been so fortunate, or so cunning as to make advances to Elsa
+soon after she had swallowed the love philtre. Adrian, like most people
+in his day, was very superstitious and credulous. It never even occurred
+to him to doubt the almost universally accepted power and efficacy of
+this witch's medicine, though even now he understood what a fool he was
+when, in his first outburst of rage, he told Elsa that he had trusted to
+such means to win her affections, instead of letting his own virtues and
+graces do their natural work.
+
+Well, the mischief was done, the poison was swallowed, but--most poisons
+have their antidotes. Why was he lingering here? He must consult his
+friend, the Master, and at once.
+
+Ten minutes later Adrian was at Black Meg's house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE FRAY IN THE SHOT TOWER
+
+The door was opened by Hague Simon, the bald-headed, great-paunched
+villain who lived with Black Meg. In answer to his visitor's anxious
+inquiries the Butcher said, searching Adrian's face with his pig-like
+eyes the while, that he could not tell for certain whether Meg was or
+was not at home. He rather thought that she was consulting the spirits
+with the Master, but they might have passed out without his knowing it,
+"for they had great gifts--great gifts," and he wagged his fat head as
+he showed Adrian into the accustomed room.
+
+It was an uncomfortable kind of chamber which, in some unexplained
+way, always gave Adrian the impression that people, or presences, were
+stirring in it whom he could not see. Also in this place there happened
+odd and unaccountable noises; creakings, and sighings which seemed to
+proceed from the walls and ceiling. Of course, such things were to be
+expected in a house where sojourned one of the great magicians of the
+day. Still he was not altogether sorry when the door opened and Black
+Meg entered, although some might have preferred the society of almost
+any ghost.
+
+"What is it, that you disturb me at such an hour?" she asked sharply.
+
+"What is it? What isn't it?" Adrian replied, his rage rising at the
+thought of his injuries. "That cursed philtre of yours has worked all
+wrong, that's what it is. Another man has got the benefit of it, don't
+you understand, you old hag? And, by Heaven! I believe he means to
+abduct her, yes, that's the meaning of all the packing and fuss, blind
+fool that I was not to guess it before. The Master--I will see the
+Master. He must give me an antidote, another medicine----"
+
+"You certainly look as though you want it," interrupted Black Meg drily.
+"Well, I doubt whether you can see him; it is not his hour for receiving
+visitors; moreover, I don't think he's here, so I shall have to signal
+for him."
+
+"I must see him. I will see him," shouted Adrian.
+
+"I daresay," replied Black Meg, squinting significantly at his pocket.
+
+Enraged as he was Adrian took the hint.
+
+"Woman, you seek gold," he said, quoting involuntarily from the last
+romance he had read, and presenting her with a handful of small silver,
+which was all he had.
+
+Meg took the silver with a sniff, on the principle that something
+is better than nothing, and departed gloomily. Then followed more
+mysterious noises; voices whispered, doors opened and shut, furniture
+creaked, after which came a period of exasperating and rather
+disagreeable silence. Adrian turned his face to the wall, for the only
+window in the room was so far above his head that he was unable to look
+out of it; indeed, it was more of a skylight than a window. Thus he
+remained a while gnawing at the ends of his moustache and cursing his
+fortune, till presently he felt a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Who the devil is that?" he exclaimed, wheeling round to find himself
+face to face with the draped and majestic form of the Master.
+
+"The devil! That is an ill word upon young lips, my friend," said the
+sage, shaking his head in reproof.
+
+"I daresay," replied Adrian, "but what the--I mean how did you get here?
+I never heard the door open."
+
+"How did I get here? Well, now you mention it, I wonder how I did. The
+door--what have I to do with doors?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know," answered Adrian shortly, "but most people find
+them useful."
+
+"Enough of such material talk," interrupted the sage with sternness.
+"Your spirit cried to mine, and I _am_ here, let that suffice."
+
+"I suppose that Black Meg fetched you," went on Adrian, sticking to his
+point, for the philtre fiasco had made him suspicious.
+
+"Verily, friend Adrian, you can suppose what you will; and now, as I
+have little time to spare, be so good as to set out the matter.
+Nay, what need, I know all, for have I not--is this the case? You
+administered the philtre to the maid and neglected my instructions to
+offer yourself to her at once. Another saw it and took advantage of
+the magic draught. While the spell was on her he proposed, he was
+accepted--yes, your brother Foy. Oh! fool, careless fool, what else did
+you expect?"
+
+"At any rate I didn't expect that," replied Adrian in a fury. "And now,
+if you have all the power you pretend, tell me what I am to do."
+
+Something glinted ominously beneath the hood, it was the sage's one eye.
+
+"Young friend," he said, "your manner is brusque, yes, even rude. But I
+understand and I forgive. Come, we will take counsel together. Tell me
+what has happened."
+
+Adrian told him with much emphasis, and the recital of his adventures
+seemed to move the Master deeply, at any rate he turned away, hiding
+his face in his hands, while his back trembled with the intensity of his
+feelings.
+
+"The matter is grave," he said solemnly, when at length the lovesick
+and angry swain had finished. "There is but one thing to be done. Your
+treacherous rival--oh! what fraud and deceit are hidden beneath that
+homely countenance--has been well advised, by whom I know not, though
+I suspect one, a certain practitioner of the Black Magic, named
+Arentz----"
+
+"Ah!" ejaculated Adrian.
+
+"I see you know the man. Beware of him. He is, indeed, a wolf in sheep's
+clothing, who wraps his devilish incantations in a cloak of seditious
+doctrine. Well, I have thwarted him before, for can Darkness stand
+before Light? and, by the help of those who aid me, I may thwart
+him again. Now, attend and answer my questions clearly, slowly and
+truthfully. If the girl is to be saved to you, mark this, young friend,
+your cunning rival must be removed from Leyden for a while until the
+charm works out its power."
+
+"You don't mean--" said Adrian, and stopped.
+
+"No, no. I mean the man no harm. I mean only that he must take
+a journey, which he will do fast enough, when he learns that his
+witchcrafts and other crimes are known. Now answer, or make an end, for
+I have more business to attend to than the love-makings of a foo--of
+a headstrong youth. First: What you have told me of the attendances of
+Dirk van Goorl, your stepfather, and others of his household, namely,
+Red Martin and your half-brother Foy, at the tabernacle of your enemy,
+the wizard Arentz, is true, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Adrian, "but I do not see what that has to do with the
+matter."
+
+"Silence!" thundered the Master. Then he paused a while, and Adrian
+seemed to hear certain strange squeakings proceeding from the walls.
+The sage remained lost in thought until the squeakings ceased. Again he
+spoke:
+
+"What you have told me of the part played by the said Foy and the said
+Martin as to their sailing away with the treasure of the dead heretic,
+Hendrik Brant, and of the murders committed by them in the course of its
+hiding in the Haarlemer Meer, is true, is it not?"
+
+"Of course it is," answered Adrian, "but----"
+
+"Silence!" again thundered the sage, "or by my Lord Zoroaster, I throw
+up the case."
+
+Adrian collapsed, and there was another pause.
+
+"You believe," he went on again, "that the said Foy and the said Dirk
+van Goorl, together with the said Martin, are making preparations to
+abduct that innocent and unhappy maid, the heiress, Elsa Brant, for evil
+purposes of their own?"
+
+"I never told you so," said Adrian, "but I think it is a fact; at least
+there is a lot of packing going on."
+
+"You never told me! Do you not understand that there is no need for you
+to tell me anything?"
+
+"Then, in the name of your Lord Zoroaster, why do you ask?" exclaimed
+the exasperated Adrian.
+
+"That you will know presently," he answered musing.
+
+Once more Adrian heard the strange squeaking as of young and hungry
+rats.
+
+"I think that I will not take up your time any more," he said, growing
+thoroughly alarmed, for really the proceedings were a little odd, and he
+rose to go.
+
+The Master made no answer, only, which was curious conduct for a sage,
+he began to whistle a tune.
+
+"By your leave," said Adrian, for the magician's back was against the
+door. "I have business----"
+
+"And so have I," replied the sage, and went on whistling.
+
+Then suddenly the side of one of the walls seemed to fall out, and
+through the opening emerged a man wrapped in a priest's robe, and after
+him, Hague Simon, Black Meg, and another particularly evil-looking
+fellow.
+
+"Got it all down?" asked the Master in an easy, everyday kind of voice.
+
+The monk bowed, and producing several folios of manuscript, laid them on
+the table together with an ink-horn and a pen.
+
+"Very well. And now, my young friend, be so good as to sign there, at
+the foot of the writing."
+
+"Sign what?" gasped Adrian.
+
+"Explain to him," said the Master. "He is quite right; a man should know
+what he puts his name to."
+
+Then a monk spoke in a low, business-like voice.
+
+"This is the information of Adrian, called Van Goorl, as taken down from
+his own lips, wherein, among other things, he deposes to certain crimes
+of heresy, murder of the king's subjects, an attempted escape from
+the king's dominions, committed by his stepfather, Dirk van Goorl, his
+half-brother, Foy van Goorl, and their servant, a Frisian known as Red
+Martin. Shall I read the papers? It will take some time."
+
+"If the witness so desires," said the Master.
+
+"What is that document for?" whispered Adrian in a hoarse voice.
+
+"To persuade your treacherous rival, Foy van Goorl, that it will be
+desirable in the interests of his health that he should retire from
+Leyden for a while," sneered his late mentor, while the Butcher and
+Black Meg sniggered audibly. Only the monk stood silent, like a black
+watching fate.
+
+"I'll not sign!" shouted Adrian. "I have been tricked! There is
+treachery!" and he bent forward to spring for the door.
+
+Ramiro made a sign, and in another instant the Butcher's fat hands were
+about Adrian's throat, and his thick thumbs were digging viciously at
+the victim's windpipe. Still Adrian kicked and struggled, whereon, at a
+second sign, the villainous-looking man drew a great knife, and, coming
+up to him, pricked him gently on the nose.
+
+Then Ramiro spoke to him very suavely and quietly.
+
+"Young friend," he said, "where is that faith in me which you promised,
+and why, when I wish you to sign this quite harmless writing, do you so
+violently refuse?"
+
+"Because I won't betray my stepfather and brother," gasped Adrian. "I
+know why you want my signature," and he looked at the man in a priest's
+robe.
+
+"You won't betray them," sneered Ramiro. "Why, you young fool, you have
+already betrayed them fifty times over, and what is more, which you
+don't seem to remember, you have betrayed yourself. Now look here. If
+you choose to sign that paper, or if you don't choose, makes little
+difference to me, for, dear pupil, I would almost as soon have your
+evidence by word of mouth."
+
+"I may be a fool," said Adrian, turning sullen; "yes, I see now that I
+have been a fool to trust in you and your sham arts, but I am not fool
+enough to give evidence against my own people in any of your courts.
+What I have said I said never thinking that it would do them harm."
+
+"Not caring whether it would do them harm or no," corrected Ramiro, "as
+you had your own object to gain--the young lady whom, by the way, you
+were quite ready to doctor with a love medicine."
+
+"Because love blinded me," said Adrian loftily.
+
+Ramiro put his hand upon his shoulder and shook him slightly as he
+answered:
+
+"And has it not struck you, you vain puppy, that other things may blind
+you also--hot irons, for instance?"
+
+"What do you mean?" gasped Adrian.
+
+"I mean that the rack is a wonderful persuader. Oh! it makes the most
+silent talk and the most solemn sing. Now take your choice. Will you
+sign or will you go to the torture chamber?"
+
+"What right have you to question me?" asked Adrian, striving to build up
+his tottering courage with bold words.
+
+"Just this right--that I to whom you speak am the Captain and Governor
+of the Gevangenhuis in this town, an official who has certain powers."
+
+Adrian turned pale but said nothing.
+
+"Our young friend has gone to sleep," remarked Ramiro, reflectively.
+"Here you, Simon, twist his arm a little. No, not the right arm; he may
+want that to sign with, which will be awkward if it is out of joint: the
+other."
+
+With an ugly grin the Butcher, taking his fingers from Adrian's throat,
+gripped his captive's left wrist, and very slowly and deliberately began
+to screw it round.
+
+Adrian groaned.
+
+"Painful, isn't it?" said Ramiro. "Well, I have no more time to waste,
+break his arm."
+
+Then Adrian gave in, for he was not fitted to bear torture; his
+imagination was too lively.
+
+"I will sign," he whispered, the perspiration pouring from his pale
+face.
+
+"Are you quite sure you do it willingly?" queried his tormentor, adding,
+"another little half-turn, please, Simon; and you, Mistress Meg, if he
+begins to faint, just prick him in the thigh with your knife."
+
+"Yes, yes," groaned Adrian.
+
+"Very good. Now here is the pen. Sign."
+
+So Adrian signed.
+
+"I congratulate you upon your discretion, pupil," remarked Ramiro, as he
+scattered sand on the writing and pocketed the paper. "To-day you have
+learned a very useful lesson which life teaches to most of us, namely,
+that the inevitable must rule our little fancies. Let us see; I think
+that by now the soldiers will have executed their task, so, as you have
+done what I wished, you can go, for I shall know where to find you if I
+want you. But, if you will take my advice, which I offer as that of one
+friend to another, you will hold your tongue about the events of this
+afternoon. Unless you speak of it, nobody need ever know that you have
+furnished certain useful information, for in the Gevangenhuis the
+names of witnesses are not mentioned to the accused. Otherwise you may
+possibly come into trouble with your heretical friends and relatives.
+Good afternoon. Brother, be so good as to open the door for this
+gentleman."
+
+A minute later Adrian found himself in the street, towards which he had
+been helped by the kick of a heavy boot. His first impulse was to run,
+and he ran for half a mile or more without stopping, till at length he
+paused breathless in a deserted street, and, leaning against the wheel
+of an unharnessed waggon, tried to think. Think! How could he think? His
+mind was one mad whirl; rage, shame, disappointed passion, all boiled in
+it like bones in a knacker's cauldron. He had been fooled, he had lost
+his love, and, oh! infamy, he had betrayed his kindred to the hell of
+the Inquisition. They would be tortured and burnt. Yes, even his mother
+and Elsa might be burned, since those devils respected neither age nor
+sex, and their blood would be upon his head. It was true that he had
+signed under compulsion, but who would believe that, for had they not
+taken down his talk word for word? For once Adrian saw himself as he
+was; the cloaks of vanity and self-love were stripped from his soul, and
+he knew what others would think when they came to learn the story. He
+thought of suicide; there was water, here was steel, the deed would not
+be difficult. No, he could not; it was too horrible. Moreover, how dared
+he enter the other world so unprepared, so steeped in every sort of
+evil? What, then, could he do to save his character and those whom his
+folly had betrayed? He looked round him; there, not three hundred yards
+away, rose the tall chimney of the factory. Perhaps there was yet time;
+perhaps he could still warn Foy and Martin of the fate which awaited
+them.
+
+Acting on the impulse of the moment, Adrian started forward, running
+like a hare. As he approached the building he saw that the workmen had
+left, for the big doors were shut. He raced round to the small entrance;
+it was open--he was through it, and figures were moving in the office.
+God be praised! They were Foy and Martin. To them he sped, a white-faced
+creature with gaping mouth and staring eyes, to look at more like a
+ghost than a human being.
+
+Martin and Foy saw him and shrank back. Could this be Adrian, they
+thought, or was it an evil vision?
+
+"Fly!" he gasped. "Hide yourselves! The officers of the Inquisition
+are after you!" Then another thought struck him, and he stammered, "My
+father and mother. I must warn them!" and before they could speak he had
+turned and was gone, as he went crying, "Fly! Fly!"
+
+Foy stood astonished till Martin struck him on the shoulder, and said
+roughly:
+
+"Come, let us get out of this. Either he is mad, or he knows something.
+Have you your sword and dagger? Quick, then."
+
+They passed through the door, which Martin paused to lock, and into the
+courtyard. Foy reached the gate first, and looked through its open bars.
+Then very deliberately he shot the bolts and turned the great key.
+
+"Are you brain-sick," asked Martin, "that you lock the gate on us?"
+
+"I think not," replied Foy, as he came back to him. "It is too late to
+escape. Soldiers are marching down the street."
+
+Martin ran and looked through the bars. It was true enough. There
+they came, fifty men or more, a whole company, headed straight for the
+factory, which it was thought might be garrisoned for defence.
+
+"Now I can see no help but to fight for it," Martin said cheerfully, as
+he hid the keys in the bucket of the well, which he let run down to the
+water.
+
+"What can two men do against fifty?" asked Foy, lifting his steel-lined
+cap to scratch his head.
+
+"Not much, still, with good luck, something. At least, as nothing but a
+cat can climb the walls, and the gateway is stopped, I think we may as
+well die fighting as in the torture-chamber of the Gevangenhuis, for
+that is where they mean to lodge us."
+
+"I think so too," answered Foy, taking courage. "Now how can we hurt
+them most before they quiet us?"
+
+Martin looked round reflectively. In the centre of the courtyard stood a
+building not unlike a pigeon-house, or the shelter that is sometimes set
+up in the middle of a market beneath which merchants gather. In fact it
+was a shot tower, where leaden bullets of different sizes were cast and
+dropped through an opening in the floor into a shallow tank below to
+cool, for this was part of the trade of the foundry.
+
+"That would be a good place to hold," he said; "and crossbows hang upon
+the walls."
+
+Foy nodded, and they ran to the tower, but not without being seen, for
+as they set foot upon its stair, the officer in command of the soldiers
+called upon them to surrender in the name of the King. They made
+no answer, and as they passed through the doorway, a bullet from an
+arquebus struck its woodwork.
+
+The shot tower stood upon oaken piles, and the chamber above, which was
+round, and about twenty feet in diameter, was reached by a broad ladder
+of fifteen steps, such as is often used in stables. This ladder ended
+in a little landing of about six feet square, and to the left of the
+landing opened the door of the chamber where the shot were cast. They
+went up into the place.
+
+"What shall we do now?" said Foy, "barricade the door?"
+
+"I can see no use in that," answered Martin, "for then they would batter
+it down, or perhaps burn a way through it. No; let us take it off its
+hinges and lay it on blocks about eight inches high, so that they may
+catch their shins against it when they try to rush us."
+
+"A good notion," said Foy, and they lifted off the narrow oaken door and
+propped it up on four moulds of metal across the threshold, weighting
+it with other moulds. Also they strewed the floor of the landing with
+three-pound shot, so that men in a hurry might step on them and fall.
+Another thing they did, and this was Foy's notion. At the end of the
+chamber were the iron baths in which the lead was melted, and beneath
+them furnaces ready laid for the next day's founding. These Foy set
+alight, pulling out the dampers to make them burn quickly, and so melt
+the leaden bars which lay in the troughs.
+
+"They may come underneath," he said, pointing to the trap through which
+the hot shot were dropped into the tank, "and then molten lead will be
+useful."
+
+Martin smiled and nodded. Then he took down a crossbow from the walls,
+for in those days, when every dwelling and warehouse might have to
+be used as a place of defence, it was common to keep a good store of
+weapons hung somewhere ready to hand, and went to the narrow window
+which overlooked the gate.
+
+"As I thought," he said. "They can't get in and don't like the look of
+the iron spikes, so they are fetching a smith to burst it open. We must
+wait."
+
+Very soon Foy began to fidget, for this waiting to be butchered by an
+overwhelming force told upon his nerves. He thought of Elsa and his
+parents, whom he would never see again; he thought of death and all the
+terrors and wonders that might lie beyond it; death whose depths he must
+so soon explore. He had looked to his crossbow, had tested the string
+and laid a good store of quarrels on the floor beside him; he had taken
+a pike from the walls and seen to its shaft and point; he had stirred
+the fires beneath the leaden bars till they roared in the sharp draught.
+
+"Is there nothing more to do?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," replied Martin, "we might say our prayers; they will be the
+last," and suiting his action to the word, the great man knelt down, an
+example which Foy followed.
+
+"Do you speak," said Foy, "I can't think of anything."
+
+So Martin began a prayer which is perhaps worthy of record:--
+
+"O Lord," he said, "forgive me all my sins, which are too many to count,
+or at least I haven't the time to try, and especially for cutting off
+the head of the executioner with his own sword, although I had no death
+quarrel with him, and for killing a Spaniard in a boxing match. O Lord,
+I thank you very much because you have arranged for us to die fighting
+instead of being tortured and burnt in the gaol, and I pray that we
+may be able to kill enough Spaniards first to make them remember us for
+years to come. O Lord, protect my dear master and mistress, and let the
+former learn that we have made an end of which he would approve, but if
+may be, hide it from the Paster Arentz, who might think that we ought to
+surrender. That is all I have to say. Amen."
+
+Then Foy did his own praying, and it was hearty enough, but we need
+scarcely stop to set down its substance.
+
+Meanwhile the Spaniards had found a blacksmith, who was getting to work
+upon the gate, for they could see him through the open upper bars.
+
+"Why don't you shoot?" asked Foy. "You might catch him with a bolt."
+
+"Because he is a poor Dutchman whom they have pressed for the job, while
+they stand upon one side. We must wait till they break down the gate.
+Also we must fight well when the time comes, Master Foy, for, see, folk
+are watching us, and they will expect it," and he pointed upwards.
+
+Foy looked. The foundry courtyard was surrounded by tall gabled houses,
+and of these the windows and balconies were already crowded with
+spectators. Word had gone round that the Inquisition had sent soldiers
+to seize one of the young Van Goorls and Red Martin--that they were
+battering at the gates of the factory. Therefore the citizens, some of
+them their own workmen, gathered there, for they did not think that Red
+Martin and Foy van Goorl would be taken easily.
+
+The hammering at the gate went on, but it was very stout and would not
+give.
+
+"Martin," said Foy presently, "I am frightened. I feel quite sick. I
+know that I shall be no good to you when the pinch comes."
+
+"Now I am sure that you are a brave man," answered Martin with a short
+laugh, "for otherwise you would never have owned that you feel afraid.
+Of course you feel afraid, and so do I. It is the waiting that does it;
+but when once the first blow has been struck, why, you will be as happy
+as a priest. Look you, master. So soon as they begin to rush the ladder,
+do you get behind me, close behind, for I shall want all the room to
+sweep with my sword, and if we stand side by side we shall only hinder
+each other, while with a pike you can thrust past me, and be ready to
+deal with any who win through."
+
+"You mean that you want to shelter me with your big carcase," answered
+Foy. "But you are captain here. At least I will do my best," and putting
+his arms about the great man's middle, he hugged him affectionately.
+
+"Look! look!" cried Martin. "The gate is down. Now, first shot to you,"
+and he stepped to one side.
+
+As he spoke the oaken doors burst open and the Spanish soldiers began
+to stream through them. Suddenly Foy's nerve returned to him and he grew
+steady as a rock. Lifting his crossbow he aimed and pulled the trigger.
+The string twanged, the quarrel rushed forth with a whistling sound,
+and the first soldier, pierced through breastplate and through breast,
+sprang into the air and fell forward. Foy stepped to one side to string
+his bow.
+
+"Good shot," said Martin taking his place, while from the spectators in
+the windows went up a sudden shout. Martin fired and another man fell.
+Then Foy fired again and missed, but Martin's next bolt struck the last
+soldier through the arm and pinned him to the timber of the broken gate.
+After this they could shoot no more, for the Spaniards were beneath
+them.
+
+"To the doorway," said Martin, "and remember what I told you. Away with
+the bows, cold steel must do the rest."
+
+Now they stood by the open door, Martin, a helmet from the walls upon
+his head, tied beneath his chin with a piece of rope because it was too
+small for him, the great sword Silence lifted ready to strike, and
+Foy behind gripping the long pike with both hands. Below them from the
+gathered mob of soldiers came a confused clamour, then a voice called
+out an order and they heard footsteps on the stair.
+
+"Look out; they are coming," said Martin, turning his head so that Foy
+caught sight of his face. It was transfigured, it was terrible. The
+great red beard seemed to bristle, the pale blue unshaded eyes rolled
+and glittered, they glittered like the blue steel of the sword Silence
+that wavered above them. In that dread instant of expectancy Foy
+remembered his vision of the morning. Lo! it was fulfilled, for before
+him stood Martin, the peaceful, patient giant, transformed into a Red
+Vengeance.
+
+A man reached the head of the ladder, stepped upon one of the loose
+cannon-balls and fell with an oath and a crash. But behind him came
+others. Suddenly they turned the corner, suddenly they burst into view,
+three or four of them together. Gallantly they rushed on. The first of
+them caught his feet in the trap of the door and fell headlong across
+it. Of him Martin took no heed, but Foy did, for before ever the soldier
+could rise he had driven his pike down between the man's shoulders, so
+that he died there upon the door. At the next Martin struck, and Foy
+saw this one suddenly grow small and double up, which, if he had found
+leisure to examine the nature of that wound, would have surprised him
+very little. Another man followed so quickly that Martin could not lift
+the sword to meet him. But he pointed with it, and next instant was
+shaking his carcase off its blade.
+
+After this Foy could keep no count. Martin slashed with the sword, and
+when he found a chance Foy thrust with the pike, till at length there
+were none to thrust at, for this was more than the Spaniards had
+bargained. Two of them lay dead in the doorway, and others had been
+dragged or had tumbled down the ladder, while from the onlookers at the
+windows without, as they caught sight of them being brought forth slain
+or sorely wounded, went up shout upon shout of joy.
+
+"So far we have done very well," said Martin quietly, "but if they come
+up again, we must be cooler and not waste our strength so much. Had I
+not struck so hard, I might have killed another man."
+
+But the Spaniards showed no sign of coming up any more; they had seen
+enough of that narrow way and of the red swordsman who awaited them in
+the doorway round the corner. Indeed it was a bad place for attackers,
+since they could not shoot with arquebuses or arrows, but must pass in
+to be slaughtered like sheep at the shambles in the dim room beyond. So,
+being cautious men who loved their lives, they took a safer counsel.
+
+The tank beneath the shot-tower, when it was not in use, was closed
+with a stone cover, and around this they piled firewood and peats from
+a stack in the corner of the yard, and standing in the centre out of the
+reach of arrows, set light to it. Martin lay down watching them through
+a crack in the floor. Then he signed to Foy, and whispered, and going
+to the iron baths, Foy drew from them two large buckets of molten lead,
+each as much as a man could carry. Again Martin looked through the
+crack, waiting till several of the burners were gathered beneath. Then,
+with a swift motion he lifted up the trap-door, and as those below
+stared upwards wondering, full into their faces came the buckets of
+molten lead. Down went two of them never to speak more, while others ran
+out shrieking and aflame, tearing at their hair and garments.
+
+After this the Spaniards grew more wary, and built their fires round
+the oak piers till the flames eating up them fired the building, and the
+room above grew full of little curling wreaths of smoke.
+
+"Now we must choose," said Martin, "whether we will be roasted like
+fowls in an oven, or go down and have our throats cut like pigs in the
+open."
+
+"For my part, I prefer to die in the air," coughed Foy.
+
+"So say I, master. Listen. We can't get down the stair, for they are
+watching for us there, so we must drop from the trap-door and charge
+through the fire. Then, if we are lucky, back to back and fight it out."
+
+Half a minute later two men bearing naked swords in their hands might be
+seen bursting through the barrier of flaming wood. Out they came safely
+enough, and there in an open space not far from the gateway, halted
+back to back, rubbing the water from their smarting eyes. On them, a
+few seconds later, like hounds on a wounded boar, dashed the mob of
+soldiers, while from every throat of the hundreds who were watching went
+up shrill cries of encouragement, grief, and fear. Men fell before them,
+but others rushed in. They were down, they were up again, once more they
+were down, and this time only one of them rose, the great man Martin. He
+staggered to his feet, shaking off the soldiers who tried to hold him,
+as a dog in the game-pit shakes off rats. He was up, he stood across
+the body of his companion, and once more that fearful sword was sweeping
+round, bringing death to all it touched. They drew back, but a soldier,
+old in war, creeping behind him suddenly threw a cloak over his head.
+Then the end came, and slowly, very slowly, they overmatched his
+strength, and bore him down and bound him, while the watching mob
+groaned and wept with grief.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN THE GEVANGENHUIS
+
+When Adrian left the factory he ran on to the house in the Bree Straat.
+
+"Oh! what has happened?" said his mother as he burst into the room where
+she and Elsa were at work.
+
+"They are coming for him," he gasped. "The soldiers from the
+Gevangenhuis. Where is he? Let him escape quickly--my stepfather."
+
+Lysbeth staggered and fell back into her chair.
+
+"How do you know?" she asked.
+
+At the question Adrian's head swam and his heart stood still. Yet his
+lips found a lie.
+
+"I overheard it," he said; "the soldiers are attacking Foy and Martin in
+the factory, and I heard them say that they were coming here for him."
+
+Elsa moaned aloud, then she turned on him like a tiger, asking:
+
+"If so, why did you not stay to help them?"
+
+"Because," he answered with a touch of his old pomposity, "my first duty
+was towards my mother and you."
+
+"He is out of the house," broke in Lysbeth in a low voice that was
+dreadful to hear. "He is out of the house, I know not where. Go, son,
+and search for him. Swift! Be swift!"
+
+So Adrian went forth, not sorry to escape the presence of these
+tormented women. Here and there he wandered to one haunt of Dirk's after
+another, but without success, till at length a noise of tumult drew him,
+and he ran towards the sound. Presently he was round the corner, and
+this was what he saw.
+
+Advancing down the wide street leading to the Gevangenhuis came a body
+of Spanish soldiers, and in the centre of them were two figures whom
+it was easy for Adrian to recognise--Red Martin and his brother Foy.
+Martin, although his bull-hide jerkin was cut and slashed and his helmet
+had gone, seemed to be little hurt, for he was still upright and proud,
+walking along with his arms lashed behind him, while a Spanish officer
+held the point of a sword, his own sword Silence, near his throat ready
+to drive it home should he attempt to escape. With Foy the case was
+different. At first Adrian thought that he was dead, for they were
+carrying him upon a ladder. Blood fell from his head and legs, while
+his doublet seemed literally to be rent to pieces with sword-cuts and
+dagger-thrusts; and in truth had it not been for the shirt of mail which
+he wore beneath, he must have been slain several times over. But Foy was
+not dead, for as Adrian watched he saw his head turn upon the ladder and
+his hand rise up and fall again.
+
+But this was not all, for behind appeared a cart drawn by a grey horse,
+and in it were the bodies of Spanish soldiers--how many Adrian could not
+tell, but there they lay with their harness still on them. After these
+again, in a long and melancholy procession, marched other Spanish
+soldiers, some of them sorely wounded, and, like Foy, carried upon doors
+or ladders, and others limping forward with the help of their comrades.
+No wonder that Martin walked proudly to his doom, since behind him came
+the rich harvest of the sword Silence. Also, there were other signs to
+see and hear, since about the cavalcade surged and roared a great mob of
+the citizens of Leyden.
+
+"Bravo, Martin! Well fought, Foy van Goorl!" they shouted, "We are proud
+of you! We are proud of you!" Then from the back of the crowd someone
+cried, "Rescue them!" "Kill the Inquisition dogs!" "Tear the Spaniards
+to pieces!"
+
+A stone flew through the air, then another and another, but at a word of
+command the soldiers faced about and the mob drew back, for they had
+no leader. So it went on till they were within a hundred yards of the
+Gevangenhuis.
+
+"Don't let them be murdered," cried the voice. "A rescue! a rescue!" and
+with a roar the crowd fell upon the soldiers. It was too late, for the
+Spaniards, trained to arms, closed up and fought their way through,
+taking their prisoners with them. But they cost them dear, for the
+wounded men, and those who supported them, were cut off. They were cut
+off, they were struck down. In a minute they were dead, every one of
+them, and although they still held its fortresses and walls, from that
+hour the Spaniards lost their grip of Leyden, nor did they ever win it
+back again. From that hour to this Leyden has been free. Such were the
+first fruits of the fight of Foy and Martin against fearful odds.
+
+The great doors of oak and iron of the Gevangenhuis clashed to behind
+the prisoners, the locks were shot, and the bars fell home, while
+outside raved the furious crowd.
+
+The place was not large nor very strong, merely a drawbridge across the
+narrow arm of a moat, a gateway with a walled courtyard beyond, and over
+it a three-storied house built in the common Dutch fashion, but with
+straight barrel windows. To the right, under the shadow of the archway,
+which, space being limited, was used as an armoury, and hung with
+weapons, lay the court-room where prisoners were tried, and to the left
+a vaulted place with no window, not unlike a large cellar in appearance.
+This was the torture-chamber. Beyond was the courtyard, and at the back
+of it rose the prison. In this yard were waiting the new governor of the
+jail, Ramiro, and with him a little red-faced, pig-eyed man dressed in
+a rusty doublet. He was the Inquisitor of the district, especially
+empowered as delegate of the Blood Council and under various edicts and
+laws to try and to butcher heretics.
+
+The officer in command of the troops advanced to make his report.
+
+"What is all that noise?" asked the Inquisitor in a frightened, squeaky
+voice. "Is this city also in rebellion?"
+
+"And where are the rest of you?" said Ramiro, scanning the thin files.
+
+"Sir," answered the officer saluting, "the rest of us are dead. Some
+were killed by this red rogue and his companion, and the mob have the
+others."
+
+Then Ramiro began to curse and to swear, as well he might, for he knew
+that when this story reached headquarters, his credit with Alva and the
+Blood Council would be gone.
+
+"Coward!" he yelled, shaking his fist in the face of the officer.
+"Coward to lose a score or more of men in taking a brace of heretics."
+
+"Don't blame me, sir," answered the man sullenly, for the word stirred
+his bile, "blame the mob and this red devil's steel, which went through
+us as though we were wet clay," and he handed him the sword Silence.
+
+"It fits the man," muttered Montalvo, "for few else could wield such a
+blade. Go hang it in the doorway, it may be wanted in evidence," but to
+himself he thought, "Bad luck again, the luck that follows me whenever I
+pit myself against Lysbeth van Hout." Then he gave an order, and the two
+prisoners were taken away up some narrow stairs.
+
+At the top of the first flight was a solid door through which they
+passed, to find themselves in a large and darksome place. Down the
+centre of this place ran a passage. On either side of the passage, dimly
+lighted by high iron-barred windows, were cages built of massive oaken
+bars, and measuring each of them eight or ten feet square, very dens
+such as might have served for wild beasts, but filled with human beings
+charged with offences against the doctrines of the Church. Those who
+chance to have seen the prison of the Inquisition at The Hague as it
+still stands to-day, will know what they were like.
+
+Into one of these dreadful holes they were thrust, Foy, wounded as he
+was, being thrown roughly upon a heap of dirty straw in the corner.
+Then, having bolted and locked the door of their den, the soldiers left
+them.
+
+As soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, Martin stared about
+him. The conveniences of the dungeon were not many; indeed, being built
+above the level of the ground, it struck the imagination as even more
+terrible than any subterranean vault devoted to the same dreadful
+purpose. By good fortune, however, in one corner of it stood an
+earthenware basin and a large jug of water.
+
+"I will take the risk of its being poisoned," thought Martin to himself,
+as lifting the jug he drank deep of it, for what between fighting, fire
+and fury there seemed to be no moisture left in him. Then, his burning
+thirst satisfied at last, he went to where Foy lay unconscious and began
+to pour water, little by little, into his mouth, which, senseless as he
+was, he swallowed mechanically and presently groaned a little. Next,
+as well as he could, Martin examined his comrade's wounds, to find that
+what had made him insensible was a cut upon the right side of the head,
+which, had it not been for his steel-lined cap, must certainly have
+killed him, but as it was, beyond the shock and bruise, seemed in no way
+serious.
+
+His second hurt was a deep wound in the left thigh, but being on the
+outside of the limb, although he bled much it had severed no artery.
+Other injuries he had also upon the forearms and legs, also beneath the
+chain shirt his body was bruised with the blows of swords and daggers.
+But none of these were dangerous.
+
+Martin stripped him as tenderly as he might and washed his wounds. Then
+he paused, for both of them were wearing garments of flannel, which is
+unsuitable for the dressing of hurts.
+
+"You need linen," said a woman's voice, speaking from the next den.
+"Wait awhile and I will give you my smock."
+
+"How can I take your garment, lady, whoever you may be," answered
+Martin, "to bind about the limbs of a man even if he is wounded?"
+
+"Take it and welcome," said the unknown in sweet, low tones, "I want it
+no more; they are going to execute me to-night."
+
+"Execute you to-night?" muttered Martin.
+
+"Yes," replied the voice, "in the court-room or one of the cellars,
+I believe, as they dare not do it outside because of the people. By
+beheading--am I not fortunate? Only by beheading."
+
+"Oh! God, where art Thou?" groaned Martin.
+
+"Don't be sorry for me," answered the voice, "I am very glad. There were
+three of us, my father, my sister, and I, and--you can guess--well, I
+wish to join them. Also it is better to die than to go through what I
+have suffered again. But here is the garment. I fear that it is stained
+about the neck, but it will serve if you tear it into strips," and a
+trembling, delicate hand, which held the linen, was thrust between the
+oaken bars.
+
+Even in that light, however, Martin saw that the wrist was cut and
+swollen. He saw it, and because of that tender, merciful hand he
+registered an oath about priests and Spaniards, which, as it chanced, he
+lived to keep very thoroughly. Also, he paused awhile wondering whether
+if all this was of any good, wondering if it would not be best to let
+Foy die at once, or even to kill him.
+
+"What are you thinking about, sir?" asked the lady on the other side of
+the bars.
+
+"I am thinking," answered Martin, "that perhaps my young master here
+would be better dead, and that I am a fool to stop the bleeding."
+
+"No, no," said the sweet voice, "do your utmost and leave the rest to
+God. It pleases God that I should die, which matters little as I am but
+a weak girl; it may please Him that this young man shall live to be of
+service to his country and his faith. I say, bind up his wounds, good
+sir."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," answered Martin. "Who knows, there's a key to
+every lock, if only it can be found." Then he set to work upon Foy's
+wounds, binding them round with strips of the girl's garment dipped in
+water, and when he had done the best he could he clothed him again, even
+to the chain shirt.
+
+"Are you not hurt yourself?" asked the voice presently.
+
+"A little, nothing to speak of; a few cuts and bruises, that's all; this
+bull's hide turned their swords."
+
+"Tell me whom you have been fighting," she said.
+
+So, to while away the time while Foy still lay senseless, Martin told
+her the story of the attack upon the shot tower, of how they had driven
+the Spaniards down the ladder, of how they had drenched them with molten
+lead, and of their last stand in the courtyard when they were forced
+from the burning building.
+
+"Oh! what a fearful fight--two against so many," said the voice with a
+ring of admiration in it.
+
+"Yes," answered Martin, "it was a good fight--the hottest that ever I
+was in. For myself I don't much care, for they've paid a price for my
+carcase. I didn't tell you, did I, that the mob set on them as they
+haled us here and pulled four wounded men and those who carried them to
+bits? Oh! yes, they have paid a price, a very good price for a Frisian
+boor and a Leyden burgher."
+
+"God pardon their souls," murmured the unknown.
+
+"That's as He likes," said Martin, "and no affair of mine; I had only to
+do with their bodies and--" At this moment Foy groaned, sat up and asked
+for something to drink.
+
+Martin gave him water from the pitcher.
+
+"Where am I?" he asked, and he told him.
+
+"Martin, old fellow," said Foy in an uncertain voice, "we are in a very
+bad way, but as we have lived through this"--here his characteristic
+hopefulness asserted itself--"I believe, I believe that we shall live
+through the rest."
+
+"Yes, young sir," echoed the thin, faint notes out of the darkness
+beyond the bars, "I believe, too, that you will live through the rest,
+and I am praying that it may be so."
+
+"Who is that?" asked Foy drowsily.
+
+"Another prisoner," answered Martin.
+
+"A prisoner who will soon be free," murmured the voice again through the
+blackness, for by now night had fallen, and no light came from the hole
+above.
+
+Then Foy fell into sleep or stupor, and there was silence for a long
+while, until they heard the bolts and bars of the door of the dungeon
+creaking, and the glint of a lantern appeared floating on the gloom.
+Several men tramped down the narrow gangway, and one of them, unlocking
+their cage, entered, filled the jug of water from a leathern jack, and
+threw down some loaves of black bread and pieces of stockfish, as food
+is thrown to dogs. Having examined the pair of them he grunted and went
+away, little knowing how near he had been to death, for the heart of
+Martin was mad. But he let him go. Then the door of the next cell was
+opened, and a man said, "Come out. It is time."
+
+"It is time and I am ready," answered the thin voice. "Good-bye,
+friends, God be with you."
+
+"Good-bye, lady," answered Martin; "may you soon be with God." Then he
+added, by an afterthought, "What is your name? I should like to know."
+
+"Mary," she replied, and began to sing a hymn, and so, still singing the
+hymn, she passed away to her death. They never saw her face, they never
+learned who she might be, this poor girl who was but an item among the
+countless victims of perhaps the most hideous tyranny that the world
+has ever known--one of Alva's slaughtered sixty thousand. But many years
+afterwards, when Foy was a rich man in a freer land, he built a church
+and named it Mary's kirk.
+
+The long night wore away in silence, broken only by the groans and
+prayers of prisoners in dens upon the same floor, or with the solemn
+rhythm of hymns sung by those above, till at length the light, creeping
+through the dungeon lattices, told them that it was morning. At its
+first ray Martin awoke much refreshed, for even there his health and
+weariness had brought sleep to him. Foy also awoke, stiff and sore, but
+in his right mind and very hungry. Then Martin found the loaves and the
+stockfish, and they filled themselves, washing down the meal with water,
+after which he dressed Foy's wounds, making a poultice for them out of
+the crumb of the bread, and doctored his own bruises as best he could.
+
+It must have been ten o'clock or later when again the doors were opened,
+and men appeared who commanded that they should follow them.
+
+"One of us can't walk," said Martin; "still, perhaps I can manage," and,
+lifting Foy in his arms as though he had been a baby, he passed with the
+jailers out of the den, down the stair, and into the court-room. Here,
+seated behind a table, they found Ramiro and the little, squeaky-voiced,
+red-faced Inquisitor.
+
+"Heaven above us!" said the Inquisitor, "what a great hairy ruffian;
+it makes me feel nervous to be in the same place with him. I beg you,
+Governor Ramiro, instruct your soldiers to be watching and to stab him
+at the first movement."
+
+"Have no fear, noble sir," answered Ramiro, "the villain is quite
+unarmed."
+
+"I daresay, I daresay, but let us get on. Now what is the charge against
+these people? Ah! I see, heresy like the last upon the evidence of--oh!
+well, never mind. Well, we will take that as proved, and, of course, it
+is enough. But what more? Ah! here it is. Escaped from The Hague with
+the goods of a heretic, killed sundry of his Majesty's lieges, blew up
+others on the Haarlemer Meer, and yesterday, as we know for ourselves,
+committed a whole series of murders in resisting lawful arrest.
+Prisoners, have you anything to say?"
+
+"Plenty," answered Foy.
+
+"Then save your trouble and my time, since nothing can excuse your
+godless, rebellious, and damnable behaviour. Friend Governor, into your
+hands I deliver them, and may God have mercy on their souls. See, by the
+way, that you have a priest at hand to shrive them at last, if they will
+be shriven, just for the sake of charity, but all the other details I
+leave to you. Torment? Oh! of course if you think there is anything to
+be gained by it, or that it will purify their souls. And now I will be
+going on to Haarlem, for I tell you frankly, friend Governor, that I
+don't think this town of Leyden safe for an honest officer of the law;
+there are too many bad characters here, schismatics and resisters of
+authority. What? The warrant not ready? Well, I will sign it in blank.
+You can fill it in. There. God forgive you, heretics; may your souls
+find peace, which is more, I fear, than your bodies will for the next
+few hours. Bah! friend Governor, I wish that you had not made me assist
+at the execution of that girl last night, especially as I understand she
+leaves no property worth having; her white face haunts my mind, I can't
+be rid of the look of those great eyes. Oh! these heretics, to what
+sorrow do they put us orthodox people! Farewell, friend Governor; yes,
+I think I will go out by the back way, some of those turbulent citizens
+might be waiting in front. Farewell, and temper justice with mercy if
+you can," and he was gone.
+
+Presently Ramiro, who had accompanied him to the gate, returned. Seating
+himself on the further side of the table, he drew his rapier and laid it
+before him. Then, having first commanded them to bring a chair in which
+Foy might sit, since he could not stand because of his wounded leg, he
+told the guard to fall back out of hearing, but to be ready should he
+need them.
+
+"Not much dignity about that fellow," he said, addressing Martin and
+Foy in a cheerful voice; "quite different from the kind of thing you
+expected, I daresay. No hooded Dominican priests, no clerks taking
+notes, no solemnities, nothing but a little red-faced wretch, perspiring
+with terror lest the mob outside should catch him, as for my part I
+hope they may. Well, gentlemen, what can you expect, seeing that, to my
+knowledge, the man is a bankrupt tailor of Antwerp? However, it is the
+substance we have to deal with, not the shadow, and that's real enough,
+for his signature on a death warrant is as good as that of the Pope, or
+his gracious Majesty King Philip, or, for the matter of that, of Alva
+himself. Therefore, you are--dead men."
+
+"As you would have been had I not been fool enough to neglect Martin's
+advice out in the Haarlemer Meer and let you escape," answered Foy.
+
+"Precisely, my young friend, but you see my guardian angel was too many
+for you, and you did neglect that excellent counsel. But, as it happens,
+it is just about the Haarlemer Meer that I want to have a word with
+you."
+
+Foy and Martin looked at each other, for now they understood exactly
+why they were there, and Ramiro, watching them out of the corners of his
+eyes, went on in a low voice:
+
+"Let us drop this and come to business. You hid it, and you know where
+it is, and I am in need of a competence for my old age. Now, I am not a
+cruel man; I wish to put no one to pain or death; moreover, I tell you
+frankly, I admire both of you very much. The escape with the treasure on
+board of your boat _Swallow_, and the blowing up, were both exceedingly
+well managed, with but one mistake which you, young sir, have pointed
+out," and he bowed and smiled. "The fight that you made yesterday, too,
+was splendid, and I have entered the details of it in my own private
+diary, because they ought not to be forgotten."
+
+Now it was Foy's turn to bow, while even on Martin's grim and impassive
+countenance flickered a faint smile.
+
+"Naturally," went on Ramiro, "I wish to save such men, I wish you to go
+hence quite free and unharmed," and he paused.
+
+"How can we after we have been condemned to death?" asked Foy.
+
+"Well, it does not seem so difficult. My friend, the tailor--I mean the
+Inquisitor--who, for all his soft words, _is_ a cruel man indeed, was in
+a hurry to be gone, and--he signed a blank warrant, always an incautious
+thing to do. Well, a judge can acquit as well as condemn, and this
+one--is no exception. What is there to prevent me filling this paper in
+with an order for your release?"
+
+"And what is there to show us that you would release us after all?"
+asked Foy.
+
+"Upon the honour of a gentleman," answered Ramiro laying his hand on
+his heart. "Tell me what I want to know, give me a week to make certain
+necessary arrangements, and so soon as I am back you shall both of you
+be freed."
+
+"Doubtless," said Foy, angrily, "upon such honour as gentlemen learn in
+the galleys, Senor Ramiro--I beg your pardon, Count Juan de Montalvo."
+
+Ramiro's face grew crimson to the hair.
+
+"Sir," he said, "were I a different sort of man, for those words you
+should die in a fashion from which even the boldest might shrink. But
+you are young and inexperienced, so I will overlook them. Now this
+bargaining must come to a head. Which will you have, life and safety, or
+the chance--which under the circumstances is no chance at all--that one
+day, not you, of course, but somebody interested in it, may recover a
+hoard of money and jewels?"
+
+Then Martin spoke for the first time, very slowly and respectfully.
+
+"Worshipful sir," he said, "we cannot tell you where the money is
+because we do not know. To be frank with you, nobody ever knew except
+myself. I took the stuff and sank it in the water in a narrow channel
+between two islands, and I made a little drawing of them on a piece of
+paper."
+
+"Exactly, my good friend, and where is that piece of paper?"
+
+"Alas! sir, when I was lighting the fuses on board the _Swallow_, I let
+it fall in my haste, and it is--in exactly the same place as are all
+your worship's worthy comrades who were on board that ship. I believe,
+however, that if you will put yourself under my guidance I could show
+your Excellency the spot, and this, as I do not want to be killed, I
+should be most happy to do."
+
+"Good, simple man," said Ramiro with a little laugh, "how charming is
+the prospect that you paint of a midnight row with you upon those lonely
+waters; the tarantula and the butterfly arm in arm! Mynheer van Goorl,
+what have you to say?"
+
+"Only that the story told by Martin here is true. I do not know where
+the money is, as I was not present at its sinking, and the paper has
+been lost."
+
+"Indeed? I am afraid, then, that it will be necessary for me to refresh
+your memory, but, first, I have one more argument, or rather two. Has
+it struck you that another life may hang upon your answer? As a rule men
+are loth to send their fathers to death."
+
+Foy heard, and terrible as was the hint, yet it came to him as a relief,
+for he had feared lest he was about to say "your mother" or "Elsa
+Brant."
+
+"That is my first argument, a good one, I think, but I have--another
+which may appeal even more forcibly to a young man and prospective heir.
+The day before yesterday you became engaged to Elsa Brant--don't look
+surprised; people in my position have long ears, and you needn't
+be frightened, the young lady will not be brought here; she is too
+valuable."
+
+"Be so good as to speak plainly," said Foy.
+
+"With pleasure. You see this girl is the heiress, is she not? and
+whether or no I find out the facts from you, sooner or later, in this
+way or that, she will doubtless discover where her heritage is hidden.
+Well, that fortune a husband would have the advantage of sharing. I
+myself labour at present under no matrimonial engagements, and am in a
+position to obtain an introduction--ah! my friend, are you beginning to
+see that there are more ways of killing a dog than by hanging him?"
+
+Weak and wounded as he was, Foy's heart sank in him at the words of this
+man, this devil who had betrayed his mother with a mock marriage, and
+who was the father of Adrian. The idea of making the heiress his wife
+was one worthy of his evil ingenuity, and why should he not put it into
+practice? Elsa, of course, would rebel, but Alva's officials in such
+days had means of overcoming any maidenly reluctance, or at least of
+forcing women to choose between death and degradation. Was it not common
+for them even to dissolve marriages in order to give heretics to new
+husbands who desired their wealth? There was no justice left in the
+land; human beings were the chattels and slaves of their oppressors. Oh
+God! what was there to do, except to trust in God? Why should they
+be tortured, murdered, married against their wills, for the sake of a
+miserable pile of pelf? Why not tell the truth and let the fellow take
+the money? He had measured up his man, and believed that he could drive
+a bargain with him. Ramiro wanted money, not lives. He was no fanatic;
+horrors gave him no pleasure; he cared nothing about his victims' souls.
+As he had betrayed his mother, Lysbeth, for cash, so he would be willing
+to let them all go for cash. Why not make the exchange?
+
+Then distinct, formidable, overwhelming, the answer rose up in Foy's
+mind. Because he had sworn to his father that nothing which could be
+imagined should induce him to reveal this secret and betray this trust.
+And not only to his father, to Hendrik Brant also, who already had given
+his own life to keep his treasure out of the hands of the Spaniards,
+believing that in some unforeseen way it would advantage his own land
+and countrymen. No, great as was the temptation, he must keep the letter
+of his bond and pay its dreadful price. So again Foy answered,
+
+"It is useless to try to bribe me, for I do not know where the money
+is."
+
+"Very well, Heer Foy van Goorl, now we have a plain issue before us,
+but I will still try to protect you against yourself--the warrant shall
+remain blank for a little while."
+
+Then he called aloud, "Sergeant, ask the Professor Baptiste to be so
+good as to step this way."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+HOW MARTIN TURNED COWARD
+
+The sergeant left the room and presently returned, followed by the
+Professor, a tall hang-dog looking rogue, clad in rusty black, with
+broad, horny hands, and nails bitten down to the quick.
+
+"Good morning to you, Professor," said Ramiro. "Here are two subjects
+for your gentle art. You will begin upon the big one, and from time to
+time report progress, and be sure, if he becomes willing to reveal what
+I want to know--never mind what it is, that is my affair--come to summon
+me at once."
+
+"What methods does your Excellency wish employed?"
+
+"Man, I leave that to you. Am I a master of your filthy trade? Any
+method, provided it is effective."
+
+"I don't like the look of him," grumbled the Professor, gnawing at
+his short nails. "I have heard about this mad brute; he is capable of
+anything."
+
+"Then take the whole guard with you; one naked wretch can't do much
+against eight armed men. And, listen; take the young gentleman also, and
+let him see what goes on; the experience may modify his views, but don't
+touch him without telling me. I have reports to write, and shall stop
+here."
+
+"I don't like the look of him," repeated the Professor. "I say that he
+makes me feel cold down the back--he has the evil eye; I'd rather begin
+with the young one."
+
+"Begone and do what I tell you," said Ramiro, glaring at him fiercely.
+"Guard, attend upon the executioner Baptiste."
+
+"Bring them along," grumbled the Professor.
+
+"No need for violence, worthy sir," muttered Martin; "show the way and
+we follow," and stooping down he lifted Foy from his chair.
+
+Then the procession started. First went Baptiste and four soldiers, next
+came Martin bearing Foy, and after them four more soldiers. They passed
+out of the courtroom into the passage beneath the archway. Martin,
+shuffling along slowly, glanced down it and saw that on the wall, among
+some other weapons, hung his own sword, Silence. The big doors were
+locked and barred, but at the wicket by the side of them stood a sentry,
+whose office it was to let people in and out upon their lawful business.
+Making pretence to shift Foy in his arms, Martin scanned this wicket as
+narrowly as time would allow, and observed that it seemed to be secured
+by means of iron bolts at the top and the bottom, but that it was
+not locked, since the socket into which the tongue went was empty.
+Doubtless, while he was on guard there, the porter did not think it
+necessary to go to the pains of using the great key that hung at his
+girdle.
+
+The sergeant in charge of the victims opened a low and massive door,
+which was almost exactly opposite to that of the court-room, by shooting
+back a bolt and pushing it ajar. Evidently the place beyond at some time
+or other had been used as a prison, which accounted for the bolt on
+the outside. A few seconds later and they were locked into the
+torture-chamber of the Gevangenhuis, which was nothing more than a
+good-sized vault like that of a cellar, lit with lamps, for no light
+of day was suffered to enter here, and by a horrid little fire that
+flickered on the floor. The furnitures of the place may be guessed
+at; those that are curious about such things can satisfy themselves by
+examining the mediaeval prisons at The Hague and elsewhere. Let us pass
+them over as unfit even for description, although these terrors, of
+which we scarcely like to speak to-day, were very familiar to the sight
+of our ancestors of but three centuries ago.
+
+Martin sat Foy down upon some terrible engine that roughly resembled
+a chair, and once more let his blue eyes wander about him. Amongst the
+various implements was one leaning against the wall, not very far
+from the door, which excited his especial interest. It was made for a
+dreadful purpose, but Martin reflected only that it seemed to be a stout
+bar of iron exactly suited to the breaking of anybody's head.
+
+"Come," sneered the Professor, "undress that big gentleman while I make
+ready his little bed."
+
+So the soldiers stripped Martin, nor did they assault him with sneers
+and insults, for they remembered the man's deeds of yesterday, and
+admired his strength and endurance, and the huge, muscular frame beneath
+their hands.
+
+"Now he is ready if you are," said the sergeant.
+
+The Professor rubbed his hands.
+
+"Come on, my little man," he said.
+
+Then Martin's nerve gave way, and he began to shiver and to shake.
+
+"Oho!" laughed the Professor, "even in this stuffy place he is cold
+without his clothes; well we must warm him--we must warm him."
+
+"Who would have thought that a big fellow, who can fight well, too,
+was such a coward at heart," said the sergeant of the guard to his
+companions. "After all, he will give no more play than a Rhine salmon."
+
+Martin heard the words, and was seized with such an intense access of
+fear that he burst into a sweat all over his body.
+
+"I can't bear it," he said, covering his eyes--which, however, he did
+not shut--with his fingers. "The rack was always my nightmare, and now I
+see why. I'll tell all I know."
+
+"Oh! Martin, Martin," broke out Foy in a kind of wail, "I was doing my
+best to keep my own courage; I never dreamt that you would turn coward."
+
+"Every well has a bottom, master," whined Martin, "and mine is the rack.
+Forgive me, but I can't abide the sight of it."
+
+Foy stared at him open-mouthed. Could he believe his ears? And if Martin
+was so horribly scared, why did his eye glint in that peculiar way
+between his fingers? He had seen this light in it before, no later
+indeed than the last afternoon just as the soldiers tried to rush the
+stair. He gave up the problem as insoluble, but from that moment he
+watched very narrowly.
+
+"Do you hear what this young lady says, Professor Baptiste?" said the
+sergeant. "She says" (imitating Martin's whine) "that she'll tell all
+she knows."
+
+"Then the great cur might have saved me this trouble. Stop here with
+him. I must go and inform the Governor; those are my orders. No, no,
+you needn't give him clothes yet--that cloth is enough--one can never be
+sure."
+
+Then he walked to the door and began to unlock it, as he went striking
+Martin in the face with the back of his hand, and saying,
+
+"Take that, cur." Whereat, as Foy observed, the cowed prisoner perspired
+more profusely than before, and shrank away towards the wall.
+
+God in Heaven! What had happened? The door of the torture den was
+opened, and suddenly, uttering the words, "_To me, Foy!_" Martin made
+a movement more quick than he could follow. Something flew up and fell
+with a fearful thud upon the executioner in the doorway. The guard
+sprang forward, and a great bar of iron, hurled with awful force into
+their faces, swept two of them broken to the ground. Another instant,
+and one arm was about his middle, the next they were outside the door,
+Martin standing straddle-legged over the body of the dead Professor
+Baptiste.
+
+They were outside the door, but it was not shut, for now, on the other
+side of it six men were pushing with all their might and main. Martin
+dropped Foy. "Take his dagger and look out for the porter," he gasped as
+he hurled himself against the door.
+
+In a second Foy had drawn the weapon out of the belt of the dead man,
+and wheeled round. The porter from the wicket was running on them sword
+in hand. Foy forgot that he was wounded--for the moment his leg
+seemed sound again. He doubled himself up and sprang at the man like
+a wild-cat, as one springs who has the rack behind him. There was no
+fight, yet in that thrust the skill which Martin had taught him so
+patiently served him well, for the sword of the Spaniard passed over
+his head, whereas Foy's long dagger went through the porter's throat.
+A glance showed Foy that from him there was nothing more to fear, so he
+turned.
+
+"Help if you can," groaned Martin, as well he might, for with his naked
+shoulder wedged against one of the cross pieces of the door he was
+striving to press it to so that the bolt could be shot into its socket.
+
+Heavens! what a struggle was that. Martin's blue eyes seemed to be
+starting from his head, his tongue lolled out and the muscles of his
+body rose in great knots. Foy hopped to him and pushed as well as he was
+able. It was little that he could do standing upon one leg only, for now
+the sinews of the other had given way again; still that little made
+the difference, for let the soldiers on the further side strive as they
+might, slowly, very slowly, the thick door quivered to its frame. Martin
+glanced at the bolt, for he could not speak, and with his left hand Foy
+slowly worked it forward. It was stiff with disuse, it caught upon the
+edge of the socket.
+
+"Closer," he gasped.
+
+Martin made an effort so fierce that it was hideous to behold, for
+beneath the pressure the blood trickled from his nostrils, but the door
+went in the sixteenth of an inch and the rusty bolt creaked home into
+its stone notch.
+
+Martin stepped back, and for a moment stood swaying like a man about to
+fall. Then, recovering himself, he leapt at the sword Silence which hung
+upon the wall and passed its thong over his right wrist. Next he turned
+towards the door of the court-room.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Foy.
+
+"To bid _him_ farewell," hissed Martin.
+
+"You're mad," said Foy; "let's fly while we can. That door may
+give--they are shouting."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," answered Martin doubtfully. "Come. On to my
+back with you."
+
+A few seconds later the two soldiers on guard outside the Gevangenhuis
+were amazed to see a huge, red-bearded man, naked save for a loin-cloth,
+and waving a great bare sword, who carried upon his back another man,
+rush straight at them with a roar. They never waited his onset; they
+were terrified and thought that he was a devil. This way and that they
+sprang, and the man with his burden passed between them over the little
+drawbridge down the street of the city, heading for the Morsch poort.
+
+Finding their wits again the guards started in pursuit, but a voice from
+among the passers-by cried out:
+
+"It is Martin, Red Martin, and Foy van Goorl, who escape from the
+Gevangenhuis," and instantly a stone flew towards the soldiers.
+
+Then, bearing in mind the fate of their comrades on the yesterday, those
+men scuttled back to the friendly shelter of the prison gate. When at
+length Ramiro, growing weary of waiting, came out from an inner chamber
+beyond the court-room, where he had been writing, to find the Professor
+and the porter dead in the passage, and the yelling guard locked in his
+own torture-chamber, why, then those sentries declared that they had
+seen nothing at all of prisoners clothed or naked.
+
+For a while he believed them, and mighty was the hunt from the
+clock-tower of the Gevangenhuis down to the lowest stone of its cellars,
+yes, and even in the waters of the moat. But when the Governor found out
+the truth it went very ill with those soldiers, and still worse with the
+guard from whom Martin had escaped in the torture-room like an eel out
+of the hand of a fish-wife. For by this time Ramiro's temper was roused,
+and he began to think that he had done ill to return to Leyden.
+
+But he had still a card to play. In a certain room in the Gevangenhuis
+sat another victim. Compared to the dreadful dens where Foy and Martin
+had been confined this was quite a pleasant chamber upon the first
+floor, being reserved, indeed, for political prisoners of rank, or
+officers captured upon the field who were held to ransom. Thus it had
+a real window, secured, however, by a double set of iron bars, which
+overlooked the little inner courtyard and the gaol kitchen. Also it was
+furnished after a fashion, and was more or less clean. This prisoner
+was none other than Dirk van Goorl, who had been neatly captured as he
+returned towards his house after making certain arrangements for the
+flight of his family, and hurried away to the gaol. On that morning Dirk
+also had been put upon his trial before the squeaky-voiced and agitated
+ex-tailor. He also had been condemned to death, the method of his
+end, as in the case of Foy and Martin, being left in the hands of the
+Governor. Then they led him back to his room, and shot the bolts upon
+him there.
+
+Some hours later a man entered his cell, to the door of which he was
+escorted by soldiers, bringing him food and drink. He was one of the
+cooks and, as it chanced, a talkative fellow.
+
+"What passes in this prison, friend?" asked Dirk looking up, "that I see
+people running to and fro across the courtyard, and hear trampling and
+shouts in the passages? Is the Prince of Orange coming, perchance, to
+set all of us poor prisoners free?" and he smiled sadly.
+
+"Umph!" grunted the man, "we have prisoners here who set themselves
+free without waiting for any Prince of Orange. Magicians they must
+be--magicians and nothing less."
+
+Dirk's interest was excited. Putting his hand into his pocket he drew
+out a gold piece, which he gave to the man.
+
+"Friend," he said, "you cook my food, do you not, and look after me?
+Well, I have a few of these about me, and if you prove kind they may as
+well find their way into your pocket as into those of your betters. Do
+you understand?"
+
+The man nodded, took the money, and thanked him.
+
+"Now," went on Dirk, "while you clean the room, tell me about this
+escape, for small things amuse those who hear no tidings."
+
+"Well, Mynheer," answered the man, "this is the tale of it so far as I
+can gather. Yesterday they captured two fellows, heretics I suppose, who
+made a good fight and did them much damage in a warehouse. I don't know
+their names, for I am a stranger to this town, but I saw them brought
+in; a young fellow, who seemed to be wounded in the leg and neck, and
+a great red-bearded giant of a man. They were put upon their trial this
+morning, and afterwards sent across, the two of them together, with
+eight men to guard them, to call upon the Professor--you understand?"
+
+Dirk nodded, for this Professor was well known in Leyden. "And then?" he
+asked.
+
+"And then? Why, Mother in Heaven! they came out, that's all--the big
+man stripped and carrying the other on his back. Yes, they killed the
+Professor with the branding iron, and out they came--like ripe peas from
+a pod."
+
+"Impossible!" said Dirk.
+
+"Very well, perhaps you know better than I do; perhaps it is impossible
+also that they should have pushed the door to, let all those Spanish
+cocks inside do what they might, and bolted them in; perhaps it is
+impossible that they should have spitted the porter and got clean away
+through the outside guards, the big one still carrying the other upon
+his back. Perhaps all these things are impossible, but they're true
+nevertheless, and if you don't believe me, after they get away from the
+whipping-post, just ask the bridge guard why they ran so fast when they
+saw that great, naked, blue-eyed fellow come at them roaring like a
+lion, with his big sword flashing above his head. Oh! there's a pretty
+to-do, I can tell you, a pretty to-do, and in meal or malt we shall
+all pay the price of it, from the Governor down. Indeed, some backs are
+paying it now."
+
+"But, friend, were they not taken outside the gaol?"
+
+"Taken? Who was to take them when the rascally mob made them an escort
+five hundred strong as they went down the street? No, they are far away
+from Leyden now, you may swear to that. I must be going, but if there
+is anything you'd like while you're here just tell me, and as you are so
+liberal I'll try and see that you get what you want."
+
+As the bolts were shot home behind the man Dirk clasped his hands and
+almost laughed aloud with joy. So Martin was free and Foy was free,
+and until they could be taken again the secret of the treasure remained
+safe. Montalvo would never have it, of that he was sure. And as for his
+own fate? Well, he cared little about it, especially as the Inquisitor
+had decreed that, being a man of so much importance, he was not to be
+put to the "question." This order, however, was prompted, not by mercy,
+but by discretion, since the fellow knew that, like other of the Holland
+towns, Leyden was on the verge of open revolt, and feared lest, should
+it leak out that one of the wealthiest and most respected of its
+burghers was actually being tormented for his faith's sake, the populace
+might step over the boundary line.
+
+
+
+When Adrian had seen the wounded Spanish soldiers and their bearers
+torn to pieces by the rabble, and had heard the great door of the
+Gevangenhuis close upon Foy and Martin, he turned to go home with his
+evil news. But for a long while the mob would not go home, and had it
+not been that the drawbridge over the moat in front of the prison was
+up, and that they had no means of crossing it, probably they would have
+attacked the building then and there. Presently, however, rain began to
+fall and they melted away, wondering, not too happily, whether, in
+that time of daily slaughter, the Duke of Alva would think a few common
+soldiers worth while making a stir about.
+
+Adrian entered the upper room to tell his tidings, since they must
+be told, and found it occupied by his mother alone. She was sitting
+straight upright in her chair, her hands resting upon her knees, staring
+out of the window with a face like marble.
+
+"I cannot find him," he began, "but Foy and Martin are taken after a
+great fight in which Foy was wounded. They are in the Gevangenhuis."
+
+"I know all," interrupted Lysbeth in a cold, heavy voice. "My husband is
+taken also. Someone must have betrayed them. May God reward him! Leave
+me, Adrian."
+
+Then Adrian turned and crept away to his own chamber, his heart so full
+of remorse and shame that at times he thought that it must burst. Weak
+as he was, wicked as he was, he had never intended this, but now, oh
+Heaven! his brother Foy and the man who had been his benefactor, whom
+his mother loved more than her life, were through him given over to a
+death worse than the mind could conceive. Somehow that night wore away,
+and of this we may be sure, that it did not go half as heavily with
+the victims in their dungeon as with the betrayer in his free comfort.
+Thrice during its dark hours, indeed, Adrian was on the point of
+destroying himself; once even he set the hilt of his sword upon the
+floor and its edge against his breast, and then at the prick of steel
+shrank back.
+
+Better would it have been for him, perhaps, could he have kept his
+courage; at least he would have been spared much added shame and misery.
+
+
+
+So soon as Adrian had left her Lysbeth rose, robed herself, and took her
+way to the house of her cousin, van de Werff, now a successful citizen
+of middle age and the burgomaster-elect of Leyden.
+
+"You have heard the news?" she said.
+
+"Alas! cousin, I have," he answered, "and it is very terrible. Is it
+true that this treasure of Hendrik Brant's is at the bottom of it all?"
+
+She nodded, and answered, "I believe so."
+
+"Then could they not bargain for their lives by surrendering its
+secret?"
+
+"Perhaps. That is, Foy and Martin might--Dirk does not know its
+whereabouts--he refused to know, but they have sworn that they will die
+first."
+
+"Why, cousin?"
+
+"Because they promised as much to Hendrik Brant, who believed that
+if his gold could be kept from the Spaniards it would do some mighty
+service to his country in time to come, and who has persuaded them all
+that is so."
+
+"Then God grant it may be true," said van de Werff with a sigh, "for
+otherwise it is sad to think that more lives should be sacrificed for
+the sake of a heap of pelf."
+
+"I know it, cousin, but I come to you to save those lives."
+
+"How?"
+
+"How?" she answered fiercely. "Why, by raising the town; by attacking
+the Gevangenhuis and rescuing them, by driving the Spaniards out of
+Leyden----"
+
+"And thereby bringing upon ourselves the fate of Mons. Would you see
+this place also given over to sack by the soldiers of Noircarmes and Don
+Frederic?"
+
+"I care not what I see so long as I save my son and my husband," she
+answered desperately.
+
+"There speaks the woman, not the patriot. It is better that three men
+should die than a whole city full."
+
+"That is a strange argument to find in your mouth, cousin, the argument
+of Caiaphas the Jew."
+
+"Nay, Lysbeth, be not wroth with me, for what can I say? The Spanish
+troops in Leyden are not many, it is true, but more have been sent for
+from Haarlem and elsewhere after the troubles of yesterday arising
+out of the capture of Foy and Martin, and in forty-eight hours at the
+longest they will be here. This town is not provisioned for a siege,
+its citizens are not trained to arms, and we have little powder stored.
+Moreover, the city council is divided. For the killing of the Spanish
+soldiers we may compound, but if we attack the Gevangenhuis, that is
+open rebellion, and we shall bring the army of Don Frederic down upon
+us."
+
+"What matter, cousin? It will come sooner or later."
+
+"Then let it come later, when we are more prepared to beat it off. Oh!
+do not reproach me, for I can bear it ill, I who am working day and
+night to make ready for the hour of trial. I love your husband and your
+son, my heart bleeds for your sorrow and their doom, but at present
+I can do nothing, nothing. You must bear your burden, they must bear
+theirs, I must bear mine; we must all wander through the night not
+knowing where we wander till God causes the dawn to break, the dawn of
+freedom and retribution."
+
+Lysbeth made no answer, only she rose and stumbled from the house, while
+van de Werff sat down groaning bitterly and praying for help and light.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A MEETING AND A PARTING
+
+Lysbeth did not sleep that night, for even if her misery would have let
+her sleep, she could not because of the physical fire that burnt in her
+veins, and the strange pangs of agony which pierced her head. At first
+she thought little of them, but when at last the cold light of the
+autumn morning dawned she went to a mirror and examined herself, and
+there upon her neck she found a hard red swelling of the size of a nut.
+Then Lysbeth knew that she had caught the plague from the Vrouw Jansen,
+and laughed aloud, a dreary little laugh, since if all she loved were
+to die, it seemed to her good that she should die also. Elsa was abed
+prostrated with grief, and, shutting herself in her room, Lysbeth
+suffered none to come near her except one woman who she knew had
+recovered from the plague in past years, but even to her she said
+nothing of her sickness.
+
+About eleven o'clock in the morning this woman rushed into her chamber
+crying, "They have escaped! They have escaped!"
+
+"Who?" gasped Lysbeth, springing from her chair.
+
+"Your son Foy and Red Martin," and she told the tale of how the naked
+man with the naked sword, carrying the wounded Foy upon his back, burst
+his way roaring from the Gevangenhuis, and, protected by the people,
+had run through the town and out of the Morsch poort, heading for the
+Haarlemer Meer.
+
+As she listened Lysbeth's eyes flamed up with a fire of pride.
+
+"Oh! good and faithful servant," she murmured, "you have saved my son,
+but alas! your master you could not save."
+
+Another hour passed, and the woman appeared again bearing a letter.
+
+"Who brought this?" she asked.
+
+"A Spanish soldier, mistress."
+
+Then she cut the silk and read it. It was unsigned, and ran:--
+
+
+"One in authority sends greetings to the Vrouw van Goorl. If the Vrouw
+van Goorl would save the life of the man who is dearest to her, she is
+prayed to veil herself and follow the bearer of this letter. For her own
+safety she need have no fear; it is assured hereby."
+
+
+Lysbeth thought awhile. This might be a trick; very probably it was
+a trick to take her. Well, if so, what did it matter since she would
+rather die with her husband than live on without him; moreover, why
+should she turn aside from death, she in whose veins the plague was
+burning? But there was another thing worse than that. She could guess
+who had penned this letter; it even seemed to her, after all these many
+years, that she recognised the writing, disguised though it was. Could
+she face him! Well, why not--for Dirk's sake?
+
+And if she refused and Dirk was done to death, would she not reproach
+herself, if she lived to remember it, because she had left a stone
+unturned?
+
+"Give me my cloak and veil," she said to the woman, "and now go tell the
+man that I am coming."
+
+At the door she found the soldier, who saluted her, and said
+respectfully, "Follow me, lady, but at a little distance."
+
+So they started, and through side streets Lysbeth was led to a back
+entrance of the Gevangenhuis, which opened and closed behind her
+mysteriously, leaving her wondering whether she would ever pass that
+gate again. Within a man was waiting--she did not even notice what kind
+of man--who also said, "Follow me, lady," and led her through gloomy
+passages and various doors into a little empty chamber furnished with a
+table and two chairs. Presently the door opened and shut; then her whole
+being shrank and sickened as though beneath the breath of poison, for
+there before her, still the same, still handsome, although so marred by
+time and scars and evil, stood the man who had been her husband, Juan
+de Montalvo. But whatever she felt Lysbeth showed nothing of it in her
+face, which remained white and stern; moreover, even before she looked
+at him she was aware that he feared her more than she feared him.
+
+It was true, for from this woman's eyes went out a sword of terror that
+seemed to pierce Montalvo's heart. Back flew his mind to the scene of
+their betrothal, and the awful words that she had spoken then re-echoed
+in his ears. How strangely things had come round, for on that day, as
+on this, the stake at issue was the life of Dirk van Goorl. In the old
+times she had bought it, paying as its price herself, her fortune, and,
+worst of all, to a woman, her lover's scorn and wonder. What would she
+be prepared to pay now? Well, fortunately, he need ask but little of
+her. And yet his soul mistrusted him of these bargainings with Lysbeth
+van Hout for the life of Dirk van Goorl. The first had ended ill with a
+sentence of fourteen years in the galleys, most of which he had served.
+How would the second end?
+
+By way of answer there seemed to rise before the eye of Montalvo's mind
+a measureless black gulf, and, falling, falling, falling through its
+infinite depths one miserable figure, a mere tiny point that served to
+show the vastness it explored. The point turned over, and he saw its
+face as in a crystal--it was his own.
+
+This unpleasant nightmare of the imagination came in an instant, and in
+an instant passed. The next Montalvo, courteous and composed, was bowing
+before his visitor and praying her to be seated.
+
+"It is most good of you, Vrouw van Goorl," he began, "to have responded
+so promptly to my invitation."
+
+"Perhaps, Count de Montalvo," she replied, "you will do me the favour to
+set out your business in as few words as possible."
+
+"Most certainly; that is my desire. Let me free your mind of
+apprehension. The past has mingled memories for both of us, some of them
+bitter, some, let me hope, sweet," and he laid his hand upon his heart
+and sighed. "But it is a dead past, so, dear lady, let us agree to bury
+it in a fitting silence."
+
+Lysbeth made no answer, only her mouth grew a trifle more stern.
+
+"Now, one word more, and I will come to the point. Let me congratulate
+you upon the gallant deeds of a gallant son. Of course his courage and
+dexterity, with that of the red giant, Martin, have told against myself,
+have, in short, lost me a trick in the game. But I am an old soldier,
+and I can assure you that the details of their fight yesterday at
+the factory, and of their marvellous escape from--from--well, painful
+surroundings this morning, have stirred my blood and made my heart beat
+fast."
+
+"I have heard the tale; do not trouble to repeat it," said Lysbeth. "It
+is only what I expected of them, but I thank God that it has pleased Him
+to let them live on so that in due course they may fearfully avenge a
+beloved father and master."
+
+Montalvo coughed and turned his head with the idea of avoiding that
+ghastly nightmare of a pitiful little man falling down a fathomless gulf
+which had sprung up suddenly in his mind again.
+
+"Well," he went on, "a truce to compliments. They escaped, and I am
+glad of it, whatever murders they may contemplate in the future. Yes,
+notwithstanding their great crimes and manslayings in the past I am
+glad that they escaped, although it was my duty to keep them while I
+could--and if I should catch them it will be my duty--but I needn't talk
+of that to you. Of course, however, you know, there is one gentleman who
+was not quite so fortunate."
+
+"My husband?"
+
+"Yes, your worthy husband, who, happily for my reputation as captain of
+one of His Majesty's prisons, occupies an upstairs room."
+
+"What of him?" asked Lysbeth.
+
+"Dear lady, don't be over anxious; there is nothing so wearing as
+anxiety. I was coming to the matter." Then, with a sudden change of
+manner, he added, "It is needful, Lysbeth, that I should set out the
+situation."
+
+"What situation do you mean?"
+
+"Well, principally that of the treasure."
+
+"What treasure?"
+
+"Oh! woman, do not waste time in trying to fool me. The treasure, the
+vast, the incalculable treasure of Hendrik Brant which Foy van Goorl
+and Martin, who have escaped"--and he ground his teeth together at the
+anguish of the thought--"disposed of somewhere in the Haarlemer Meer."
+
+"Well, what about this treasure?"
+
+"I want it, that is all."
+
+"Then you had best go to seek it."
+
+"That is my intention, and I shall begin the search--in the heart of
+Dirk van Goorl," he added, slowly crushing the handkerchief he held with
+his long fingers as though it were a living thing that could be choked
+to death.
+
+Lysbeth never stirred, she had expected this.
+
+"You will find it a poor mine to dig in," she said, "for he knows
+nothing of the whereabouts of this money. Nobody knows anything of it
+now. Martin hid it, as I understand, and lost the paper, so it will lie
+there till the Haarlemer Meer is drained."
+
+"Dear me! Do you know I have heard that story before; yes, from the
+excellent Martin himself--and, do you know, I don't quite believe it."
+
+"I cannot help what you believe or do not believe. You may remember that
+it was always my habit to speak the truth."
+
+"Quite so, but others may be less conscientious. See here," and drawing
+a paper from his doublet, he held it before her. It was nothing less
+than the death-warrant of Dirk van Goorl, signed by the Inquisitor, duly
+authorised thereto.
+
+Mechanically she read it and understood.
+
+"You will observe," he went on, "that the method of the criminal's
+execution is left to the good wisdom of our well-beloved--etc., in plain
+language, to me. Now might I trouble you so far as to look out of this
+little window? What do you see in front of you? A kitchen? Quite so;
+always a homely and pleasant sight in the eyes of an excellent housewife
+like yourself. And--do you mind bending forward a little? What do you
+see up there? A small barred window? Well, let us suppose, for the sake
+of argument, that a hungry man, a man who grows hungrier and hungrier,
+sat behind that window watching the cooks at their work and seeing the
+meat carried into this kitchen, to come out an hour or two later as hot,
+steaming, savoury joints, while he wasted, wasted, wasted and starved,
+starved, starved. Don't you think, my dear lady, that this would be a
+very unpleasant experience for that man?"
+
+"Are you a devil?" gasped Lysbeth, springing back.
+
+"I have never regarded myself as such, but if you seek a definition,
+I should say that I am a hard-working, necessitous, and somewhat
+unfortunate gentleman who has been driven to rough methods in order to
+secure a comfortable old age. I can assure you that _I_ do not wish to
+starve anybody; I wish only to find Hendrik Brant's treasure, and if
+your worthy husband won't tell me where it is, why I must make him, that
+is all. In six or eight days under my treatment I am convinced that
+he will become quite fluent on the subject, for there is nothing that
+should cause a fat burgher, accustomed to good living, to open his heart
+more than a total lack of the victuals which he can see and smell. Did
+you ever hear the story of an ancient gentleman called Tantalus? These
+old fables have a wonderful way of adapting themselves to the needs and
+circumstances of us moderns, haven't they?"
+
+Then Lysbeth's pride broke down, and, in the abandonment of her despair,
+flinging herself upon her knees before this monster, she begged for her
+husband's life, begged, in the name of God, yes, and even in the name
+of Montalvo's son, Adrian. So low had her misery brought her that she
+pleaded with the man by the son of shame whom she had borne to him.
+
+He prayed her to rise. "I want to save your husband's life," he said. "I
+give you my word that if only he will tell me what I desire to know, I
+will save it; yes, although the risk is great, I will even manage his
+escape, and I shall ask you to go upstairs presently and explain my
+amiable intentions to him." Then he thought a moment and added, "But
+you mentioned one Adrian. Pray do you mean the gentleman whose signature
+appears here?" and he handed her another document, saying, "Read it
+quietly, there is no hurry. The good Dirk is not starving yet; I am
+informed, indeed, that he has just made an excellent breakfast--not his
+last by many thousands, let us hope."
+
+Lysbeth took the sheets and glanced at them. Then her intelligence
+awoke, and she read on fiercely until her eye came to the well-known
+signature at the foot of the last page. She cast the roll down with a
+cry as though a serpent had sprung from its pages and bitten her.
+
+"I fear that you are pained," said Montalvo sympathetically, "and no
+wonder, for myself I have gone through such disillusionments, and know
+how they wound a generous nature. That's why I showed you this document,
+because I also am generous and wish to warn you against this young
+gentleman, who, I understand, you allege is my son. You see the person
+who would betray his brother might even go a step further and betray his
+mother, so, if you take my advice, you will keep an eye upon the young
+man. Also I am bound to remind you that it is more or less your
+own fault. It is a most unlucky thing to curse a child before it is
+born--you remember the incident? That curse has come home to roost with
+a vengeance. What a warning against giving way to the passion of the
+moment!"
+
+Lysbeth heeded him no longer; she was thinking as she had never thought
+before. At that moment, as though by an inspiration, there floated into
+her mind the words of the dead Vrouw Jansen: "The plague, I wish that I
+had caught it before, for then I would have taken it to him in prison,
+and they couldn't have treated him as they did." Dirk was in prison, and
+Dirk was to be starved to death, for, whatever Montalvo might think, he
+did not know the secret, and, therefore, could not tell it. And she--she
+had the plague on her; she knew its symptoms well, and its poison was
+burning in her every vein, although she still could think and speak and
+walk.
+
+Well, why not? It would be no crime. Indeed, if it was a crime, she
+cared little; it would be better that he should die of the plague in
+five days, or perhaps in two, if it worked quickly, as it often did with
+the full-blooded, than that he should linger on starving for twelve or
+more, and perhaps be tormented besides.
+
+Swiftly, very swiftly, Lysbeth came to her dreadful decision. Then she
+spoke in a hoarse voice.
+
+"What do you wish me to do?"
+
+"I wish you to reason with your husband, and to persuade him to
+cease from his obstinacy, and to surrender to me the secret of the
+hiding-place of Brant's hoard. In that event, so soon as I have proved
+the truth of what he tells me, I undertake that he shall be set at
+liberty unharmed, and that, meanwhile, he shall be well treated."
+
+"And if I will not, or he will not, or cannot?"
+
+"Then I have told you the alternative, and to show you that I am not
+joking, I will now write and sign the order. Then, if you decline this
+mission, or if it is fruitless, I will hand it to the officer before
+your eyes--and within the next ten days or so let you know the results,
+or witness them if you wish."
+
+"I will go," she said, "but I must see him alone."
+
+"It is unusual," he answered, "but provided you satisfy me that you
+carry no weapon, I do not know that I need object."
+
+So, when Montalvo had written his order and scattered dust on it from
+the pounce-box, for he was a man of neat and methodical habits, he
+himself with every possible courtesy conducted Lysbeth to her husband's
+prison. Having ushered her into it, with a cheerful "Friend van Goorl, I
+bring you a visitor," he locked the door upon them, and patiently waited
+outside.
+
+It matters not what passed within. Whether Lysbeth told her husband
+of her dread yet sacred purpose, or did not tell him; whether he ever
+learned of the perfidy of Adrian, or did not learn it; what were their
+parting words--their parting prayers, all these things matter not;
+indeed, the last are too holy to be written. Let us bow our heads and
+pass them by in silence, and let the reader imagine them as he will.
+
+
+
+Growing impatient at length, Montalvo unlocked the prison door and
+opened it, to discover Lysbeth and her husband kneeling side by side in
+the centre of the room like the figures on some ancient marble monument.
+They heard him and rose. Then Dirk folded his wife in his arms in a
+long, last embrace, and, loosing her, held one hand above her head in
+blessing, as with the other he pointed to the door.
+
+So infinitely pathetic was this dumb show of farewell, for no word
+passed between them while he was present, that not only his barbed
+gibes, but the questions that he meant to ask, died upon the lips of
+Montalvo. Try as he might he could not speak them here.
+
+"Come," he said, and Lysbeth passed out.
+
+At the door she turned to look, and there, in the centre of the room,
+still stood her husband, tears streaming from his eyes, down a face
+radiant with an unearthly smile, and his right hand lifted towards the
+heavens. And so she left him.
+
+
+
+Presently Montalvo and Lysbeth were together again in the little room.
+
+"I fear," he said, "from what I saw just now, that your mission has
+failed."
+
+"It has failed," she answered in such a voice as might be dragged by an
+evil magic from the lips of a corpse. "He does not know the secret you
+seek, and, therefore, he cannot tell it."
+
+"I am sorry that I cannot believe you," said Montalvo, "so"--and he
+stretched out his hand towards a bell upon the table.
+
+"Stop," she said; "for your own sake stop. Man, will you really commit
+this awful, this useless crime? Think of the reckoning that must be paid
+here and hereafter; think of me, the woman you dishonoured, standing
+before the Judgment Seat of God, and bearing witness against your naked,
+shivering soul. Think of him, the good and harmless man whom you are
+about cruelly to butcher, crying in the ear of Christ, 'Look upon Juan
+de Montalvo, my pitiless murderer----'"
+
+"Silence," shouted Montalvo, yet shrinking back against the wall as
+though to avoid a sword-thrust. "Silence, you ill-omened witch, with
+your talk of God and judgment. It is too late, I tell you, it is too
+late; my hands are too red with blood, my heart is too black with sin,
+upon the tablets of my mind is written too long a record. What more can
+this one crime matter, and--do you understand?--I must have money, money
+to buy my pleasures, money to make my last years happy, and my deathbed
+soft. I have suffered enough, I have toiled enough, and I will win
+wealth and peace who am now once more a beggar. Yes, had you twenty
+husbands, I would crush the life out of all of them inch by inch to win
+the gold that I desire."
+
+As he spoke and the passions in him broke through their crust of cunning
+and reserve, his face changed. Now Lysbeth, watching for some sign of
+pity, knew that hope was dead, for his countenance was as it had been
+on that day six-and-twenty years ago, when she sat at his side while
+the great race was run. There was the same starting eyeball, the same
+shining fangs appeared between the curled lips, and above them the
+moustachios, now grown grey, touched the high cheekbones. It was as in
+the fable of the weremen, who, at a magic sign or word, put off their
+human aspect and become beasts. So it had chanced to the spirit of
+Montalvo, shining through his flesh like some baleful marsh-light
+through the mist. It was a thing which God had forgotten, a thing that
+had burst the kindly mould of its humanity, and wrapt itself in the robe
+and mask of such a wolf as might raven about the cliffs of hell. Only
+there was fear on the face of the wolf, that inhuman face which, this
+side of the grave, she was yet destined to see once more.
+
+The fit passed, and Montalvo sank down gasping, while even in her woe
+and agony Lysbeth shuddered at this naked vision of a Satan-haunted
+soul.
+
+"I have one more thing to ask," she said. "Since my husband must die,
+suffer that I die with him. Will you refuse this also, and cause the cup
+of your crimes to flow over, and the last angel of God's mercy to flee
+away?"
+
+"Yes," he answered. "You, woman with the evil eye, do you suppose that
+I wish you here to bring all the ills you prate of upon my head? I say
+that I am afraid of you. Why, for your sake, once, years ago, I made a
+vow to the Blessed Virgin that, whatever I worked on men, I would never
+again lift a hand against a woman. To that oath I look to help me at the
+last, for I have kept it sacredly, and am keeping it now, else by this
+time both you and the girl, Elsa, might have been stretched upon the
+rack. No, Lysbeth, get you gone, and take your curses with you," and he
+snatched and rang the bell.
+
+A soldier entered the room, saluted, and asked his commands.
+
+"Take this order," he said, "to the officer in charge of the heretic,
+Dirk van Goorl; it details the method of his execution. Let it be
+strictly adhered to, and report made to me each morning of the condition
+of the prisoner. Stay, show this lady from the prison."
+
+The man saluted again and went out of the door. After him followed
+Lysbeth. She spoke no more, but as she passed she looked at Montalvo,
+and he knew well that though she might be gone, yet her curse remained
+behind.
+
+The plague was on her, the plague was on her, her head and bones were
+racked with pain, and the swords of sorrow pierced her poor heart. But
+Lysbeth's mind was still clear, and her limbs still supported her. She
+reached her home and walked upstairs to the sitting room, commanding the
+servant to find the Heer Adrian and bid him join her there.
+
+In the room was Elsa, who ran to her crying,
+
+"Is it true? Is it true?"
+
+"It is true, daughter, that Foy and Martin have escaped----"
+
+"Oh! God is good!" wept the girl.
+
+"And that my husband is a prisoner and condemned to death."
+
+"Ah!" gasped Elsa, "I am selfish."
+
+"It is natural that a woman should think first of the man she loves. No,
+do not come near me; I fear that I am stricken with the pest."
+
+"I am not afraid of that," answered Elsa. "Did I never tell you? As a
+child I had it in The Hague."
+
+"That, at least, is good news among much that is very ill; but be
+silent, here comes Adrian, to whom I wish to speak. Nay, you need not
+leave us; it is best that you should learn the truth."
+
+Presently Adrian entered, and Elsa, watching everything, noticed that he
+looked sadly changed and ill.
+
+"You sent for me, mother," he began, with some attempt at his old
+pompous air. Then he caught sight of her face and was silent.
+
+"I have been to the Gevangenhuis, Adrian," she said, "and I have news to
+tell you. As you may have heard, your brother Foy and our servant Martin
+have escaped, I know not whither. They escaped out of the very jaws of
+worse than death, out of the torture-chamber, indeed, by killing that
+wretch who was known as the Professor, and the warden of the gate,
+Martin carrying Foy, who is wounded, upon his back."
+
+"I am indeed rejoiced," cried Adrian excitedly.
+
+"Hypocrite, be silent," hissed his mother, and he knew that the worst
+had overtaken him.
+
+"My husband, your stepfather, has not escaped; he is in the prison
+still, for there I have just bidden him farewell, and the sentence
+upon him is that he shall be starved to death in a cell overlooking the
+kitchen."
+
+"Oh! oh!" cried Elsa, and Adrian groaned.
+
+"It was my good, or my evil, fortune," went on Lysbeth, in a voice of
+ice, "to see the written evidence upon which my husband, your brother
+Foy, and Martin were condemned to death, on the grounds of heresy,
+rebellion, and the killing of the king's servants. At the foot of it,
+duly witnessed, stands the signature of--Adrian van Goorl."
+
+Elsa's jaw fell. She stared at the traitor like one paralysed, while
+Adrian, seizing the back of a chair, rested upon it, and rocked his body
+to and fro.
+
+"Have you anything to say?" asked Lysbeth.
+
+There was still one chance for the wretched man--had he been more
+dishonest than he was. He might have denied all knowledge of the
+signature. But to do this never occurred to him. Instead, he plunged
+into a wandering, scarcely intelligible, explanation, for even in his
+dreadful plight his vanity would not permit him to tell all the truth
+before Elsa. Moreover, in that fearful silence, soon he became utterly
+bewildered, till at length he hardly knew what he was saying, and in the
+end came to a full stop.
+
+"I understand you to admit that you signed this paper in the house of
+Hague Simon, and in the presence of a man called Ramiro, who is Governor
+of the prison, and who showed it to me," said Lysbeth, lifting her head
+which had sunk upon her breast.
+
+"Yes, mother, I signed something, but----"
+
+"I wish to hear no more," interrupted Lysbeth. "Whether your motive was
+jealousy, or greed, or wickedness of heart, or fear, you signed that
+which, had you been a man, you would not have yourself to be torn to
+pieces with redhot pincers you put a pen to it. Moreover, you gave your
+evidence fully and freely, for I have read it, and supported it with the
+severed finger of the woman Meg which you stole from Foy's room. You
+are the murderer of your benefactor and of your mother's heart, and
+the would-be murderer of your brother and of Martin Roos. When you were
+born, the mad wife, Martha, who nursed me, counselled that you should
+be put to death, lest you should live to bring evil upon me and mine. I
+refused, and you have brought the evil upon us all, but most, I think,
+upon your own soul. I do not curse you, I call down no ill upon you;
+Adrian, I give you over into the hands of God to deal with as He sees
+fit. Here is money"--and, going to her desk, she took from it a heavy
+purse of gold which had been prepared for their flight, and thrust it
+into the pocket of his doublet, wiping her fingers upon her kerchief
+after she had touched him. "Go hence and never let me see your face
+again. You were born of my body, you are my flesh and blood, but for
+this world and the next I renounce you, Adrian. Bastard, I know you not.
+Murderer, get you gone."
+
+Adrian fell upon the ground; he grovelled before his mother trying to
+kiss the hem of her dress, while Elsa sobbed aloud hysterically. But
+Lysbeth spurned him in the face with her foot, saying,
+
+"Get you gone before I call up such servants as are left to me to thrust
+you to the street."
+
+Then Adrian rose and with great gasps of agony, like some sore-wounded
+thing, crept from that awful and majestic presence of outraged
+motherhood, crept down the stairs and away into the city.
+
+When he had gone Lysbeth took pen and paper and wrote in large letters
+these words:--
+
+
+"Notice to all the good citizens of Leyden. Adrian, called van Goorl,
+upon whose written evidence his stepfather, Dirk van Goorl, his
+half-brother, Foy van Goorl, and the serving-man, Martin Roos, have been
+condemned to death in the Gevangenhuis by torment, starvation, water,
+fire, and sword, is known here no longer. Lysbeth van Goorl."
+
+
+Then she called a servant and gave orders that this paper should be
+nailed upon the front door of the house where every passer-by might read
+it.
+
+"It is done," she said. "Cease weeping, Elsa, and lead me to my bed,
+whence I pray God that I may never rise again."
+
+
+
+Two days went by, and a fugitive rode into the city, a worn and wounded
+man of Leyden, with horror stamped upon his face.
+
+"What news?" cried the people in the market-place, recognising him.
+
+"Mechlin! Mechlin!" he gasped. "I come from Mechlin."
+
+"What of Mechlin and its citizens?" asked Pieter van de Werff, stepping
+forward.
+
+"Don Frederic has taken it; the Spaniards have butchered them; everyone,
+old and young, men, women, and children, they are all butchered.
+I escaped, but for two leagues and more I heard the sound of the
+death-wail of Mechlin. Give me wine."
+
+They gave him wine, and by slow degrees, in broken sentences, he told
+the tale of one of the most awful crimes ever committed in the name
+of Christ by cruel man against God and his own fellows. It was written
+large in history: we need not repeat it here.
+
+Then, when they knew the truth, up from that multitude of the men
+of Leyden went a roar of wrath, and a cry to vengeance for their
+slaughtered kin. They took arms, each what he had, the burgher his
+sword, the fisherman his fish-spear, the boor his ox-goad or his pick;
+leaders sprang up to command them, and there arose a shout of "To the
+gates! To the Gevangenhuis! Free the prisoners!"
+
+They surged round the hateful place, thousands of them. The drawbridge
+was up, but they bridged the moat. Some shots were fired at them, then
+the defence ceased. They battered in the massive doors, and, when these
+fell, rushed to the dens and loosed those who remained alive within
+them.
+
+But they found no Spaniards, for by now Ramiro and his garrison had
+vanished away, whither they knew not. A voice cried, "Dirk van Goorl,
+seek for Dirk van Goorl," and they came to the chamber overlooking the
+courtyard, shouting, "Van Goorl, we are here!"
+
+They broke in the door, and there they found him, lying upon his pallet,
+his hands clasped, his face upturned, smitten suddenly dead, not by man,
+but by the poison of the plague.
+
+Unfed and untended, the end had overtaken him very swiftly.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE THIRD
+
+THE HARVESTING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+FATHER AND SON
+
+When Adrian left his mother's house in the Bree Straat he wandered away
+at hazard, for so utterly miserable was he that he could form no plans
+as to what he was to do or whither he should go. Presently he found
+himself at the foot of that great mound which in Leyden is still known
+as the Burg, a strange place with a circular wall upon the top of it,
+said to have been constructed by the Romans. Up this mound he climbed,
+and throwing himself upon the grass under an oak which grew in one of
+the little recesses of those ancient walls, he buried his face in his
+hands and tried to think.
+
+Think! How could he think? Whenever he shut his eyes there arose before
+them a vision of his mother's face, a face so fearful in its awesome and
+unnatural calm that vaguely he wondered how he, the outcast son, upon
+whom it had been turned like the stare of the Medusa's head, withering
+his very soul, could have seen it and still live. Why did he live? Why
+was he not dead, he who had a sword at his side? Was it because of
+his innocence? He was not guilty of this dreadful crime. He had
+never intended to hand over Dirk van Goorl and Foy and Martin to the
+Inquisition. He had only talked about them to a man whom he believed
+to be a professor of judicial astrology, and who said that he could
+compound draughts which would bend the wills of women. Could he help
+it if this fellow was really an officer of the Blood Council? Of course
+not. But, oh! why had he talked so much? Oh! why had he signed that
+paper, why did he not let them kill him first? He had signed, and
+explain as he would, he could never look an honest man in the face
+again, and less still a woman, if she knew the truth. So he was not
+still alive because he was innocent, since for all the good that
+this very doubtful innocence of his was likely to be even to his own
+conscience, he might almost as well have been guilty. Nor was he alive
+because he feared to die. He did fear to die horribly, but to the young
+and impressionable, at any rate, there are situations in which death
+seems the lesser of two evils. That situation had been well-nigh reached
+by him last night when he set the hilt of his sword against the floor
+and shrank back at the prick of its point. To-day it was overpast.
+
+No, he lived on because before he died he had a hate to satisfy, a
+revenge to work. He would kill this dog, Ramiro, who had tricked him
+with his crystal gazing and his talk of friendship, who had frightened
+him with the threat of death until he became like some poor girl and for
+fear signed away his honour--oh, Heaven! for very fear, he who prided
+himself upon his noble Spanish blood, the blood of warriors--this
+treacherous dog, who, having used him, had not hesitated to betray his
+shame to her from whom most of all it should have been hidden, and,
+for aught he knew, to the others also. Yes if ever he met him--his
+own brother--Foy would spit upon him in the street; Foy, who was
+so hatefully open and honest, who could not understand into what
+degradation a man's nerves may drag him. And Martin, who had always
+mistrusted and despised him, why, if he found the chance, he would tear
+him limb from limb as a kite tears a partridge. And, worse still, Dirk
+van Goorl, the man who had befriended him, who had bred him up although
+he was no son of his, but the child of some rival, he would sit there
+in his prison cell, and while his face fell in and his bones grew daily
+plainer, till at length his portly presence was as that of a living
+skeleton, he would sit there by the window, watching the dishes of
+savoury food pass in and out beneath him, and between the pangs of his
+long-drawn, hideous agony, put up his prayer to God to pay back to him,
+Adrian, all the woe that he had caused.
+
+Oh! it was too much. Under the crushing weight of his suffering, his
+senses left him, and he found such peace as to-day is won by those who
+are about to pass beneath the surgeon's knife; the peace that but too
+often wakes to a livelier agony.
+
+When Adrian came to himself again, he felt cold, for already the autumn
+evening had begun to fall, and there was a feel in the clear, still air
+as of approaching frost. Also he was hungry (Dirk van Goorl, too, must
+be growing hungry now, he remembered), for he had eaten nothing since
+the yesterday. He would go into the town, get food, and then make up his
+mind what he should do.
+
+Accordingly, descending from the Burg, Adrian went to the best inn
+in Leyden, and, seating himself at a table under the trees that
+grew outside of it, bade the waiting-man bring him food and beer.
+Unconsciously, for he was thinking of other things, in speaking to
+him, Adrian had assumed the haughty, Spanish hidalgo manner that was
+customary with him when addressing his inferiors. Even then he noticed,
+with the indignation of one who dwells upon his dignity, that this
+server made him no bow, but merely called his order to someone in the
+house, and, turning his back upon him, began to speak to a man who was
+loitering near. Soon Adrian became aware that he was the subject of that
+conversation, for the two of them looked at him out of the corners of
+their eyes, and jerked their thumbs towards him. Moreover, first one,
+then two, then quite a number of passers-by stopped and joined in the
+conversation, which appeared to interest them very much. Boys came also,
+a dozen or more of them, and women of the fish-wife stamp, and all of
+these looked at him out of the corner of _their_ eyes, and from time to
+time jerked _their_ thumbs towards him. Adrian began to feel uneasy and
+angered, but, drawing down his bonnet, and folding his arms upon his
+breast, he took no notice. Presently the server thrust his meal and
+flagon of beer before him with such clattering clumsiness that some of
+the liquor splashed over upon the table.
+
+"Be more careful and wipe that up," said Adrian.
+
+"Wipe it yourself," answered the man, rudely turning upon his heel.
+
+Now Adrian was minded to be gone, but he was hungry and thirsty, so
+first, thought he, he would satisfy himself. Accordingly he lifted the
+tankard and took a long pull at it, when suddenly something struck the
+bottom of the vessel, jerking liquor over his face and doublet. He set
+it down with an oath, and laying his hand upon his sword hilt asked who
+had done this. But the mob, which by now numbered fifty or sixty, and
+was gathered about him in a triple circle, made no answer. They stood
+there staring sullenly, and in the fading light their faces seemed
+dangerous and hostile.
+
+He was frightened. What could they mean? Yes, he was frightened, but
+he determined to brave it out, and lifted the cover from his meat, when
+something passed over his shoulder and fell into the dish, something
+stinking and abominable--to be particular, a dead cat. This was too
+much. Adrian sprang to his feet, and asked who dared thus to foul his
+food. The crowd did not jeer, did not even mock; it seemed too much in
+earnest for gibes, but a voice at the back called out:
+
+"Take it to Dirk van Goorl. He'll be glad of it soon."
+
+Now Adrian understood. All these people knew of his infamy; the whole of
+Leyden knew that tale. His lips turned dry, and the sweat broke out upon
+his body. What should he do? Brave it out? He sat down, and the fierce
+ring of silent faces drew a pace or two nearer. He tried to bid the man
+to bring more meat, but the words stuck in his throat. Now the mob saw
+his fear, and of a sudden seemed to augur his guilt from it, and to pass
+sentence on him in their hearts. At least, they who had been so dumb
+broke out into yells and hoots.
+
+"Traitor!" "Spanish spy!" "Murderer!" they screamed. "Who gave evidence
+against our Dirk? Who sold his brother to the rack?"
+
+Then came another shriller note. "Kill him." "Hang him up by the heels
+and stone him." "Twist off his tongue," and so forth. Out shot a hand, a
+long, skinny, female hand, and a harsh voice cried, "Give us a keepsake,
+my pretty boy!" Then there was a sharp wrench at his head, and he knew
+that from it a lock of hair was missing. This was too much. He ought to
+have stopped there and let them kill him if they would, but a terror
+of these human wolves entered his soul and mastered him. To be trodden
+beneath those mire-stained feet, to be rent by those filthy hands, to be
+swung up living by the ankles to some pole and then carved piecemeal--he
+could not bear it. He drew his sword and turned to fly.
+
+"Stop him," yelled the mob, whereon he lunged at them wildly, running a
+small boy through the arm.
+
+The sight of blood and the screech of the wounded lad settled the
+question, and those who were foremost came at him with a spring. But
+Adrian was swifter than they, and before a hand could be laid upon him,
+amidst a shower of stones and filth, he was speeding down the street.
+After him came the mob, and then began one of the finest man-hunts ever
+known in Leyden.
+
+From one street to another, round this turn and round that, sped the
+quarry, and after him, a swiftly growing pack, came the hounds. Some
+women drew a washing-line across the street to trip him. Adrian jumped
+it like a deer. Four men got ahead and tried to cut him off. He dodged
+them. Down the Bree Straat he went, and on his mother's door he saw a
+paper and guessed what was written there. They were gaining, they were
+gaining, for always fresh ones took the place of those who grew weary.
+There was but one chance for him now. Near by ran the Rhine, and here
+it was wide and unbridged. Perhaps they would not follow him through the
+water. In he went, having no choice, and swam for his life. They threw
+stones and bits of wood at him, and called for bows but, luckily for
+him, by now the night was falling fast, so that soon he vanished from
+their sight, and heard them crying to each other that he was drowned.
+
+But Adrian was not drowned, for at that moment he was dragging himself
+painfully through the deep, greasy mud of the opposing bank and hiding
+among the old boats and lumber which were piled there, till his breath
+came to him again. But he could not stay long, for even if he had not
+been afraid that they would come and find him, it was too cold. So he
+crept away into the darkness.
+
+
+
+Half an hour later, as, resting from their daily labours, Hague Simon
+and his consort Meg were seated at their evening meal, a knock came at
+the door, causing them to drop their knives and to look at each other
+suspiciously.
+
+"Who can it be?" marvelled Meg.
+
+Simon shook his fat head. "I have no appointment," he murmured, "and I
+don't like strange visitors. There's a nasty spirit abroad in the town,
+a very nasty spirit."
+
+"Go and see," said Meg.
+
+"Go and see yourself, you----" and he added an epithet calculated to
+anger the meekest woman.
+
+She answered it with an oath and a metal plate, which struck him in the
+face, but before the quarrel could go farther, again came the sound of
+raps, this time louder and more hurried. Then Black Meg went to open the
+door, while Simon took a knife and hid himself behind a curtain. After
+some whispering, Meg bade the visitor enter, and ushered him into the
+room, that same fateful room where the evidence was signed. Now he was
+in the light, and she saw him.
+
+"Oh! come here," she gasped. "Simon, come and look at our little
+grandee." So Simon came, whereon the pair of them, clapping their hands
+to their ribs, burst into screams of laughter.
+
+"It's the Don! Mother of Heaven! it is the Don," gurgled Simon.
+
+Well might they laugh, they who had known Adrian in his pride and rich
+attire, for before them, crouching against the wall, was a miserable,
+bareheaded object, his hair stained with mud and rotten eggs, blood
+running from his temple where a stone had caught him, his garments a
+mass of filth and dripping water, one boot gone and his hose burst to
+tatters. For a while the fugitive bore it, then suddenly, without a
+word, he drew the sword that still remained to him and rushed at the
+bestial looking Simon, who skipped away round the table.
+
+"Stop laughing," he said, "or I will put this through you. I am a
+desperate man."
+
+"You look it," said Simon, but he laughed no more, for the joke had
+become risky. "What do you want, Heer Adrian?"
+
+"I want food and lodging for so long as I please to stop here. Don't be
+afraid, I have money to pay you."
+
+"I am thinking that you are a dangerous guest," broke in Meg.
+
+"I am," replied Adrian; "but I tell you that I shall be more dangerous
+outside. I was not the only one concerned in that matter of the
+evidence, and if they get me they will have you too. You understand?"
+
+Meg nodded. She understood perfectly; for those of her trade Leyden was
+growing a risky habitation.
+
+"We will accommodate you with our best, Mynheer," she said. "Come
+upstairs to the Master's room and put on some of his clothes. They will
+fit you well; you are much of the same figure."
+
+Adrian's breath caught in his throat.
+
+"Is he here?" he asked.
+
+"No, but he keeps his room."
+
+"Is he coming back?"
+
+"I suppose so, sometime, as he keeps his room. Do you want to see him?"
+
+"Very much, but you needn't mention it; my business can wait till we
+meet. Get my clothes washed and dried as quickly as you can, will you? I
+don't care about wearing other men's garments."
+
+A quarter of an hour later Adrian, cleaned and clothed, different
+indeed to look on from the torn and hunted fugitive, re-entered the
+sitting-room. As he came, clad in Ramiro's suit, Meg nudged her husband
+and whispered, "Like, ain't they?"
+
+"Like as two devils in hell," Simon answered critically, then added,
+"Your food is ready; come, Mynheer, and eat."
+
+So Adrian ate and drank heartily enough, for the meat and wine were
+good, and he needed them. Also it rejoiced him in a dull way to find
+that there was something left in which he could take pleasure, even if
+it were but eating and drinking. When he had finished he told his
+story, or so much of it as he wished to tell, and afterwards went to bed
+wondering whether his hosts would murder him in his sleep for the purse
+of gold he carried, half hoping that they might indeed, and slept for
+twelve hours without stirring.
+
+All that day and until the evening of the next Adrian sat in the home
+of his spy hosts recovering his strength and brooding over his fearful
+fall. Black Meg brought in news of what passed without; thus he learned
+that his mother had sickened with the plague, and that the sentence of
+starvation was being carried out upon the body of her husband, Dirk
+van Goorl. He learned also the details of the escape of Foy and Martin,
+which were the talk of all the city. In the eyes of the common people
+they had become heroes, and some local poet had made a song about them
+which men were singing in the streets. Two verses of that song were
+devoted to him, Adrian; indeed, Black Meg repeated them to him word
+by word with a suppressed but malignant joy. Yes, this was what had
+happened; his brother had become a popular hero and he, Adrian, who
+in every way was so infinitely that brother's superior, an object of
+popular execration. And of all this the man, Ramiro, was the cause.
+
+Well, he was waiting for Ramiro. That was why he risked his life by
+staying in Leyden. Sooner or later Ramiro would be bound to visit this
+haunt of his, and then--here Adrian drew his rapier and lunged and
+parried, and finally with hissing breath drove it down into the wood of
+the flooring, picturing, in a kind of luxury of the imagination, that
+the throat of Ramiro was between its point and the ground. Of course
+in the struggle that must come, the said Ramiro, who doubtless was a
+skilful swordsman, might get the upper hand; it might be his, Adrian's
+throat, which was between the point and the ground. Well, if so, it
+scarcely mattered; he did not care. At any rate, for this once he would
+play the man and then let the devil take his own; himself, or Ramiro, or
+both of them.
+
+On the afternoon of the second day Adrian heard shouting in the streets,
+and Hague Simon came in and told him that a man had arrived with bad
+news from Mechlin; what it was he could not say, he was going to find
+out. A couple of hours went by and there was more shouting, this time
+of a determined and ordered nature. Then Black Meg appeared and informed
+him that the news from Mechlin was that everyone in that unhappy town
+had been slain by the Spaniards; that further the people of Leyden had
+risen and were marching to attack the Gevangenhuis. Out she hurried
+again, for when the waters were stormy then Black Meg must go afishing.
+
+Another hour went by, and once more the street door was opened with a
+key, to be carefully shut when the visitor had entered.
+
+Simon or Meg, thought Adrian, but as he could not be sure he took the
+precaution of hiding himself behind the curtain. The door of the room
+opened, and not Meg or Simon, but Ramiro entered. So his opportunity had
+come!
+
+The Master seemed disturbed. He sat down upon a chair and wiped his brow
+with a silk handkerchief. Then aloud, and shaking his fist in the air,
+he uttered a most comprehensive curse upon everybody and everything, but
+especially upon the citizens of Leyden. After this once more he lapsed
+into silence, sitting, his one eye fixed upon vacancy, and twisting his
+waxed moustaches with his hand.
+
+Now was Adrian's chance; he had only to step out from behind the curtain
+and run him through before he could rise from his seat. The plan had
+great charms, and doubtless he might have put it into execution had not
+Adrian's histrionic instincts stayed his hand. If he killed Ramiro thus,
+he would never know why he had been killed, and above all things Adrian
+desired that he should know. He wanted not only to wreak his wrongs,
+but to let his adversary learn why they were wreaked. Also, to do him
+justice, he preferred a fair fight to a secret stab delivered from
+behind, for gentlemen fought, but assassins stabbed.
+
+Still, as there were no witnesses, he might have been willing to waive
+this point, if only he could make sure that Ramiro should learn the
+truth before he died. He thought of springing out and wounding him, and
+then, after he had explained matters, finishing him off at his leisure.
+But how could he be sure of his sword-thrust, which might do too much
+or too little? No, come what would, the matter must be concluded in the
+proper fashion.
+
+Choosing his opportunity, Adrian stepped from behind the hanging and
+placed himself between Ramiro and the door, the bolt of which he shot
+adroitly that no one might interrupt their interview. At the sound
+Ramiro started and looked up. In an instant he grasped the situation,
+and though his bronzed face paled, for he knew that his danger was
+great, rose to it, as might have been expected from a gentleman of his
+long and varied experience.
+
+"The Heer Adrian called van Goorl, as I live!" he said. "My friend and
+pupil, I am glad to see you; but, if I might ask, although the times are
+rough, why in this narrow room do you wave about a naked rapier in that
+dangerous fashion?"
+
+"Villain," answered Adrian, "you know why; you have betrayed me and
+mine, and I am dishonoured, and now I am going to kill you in payment."
+
+"I see," said Ramiro, "the van Goorl affair again. I can never be clear
+of it for half an hour even. Well, before you begin, it may interest you
+to know that your worthy stepfather, after a couple of days' fasting, is
+by now, I suppose, free, for the rabble have stormed the Gevangenhuis.
+Truth, however, compels me to add that he is suffering badly from the
+plague, which your excellent mother, with a resource that does
+her credit, managed to communicate to him, thinking this end less
+disagreeable on the whole than that which the law had appointed."
+
+Thus spoke Ramiro, slowly and with purpose, for all the while he was
+so manoeuvring that the light from the lattice fell full upon his
+antagonist, leaving himself in the shadow, a position which experience
+taught him would prove of advantage in emergency.
+
+Adrian made no answer, but lifted his sword.
+
+"One moment, young gentleman," went on Ramiro, drawing his own weapon
+and putting himself on guard; "are you in earnest? Do you really wish to
+fight?"
+
+"Yes," answered Adrian.
+
+"What a fool you must be," mused Ramiro. "Why at your age should you
+seek to be rid of life, seeing that you have no more chance against me
+than a rat in a corner against a terrier dog? Look!" and suddenly he
+lunged most viciously straight at his heart. But Adrian was watching and
+parried the thrust.
+
+"Ah!" continued Ramiro, "I knew you would do that, otherwise I should
+not have let fly, for all the angels know I do not wish to hurt you."
+But to himself he added, "The lad is more dangerous than I thought--my
+life hangs on it. The old fault, friend, too high, too high!"
+
+Then Adrian came at him like a tiger, and for the next thirty seconds
+nothing was heard in the room but the raspings of steel and the hard
+breathing of the two men.
+
+At first Adrian had somewhat the better of it, for his assault was
+fierce, and he forced the older and cooler man to be satisfied with
+guarding himself. He did more indeed, for presently thrusting over
+Ramiro's guard, he wounded him slightly in the left arm. The sting
+of his hurt seemed to stir Ramiro's blood; at any rate he changed
+his tactics and began to attack in turn. Now, moreover, his skill and
+seasoned strength came to his aid; slowly but surely Adrian was driven
+back before him till his retreat in the narrow confines of the room
+became continuous. Suddenly, half from exhaustion and half because of a
+stumble, he reeled right across it, to the further wall indeed. With a
+guttural sound of triumph Ramiro sprang after him to make an end of him
+while his guard was down, caught his foot on a joined stool which had
+been overset in the struggle, and fell prone to the ground.
+
+This was Adrian's chance. In an instant he was on him and had the point
+of his rapier at his throat. But he did not stab at once, not from any
+compunction, but because he wished his enemy to feel a little before
+he died, for, like all his race, Adrian could be vindictive and
+bloodthirsty enough when his hate was roused. Rapidly Ramiro considered
+the position. In a physical sense he was helpless, for Adrian had one
+foot upon his breast, the other upon his sword-arm, and the steel at his
+throat. Therefore if time were given him he must trust to his wit.
+
+"Make ready, you are about to die," said Adrian.
+
+"I think not," replied the prostrate Ramiro.
+
+"Why not?" asked Adrian, astonished.
+
+"If you will be so kind as to move that sword-point a little--it is
+pricking me--thank you. Now I will tell you why. Because it is not usual
+for a son to stick his father as though he were a farmyard pig."
+
+"Son? Father?" said Adrian. "Do you mean----?"
+
+"Yes, I do mean that we have the happiness of filling those sacred
+relationships to each other."
+
+"You lie," said Adrian.
+
+"Let me stand up and give me my sword, young sir, and you shall pay for
+that. Never yet did a man tell the Count Juan de Montalvo that he lied,
+and live."
+
+"Prove it," said Adrian.
+
+"In this position, to which misfortune, not skill, has reduced me, I can
+prove nothing. But if you doubt it, ask your mother, or your hosts, or
+consult the registers of the Groote Kerke, and see whether on a date,
+which I will give you, Juan de Montalvo was, or was not, married to
+Lysbeth van Hout, of which marriage was born one Adrian. Man, I will
+prove it to you. Had I not been your father, would you have been saved
+from the Inquisition with others, and should I not within the last five
+minutes had run you through twice over, for though you fought well, your
+swordsmanship is no match for mine?"
+
+"Even if you are my father, why should I not kill you, who have forced
+me to your will by threats of death, you who wronged and shamed me, you
+because of whom I have been hunted through the streets like a mad dog,
+and made an outcast?" And Adrian looked so fierce, and brought down his
+sword so close, that hope sank very low in Ramiro's heart.
+
+"There are reasons which might occur to the religious," he said, "but
+I will give you one that will appeal to your own self-interest. If you
+kill me, the curse which follows the parricide will follow you to your
+last hour--of the beyond I say nothing."
+
+"It would need to be a heavy one," answered Adrian, "if it was worse
+than that of which I know." But there was hesitation in his voice,
+for Ramiro, the skilful player upon human hearts, had struck the right
+string, and Adrian's superstitious nature answered to the note.
+
+"Son," went on Ramiro, "be wise and hold your hand before you do that
+for which all hell itself would cry shame upon you. You think that I
+have been your enemy, but it is not so; all this while I have striven
+to work you good, but how can I talk lying thus like a calf before its
+butcher? Take the swords, both of them, and let me sit up, and I will
+tell you all my plans for the advantage of us both. Or if you wish it,
+thrust on and make an end. I will not plead for my life with you; it is
+not worthy of an hidalgo of Spain. Moreover, what is life to me who have
+known so many sorrows that I should seek to cling to it? Oh! God,
+who seest all, receive my soul, and I pray Thee pardon this youth his
+horrible crime, for he is mad and foolish, and will live to sorrow for
+the deed."
+
+Since it was no further use to him, Ramiro had let the sword fall from
+his hand. Drawing it towards him with the point of his own weapon,
+Adrian stooped and picked it up.
+
+"Rise," he said, lifting his foot, "I can kill you afterwards if I
+wish."
+
+Could he have looked into the heart of his new-found parent as stiff and
+aching he staggered to his feet, the execution would not have been long
+delayed.
+
+"Oh! my young friend, you have given me a nasty fright," thought Ramiro
+to himself, "but it is over now, and if I don't pay you out before I
+have done with you, my sweet boy, your name is not Adrian."
+
+Ramiro rose, dusted his garments, seated himself deliberately, and began
+to talk with great earnestness. It will be sufficient to summarise
+his arguments. First of all, with the most convincing sincerity, he
+explained that when he had made use of him, Adrian, he had no idea that
+he was his son. Of course this was a statement that will not bear a
+moment's examination, but Ramiro's object was to gain time, and Adrian
+let it pass. Then he explained that it was only after his mother had,
+not by his wish, but accidentally, seen the written evidence upon which
+her husband was convicted, that he found out that Adrian van Goorl was
+her child and his own. However, as he hurried to point out, all these
+things were now ancient history that had no bearing on the present.
+Owing to the turbulent violence of the mob, which had driven him from
+his post and fortress, he, Ramiro, was in temporary difficulties, and
+owing to other circumstances, he, Adrian, was, so far as his own party
+and people were concerned, an absolutely dishonoured person. In this
+state of affairs he had a suggestion to make. Let them join forces; let
+the natural relationship that existed between them, and which had been
+so nearly severed by a sword thrust that both must have regretted,
+become real and tender. He, the father, had rank, although it suited
+him to sink it; he had wide experience, friends, intelligence, and the
+prospect of enormous wealth, which, of course, he could not expect to
+enjoy for ever. On the other side, he, the son, had youth, great beauty
+of person, agreeable and distinguished manners, a high heart, the
+education of a young man of the world, ambition and powers of mind that
+would carry him far, and for the immediate future an object to gain,
+the affection of a lady whom all acknowledged to be as good as she was
+charming, and as charming as she was personally attractive.
+
+"She hates me," broke in Adrian.
+
+"Ah!" laughed Ramiro, "there speaks the voice of small experience. Oh!
+youth, so easily exalted and so easily depressed! Joyous, chequered
+youth! How many happy marriages have I not known begin with such hate
+as this? Well, there it is, you must take my word for it. If you want
+to marry Elsa Brant, I can manage it for you, and if not, why, you can
+leave it alone."
+
+Adrian reflected, then as his mind had a practical side, he put a
+question.
+
+"You spoke of the prospect of enormous wealth; what is it?"
+
+"I will tell you, I will tell you," whispered his parent, looking about
+him cautiously; "it is the vast hoard of Hendrik Brant which I intend
+to recover; indeed, my search for it has been at the root of all this
+trouble. And now, son, you can see how open I have been with you, for if
+you marry Elsa that money will legally be your property, and I can only
+claim whatever it may please you to give me. Well, as to that question,
+in the spirit of the glorious motto of our race, 'Trust to God and me,'
+I shall leave it to your sense of honour, which, whatever its troubles,
+has never yet failed the house of Montalvo. What does it matter to
+me who is the legal owner of the stuff, so long as it remains in the
+family?"
+
+"Of course not," replied Adrian, loftily, "especially as I am not
+mercenary."
+
+"Ah! well," went on Ramiro, "we have talked for a long while, and if I
+continue to live there are affairs to which I ought to attend. You have
+heard all I have to say, and you have the swords in your hand, and, of
+course, I am--only your prisoner on parole. So now, my son, be so good
+as to settle this matter without further delay. Only, if you make up
+your mind to use the steel, allow me to show you where to thrust, as I
+do not wish to undergo any unnecessary discomfort"--and he stood before
+him and bowed in a very courtly and dignified fashion.
+
+Adrian looked at him and hesitated. "I don't trust you," he said; "you
+have tricked me once and I daresay that you will trick me again. Also I
+don't think much of people who masquerade under false names and lay such
+traps as you laid to get my evidence against the rest of them. But I am
+in a bad place and without friends. I want to marry Elsa and recover my
+position in the world; also, as you know well, I can't cut the throat of
+my own father in cold blood," and he threw down one of the swords.
+
+"Your decision is just such as I would have expected from my knowledge
+of your noble nature, son Adrian," remarked Ramiro as he picked up his
+weapon and restored it to the scabbard. "But now, before we enter upon
+this perfect accord, I have two little stipulations to make on my side."
+
+"What are they?" asked Adrian.
+
+"First, that our friendship should be complete, such as ought to exist
+between a loving father and son, a friendship without reservations.
+Secondly--this is a condition that I fear you may find harder--but,
+although fortune has led me into stony paths, and I fear some doubtful
+expedients, there was always one thing which I have striven to cherish
+and keep pure, and that in turn has rewarded me for my devotion in many
+a dangerous hour, my religious belief. Now I am Catholic, and I could
+wish that my son should be Catholic also; these horrible errors, believe
+me, are as dangerous to the soul as just now they happen to be fatal
+to the body. May I hope that you, who were brought up but not born in
+heresy, will consent to receive instruction in the right faith?"
+
+"Certainly you may," answered Adrian, almost with enthusiasm. "I have
+had enough of conventicles, psalm-singing, and the daily chance of being
+burned; indeed, from the time when I could think for myself I always
+wished to be a Catholic."
+
+"Your words make me a happy man," answered Ramiro. "Allow me to unbolt
+the door, I hear our hosts. Worthy Simon and Vrouw, I make you parties
+to a solemn and joyful celebration. This young man is my son, and in
+token of my fatherly love, which he has been pleased to desire, I now
+take him in my arms and embrace him before you," and he suited the
+action to the word.
+
+But Black Meg, watching his face in astonishment from over Adrian's
+shoulder, saw its one bright eye suddenly become eclipsed. Could it be
+that the noble Master had winked?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+MARTHA PREACHES A SERMON AND TELLS A SECRET
+
+Two days after his reconciliation with his father, Adrian was admitted
+as a member of the Catholic Church. His preparation had been short;
+indeed, it consisted of three interviews with a priest who was brought
+to the house at night. The good man found in his pupil so excellent a
+disposition and a mind so open to his teaching that, acting on a
+hint given him by Ramiro, who, for reasons of his own not altogether
+connected with religion, was really anxious to see his son a member of
+the true and Catholic Church, he declared it unnecessary to prolong the
+period of probation. Therefore, on the third day, as the dusk of evening
+was closing, for in the present state of public feeling they dared not
+go out while it was light, Adrian was taken to the baptistry of the
+Groote Kerke. Here he made confession of his sins to a certain Abbe
+known as Father Dominic, a simple ceremony, for although the list of
+them which he had prepared was long, its hearing proved short. Thus all
+his offences against his family, such as his betrayal of his stepfather,
+were waived aside by the priest as matters of no account; indeed, crimes
+of this nature, he discovered, to the sacerdotal eye wore the face of
+virtue. Other misdoings also, such as a young man might have upon his
+mind, were not thought weighty. What really was considered important
+proved to be the earnestness of his recantation of heretical errors, and
+when once his confessor was satisfied upon that point, the penitent soul
+was relieved by absolution full and free.
+
+After this came the service of his baptism, which, because Ramiro wished
+it, for a certain secret reason, was carried out with as much formal
+publicity as the circumstances would allow. Indeed, several priests
+officiated at the rite, Adrian's sponsors being his father and the
+estimable Hague Simon, who was paid a gold piece for his pains. While
+the sacrament was still in progress, an untoward incident occurred. From
+its commencement the trampling and voices of a mob had been heard in the
+open space in front of the church, and now they began to hammer on the
+great doors and to cast stones at the painted windows, breaking the
+beautiful and ancient glass. Presently a beadle hurried into the
+baptistery, and whispered something in the ear of the Abbe which caused
+that ecclesiastic to turn pale and to conclude the service in a somewhat
+hasty fashion.
+
+"What is it?" asked Ramiro.
+
+"Alas! my son," said the priest, "these heretic dogs saw you, or our
+new-found brother, I know not which--enter this holy place, and a great
+mob of them have surrounded it, ravening for our blood."
+
+"Then we had best begone," said Ramiro.
+
+"Senor, it is impossible," broke in the sacristan; "they watch every
+door. Hark! hark! hark!" and as he spoke there came the sound of
+battering on the oaken portals.
+
+"Can your reverences make any suggestions?" asked Ramiro, "for if not--"
+and he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Let us pray," said one of them in a trembling voice.
+
+"By all means, but I should prefer to do so as I go. Fool, is there any
+hiding place in this church, or must we stop here to have our throats
+cut?"
+
+Then the sacristan, with white lips and knocking knees, whispered:
+
+"Follow me, all of you. Stay, blow out the lights."
+
+So the candles were extinguished, and in the darkness they grasped each
+other's hands and were led by the verger whither they knew not. Across
+the wide spaces of the empty church they crawled, its echoing silence
+contrasting strangely with the muffled roar of angry voices without and
+the dull sound of battering on the doors. One of their number, the fat
+Abbe Dominic, became separated from them in the gloom, and wandered away
+down an arm of the vast transept, whence they could hear him calling
+to them. The sacristan called back, but Ramiro fiercely bade him to be
+silent, adding:
+
+"Are we all to be snared for the sake of one priest?"
+
+So they went on, till presently in that great place his shouts grew
+fainter, and were lost in the roar of the multitude without.
+
+"Here is the spot," muttered the sacristan, after feeling the floor with
+his hands, and by a dim ray of moonlight which just then pierced the
+windows of the choir, Adrian saw that there was a hole in the pavement
+before him.
+
+"Descend, there are steps," said their guide. "I will shut the stone,"
+and one by one they passed down six or seven narrow steps into some
+darksome place.
+
+"Where are we?" asked a priest of the verger, when he had pulled the
+stone close and joined them.
+
+"In the family vault of the noble Count van Valkenburg, whom your
+reverence buried three days ago. Fortunately the masons have not yet
+come to cement down the stone. If your Excellencies find it close, you
+can get air by standing upon the coffin of the noble Count."
+
+Adrian did find it close, and took the hint, to discover that in a line
+with his head was some filigree stonework, pierced with small apertures,
+the front doubtless of the marble tomb in the church above, for through
+them he could see the pale moon rays wavering on the pavement of the
+choir. As he looked the priest at his side muttered:
+
+"Hark! The doors are down. Aid us, St. Pancras!" and falling upon his
+knees he began to pray very earnestly.
+
+Yielding at last to the blows of the battering-beam, the great portals
+had flown open with a crash, and now through them poured the mob. On
+they came with a rush and a roar, like that of the sea breaking through
+a dyke, carrying in their hands torches, lanterns hung on poles, axes,
+swords and staves, till at length they reached the screen of wonderful
+carved oak, on the top of which, rising to a height of sixty feet above
+the floor of the church, stood the great Rood, with the images of the
+Virgin and St. John on either side. Here, of a sudden, the vastness
+and the silence of the holy place which they had known, every one, from
+childhood, with its echoing aisles, the moonlit, pictured windows, its
+consecrated lamps twinkling here and there like fisher lights upon the
+darkling waters, seemed to take hold of them. As at the sound of the
+Voice Divine sweeping down the wild waves at night, the winds ceased
+their raving and the seas were still, so now, beneath the silent
+reproach of the effigy of the White Christ standing with uplifted hand
+above the altar, hanging thorn-crowned upon the Rood, kneeling agonised
+within the Garden, seated at the Holy Supper, on His lips the New
+Commandment, "As I have loved you, so ye also love one another," their
+passions flickered down and their wrath slept.
+
+"They are not here, let us be going," said a voice.
+
+"They are here," answered another voice, a woman's voice with a note
+of vengeance in it. "I tracked them to the doors, the Spanish murderer
+Ramiro, the spy Hague Simon, the traitor Adrian, called van Goorl, and
+the priests, the priests, the priests who butcher us."
+
+"Let God deal with them," said the first voice, which to Adrian sounded
+familiar. "We have done enough. Go home in peace."
+
+Now muttering, "The pastor is right. Obey the Pastor Arentz," the more
+orderly of the multitude turned to depart, when suddenly, from the far
+end of the transept, arose a cry.
+
+"Here's one of them. Catch him! catch him!" A minute more and into the
+circle of the torchlight rushed the Abbe Dominic, his eyes starting from
+his head with terror, his rent robe flapping on the ground. Exhausted
+and bewildered he cast himself down, and grasping the pedestal of an
+image began to cry for mercy, till a dozen fierce hands dragged him to
+his feet again.
+
+"Let him go," said the voice of the Pastor Arentz. "We fight the Church,
+not its ministers."
+
+"Hear me first," she answered who had spoken before, and men turned
+to see standing above them in the great pulpit of the church, a
+fierce-eyed, yellow-toothed hag, grey-haired, skinny-armed, long-faced
+like a horse, and behind her two other women, each of whom held a torch
+in her right hand.
+
+"It is the Mare," roared the multitude. "It is Martha of the Mere.
+Preach on, Martha. What's your text?"
+
+"Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed," she
+answered in a ringing, solemn voice, and instantly a deep silence fell
+upon the place.
+
+"You call me the Mare," she went on. "Do you know how I got that name?
+They gave it me after they had shrivelled up my lips and marred the
+beauty of my face with irons. And do you know what they made me do? They
+made me carry my husband to the stake upon my back because they said
+that a horse must be ridden. And do you know who said this? _That priest
+who stands before you._"
+
+As the words left her lips a yell of rage beat against the roof. Martha
+held up her thin hand, and again there was silence.
+
+"He said it--the holy Father Dominic; let him deny it if he can. What?
+He does not know me? Perchance not, for time and grief and madness and
+hot pincers have changed the face of Vrouw Martha van Muyden, who was
+called the Lily of Brussels. Ah! look at him now. He remembers the Lily
+of Brussels. He remembers her husband and her son also, for he burned
+them. O God, judge between us. O people, deal with that devil as God
+shall teach you.
+
+"Who are the others? He who is called Ramiro, the Governor of the
+Gevangenhuis, the man who years ago would have thrust me beneath the
+ice to drown had not the Vrouw van Goorl bought my life; he who set her
+husband, Dirk van Goorl, the man you loved, to starve to death sniffing
+the steam of kitchens. O people, deal with that devil as God shall teach
+you.
+
+"And the third, the half-Spaniard, the traitor Adrian called van Goorl,
+he who has come here to-night to be baptised anew into the bosom of
+the Holy Church; he who signed the evidence upon which Dirk was
+murdered"--here, again, the roar of hate and rage went up and beat along
+the roof--"upon which too his brother Foy was taken to the torture,
+whence Red Martin saved him. O people, do with that devil also as God
+shall teach you.
+
+"And the fourth, Hague Simon the spy, the man whose hands for years
+have smoked with innocent blood; Simon the Butcher--Simon the false
+witness----"
+
+"Enough, enough!" roared the crowd. "A rope, a rope; up with him to the
+arm of the Rood."
+
+"My friends," cried Arentz, "let the man go. Vengeance is mine, saith
+the Lord, and I will repay."
+
+"Yes, but we will give him something on account," shouted a voice in
+bitter blasphemy. "Well climbed, Jan, well climbed," and they looked up
+to see, sixty feet above their heads, seated upon the arm of the lofty
+Rood, a man with a candle bound upon his brow and a coil of rope upon
+his back.
+
+"He'll fall," said one.
+
+"Pish!" answered another, "it is steeplejack Jan, who can hang on a wall
+like a fly."
+
+"Look out for the ends of the rope," cried the thin voice above, and
+down they came.
+
+"Spare me," screamed the wretched priest, as his executioners caught
+hold of him.
+
+"Yes, yes, as you spared the Heer Jansen a few months ago."
+
+"It was to save his soul," groaned Dominic.
+
+"Quite so, and now we are going to save yours; your own medicine,
+father, your own medicine."
+
+"Spare me, and I will tell you where the others are."
+
+"Well, where are they?" asked the ringleader, pushing his companions
+away.
+
+"Hidden in the church, hidden in the church."
+
+"We knew that, you traitorous dog. Now then for the soul-saving. Catch
+hold there and run away with it. A horse should be ridden, father--your
+own saying--and an angel must learn to fly."
+
+Thus ended the life of the Abbe Dominic at the hands of avenging men.
+Without a doubt they were fierce and bloody-minded, for the reader must
+not suppose that all the wickedness of those days lies on the heads of
+the Inquisition and the Spaniards. The adherents of the New Religion did
+evil things also, things that sound dreadful in our ears. In excuse
+of them, however, this can be urged, that, compared to those of their
+oppressors, they were as single trees to a forest full; also that they
+who worked them had been maddened by their sufferings. If our fathers,
+husbands and brothers had been burned at the stake, or done to death
+under the name of Jesus in the dens of the Inquisition, or slaughtered
+by thousands in the sack of towns; if our wives and daughters had been
+shamed, if our houses had been burned, our goods taken, our liberties
+trampled upon, and our homes made a desolation, then, my reader, is it
+not possible that even in these different days you and I might have been
+cruel when our hour came? God knows alone, and God be thanked that so
+far as we can foresee, except under the pressure, perhaps, of invasion
+by semi-barbarian hordes, or of dreadful and sudden social revolutions,
+civilized human nature will never be put to such a test again.
+
+Far aloft in the gloom there, swinging from the arm of the Cross, whose
+teachings his life had mocked, like some mutinous sailor at the yard of
+the vessel he had striven to betray, the priest hung dead, but his life
+did not appease the fury of the triumphant mob.
+
+"The others," they cried, "find the others," and with torches and
+lanterns they hunted round the great church. They ascended the belfry,
+they rummaged the chapels, they explored the crypt; then, baffled, drew
+together in a countless crowd in the nave, shouting, gesticulating,
+suggesting.
+
+"Get dogs," cried a voice; "dogs will smell them out;" and dogs
+were brought, which yapped and ran to and fro, but, confused by the
+multitude, and not knowing what to seek, found nothing. Then some one
+threw an image from a niche, and next minute, with a cry of "Down with
+the idols," the work of destruction began.
+
+Fanatics sprang at the screens and the altars, "all the carved work
+thereof they break down with hatchet and hammer," they tore the hangings
+from the shrines, they found the sacred cups, and filling them with
+sacramental wine, drank with gusts of ribald laughter. In the centre of
+the choir they built a bonfire, and fed it with pictures, carvings, and
+oaken benches, so that it blazed and roared furiously. On to it--for
+this mob did not come to steal but to work vengeance--they threw
+utensils of gold and silver, the priceless jewelled offerings of
+generations, and danced around its flames in triumph, while from every
+side came the crash of falling statues and the tinkling of shattered
+glass.
+
+The light of that furnace shone through the lattice stonework of the
+tomb, and in its lurid and ominous glare Adrian beheld the faces of
+those who refuged with him. What a picture it was; the niches filled
+with mouldering boxes, the white gleam of human bones that here and
+there had fallen from them, the bright furnishings and velvet pall of
+the coffin of the newcomer on which he stood--and then those faces. The
+priests, still crouched in corners, rolling on the ground, their white
+lips muttering who knows what; the sacristan in a swoon, Hague Simon
+hugging a coffin in a niche, as a drowning man hugs a plank, and,
+standing in the midst of them, calm, sardonic and watchful, a drawn
+rapier in his hand, his father Ramiro.
+
+"We are lost," moaned a priest, losing control of himself. "We are lost.
+They will kill us as they have killed the holy Abbe."
+
+"We are not lost," hissed Ramiro, "we are quite safe, but, friend,
+if you open that cursed mouth of yours again it shall be for the last
+time," and he lifted his sword, adding, "Silence; he who speaks, dies."
+
+How long did it last? Was it one hour, or two or three? None of them
+knew, but at length the image-breaking was done, and it came to an end.
+The interior of the church, with all its wealth and adornments, was
+utterly destroyed, but happily the flames did not reach the roof, and
+the walls could not catch fire.
+
+By degrees the iconoclasts wearied; there seemed to be nothing more to
+break, and the smoke choked them. Two or three at a time they left the
+ravaged place, and once more it became solemn and empty; a symbol of
+Eternity mocking Time, of Peace conquering Tumult, of the Patience and
+Purpose of God triumphant over the passions and ravings of Man. Little
+curls of smoke went up from the smouldering fire; now and again a
+fragment of shattered stonework fell with an echoing crash, and the cold
+wind of the coming winter sighed through the gaping windows. The deed
+was done, the revenge of a tortured multitude had set its seal upon
+the ancient fane in which their forefathers worshipped for a score of
+generations, and once more quiet brooded upon the place, and the shafts
+of the sweet moonlight pierced its desecrated solitudes.
+
+One by one, like ghosts arising at a summons of the Spirit, the
+fugitives crept from the shelter of the tomb, crept across the transepts
+to the little door of the baptistery, and with infinite peeping and
+precaution, out into the night, to vanish this way and that, hugging
+their hearts as though to feel whether they still beat safely in their
+bosoms.
+
+As he passed the Rood Adrian looked up, and there, above the broken
+carvings and the shattered statue of the Virgin, hung the calm face of
+the Saviour crowned with thorns. There, too, not far from it, looking
+small and infinitely piteous at that great height, and revolving slowly
+in the sharp draught from the broken windows, hung another dead face,
+the horrid face of the Abbe Dominic, lately the envied, prosperous
+dignitary and pluralist, who not four hours since had baptised him into
+the bosom of the Church, and who now himself had been born again into
+the bosom of whatever world awaited him beyond the Gates. It terrified
+Adrian; no ghost could have frightened him more, but he set his teeth
+and staggered on, guided by the light gleaming faintly on the sword of
+Ramiro--to whatever haven that sword should lead him.
+
+Before dawn broke it had led him out of Leyden.
+
+
+
+It was after ten o'clock that night when a woman, wrapped in a rough
+frieze coat, knocked at the door of the house in the Bree Straat and
+asked for the Vrouw van Goorl.
+
+"My mistress lies between life and death with the plague," answered the
+servant. "Get you gone from this pest-house, whoever you are."
+
+"I do not fear the plague," said the visitor. "Is the Jufvrouw Elsa
+Brant still up? Then tell her that Martha, called the Mare, would speak
+with her."
+
+"She can see none at such an hour," answered the servant.
+
+"Tell her I come from Foy van Goorl."
+
+"Enter," said the servant wondering, and shut the door behind her.
+
+A minute later Elsa, pale-faced, worn, but still beautiful, rushed into
+the room, gasping, "What news? Does he live? Is he well?"
+
+"He lives, lady, but he is not well, for the wound in his thigh has
+festered and he cannot walk, or even stand. Nay, have no fear, time and
+clean dressing will heal him, and he lies in a safe place."
+
+In the rapture of her relief Elsa seized the woman's hand, and would
+have kissed it.
+
+"Touch it not, it is bloodstained," said Martha, drawing her hand away.
+
+"Blood? Whose blood is on it?" asked Elsa, shrinking back.
+
+"Whose blood?" answered Martha with a hollow laugh; "why that of many
+a Spanish man. Where, think you, lady, that the Mare gallops of nights?
+Ask it of the Spaniards who travel by the Haarlemer Meer. Aye, and now
+Red Martin is with me and we run together, taking our tithe where we can
+gather it."
+
+"Oh! tell me no more," said Elsa. "From day to day it is ever the same
+tale, a tale of death. Nay, I know your wrongs have driven you mad, but
+that a woman should slay----"
+
+"A woman! I am no woman; my womanhood died with my husband and my
+son. Girl, I tell you that I am no woman; I am a Sword of God myself
+appointed to the sword. And so to the end I kill, and kill and kill till
+the hour when I am killed. Go, look in the church yonder, and see who
+hangs to the high arm of the Rood--the fat Abbe Dominic. Well, I sent
+him there to-night; to-morrow you will hear how I turned parson and
+preached a sermon--aye, and Ramiro and Adrian called van Goorl, and
+Simon the spy, should have joined him there, only I could not find
+them because their hour has not come. But the idols are down and the
+paintings burnt, and the gold and silver and jewels are cast upon the
+dung-heap. Swept and garnished is the temple, made clean and fit for the
+Lord to dwell in."
+
+"Made clean with the blood of murdered priests, and fit by the smoke of
+sacrilege?" broke in Elsa. "Oh! woman, how can you do such wicked things
+and not be afraid?"
+
+"Afraid?" she answered. "Those who have passed through hell have no more
+fear; death I seek, and when judgment comes I will say to the Lord: What
+have I done that the Voice which speaks to me at night did not tell me
+to do? Look down, the blood of my husband and my son still smokes upon
+the ground. Hearken, Lord God, it cries to Thee for vengeance!" and as
+she spoke she lifted her blackened hands and shook them. Then she went
+on.
+
+"They murdered your father, why do you not kill them also? You are small
+and weak and timid, and could not run by night and use the knife as I
+do, but there is poison. I can brew it and bring it to you, made from
+marsh herbs, white as water and deadly as Death itself. What! You shrink
+from such things? Well, girl, once I was beautiful as you and as loving
+and beloved, and I can do them for my love's sake--for my love's sake.
+Nay, _I_ do not do them, they are done through me. The Sword am I, the
+Sword! And you too are a sword, though you know it not, though you
+see it not, you, maiden, so soft and white and sweet, are a Sword of
+Vengeance working the death of men; I, in my way, you in yours, paying
+back, back, back, full measure pressed down and running over to those
+appointed to die. The treasure of Hendrik Brant, your treasure, it is
+red with blood, every piece of it. I tell you that the deaths that I
+have done are but as a grain of sand to a bowlful compared to those
+which your treasure shall do. There, maid, I fright you. Have no fear,
+it is but Mad Martha, who, when she sees, must speak, and through the
+flames in the kirk to-night I saw visions such as I have not seen for
+years."
+
+"Tell me more of Foy and Martin," said Elsa, who was frightened and
+bewildered.
+
+At her words a change seemed to come over this woman, at once an object
+of pity and of terror, for the scream went out of her voice and she
+answered quietly,
+
+"They reached me safe enough five days ago, Red Martin carrying Foy upon
+his back. From afar I saw him, a naked man with a named sword, and knew
+him by his size and beard. And oh! when I heard his tale I laughed as I
+have not laughed since I was young."
+
+"Tell it me," said Elsa.
+
+And she told it while the girl listened with clasped hands.
+
+"Oh! it was brave, brave," she murmured. "Red Martin forcing to the door
+and Foy, weak and wounded, slaying the warder. Was there ever such a
+story?"
+
+"Men are brave and desperate with the torture pit behind them," answered
+Martha grimly; "but they did well, and now they are safe with me where
+no Spaniard can find them unless they hunt in great companies after the
+ice forms and the reeds are dead."
+
+"Would that I could be there also," said Elsa, "but I tend his mother
+who is very sick, so sick that I do not know whether she will live or
+die."
+
+"Nay, you are best here among your people," answered Martha. "And now
+that the Spaniards are driven out, here Foy shall return also so soon as
+it is safe for him to travel; but as yet he cannot stir, and Red Martin
+stays to watch him. Before long, however, he must move, for I have
+tidings that the Spaniards are about to besiege Haarlem with a great
+army, and then the Mere will be no longer safe for us, and I shall leave
+it to fight with the Haarlem folk."
+
+"And Foy and Martin will return?"
+
+"I think so, if they are not stopped."
+
+"Stopped?"--and she put her hand upon her heart.
+
+"The times are rough, Jufvrouw Elsa. Who that breathes the air one
+morning can know what breath will pass his nostrils at the nightfall?
+The times are rough, and Death is king of them. The hoard of Hendrik
+Brant is not forgotten, nor those who have its key. Ramiro slipped
+through my hands to-night, and doubtless by now is far away from Leyden
+seeking the treasure."
+
+"The treasure! Oh! that thrice accursed treasure!" broke in Elsa,
+shivering as though beneath an icy wind; "would that we were rid of it."
+
+"That you cannot be until it is appointed, for is this not the heritage
+which your father died to save? Listen. Do you know, lady, where it lies
+hid?" and she dropped her voice to a whisper.
+
+Elsa shook her head, saying:
+
+"I neither know nor wish to know."
+
+"Still it is best that you should be told, for we three who have the
+secret may be killed, every one of us--no, not the place, but where to
+seek a clue to the place."
+
+Elsa looked at her questioningly, and Martha, leaning forward, whispered
+in her ear:
+
+"_It lies in the hilt of the Sword Silence_. If Red Martin should
+be taken or killed, seek out his sword and open the hilt. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Elsa nodded and answered, "But if aught happens to Martin the sword may
+be lost."
+
+Martha shrugged her shoulders. "Then the treasure will be lost also,
+that is if I am gone. It is as God wills; but at least in name you are
+the heiress, and you should know where to find its secret, which may
+serve you or your country in good stead in time to come. I give you no
+paper, I tell you only where to seek a paper, and now I must be gone to
+reach the borders of the Mere by daybreak. Have you any message for your
+love, lady?"
+
+"I would write a word, if you can wait. They will bring you food."
+
+"Good; write on and I will eat. Love for the young and meat for the old,
+and for both let God be thanked."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE RED MILL
+
+After a week's experience of that delectable dwelling and its
+neighbourhood, Adrian began to grow weary of the Red Mill. Nine or
+ten Dutch miles to the nor'west of Haarlem is a place called Velsen,
+situated on the borders of the sand-dunes, to the south of what is
+known to-day as the North Sea Canal. In the times of which this page of
+history tells, however, the canal was represented by a great drainage
+dyke, and Velsen was but a deserted village. Indeed, hereabouts all the
+country was deserted, for some years before a Spanish force had passed
+through it, burning, slaying, laying waste, so that few were left to
+tend the windmills and repair the dyke. Holland is a country won from
+swamps and seas, and if the water is not pumped out of it, and the
+ditches are not cleaned, very quickly it relapses into primeval marsh;
+indeed, it is fortunate if the ocean, bursting through the feeble
+barriers reared by the industry of man, does not turn it into vast
+lagoons of salt water.
+
+Once the Red Mill had been a pumping station, which, when the huge sails
+worked, delivered the water from the fertile meadows into the great
+dyke, whence it ran through sluice gates to the North Sea. Now, although
+the embankment of this dyke still held, the meadows had gone back into
+swamps. Rising out of these--for it was situated upon a low mound of
+earth, raised, doubtless, as a point of refuge by marsh-dwellers
+who lived and died before history began, towered the wreck of a
+narrow-waisted windmill, built of brick below and wood above, of very
+lonesome and commanding appearance in its gaunt solitude. There were no
+houses near it, no cattle grazed about its foot; it was a dead thing in
+a dead landscape. To the left, but separated from it by a wide and slimy
+dyke, whence in times of flood the thick, brackish water trickled to the
+plain, stretched an arid area of sand-dunes, clothed with sparse grass,
+that grew like bristles upon the back of a wild hog. Beyond these dunes
+the ocean roared and moaned and whispered hungrily as the wind and
+weather stirred its depths. In front, not fifty paces away, ran the big
+dyke like a raised road, secured by embankments, and discharging day by
+day its millions of gallons of water into the sea. But these embankments
+were weakening now, and here and there could be seen a spot which looked
+as though a giant ploughshare had been drawn up them, for a groove of
+brown earth scarred the face of green, where in some winter flood the
+water had poured over to find its level, cutting them like cheese, but
+when its volume sank, leaving them still standing, and as yet sufficient
+for their purpose.
+
+To the right again and behind, were more marshes, broken only in the
+distance by the towers of Haarlem and the spires of village churches,
+marshes where the snipe and bittern boomed, the herons fed, and in
+summer the frogs croaked all night long.
+
+Such was the refuge to which Ramiro and his son, Adrian, had been led by
+Hague Simon and Black Meg, after they had escaped with their lives from
+Leyden upon the night of the image-breaking in the church, that ominous
+night when the Abbe Dominic gave up the ghost on the arm of the
+lofty Rood, and Adrian had received absolution and baptism from his
+consecrated hand.
+
+On the journey hither Adrian asked no questions as to their destination;
+he was too broken in heart and too shaken in body to be curious; life in
+those days was for him too much of a hideous phantasmagoria of waste
+and blackness out of which appeared vengeful, red-handed figures, out of
+which echoed dismal, despairing voices calling him to doom.
+
+They came to the place and found its great basement and the floors
+above, or some of them, furnished after a fashion. The mill had been
+inhabited, and recently, as Adrian gathered, by smugglers, or thieves,
+with whom Meg and Simon were in alliance, or some such outcast
+evil-doers who knew that here the arm of the law could not reach them.
+Though, indeed, while Alva ruled in the Netherlands there was little law
+to be feared by those who were rich or who dared to worship God after
+their own manner.
+
+"Why have we come here--father," Adrian was about to add, but the word
+stuck in his throat.
+
+Ramiro shrugged his shoulders and looked round him with his one
+criticising eye.
+
+"Because our guides and friends, the worthy Simon and his wife, assure
+me that in this spot alone our throats are for the present safe, and
+by St. Pancras, after what we saw in the church yonder I am inclined
+to agree with them. He looked a poor thing up under the roof there, the
+holy Father Dominic, didn't he, hanging up like a black spider from the
+end of his cord? Bah! my backbone aches when I think of him."
+
+"And how long are we to stop here?"
+
+"Till--till Don Frederic has taken Haarlem and these fat Hollanders, or
+those who are left of them, lick our boots for mercy," and he ground
+his teeth, then added: "Son, do you play cards? Good, well let us have
+a game. Here are dice; it will serve to turn our thoughts. Now then, a
+hundred guilders on it."
+
+So they played and Adrian won, whereon, to his amazement, his father
+paid him the money.
+
+"What is the use of that?" asked Adrian.
+
+"Gentlemen should always pay their debts at cards."
+
+"And if they cannot?"
+
+"Then they must keep score of the amount and discharge it when they are
+able. Look you, young man, everything else you may forget, but what you
+lose over the dice is a debt of honour. There lives no man who can say
+that I cheated him of a guilder at cards, though I fear some others have
+my name standing in their books."
+
+When they rose from their game that night Adrian had won between three
+and four hundred florins. Next day his winnings amounted to a thousand
+florins, for which his father gave him a carefully-executed note of
+hand; but at the third sitting the luck changed or perhaps skill began
+to tell, and he lost two thousand florins. These he paid up by returning
+his father's note, his own winnings, and all the balance of the purse
+of gold which his mother had given to him when he was driven from the
+house, so that now he was practically penniless.
+
+The rest of the history may be guessed. At every game the stakes
+were increased, for since Adrian could not pay, it was a matter of
+indifference to him how much he wagered. Moreover, he found a kind of
+mild excitement in playing at the handling of such great sums of money.
+By the end of a week he had lost a queen's dowry. As they rose from the
+table that night his father filled in the usual form, requested him to
+be so good as to sign it, and a sour-faced woman who had arrived at the
+mill, Adrian knew not whence, to do the household work, to put her name
+as witness.
+
+"What is the use of this farce?" asked Adrian. "Brant's treasure would
+scarcely pay that bill."
+
+His father pricked his ears.
+
+"Indeed? I lay it at as much again. What is the use? Who knows--one day
+you might become rich, for, as the great Emperor said, 'Fortune is a
+woman who reserves her favours for the young,' and then, doubtless,
+being the man of honour that you are, you would wish to pay your old
+gambling debts."
+
+"Oh! yes, I should pay if I could," answered Adrian with a yawn. "But it
+seems hardly worthy while talking about, does it?" and he sauntered out
+of the place into the open air.
+
+His father rose, and, standing by the great peat fire, watched him
+depart thoughtfully.
+
+"Let me take stock of the position," he said to himself. "The dear child
+hasn't a farthing left; therefore, although he is getting bored,
+he can't run away. Moreover, he owes me more money than I ever saw;
+therefore, if he should chance to become the husband of the
+Jufvrouw Brant, and the legal owner of her parent's wealth, whatever
+disagreements may ensue between him and me I shall have earned my share
+of it in a clean and gentlemanly fashion. If, on the other hand, it
+should become necessary for me to marry the young lady, which God
+forbid, at least no harm is done, and he will have had the advantage of
+some valuable lessons from the most accomplished card-player in Spain.
+
+"And now what we need to enliven this detestable place is the presence
+of Beauty herself. Our worthy friends should be back soon--bringing
+their sheaves with them, let us hope, for otherwise matters will be
+complicated. Let me see: have I thought of everything, for in such
+affairs one oversight--He is a Catholic, therefore can contract a legal
+marriage under the Proclamations--it was lucky I remembered that point
+of law, though it nearly cost us all our lives--and the priest, I can
+lay my hands on him, a discreet man, who won't hear if the lady says
+No, but filled beyond a question with the power and virtue of his
+holy office. No, I have nothing to reproach myself with in the way of
+precaution, nothing at all. I have sown the seed well and truly, it
+remains only for Providence to give the increase, or shall I say--no, I
+think not, for between the general and the private familiarity is always
+odious. Well, it is time that you met with a little success and settled
+down, for you have worked hard, Juan, my friend, and you are getting
+old--yes, Juan, you are getting old. Bah! what a hole and what weather!"
+and Montalvo established himself by the fireside to doze away his
+_ennui_.
+
+When Adrian shut the door behind him the late November day was drawing
+to its close, and between the rifts in the sullen snow clouds now
+and again an arrow from the westering sun struck upon the tall,
+skeleton-like sails of the mill, through which the wind rushed with a
+screaming noise. Adrian had intended to walk on the marsh, but finding
+it too sodden, he crossed the western dyke by means of a board laid from
+bank to bank, and struck into the sand-dunes beyond. Even in the summer,
+when the air was still and flowers bloomed and larks sang, these dunes
+were fantastic and almost unnatural in appearance, with their deep,
+wind-scooped hollows of pallid sand, their sharp angles, miniature
+cliffs, and their crests crowned with coarse grasses. But now, beneath
+the dull pall of the winter sky, no spot in the world could have been
+more lonesome or more desolate, for never a sign of man was to be
+seen upon them and save for a solitary curlew, whose sad note reached
+Adrian's ears as it beat up wind from the sea, even the beasts and birds
+that dwelt there had hidden themselves away. Only the voices of Nature
+remained in all their majesty, the drear screams and moan of the rushing
+wind, and above it, now low and now voluminous as the gale veered, the
+deep and constant roar of the ocean.
+
+Adrian reached the highest crest of the ridge, whence the sea, hidden
+hitherto, became suddenly visible, a vast, slate-coloured expanse,
+twisted here and there into heaps, hollowed here and there into valleys,
+and broken everywhere with angry lines and areas of white. In such
+trouble, for, after its own fashion, his heart was troubled, some
+temperaments might have found a kind of consolation in this sight, for
+while we witness them, at any rate, the throes and moods of Nature in
+their greatness declare a mastery of our senses, and stun or hush to
+silence the petty turmoil of our souls. This, at least, is so with those
+who have eyes to read the lesson written on Nature's face, and ears
+to hear the message which day by day she delivers with her lips; gifts
+given only to such as hold the cypher-key of imagination, and pray for
+grace to use it.
+
+In Adrian's case, however, the weirdness of the sand-hills and the
+grandeur of the seascape with the bitter wind that blew between and the
+solitude which brooded over all, served only to exasperate nerves that
+already were strained well nigh to breaking.
+
+Why had his father brought him to this hideous swamp bordered by a
+sailless sea? To save their lives from the fury of the mob? This he
+understood, but there was more in it than that, some plot which he did
+not understand, and which the ruffian, Hague Simon, and that she-fiend,
+his companion, had gone away to execute. Meanwhile he must sit here day
+after day playing cards with the wretch Ramiro, whom, for no fault of
+his own, God had chosen out to be his parent. By the way, why was the
+man so fond of playing cards? And what was the meaning of all that
+nonsense about notes of hand? Yes, here he must sit, and for company he
+had the sense of his unalterable shame, the memory of his mother's face
+as she spurned and rejected him, the vision of the woman whom he loved
+and had lost, and--the ghost of Dirk van Goorl.
+
+He shivered as he thought of it; yes, his hair lifted and his lip
+twitched involuntarily, for to Adrian's racked nerves and distorted
+vision this ghost of the good man whom he had betrayed was no child of
+phantasy. He had woken in the night and seen it standing at his bedside,
+plague-defiled and hunger-wasted, and because of it he dreaded to sleep
+alone, especially in that creaking, rat-haunted mill, whose very board
+seemed charged with some tale of death and blood. Heavens! At this very
+moment he thought he could hear that dead voice calling down the
+gale. No, it must be the curlew, but at least he would be going home.
+Home--that place home--with not even a priest near to confess to and be
+comforted!
+
+Thanks be to the Saints! the wind had dropped a little, but now in place
+of it came the snow, dense, whirling, white; so dense indeed that he
+could scarcely see his path. What an end that would be, to be frozen to
+death in the snow on these sand-hills while the spirit of Dirk van Goorl
+sat near and watched him die with those hollow, hungry eyes. The sweat
+came upon Adrian's forehead at the thought, and he broke into a run,
+heading for the bank of the great dyke that pierced the dunes half a
+mile or so away, which bank must, he knew, lead him to the mill. He
+reached it and trudged along what had been the towpath, though now it
+was overgrown with weeds and rushes. It was not a pleasant journey, for
+the twilight had closed in with speed and the thick flakes, that seemed
+to heap into his face and sting him, turned it into a darkness
+mottled with faint white. Still he stumbled forward with bent head and
+close-wrapped cloak till he judged that he must be near to the mill, and
+halted staring through the gloom.
+
+Just then the snow ceased for a while and light crept back to the cold
+face of the earth, showing Adrian that he had done well to halt. In
+front of where he stood, within a few paces of his feet indeed, for a
+distance of quite twenty yards the lower part of the bank had slipped
+away, washed from the stone core with which it was faced at this
+point, by a slow and neglected percolation of water. Had he walked on
+therefore, he would have fallen his own height or more into a slough of
+mud, whence he might, or might not have been able to extricate himself.
+As it was, however, by such light as remained he could crawl upon the
+coping of the stonework which was still held in place with old struts
+of timber that, until they had been denuded by the slow and constant
+leakage, were buried and supported in the vanished earthwork. It was not
+a pleasant bridge, for to the right lay the mud-bottomed gulf, and to
+the left, almost level with his feet, were the black and peaty waters of
+the rain-fed dyke pouring onwards to the sea.
+
+"Next flood this will go," thought Adrian to himself, "and then the
+marsh must become a mere which will be bad for whomever happens to be
+living in the Red Mill." He was on firm ground again now, and there,
+looming tall and spectral against the gloom, not five hundred yards
+away, rose the gaunt sails of the mill. To reach it he walked on six
+score paces or more to the little landing-quay, where a raised path ran
+to the building. As he drew near to it he was astonished to hear the
+rattle of oars working in rollocks and a man's voice say:
+
+"Steady, here is the place, praise the Saints! Now, then, out passengers
+and let us be gone."
+
+Adrian, whom events had made timid, drew beneath the shadow of the bank
+and watched, while from the dim outline of the boat arose three figures,
+or rather two figures arose, dragging the third between them.
+
+"Hold her," said a voice that seemed familiar, "while I give these men
+their hire," and there followed a noise of clinking coin, mingled with
+some oaths and grumbling about the weather and the distance, which were
+abated with more coin. Then again the oars rattled and the boat was
+pushed off, whereon a sweet voice cried in agonised tones:
+
+"Sirs, you who have wives and daughters, will you leave me in the hands
+of these wretches? In the name of God take pity upon my helplessness."
+
+"It is a shame, and she so fair a maid," grumbled another thick and
+raucous voice, but the steersman cried, "Mind your business, Marsh Jan.
+We have done our job and got our pay, so leave the gentry to settle
+their own love affairs. Good night to you, passengers; give way, give
+way," and the boat swung round and vanished into the gloom.
+
+For a moment Adrian's heart stood still; then he sprang forward to see
+before him Hague Simon, the Butcher, Black Meg his wife, and between
+them a bundle wrapped in shawls.
+
+"What is this?" he asked.
+
+"You ought to know, Heer Adrian," answered Black Meg with a chuckle,
+"seeing that this charming piece of goods has been brought all the way
+from Leyden, regardless of expense, for your especial benefit."
+
+The bundle lifted its head, and the faint light shone upon the white and
+terrified face of--Elsa Brant.
+
+"May God reward you for this evil deed, Adrian, called van Goorl," said
+the pitiful voice.
+
+"This deed! What deed?" he stammered in answer. "I know nothing of it,
+Elsa Brant."
+
+"You know nothing of it? Yet it was done in your name, and you are
+here to receive me, who was kidnapped as I walked outside Leyden to be
+dragged hither with force by these monsters. Oh! have you no heart and
+no fear of judgment that you can speak thus?"
+
+"Free her," roared Adrian, rushing at the Butcher to see a knife
+gleaming in his hand and another in that of Black Meg.
+
+"Stop your nonsense, Master Adrian, and stand back. If you have anything
+to say, say it to your father, the Count. Come, let us pass, for we are
+cold and weary," and taking Elsa by the elbows they brushed past him,
+nor, indeed, even had he not been too bewildered to interfere, could
+Adrian have stayed them, for he was unarmed. Besides, where would be
+the use, seeing that the boat had gone and that they were alone on a
+winter's night in the wind-swept wilderness, with no refuge for miles
+save such as the mill house could afford. So Adrian bent his head, for
+the snow had begun to fall again, and, sick at heart, followed them
+along the path. Now he understood at length why they had come to the Red
+Mill.
+
+Simon opened the door and entered, but Elsa hung back at its ill-omened
+threshold. She even tried to struggle a little, poor girl, whereon the
+ruffian in front jerked her towards him with an oath, so that she caught
+her foot and fell upon her face. This was too much for Adrian. Springing
+forward he struck the Butcher full in the mouth with his fist, and
+next moment they were rolling over and over each other upon the floor,
+struggling fiercely for the knife which Simon held.
+
+During all her life Elsa never forgot that scene. Behind her the howling
+blackness of the night and the open door, through which flake by flake
+the snow leapt into the light. In front the large round room, fashioned
+from the basement of the mill, lit only by the great fire of turfs and a
+single horn lantern, hung from the ceiling that was ribbed with beams
+of black and massive oak. And there, in this forbidding, naked-looking
+place, that rocked and quivered as the gale caught the tall arms of the
+mill above, seated by the hearth in a rude chair of wood and sleeping,
+one man, Ramiro, the Spanish sleuth-hound, who had hunted down her
+father, he whom above every other she held in horror and in hate; and
+two, Adrian and the spy, at death-grips on the floor, between them the
+sheen of a naked knife.
+
+Such was the picture.
+
+Ramiro awoke at the noise, and there was fear on his face as though some
+ill dream lingered in his brain. Next instant he saw and understood.
+
+"I will run the man through who strikes another blow," he said, in a
+cold clear voice as he drew his sword. "Stand up, you fools, and tell me
+what this means."
+
+"It means that this brute beast but now threw Elsa Brant upon her face,"
+gasped Adrian as he rose, "and I punished him."
+
+"It is a lie," hissed the other; "I pulled the minx on, that is all, and
+so would you have done, if you had been cursed with such a wild-cat for
+four-and-twenty hours. Why, when we took her she was more trouble to
+hold than any man."
+
+"Oh! I understand," interrupted Ramiro, who had recovered his composure;
+"a little maidenly reluctance, that is all, my worthy Simon, and as for
+this young gentleman, a little lover-like anxiety--doubtless in bygone
+years you have felt the same," and he glanced mockingly at Black Meg.
+"So do not be too ready to take offence, good Simon. Youth will be
+youth."
+
+"And Youth will get a knife between its ribs if it is not careful,"
+grumbled Hague Simon, as he spat out a piece of broken tooth.
+
+"Why am I brought here, Senor," broke in Elsa, "in defiance of laws and
+justice?"
+
+"Laws! Mejufvrouw, I did not know that there were any left in the
+Netherlands; justice! well, all is fair in love and war, as any lady
+will admit. And the reason why--I think you must ask Adrian, he knows
+more about it than I do."
+
+"He says that he knows nothing, Senor."
+
+"Does he, the rogue? Does he indeed? Well, it would be rude to
+contradict him, wouldn't it, so I for one unreservedly accept his
+statement that he knows nothing, and I advise you to do the same. No,
+no, my boy, do not trouble to explain, we all quite understand. Now, my
+good dame," he went on addressing the serving-woman who had entered
+the place, "take this young lady to the best room you have above. And,
+listen, both of you, she is to be treated with all kindness, do you
+hear, for if any harm comes to her, either at your hands or her own,
+by Heaven! you shall pay for it to the last drop of your blood. Now, no
+excuses and--no mistakes."
+
+The two women, Meg and the other, nodded and motioned to Elsa to
+accompany them. She considered a moment, looking first at Ramiro and
+next at Adrian. Then her head dropped upon her breast, and turning
+without a word she followed them up the creaking oaken stair that rose
+from a niche near the wall of the ingle-nook.
+
+"Father," said Adrian when the massive door had closed behind her and
+they were left alone--"father--for I suppose that I must call you so."
+
+"There is not the slightest necessity," broke in Ramiro; "facts, my dear
+son, need not always be paraded in the cold light of day--fortunately.
+But, proceed."
+
+"What does all this mean?"
+
+"I wish I could tell you. It appears to mean, however, that without any
+effort upon your part, for you seem to me a young man singularly devoid
+of resource, your love affairs are prospering beyond expectation."
+
+"I have had nothing to do with the business; I wash my hands of it."
+
+"That is as well. Some sensitive people might think they need a deal
+of washing. You young fool," he went on, dropping his mocking manner,
+"listen to me. You are in love with this pink and white piece of goods,
+and I have brought her here for you to marry."
+
+"And I refuse to marry her against her will."
+
+"As to that you can please yourself. But somebody has got to marry
+her--you, or I."
+
+"You--_you!_" gasped Adrian.
+
+"Quite so. The adventure is not one, to be frank, that attracts me. At
+my age memories are sufficient. But material interests must be attended
+to, so if you decline--well, I am still eligible and hearty. Do you see
+the point?"
+
+"No, what is it?"
+
+"It is a sound title to the inheritance of the departed Hendrik Brant.
+That wealth we might, it is true, obtain by artifice or by arms; but how
+much better that it should come into the family in a regular fashion,
+thereby ousting the claim of the Crown. Things in this country are
+disturbed at present, but they will not always be disturbed, for in the
+end somebody must give way and order will prevail. Then questions might
+be asked, for persons in possession of great riches are always the mark
+of envy. But if the heiress is married to a good Catholic and loyal
+subject of the king, who can cavil at rights sanctified by the laws of
+God and man? Think it over, my dear Adrian, think it over. Step-mother
+or wife--you can take your choice."
+
+With impotent rage, with turmoil of heart and torment of conscience,
+Adrian did think it over. All that night he thought, tossing on his
+rat-haunted pallet, while without the snow whirled and the wind beat. If
+he did not marry Elsa, his father would, and there could be no doubt as
+to which of these alternatives would be best and happiest for her.
+Elsa married to that wicked, cynical, devil-possessed, battered,
+fortune-hunting adventurer with a nameless past! This must be
+prevented at any cost. With his father her lot _must_ be a hell; with
+himself--after a period of storm and doubt perhaps--it could scarcely
+be other than happy, for was he not young, handsome, sympathetic,
+and--devoted? Ah! there was the real point. He loved this lady with all
+the earnestness of which his nature was capable, and the thought of her
+passing into the possession of another man gave him the acutest anguish.
+That the man should be Foy, his half-brother, was bad enough; that it
+should be Ramiro, his father, was insupportable.
+
+At breakfast the following morning, when Elsa did not appear, the pair
+met.
+
+"You look pale, Adrian," said his father presently. "I fear that this
+wild weather kept you awake last night, as it did me, although at your
+age I have slept through the roar of a battle. Well, have you thought
+over our conversation? I do not wish to trouble you with these incessant
+family matters, but times presses, and it is necessary to decide."
+
+Adrian looked out of the lattice at the snow, which fell and fell
+without pause. Then he turned and said:
+
+"Yes. Of the two it is best that she should marry me, though I think
+that such a crime will bring its own reward."
+
+"Wise young man," answered his father. "Under all your cloakings of
+vagary I observe that you have a foundation of common-sense, just as the
+giddiest weathercock is bedded on a stone. As for the reward, considered
+properly it seems to be one upon which I can heartily congratulate you."
+
+"Peace to that talk," said Adrian, angrily; "you forget that there are
+two parties to such a contract; her consent must be gained, and I will
+not ask it."
+
+"No? Then I will; a few arguments occur to me. Now look here, friend, we
+have struck a bargain, and you will be so good as to keep it or to take
+the consequences--oh! never mind what they are. I will bring this lady
+to the altar--or, rather, to that table, and you will marry her, after
+which you can settle matters just exactly as you please; live with her
+as your wife, or make your bow and walk away, which, I care nothing so
+long as you are married. Now I am weary of all this talk, so be so good
+as to leave me in peace on the subject."
+
+Adrian looked at him, opened his lips to speak, then changed his mind
+and marched out of the house into the blinding snow.
+
+"Thank Heaven he is gone at last!" reflected his father, and called for
+Hague Simon, with whom he held a long and careful interview.
+
+"You understand?" he ended.
+
+"I understand," answered Simon, sulkily. "I am to find this priest,
+who should be waiting at the place you name, and to bring him here by
+nightfall to-morrow, which is a rough job for a Christian man in such
+weather as this."
+
+"The pay, friend Simon, remember the pay."
+
+"Oh! yes, it all sounds well enough, but I should like something on
+account."
+
+"You shall have it--is not such a labourer worthy of his hire?" replied
+his employer with enthusiasm, and producing from his pocket the purse
+which Lysbeth had given Adrian, with a smile of peculiar satisfaction,
+for really the thing had a comic side, he counted a handsome sum into
+the hand of this emissary of Venus.
+
+Simon looked at the money, concluded, after some reflection, that it
+would scarcely do to stand out for more at present, pouched it, and
+having wrapped himself in a thick frieze coat, opened the door and
+vanished into the falling snow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE BRIDE
+
+The day passed, and through every hour of it the snow fell incessantly.
+Night came, and it was still falling in large, soft flakes that floated
+to the earth gently as thistledown, for now there was no wind. Adrian
+met his father at meals only; the rest of the day he preferred to spend
+out of doors in the snow, or hanging about the old sheds at the back of
+the mill, rather than endure the society of this terrible man; this
+man of mocking words and iron purpose, who was forcing him into the
+commission of a great crime.
+
+It was at breakfast on the following morning that Ramiro inquired of
+Black Mag whether the Jufvrouw Brant had sufficiently recovered from
+the fatigues of her journey to honour them with her presence. The woman
+replied that she absolutely refused to leave her room, or even to speak
+more than was necessary.
+
+"Then," said Ramiro, "as it is important that I should have a few words
+with her, be so good as to tell the young lady, with my homage, that
+I will do myself the honour of waiting on her in the course of the
+forenoon."
+
+Meg departed on her errand, and Adrian looked up suspiciously.
+
+"Calm yourself, young friend," said his father, "although the interview
+will be private, you have really no cause for jealousy. At present,
+remember, I am but the second string in the bow-case, the understudy who
+has learnt the part, a humble position, but one which may prove useful."
+
+At all of which gibes Adrian winced. But he did not reply, for by now he
+had learned that he was no match for his father's bitter wit.
+
+Elsa received the message as she received everything else, in silence.
+
+Three days before, as after a fearful illness during which on several
+occasions she was at the very doors of death, Lysbeth van Goorl had been
+declared out of danger, Elsa, her nurse, ventured to leave her for a few
+hours. That evening the town seemed to stifle her and, feeling that she
+needed the air of the country, she passed the Morsch poort and walked a
+little way along the banks of the canal, never noticing, poor girl, that
+her footsteps were dogged. When it began to grow dusk, she halted and
+stood a while gazing towards the Haarlemer Meer, letting her heart go
+out to the lover who, as she thought and hoped, within a day or two
+would be at her side.
+
+Then it was that something was thrown over her head, and for a while all
+was black. She awoke to find herself lying in a boat, and watching her,
+two wretches, whom she recognised as those who had assailed her when
+first she came to Leyden from The Hague.
+
+"Why have you kidnapped me, and where am I going?" she asked.
+
+"Because we are paid to do it, and you are going to Adrian van Goorl,"
+was the answer.
+
+Then she understood, and was silent.
+
+Thus they brought her to this lonesome, murderous-looking place, where
+sure enough Adrian was waiting for her, waiting with a lie upon his
+lips. Now, doubtless, the end was at hand. She, who loved his brother
+with all her heart and soul, was to be given forcibly in marriage to a
+man whom she despised and loathed, the vain, furious-tempered traitor,
+who, for revenge, jealousy, or greed, she knew not which, had not
+hesitated to send his benefactor, and mother's husband, to perish in the
+fires of the Inquisition.
+
+What was she to do? Escape seemed out of the question, imprisoned as
+she was on the third story of a lofty mill standing in a lonely,
+snow-shrouded wilderness, cut off from the sight of every friendly face,
+and spied on hour after hour by two fierce-eyed women. No, there was
+only one escape for her--through the gate of death. Even this would be
+difficult, for she had no weapon, and day and night the women kept guard
+over her, one standing sentinel, while the other slept. Moreover, she
+had no mind to die, being young and healthy, with a love to live for,
+and from her childhood up she had been taught that self-slaughter is a
+sin. No, she would trust in God, and overwhelming though it was, fight
+her way through this trouble as best she might. The helpless find
+friends sometimes. Therefore, that her strength might be preserved, Elsa
+rested and ate of her food, and drank the wine which they brought to
+her, refusing to leave the room, or to speak more than she was obliged,
+but watching everything that passed.
+
+On the second morning of her imprisonment Ramiro's message reached
+her, to which, as usual, she made no answer. In due course also Ramiro
+himself arrived, and stood bowing in the doorway.
+
+"Have I your permission to enter, Jufvrouw?" he asked. Then Elsa,
+knowing that the moment of trial had come, steeled herself for the
+encounter.
+
+"You are master here," she answered, in a voice cold as the falling snow
+without, "why then do you mock me?"
+
+He motioned to the women to leave the room, and when they had gone,
+replied:
+
+"I have little thought of such a thing, lady; the matter in hand is too
+serious for smart sayings," and with another bow he sat himself down on
+a chair near the hearth, where a fire was burning. Whereon Elsa rose and
+stood over against him, for upon her feet she seemed to feel stronger.
+
+"Will you be so good as to set out this matter, Senor Ramiro? Am I
+brought here to be tried for heresy?"
+
+"Even so, for heresy against the god of love, and the sentence of the
+Court is that you must expiate your sin, not at the stake, but at the
+altar."
+
+"I do not understand."
+
+"Then I will explain. My son Adrian, a worthy young man on the
+whole--you know that he _is_ my son, do you not?--has had the
+misfortune, or I should say the good fortune, to fall earnestly in
+love with you, whereas you have the bad taste--or, perhaps, the good
+taste--to give your affections elsewhere. Under the circumstances,
+Adrian, being a youth of spirit and resource, has fallen back upon
+primitive methods in order to bring his suit to a successful conclusion.
+He is here, you are here, and this evening I understand that the priest
+will be here. I need not dwell upon the obvious issue; indeed, it is a
+private matter upon which I have no right to intrude, except, of course,
+as a relative and a well-wisher."
+
+Elsa made an impatient movement with her hand, as though to brush aside
+all this web of words.
+
+"Why do you take so much trouble to force an unhappy girl into a hateful
+marriage?" she asked. "How can such a thing advantage you?"
+
+"Ah!" answered Ramiro briskly, "I perceive I have to do with a woman
+of business, one who has that rarest of gifts--common sense. I will
+be frank. Your esteemed father died possessed of a very large fortune,
+which to-day is your property as his sole issue and heiress. Under the
+marriage laws, which I myself think unjust, that fortune will pass into
+the power of any husband whom you choose to take. Therefore, so soon as
+you are made his wife it will pass to Adrian. I am Adrian's father,
+and, as it happens, he is pecuniarily indebted to me to a considerable
+amount, so that, in the upshot, as he himself has pointed out more than
+once, this alliance will provide for both of us. But business details
+are wearisome, so I need not enlarge."
+
+"The fortune you speak of, Senor Ramiro, is lost."
+
+"It is lost, but I have reason to hope that it will be found."
+
+"You mean that this is purely a matter of money?"
+
+"So far as I am concerned, purely. For Adrian's feelings I cannot speak,
+since who knows the mystery of another's heart?"
+
+"Then, if the money were forthcoming--or a clue to it--there need be no
+marriage?"
+
+"So far as I am concerned, none at all."
+
+"And if the money is not forthcoming, and I refuse to marry the Heer
+Adrian, or he to marry me--what then?"
+
+"That is a riddle, but I think I see an answer at any rate to half
+of it. Then the marriage would still take place, but with another
+bridegroom."
+
+"Another bridegroom! Who?"
+
+"Your humble and devoted adorer."
+
+Elsa shuddered and recoiled a step.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "I should not have bowed, you saw my white hairs--to the
+young a hateful sight."
+
+Elsa's indignation rose, and she answered:
+
+"It is not your white hair that I shrink from, Senor, which in some
+would be a crown of honour, but----"
+
+"In my case suggests to you other reflections. Be gentle and spare me
+them. In a world of rough actions, what need to emphasise them with
+rough words?"
+
+For a few minutes there was silence, which Ramiro, glancing out of the
+lattice, broke by remarking that "The snowfall was extraordinarily heavy
+for the time of year." Then followed another silence.
+
+"I understood you just now, dear lady, to make some sort of suggestion
+which might lead to an arrangement satisfactory to both of us. The exact
+locality of this wealth is at present obscure--you mentioned some clue.
+Are you in a position to furnish such a clue?"
+
+"If I am in a position, what then?"
+
+"Then, perhaps, after a few days visit to an interesting, but little
+explored part of Holland, you might return to your friends as you left
+them--in short as a single woman."
+
+A struggle shook Elsa, and do what she would some trace of it appeared
+in her face.
+
+"Do you swear that?" she whispered.
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+"Do you swear before God that if you have this clue you will not force
+me into a marriage with the Heer Adrian, or with yourself--that you will
+let me go, unharmed?"
+
+"I swear it--before God."
+
+"Knowing that God will be revenged upon you if you break the oath, you
+still swear?"
+
+"I still swear. Why these needless repetitions?"
+
+"Then--then," and she leant towards him, speaking in a hoarse whisper,
+"believing that you, even you, will not dare to be false to such
+an oath, for you, even you, must fear death, a miserable death, and
+vengeance, eternal vengeance, I give you the clue: It lies in the hilt
+of the sword Silence."
+
+"The sword Silence? What sword is that?"
+
+"The great sword of Red Martin."
+
+Stirred out of his self-control, Ramiro struck his hand upon his knee.
+
+"And to think," he said, "that for over twelve hours I had it hanging
+on the wall of the Gevangenhuis! Well, I fear that I must ask you to be
+more explicit. Where is this sword?"
+
+"Wherever Red Martin is, that is all I know. I can tell you no more; the
+plan of the hiding-place is there."
+
+"Or was there. Well, I believe you, but to win a secret from the hilt of
+the sword of the man who broke his way out of the torture-chamber of the
+Gevangenhuis, is a labour that would have been not unworthy of Hercules.
+First, Red Martin must be found, then his sword must be taken, which,
+I think, will cost men their lives. Dear lady, I am obliged for your
+information, but I fear that the marriage must still go through."
+
+"You swore, you swore," she gasped, "you swore before God!"
+
+"Quite so, and I shall leave--the Power you refer to--to manage the
+matter. Doubtless He can attend to His own affairs--I must attend to
+mine. I hope that about seven o'clock this evening will suit you, by
+which time the priest and--a bridegroom will be ready."
+
+Then Elsa broke down.
+
+"Devil!" she cried in the torment of her despair. "To save my honour I
+have betrayed my father's trust; I have betrayed the secret for which
+Martin was ready to die by torment, and given him over to be hunted like
+a wild beast. Oh! God forgive me, and God help me!"
+
+"Doubtless, dear young lady, He will do the first, for your temptations
+were really considerable; I, who have more experience, outwitted you,
+that was all. Possibly, also, He may do the second, though many have
+uttered that cry unheard. For my own sake, I trust that He was sleeping
+when you uttered yours. But it is your affair and His; I leave it to be
+arranged between you. Till this evening, Jufvrouw," and he bowed himself
+from the room.
+
+But Elsa, shamed and broken-hearted, threw herself upon the bed and
+wept.
+
+At mid-day she arose, hearing upon the stair the step of the woman who
+brought her food, and to hide her tear-stained face went to the barred
+lattice and looked out. The scene was dismal indeed, for the wind
+had veered suddenly, the snow had ceased, and in place of it rain was
+falling with a steady persistence. When the woman had gone, Elsa washed
+her face, and although her appetite turned from it, ate of the food,
+knowing how necessary it was that she should keep her strength.
+
+Another hour passed, and there came a knock on the door. Elsa shuddered,
+for she thought that Ramiro had returned to torment her. Indeed it was
+almost a relief when, instead of him, appeared his son. Once glance at
+Adrian's nervous, shaken face, yes, and even the sound of his uncertain
+step brought hope to her heart. Her woman's instinct told her that now
+she had no longer to do with the merciless and terrible Ramiro, to whose
+eyes she was but a pretty pawn in a game that he must win, but with
+a young man who loved her, and whom she held, therefore, at a
+disadvantage--with one, moreover, who was harassed and ashamed, and
+upon whose conscience, therefore, she might work. She turned upon him,
+drawing herself up, and although she was short and Adrian was tall, of a
+sudden he felt as though she towered over him.
+
+"Your pleasure?" asked Elsa.
+
+In the old days Adrian would have answered with some magnificent
+compliment, or far-fetched simile lifted from the pages of romancers.
+In truth he had thought of several such while, like a half-starved dog
+seeking a home, he wandered round and round the mill-house in the snow.
+But he was now far beyond all rhetoric or gallantries.
+
+"My father wished," he began humbly--"I mean that I have come to speak
+to you about--our marriage."
+
+Of a sudden Elsa's delicate features seemed to turn to ice, while, to
+his fancy at any rate, her brown eyes became fire.
+
+"Marriage," she said in a strange voice. "Oh! what an unutterable coward
+you must be to speak that word. Call what is proposed by any foul title
+which you will, but at least leave the holy name of marriage undefiled."
+
+"It is not my fault," he answered sullenly, but shrinking beneath her
+words. "You know, Elsa, that I wished to wed you honourably enough."
+
+"Yes," she broke in, "and because I would not listen, because you do not
+please me, and you could not win me as a man wins a maid, you--you laid
+a trap and kidnapped me, thinking to get by brute force that which my
+heart withheld. Oh! in all the Netherlands lives there another such
+an abject as Adrian called van Goorl, the base-born son of Ramiro the
+galley slave?"
+
+"I have told you that it is false," he replied furiously. "I had nothing
+to do with your capture. I knew nothing of it till I saw you here."
+
+Elsa laughed a very bitter laugh. "Spare your breath," she said, "for if
+you swore it before the face of the recording Angel I would not believe
+you. Remember that you are the man who betrayed your brother and your
+benefactor, and then guess, if you can, what worth I put upon your
+words."
+
+In the bitterness of his heart Adrian groaned aloud, and from that groan
+Elsa, listening eagerly, gathered some kind of hope.
+
+"Surely," she went on, with a changed and softened manner, "surely you
+will not do this wickedness. The blood of Dirk van Goorl lies on your
+head; will you add mine to his? For be sure of this, I swear it by my
+Maker, that before I am indeed a wife to you I shall be dead--or mayhap
+you will be dead, or both of us. Do you understand?"
+
+"I understand, but----"
+
+"But what? Where is the use of this wickedness? For your soul's sake,
+refuse to have aught to do with such a sin."
+
+"But if so, my father will marry you."
+
+It was a chance arrow, but it went home, for of a sudden Elsa's strength
+and eloquence seemed to leave her. She ran to him with her hands
+clasped, she flung herself upon her knees.
+
+"Oh! help me to escape," she moaned, "and I will bless you all my life."
+
+"It is impossible," he answered. "Escape from this guarded place,
+through those leagues of melting snow? I tell you that it is
+impossible."
+
+"Then," and her eyes grew wild, "then kill him and free me. He is a
+devil, he is your evil genius; it would be a righteous deed. Kill him
+and free me."
+
+"I should like to," answered Adrian; "I nearly did once, but, for my
+soul's sake, I can't put a sword through my own father; it is the most
+horrible of crimes. When I confessed----"
+
+"Then," she broke in, "if this farce, this infamy must be gone through,
+swear at least that you will treat it as such, that you will respect
+me."
+
+"It is a hard thing to ask of a husband who loves you more than any
+woman in the world," he answered turning aside his head.
+
+"Remember," she went on, with another flash of defiant spirit, "that
+if you do not, you will soon love me better than any woman out of the
+world, or perhaps we shall both settle what lies between us before the
+Judgment Seat of God. Will you swear?"
+
+He hesitated.
+
+Oh! she reflected, what if he should answer--"Rather than this I hand
+you over to Ramiro"? What if he should think of that argument? Happily
+for her, at the moment he did not.
+
+"Swear," she implored, "swear," clinging with her hands to the lappet of
+his coat and lifting to him her white and piteous face.
+
+"I make it an offering in expiation of my sins," he groaned, "you shall
+go free of me."
+
+Elsa uttered a sigh of relief. She put no faith whatever in Adrian's
+promises, but at the worst it would give her time.
+
+"I thought that I should not appeal in vain----"
+
+"To so amusing and egregious a donkey," said Ramiro's mocking voice
+speaking from the gloom of the doorway, which now Elsa observed for the
+first time had swung open mysteriously.
+
+"My dear son and daughter-in-law, how can I thank you sufficiently for
+the entertainment with which you have enlivened one of the most dreary
+afternoons I remember. Don't look dangerous, my boy; recall what you
+have just told this young lady, that the crime of removing a parent is
+one which, though agreeable, is not lightly to be indulged. Then, as to
+your future arrangements, how touching! The soul of a Diana, I declare,
+and the self-sacrifice of a--no, I fear that the heroes of antiquity
+can furnish no suitable example. And now, adieu, I go to welcome the
+gentleman you both of you so eagerly expect."
+
+He went, and a minute later without speaking, for the situation seemed
+beyond words, Adrian crept down the stairs after him, more miserable and
+crushed even than he had crept up them half an hour before.
+
+
+
+Another two hours went by. Elsa was in her apartment with Black Meg for
+company, who watched her as a cat watches a mouse in a trap. Adrian had
+taken refuge in the place where he slept above. It was a dreary, vacuous
+chamber, that once had held stones and other machinery of the mill now
+removed, the home of spiders and half-starved rats, that a lean black
+cat hunted continually. Across its ceiling ran great beams, whereof the
+interlacing ends, among which sharp draughts whistled, lost themselves
+in gloom, while, with an endless and exasperating sound, as of a knuckle
+upon a board, the water dripped from the leaky roof.
+
+In the round living-chamber below Ramiro was alone. No lamp had been
+lit, but the glow from the great turf fire played upon his face as he
+sat there, watching, waiting, and scheming in the chair of black oak.
+Presently a noise from without caught his quick ear, and calling to the
+serving woman to light the lamp, he went to the door, opened it, and saw
+a lantern floating towards him through the thick steam of falling rain.
+Another minute and the bearer of the lantern, Hague Simon, arrived,
+followed by two other men.
+
+"Here he is," said Simon, nodding at the figure behind him, a short
+round figure wrapped in a thick frieze cloak, from which water ran. "The
+other is the head boatman."
+
+"Good," said Ramiro. "Tell him and his companions to wait in the shed
+without, where liquor will be sent to them; they may be wanted later
+on."
+
+Then followed talk and oaths, and at length the man retreated grumbling.
+
+"Enter, Father Thomas," said Ramiro; "you have had a wet journey, I
+fear. Enter and give us your blessing."
+
+Before he answered the priest threw off his dripping, hooded cape of
+Frisian cloth, revealing a coarse, wicked face, red and blear-eyed from
+intemperance.
+
+"My blessing?" he said in a raucous voice. "Here it is, Senor Ramiro,
+or whatever you call yourself now. Curse you all for bringing out a holy
+priest upon one of your devil's errands in weather which is only fit
+for a bald-headed coot to travel through. There is going to be a flood;
+already the water is running over the banks of the dam, and it gathers
+every moment as the snow melts. I tell you there is going to be such a
+flood as we have not seen for years."
+
+"The more reason, Father, for getting through this little business
+quickly; but first you will wish for something to drink."
+
+Father Thomas nodded, and Ramiro filling a small mug with brandy, gave
+it to him. He gulped it off.
+
+"Another," he said. "Don't be afraid. A chosen vessel should also be a
+seasoned vessel; at any rate this one is. Ah! that's better. Now then,
+what's the exact job?"
+
+Ramiro took him apart and they talked together for a while.
+
+"Very good," said the priest at length, "I will take the risk and do
+it, for where heretics are concerned such things are not too closely
+inquired into nowadays. But first down with the money; no paper or
+promises, if you please."
+
+"Ah! you churchmen," said Ramiro, with a faint smile, "in things
+spiritual or temporal how much have we poor laity to learn of you!" With
+a sigh he produced the required sum, then paused and added, "No; with
+your leave we will see the papers first. You have them with you?"
+
+"Here they are," answered the priest, drawing some documents from his
+pocket. "But they haven't been married yet; the rule is, marry first,
+then certify. Until the ceremony is actually performed, anything might
+happen, you know."
+
+"Quite so, Father. Anything might happen either before or after; but
+still, with your leave, I think that in this case we may as well certify
+first; you might want to be getting away, and it will save so much
+trouble later. Will you be so kind as to write your certificate?"
+
+Father Thomas hesitated, while Ramiro gently clinked the gold coins in
+his hand and murmured,
+
+"I should be sorry to think, Father, that you had taken such a rough
+journey for nothing."
+
+"What trick are you at now?" growled the priest. "Well, after all it is
+a mere form. Give me the names."
+
+Ramiro gave them; Father Thomas scrawled them down, adding some words
+and his own signature, then said, "There you are, that will hold good
+against anyone except the Pope."
+
+"A mere form," repeated Ramiro, "of course. But the world attaches
+so much importance to forms, so I think that we will have this one
+witnessed--No, not by myself, who am an interested party--by someone
+independent," and calling Hague Simon and the waiting-woman he bade them
+set their names at the foot of the documents.
+
+"Papers signed in advance--fees paid in advance!" he went on, handing
+over the money, "and now, just one more glass to drink the health of
+the bride and bridegroom, also in advance. You will not refuse, nor you,
+worthy Simon, nor you, most excellent Abigail. Ah! I thought not, the
+night is cold."
+
+"And the brandy strong," muttered the priest thickly, as this third dose
+of raw spirit took effect upon him. "Now get on with the business, for I
+want to be out of this hole before the flood comes."
+
+"Quite so. Friends, will you be so good as to summon my son and the
+lady? The lady first, I think--and all three of you might go to escort
+her. Brides sometimes consider it right to fain a slight reluctance--you
+understand? On second thoughts, you need not trouble the Senor Adrian. I
+have a new words of ante-nuptial advice to offer, so I will go to him."
+
+A minute later father and son stood face to face. Adrian leaped up; he
+shook his fist, he raved and stormed at the cold, impassive man before
+him.
+
+"You fool, you contemptible fool!" said Ramiro when he had done.
+"Heavens! to think that such a creature should have sprung from me, a
+human jackass only fit to bear the blows and burdens of others, to fill
+the field with empty brayings, and wear himself out by kicking at the
+air. Oh! don't twist up your face at me, for I am your master as well as
+your father, however much you may hate me. You are mine, body and soul,
+don't you understand; a bond-slave, nothing more. You lost the only
+chance you ever had in the game when you got me down at Leyden. You
+daren't draw a sword on me again for your soul's sake, dear Adrian, for
+your soul's sake; and if you dared, I would run you through. Now, are
+you coming?"
+
+"No," answered Adrian.
+
+"Think a minute. If you don't marry her I shall, and before she is half
+an hour older; also--" and he leant forward and whispered into his son's
+ear.
+
+"Oh! you devil, you devil!" Adrian gasped; then he moved towards the
+door.
+
+"What? Changed your mind, have you, Mr. Weathercock? Well, it is the
+prerogative of all feminine natures--but, your doublet is awry, and
+allow me to suggest that you should brush your hair. There, that's
+better; now, come on. No, you go first, if you please, I'd rather have
+you in front of me."
+
+When they reached the room below the bride was already there. Gripped
+on either side by Black Meg and the other woman, white as death and
+trembling, but still defiant, stood Elsa.
+
+"Let's get through with this," growled the half-drunken, ruffian priest.
+"I take the willingness of the parties for granted."
+
+"I am not willing," cried Elsa. "I have been brought here by force. I
+call everyone present to witness that whatever is done is against my
+will. I appeal to God to help me."
+
+The priest turned upon Ramiro.
+
+"How am I to marry them in the face of this?" he asked. "If only she
+were silent it might be done----"
+
+"The difficulty has occurred to me," answered Ramiro. He made a sign,
+whereon Simon seized Elsa's wrists, and Black Meg, slipping behind her,
+deftly fastened a handkerchief over her mouth in such fashion that she
+was gagged, but could still breathe through the nostrils.
+
+Elsa struggled a little, then was quiet, and turned her piteous eyes on
+Adrian, who stepped forward and opened his lips.
+
+"You remember the alternative," said his father in a low voice, and he
+stopped.
+
+"I suppose," broke in Father Thomas, "that we may at any rate reckon
+upon the consent, or at least upon the silence of the Heer bridegroom."
+
+"You may reckon on his silence, Father Thomas," replied Ramiro.
+
+Then the ceremony began. They dragged Elsa to the table. Thrice she
+flung herself to the ground, and thrice they lifted her to her feet, but
+at length, weary of the weight of her body, suffered her to rest upon
+her knees, where she remained as though in prayer, gagged like some
+victim on the scaffold. It was a strange and brutal scene, and every
+detail of it burned itself into Adrian's mind. The round, rude room,
+with its glowing fire of turfs and its rough, oaken furniture, half in
+light and half in dense shadow, as the lamp-rays chanced to fall; the
+death-like, kneeling bride, with a white cloth across her tortured face;
+the red-chopped, hanging-lipped hedge priest gabbling from a book, his
+back almost turned that he might not see her attitude and struggles; the
+horrible, unsexed women; the flat-faced villain, Simon, grinning by the
+hearth; Ramiro, cynical, mocking, triumphant, and yet somewhat anxious,
+his one bright eye fixed in mingled contempt and amusement upon him,
+Adrian--those were its outlines. There was something else also that
+caught and oppressed his sense, a sound which at the time Adrian thought
+he heard in his head alone, a soft, heavy sound with a moan in it, not
+unlike that of the wind, which grew gradually to a dull roar.
+
+It was over. A ring had been forced on to Elsa's unwilling hand, and,
+until the thing was undone by some competent and authorised Court, she
+was in name the wife of Adrian. The handkerchief was unbound, her hands
+were loosed, physically, Elsa was free again, but, in that day and land
+of outrage, tied, as the poor girl knew well, by a chain more terrible
+than any that hemp or steel could fashion.
+
+"Congratulations! Senora," muttered Father Thomas, eyeing her nervously.
+"I fear you felt a little faint during the service, but a sacrament----"
+
+"Cease your mockings, you false priest," cried Elsa. "Oh! let the swift
+vengeance of God fall upon every one of you, and first of all upon you,
+false priest."
+
+Drawing the ring from her finger, as she spoke she cast it down upon
+the oaken table, whence it sprang up to drop again and rattle itself to
+silence. Then with one tragic motion of despair, Elsa turned and fled
+back to her chamber.
+
+The red face of Father Thomas went white, and his yellow teeth
+chattered. "A virgin's curse," he muttered, crossing himself.
+"Misfortune always follows, and it is sometimes death--yes, by St.
+Thomas, death. And you, you brought me here to do this wickedness, you
+dog, you galley slave!"
+
+"Father," broke in Ramiro, "you know I have warned you against it before
+at The Hague; sooner or later it always breaks up the nerves," and he
+nodded towards the flagon of spirits. "Bread and water, Father, bread
+and water for forty days, that is what I prescribe, and----"
+
+As he spoke the door was burst open, and two men rushed in, their eyes
+starting, their very beards bristling with terror.
+
+"Come forth!" they cried.
+
+"What has chanced?" screamed the priest.
+
+"The great dyke has burst--hark, hark, hark! The floods are upon you,
+the mill will be swept away."
+
+God in Heaven--it was true! Now through the open doorway they heard the
+roar of waters, whose note Adrian had caught before, yes, and in the
+gloom appeared their foaming crest as they rushed through the great and
+ever-widening breach in the lofty dyke down upon the flooded lowland.
+
+Father Thomas bounded through the door yelling, "The boat, the boat!"
+For a moment Ramiro thought, considering the situation, then he said:
+
+"Fetch the Jufvrouw. No, not you, Adrian; she would die rather than come
+with you. You, Simon, and you, Meg. Swift, obey."
+
+They departed on their errand.
+
+"Men," went on Ramiro, "take this gentleman and lead him to the boat.
+Hold him if he tries to escape. I will follow with the lady. Go, you
+fool, go, there is not a second to be lost," and Adrian, hanging back
+and protesting, was dragged away by the boatmen.
+
+Now Ramiro was alone, and though, as he had said, there was little time
+to spare, again for a few moments he thought deeply. His face flushed
+and went pale; then entered into it a great resolve. "I don't like doing
+it, for it is against my vow, but the chance is good. She is safely
+married, and at best she would be very troublesome hereafter, and might
+bring us to justice or to the galleys since others seek her wealth," he
+muttered with a shiver, adding, "as for the spies, we are well rid of
+them and their evidence." Then, with swift resolution, stepping to the
+door at the foot of the stairs, Ramiro shut it and shot the great iron
+bolt!
+
+He ran from the mill; the raised path was already three feet deep in
+water; he could scarcely make his way along it. Ah! there lay the boat.
+Now he was in it, and now they were flying before the crest of a huge
+wave. The dam of the cutting had given altogether, and fed from sea and
+land at once, by snow, by rain, and by the inrush of the high tide, its
+waters were pouring in a measureless volume over the doomed marshes.
+
+"Where is Elsa?" screamed Adrian.
+
+"I don't know. I couldn't find her," answered Ramiro. "Row, row for your
+lives! We can take her off in the morning, and the priest too, if he won
+back."
+
+
+
+At length the cold winter sun rose over the watery waste, calm enough
+now, for the floods were out, in places ten and fifteen feet deep.
+Through the mists that brooded on the face of them Ramiro and his crew
+groped their way back to where the Red Mill should be. It was gone!
+
+There stood the brick walls of the bottom story rising above the flood
+level, but the wooden upper part had snapped before the first great wave
+when the bank went bodily, and afterwards been swept away by the rushing
+current, swept away with those within.
+
+"What is that?" said one of the boatmen, pointing to a dark object which
+floated among the tangled _debris_ of sere weeds and woodwork collected
+against the base of the mill.
+
+They rowed to the thing. It was the body of Father Thomas, who must have
+missed his footing as he ran along the pathway, and fallen into deep
+water.
+
+"Um!" said Ramiro, "'a virgin's curse.' Observe, friends, how the merest
+coincidences may give rise to superstition. Allow me," and, holding the
+dead man by one hand, he felt in his pockets with the other, till, with
+a smile of satisfaction, he found the purse containing the gold which he
+had paid him on the previous evening.
+
+"Oh! Elsa, Elsa," moaned Adrian.
+
+"Comfort yourself, my son," said Ramiro as the boat put about, leaving
+the dead Father Thomas bobbing up and down in the ripple; "you have
+indeed lost a wife whose temper gave you little prospect of happiness,
+but at least I have your marriage papers duly signed and witnessed,
+and--you are her heir."
+
+He did not add that he in turn was Adrian's. But Adrian thought of it,
+and even in the midst of his shame and misery wondered with a shiver how
+long he who was Ramiro's next of kin was likely to adorn this world.
+
+Till he had something that was worth inheriting, perhaps.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+WHAT ELSA SAW IN THE MOONLIGHT
+
+It will be remembered that some weeks before Elsa's forced marriage
+in the Red Mill, Foy, on their escape from the Gevangenhuis, had been
+carried upon the naked back of Martin to the shelter of Mother Martha's
+lair in the Haarlemer Meer. Here he lay sick many days, for the sword
+cut in his thigh festered so badly that at one time his life was
+threatened by gangrene, but, in the end, his own strength and healthy
+constitution, helped with Martha's simples, cured him. So soon as he was
+strong again, accompanied by Martin, he travelled into Leyden, which
+now it was safe enough for him to visit, since the Spaniards were driven
+from the town.
+
+How his young heart swelled as, still limping a little and somewhat
+pale from recent illness, he approached the well-known house in the Bree
+Straat, the home that sheltered his mother and his love. Presently he
+would see them again, for the news had been brought to him that Lysbeth
+was out of danger and Elsa must still be nursing her.
+
+Lysbeth he found indeed, turned into an old woman by grief and sore
+sickness, but Elsa he did not find. She had vanished. On the previous
+night she had gone out to take the air, and returned no more. What had
+become of her none could say. All the town talked of it, and his mother
+was half-crazed with anxiety and fear, fear of the worst.
+
+Hither and thither they went inquiring, seeking, tracking, but no trace
+of Elsa could they discover. She had been seen to pass the Morsch poort;
+then she disappeared. For a while Foy was mad. At length he grew calmer
+and began to think. Drawing from his pocket the letter which Martha had
+brought to him on the night of the church-burning, he re-read it in
+the hope of finding a clue, since it was just possible that for private
+reasons Elsa might have set out on some journey of her own. It was a
+very sweet letter, telling him of her deep joy and gratitude at his
+escape; of the events that had happened in the town; of the death of his
+father in the Gevangenhuis, and ending thus:
+
+
+"Dear Foy, my betrothed, I cannot come to you because of your mother's
+sickness, for I am sure that it would be your wish, as it is my desire
+and duty, that I should stay to nurse her. Soon, however, I hope that
+you will be able to come to her and me. Yet, in these dreadful times who
+can tell what may happen? Therefore, Foy, whatever chances, I am sure
+you will remember that in life or in death I am yours only--yes, to you,
+dead or living, you dead and I living, or you living and I dead, while
+or wherever I have sense or memory, I will be true; through life,
+through death, through whatever may lie beyond our deaths, I will be
+true as woman may be to man. So, dear Foy, for this present fare you
+well until we meet again in the days to come, or after all earthly days
+are done with for you and me. My love be with you, the blessing of God
+be with you, and when you lie down at night and when you wake at morn,
+think of me and put up a prayer for me as your true lover Elsa does for
+you. Martha waits. Most loved, most dear, most desired, fare you well."
+
+
+Here was no hint of any journey, so if such had been taken it must be
+without Elsa's own consent.
+
+"Martin, what do you make of it?" asked Foy, staring at him with
+anxious, hollow eyes.
+
+"Ramiro--Adrian--stolen away--" answered Martin.
+
+"Why do you say that?"
+
+"Hague Simon was seen hanging about outside the town yesterday, and
+there was a strange boat upon the river. Last night the Jufvrouw went
+through the Morsch poort. The rest you can guess."
+
+"Why would they take her?" asked Foy hoarsely.
+
+"Who can tell?" said Martin shrugging his great shoulders. "Yet I see
+two reasons. Hendrik Brant's wealth is supposed to be hers when it can
+be found; therefore, being a thief, Ramiro would want her. Adrian is
+in love with her; therefore, being a man, of course he would want her.
+These seem enough, the pair being what they are."
+
+"When I find them I will kill them both," said Foy, grinding his teeth.
+
+"Of course, so will I, but first we have got to find them--and her,
+which is the same thing."
+
+"How, Martin, how?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Can't you think, man?"
+
+"I am trying to, master; it's you who don't think. You talk too much. Be
+silent a while."
+
+"Well," asked Foy thirty seconds later, "have you finished thinking?"
+
+"No, master, it's no use, there is nothing to think about. We must leave
+this and go back to Martha. If anyone can track her out she can. Here we
+can learn no more."
+
+So they returned to the Haarlemer Meer and told Martha their sad tale.
+
+"Bide here a day or two and be patient," she said; "I will go out and
+search."
+
+"Never," answered Foy, "we will come with you."
+
+"If you choose, but it will make matters more difficult. Martin, get
+ready the big boat."
+
+
+
+Two nights had gone by, and it was an hour or more past noon on the
+third day, the day of Elsa's forced marriage. The snow had ceased
+falling and the rain had come instead, rain, pitiless, bitter and
+continual. Hidden in a nook at the north end of the Haarlemer Meer and
+almost buried beneath bundles of reeds, partly as a protection from the
+weather and partly to escape the eyes of Spaniards, of whom companies
+were gathering from every direction to besiege Haarlem, lay the big
+boat. In it were Red Martin and Foy van Goorl. Mother Martha was
+not there for she had gone alone to an inn at a distance, to gather
+information if she could. To hundreds of the boers in these parts she
+was a known and trusted friend, although many of them might not choose
+to recognise her openly, and from among them, unless, indeed, she had
+been taken right away to Flanders, or even to Spain, she hoped to gather
+tidings of Elsa's whereabouts.
+
+For two weary nights and days the Mare had been employed thus, but as
+yet without a shadow of success. Foy and Martin sat in the boat staring
+at each other gloomily; indeed Foy's face was piteous to see.
+
+"What are you thinking of, master?" asked Martin presently.
+
+"I am thinking," he answered, "that even if we find her now it will be
+too late; whatever was to be done, murder or marriage, will be done."
+
+"Time to trouble about that when we have found her," said Martin, for he
+knew not what else to say, and added, "listen, I hear footsteps."
+
+Foy drew apart two of the bundles of reeds and looked out into the
+driving rain.
+
+"All right," he said, "it is Martha and a man."
+
+Martin let his hand fall from the hilt of the sword Silence, for in
+those days hand and sword must be near together. Another minute and
+Martha and her companion were in the boat.
+
+"Who is this man?" asked Foy.
+
+"He is a friend of mine named Marsh Jan."
+
+"Have you news?"
+
+"Yes, at least Marsh Jan has."
+
+"Speak, and be swift," said Foy, turning on the man fiercely.
+
+"Am I safe from vengeance?" asked Marsh Jan, who was a good fellow
+enough although he had drifted into evil company, looking doubtfully at
+Foy and Martin.
+
+"Have I not said so," answered Martha, "and does the Mare break her
+word?"
+
+Then Marsh Jan told his tale: How he was one of the party that two
+nights before had rowed Elsa, or at least a young woman who answered to
+her description, to the Red Mill, not far from Velzen, and how she was
+in the immediate charge of a man and a woman who could be no other than
+Hague Simon and Black Meg. Also he told of her piteous appeal to the
+boatmen in the names of their wives and daughters, and at the telling of
+it Foy wept with fear and rage, and even Martha gnashed her teeth. Only
+Martin cast off the boat and began to punt her out into deep water.
+
+"Is that all?" asked Foy.
+
+"That is all, Mynheer, I know nothing more, but I can explain to you
+where the place is."
+
+"You can show us, you mean," said Foy.
+
+The man expostulated. The weather was bad, there would be a flood, his
+wife was ill and expected him, and so forth. Then he tried to get out of
+the boat, whereon, catching hold of him suddenly, Martin threw him into
+the stern-sheets, saying:
+
+"You could travel to this mill once taking with you a girl whom you
+knew to be kidnapped, now you can travel there again to get her out. Sit
+still and steer straight, or I will make you food for fishes."
+
+Then Marsh Jan professed himself quite willing to sail to the Red Mill,
+which he said they ought to reach by nightfall.
+
+All that afternoon they sailed and rowed, till, with the darkness,
+before ever the mill was in sight, the great flood came down upon them
+and drove them hither and thither, such a flood as had not been seen in
+those districts for a dozen years. But Marsh Jan knew his bearings well;
+he had the instinct of locality that is bred in those whose forefathers
+for generations have won a living from the fens, and through it all he
+held upon a straight course.
+
+Once Foy thought that he heard a voice calling for help in the darkness,
+but it was not repeated and they went forward. At last the sky cleared
+and the moon shone out upon such a waste of waters as Noah might have
+beheld from the ark. Only there were things floating in them that Noah
+would scarcely have seen; hayricks, dead and drowning cattle, household
+furniture, and once even a coffin washed from some graveyard, while
+beyond stretched the dreary outline of the sand dunes.
+
+"The mill should be near," said Marsh Jan, "let us put about." So they
+turned, rowing with weary arms, for the wind had fallen.
+
+
+
+Let us go back a little. Elsa, on escaping from the scene of her mock
+marriage, fled to her room and bolted its door. A few seconds later she
+heard hands hammering at it, and the voices of Hague Simon and Black Meg
+calling to her to open. She took no note, the hammering ceased, and then
+it was that for the first time she became aware of a dreadful, roaring
+noise, a noise of many waters. Time passed as it passes in a nightmare,
+till suddenly, above the dull roar, came sharp sounds as of wood
+cracking and splitting, and Elsa felt that the whole fabric of the mill
+had tilted. Beneath the pressure of the flood it had given where it
+was weakest, at its narrow waist, and now its red cap hung over like a
+wind-laid tree.
+
+Terror took hold of Elsa, and running to the door she opened it hoping
+to escape down the stairs. Behold! water was creeping up them, she could
+see it by the lantern in her hand--her retreat was cut off. But there
+were other stairs leading to the top storey of the mill that now lay at
+a steep angle, and along these she climbed, since the water was pouring
+through her doorway and there was nowhere else to go. In the very roof
+of the place was a manhole with a rotten hatch. She passed through this,
+to find herself upon the top of the mill just where one of the great
+naked arms of the sails projected from it. Her lantern was blown out by
+now, but she clung to the arm, and became aware that the wooden cap of
+the structure, still anchored to its brick foundation, lay upon its side
+rocking to and fro like a boat upon an angry sea. The water was near
+her; that she knew by its seethe and rush, although she could not see
+it, but as yet it did not even wet her feet.
+
+The hours went by, how many, she never learned, till at length the
+clouds cleared; the moon became visible, and by its light she saw an
+awful scene. Everywhere around was water; it lapped within a yard, and
+it was rising still. Now Elsa saw that in the great beam she clasped
+were placed short spokes for the use of those who set the sails above.
+Up these she climbed as best she might, till she was able to pass her
+body between two of the vanes and support her breast upon the flat
+surface of one of them, as a person does who leans out of a window. From
+her window there was something to see. Quite near to her, but separated
+by fifteen or twenty feet of yellow frothing water, a little portion
+of the swelling shape of the mill stood clear of the flood. To this
+foam-lapped island clung two human beings--Hague Simon and Black Meg.
+They saw her also and screamed for help, but she had none to give.
+Surely it was a dream--nothing so awful could happen outside a dream.
+
+The fabric of the mill tilted more and more; the space to which the two
+vile creatures hung grew less and less. There was no longer room for
+both of them. They began to quarrel, to curse and jibber at each other,
+their fierce, bestial faces not an inch apart as they crouched there on
+hands and knees. The water rose a little, they were kneeling in it now,
+and the man, putting down his bald head, butted at the woman, almost
+thrusting her from her perch. But she was strong and active, she
+struggled back again; she did more, with an eel-like wriggle she climbed
+upon his back, weighing him down. He strove to shake her off but
+could not, for on that heaving, rolling surface he dared not loose his
+hand-grip, so he turned his flat and florid face, and, seizing her
+leg between his teeth, bit and worried at it. In her pain and rage Meg
+screeched aloud--that was the cry which Foy had heard. Then suddenly
+she drew a knife from her bosom--Elsa saw it flash in the moonlight--and
+stabbed downwards once, twice, thrice.
+
+Elsa shut her eyes. When she opened them again the woman was alone upon
+the little patch of red boarding, her body splayed out over it like that
+of a dead frog. So she lay a while till suddenly the cap of the Red Mill
+dipped slowly like a lady who makes a Court curtsey, and she vanished.
+It rose again and Meg was still there, moaning in her terror and water
+running from her dress. Then again it dipped, this time more deeply, and
+when the patch of rusty boarding slowly reappeared, it was empty. No,
+not quite, for clinging to it, yowling and spitting, was the half-wild
+black cat which Elsa had seen wandering about the mill. But of Black Meg
+there was no trace.
+
+It was dreadfully cold up there hanging to the sail-bar, for now that
+the rain had finished, it began to freeze. Indeed, had it not chanced
+that Elsa was dressed in her warm winter gown with fur upon it, and dry
+from her head to her feet, it is probable that she would have fallen off
+and perished in the water. As it was gradually her body became numb and
+her senses faded. She seemed to know that all this matter of her forced
+marriage, of the flood, and of the end of Simon and Meg, was nothing but
+a dream, a very evil nightmare from which she would awake presently to
+find herself snug and warm in her own bed in the Bree Straat. Of course
+it must be a nightmare, for look, there, on the bare patch of boarding
+beneath, the hideous struggle repeated itself. There lay Hague Simon
+gnawing at his wife's foot, only his fat, white face was gone, and in
+place of it he wore the head of a cat, for she, the watcher, could
+see its glowing eyes fixed upon her. And Meg--look how her lean limbs
+gripped him round the body. Listen to the thudding noise as the great
+knife fell between his shoulders. And now, see--she was growing tall,
+she had become a giantess, her face shot across the gulf of water and
+swam upwards through the shadows till it was within a foot of her. Oh!
+she must fall, but first she would scream for help--surely the dead
+themselves could hear that cry. Better not have uttered it, it might
+bring Ramiro back; better go to join the dead. What did the voice say,
+Meg's voice, but how changed? That she was not to be afraid? That the
+thudding was the sound of oars not of knife thrusts? This would be
+Ramiro's boat coming to seize her. Of him and Adrian she could bear no
+more; she would throw herself into the water and trust to God. One, two,
+three--then utter darkness.
+
+Elsa became aware that light was shining about her, also that somebody
+was kissing her upon the face and lips. A horrible doubt struck her that
+it might be Adrian, and she opened her eyes ever so little to look. No,
+no, how very strange, it was not Adrian, it was Foy! Well, doubtless
+this must be all part of her vision, and as in dream or out of it
+Foy had a perfect right to kiss her if he chose, she saw no reason to
+interfere. Now she seemed to hear a familiar voice, that of Red Martin,
+asking someone how long it would take them to make Haarlem with this
+wind, to which another voice answered, "About three-quarters of an
+hour."
+
+It was very odd, and why did he say Haarlem and not Leyden? Next the
+second voice, which also seemed familiar, said:
+
+"Look out, Foy, she's coming to herself." Then someone poured wine down
+her throat, whereupon, unable to bear this bewilderment any longer, Elsa
+sat up and opened her eyes wide, to see before her Foy, and none other
+than Foy in the flesh.
+
+She gasped, and began to sink back again with joy and weakness,
+whereon he cast his arms about her and drew her to his breast. Then she
+remembered everything.
+
+"Oh! Foy, Foy," she cried, "you must not kiss me."
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Because--because I am married."
+
+Of a sudden his happy face became ghastly. "Married!" he stammered. "Who
+to?"
+
+"To--your brother, Adrian."
+
+He stared at her in amazement, then asked slowly:
+
+"Did you run away from Leyden to marry him?"
+
+"How dare you ask such a question?" replied Elsa with a flash of spirit.
+
+"Perhaps, then, you would explain?"
+
+"What is there to explain? I thought that you knew. They dragged me
+away, and last night, just before the flood burst, I was gagged and
+married by force."
+
+"Oh! Adrian, my friend," groaned Foy, "wait till I catch you, my friend
+Adrian."
+
+"To be just," explained Elsa, "I don't think Adrian wanted to marry me
+much, but he had to choose between marrying me himself or seeing his
+father Ramiro marry me."
+
+"So he sacrificed himself--the good, kind-hearted man," interrupted Foy,
+grinding his teeth.
+
+"Yes," said Elsa.
+
+"And where is your self-denying--oh! I can't say the word."
+
+"I don't know. I suppose that he and Ramiro escaped in the boat, or
+perhaps he was drowned."
+
+"In which case you are a widow sooner than you could have expected,"
+said Foy more cheerfully, edging himself towards her.
+
+But Elsa moved a little away and Foy saw with a sinking of the heart
+that, however distasteful it might be to her, clearly she attached some
+weight to this marriage.
+
+"I do not know," she answered, "how can I tell? I suppose that we shall
+hear sometime, and then, if he is still alive, I must set to work to get
+free of him. But, till then, Foy," she added, warningly, "I suppose that
+I am his wife in law, although I will never speak to him again. Where
+are we going?"
+
+"To Haarlem. The Spaniards are closing in upon the city, and we dare not
+try to break through their lines. Those are Spanish boats behind us. But
+eat and drink a little, Elsa, then tell us your story."
+
+"One question first, Foy. How did you find me?"
+
+"We heard a woman scream twice, once far away and once near at hand,
+and rowing to the sound, saw someone hanging to the arm of an overturned
+windmill only three or four feet above the water. Of course we knew that
+you had been taken to the mill; that man there told us. Do you remember
+him? But at first we could not find it in the darkness and the flood."
+
+Then, after she had swallowed something, Elsa told her story, while the
+three of them clustered round her forward of the sail, and Marsh Jan
+managed the helm. When she had finished it, Martin whispered to Foy,
+and as though by a common impulse all four of them kneeled down upon the
+boards in the bottom of the boat, and returned thanks to the Almighty
+that this maiden, quite unharmed, had been delivered out of such
+manifold and terrible dangers, and this by the hands of her own friends
+and of the man to whom she was affianced. When they had finished their
+service of thanksgiving, which was as simple as it was solemn and
+heartfelt, they rose, and now Elsa did not forbid that Foy should hold
+her hand.
+
+"Say, sweetheart," he asked, "is it true that you think anything of this
+forced marriage?"
+
+"Hear me before you answer," broke in Martha. "It is no marriage at all,
+for none can be wed without the consent of their own will, and you gave
+no such consent."
+
+"It is no marriage," echoed Martin, "and if it be, and I live, then the
+sword shall cut its knot."
+
+"It is no marriage," said Foy, "for although we have not stood together
+before the altar, yet our hearts are wed, so how can you be made the
+wife of another man?"
+
+"Dearest," replied Elsa, when they had all spoken, "I too am sure that
+it is no marriage, yet a priest spoke the marriage words over me, and a
+ring was thrust upon my hand, so, to the law, if there be any law left
+in the Netherlands, I am perhaps in some sort a wife. Therefore, before
+I can become wife to you these facts must be made public, and I must
+appeal to the law to free me, lest in days to come others should be
+troubled."
+
+"And if the law cannot, or will not, Elsa, what then?"
+
+"Then, dear, our consciences being clean, we will be a law to ourselves.
+But first we must wait a while. Are you satisfied now, Foy?"
+
+"No," answered Foy sulkily, "for it is monstrous that such devil's work
+should keep us apart even for an hour. Yet in this, as in all, I will
+obey you, dear."
+
+"Marrying and giving in marriage!" broke in Martha in a shrill voice.
+"Talk no more of such things, for there is other work before us. Look
+yonder, girl, what do you see?" and she pointed to the dry land. "The
+hosts of the Amalekites marching in their thousands to slaughter us and
+our brethren, the children of the Lord. Look behind you, what do you
+see? The ships of the tyrant sailing up to encompass the city of the
+children of the Lord. It is the day of death and desolation, the day of
+Armageddon, and ere the sun sets red upon it many a thousand must pass
+through the gates of doom, we, mayhap, among them. Then up with the
+flag of freedom; out with the steel of truth, gird on the buckler of
+righteousness, and snatch the shield of hope. Fight, fight for the
+liberty of the land that bore you, for the memory of Christ, the King
+who died for you, for the faith to which you are born; fight, fight, and
+when the fray is done, then, and not before, think of peace and love.
+
+"Nay, children, look not so fearful, for I, the mad mere-wife, tell you,
+by the Grace of God, that you have naught to fear. Who preserved you in
+the torture den, Foy van Goorl? What hand was it that held your life and
+honour safe when you sojourned among devils in the Red Mill yonder and
+kept your head above the waters of the flood, Elsa Brant? You know well,
+and I, Martha, tell you that this same hand shall hold you safe until
+the end. Yes, I know it, I know it; thousands shall fall upon your right
+hand and tens of thousands upon your left, but you shall live through
+the hunger; the arrows of pestilence shall pass you by, the sword of
+the wicked shall not harm you. For me it is otherwise, at length my doom
+draws near and I am well content; but for you twain, Foy and Elsa, I
+foretell many years of earthly joy."
+
+Thus spoke Martha, and it seemed to those who watched her that her wild,
+disfigured face shone with a light of inspiration, nor did they who knew
+her story, and still believed that the spirit of prophecy could open the
+eyes of chosen seers, deem it strange that vision of the things to be
+should visit her. At the least they took comfort from her words, and for
+a while were no more afraid.
+
+Yet they had much to fear. By a fateful accident they had been delivered
+from great dangers only to fall into dangers greater still, for as it
+chanced, on this tenth of December, 1572, they sailed straight into the
+grasp of the thousands of the Spanish armies which had been drawn like
+a net round the doomed city of Haarlem. There was no escape for them;
+nothing that had not wings could pass those lines of ships and soldiers.
+Their only refuge was the city, and in that city they must bide till the
+struggle, one of the most fearful of all that hideous war, was ended.
+But at least they had this comfort, they would face the foe together,
+and with them were two who loved them, Martha, the "Spanish Scourge,"
+and Red Martin, the free Frisian, the mighty man of war whom God had
+appointed to them as a shield of defence.
+
+So they smiled on each other, these two lovers of long ago, and sailed
+bravely on to the closing gates of Haarlem.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+ATONEMENT
+
+Seven months had gone by, seven of the most dreadful months ever lived
+through by human beings. For all this space of time, through the frosts
+and snows and fogs of winter, through the icy winds of spring, and now
+deep into the heart of summer, the city of Haarlem had been closely
+beleaguered by an army of thirty thousand Spaniards, most of them
+veteran troops under the command of Don Frederic, the son of Alva, and
+other generals. Against this disciplined host were opposed the little
+garrison of four thousand Hollanders and Germans aided by a few Scotch
+and English soldiers, together with a population of about twenty
+thousand old men, women and children. From day to day, from week to
+week, from month to month, the struggle was waged between these
+unequal forces, marked on either side by the most heroic efforts and by
+cruelties that would strike our age as monstrous. For in those times the
+captive prisoner of war could expect no mercy; indeed, he was fortunate
+if he was not hung from a gibbet by the leg to die slowly within eyeshot
+of his friends.
+
+There were battles without number, men perished in hecatombs; among the
+besieging armies alone over twelve thousand lost their lives, so that
+the neighbourhood of Haarlem became one vast graveyard, and the fish in
+the lake were poisoned by the dead. Assault, sortie, ambuscade, artifice
+of war; combats to the death upon the ice between skate-shod soldiers;
+desperate sea fights, attempts to storm; the explosion of mines and
+counter-mines that brought death to hundreds--all these became the
+familiar incidents of daily life.
+
+Then there were other horrors; cold from insufficient fuel, pestilences
+of various sorts such as always attend a siege, and, worse of all for
+the beleaguered, hunger. Week by week as the summer aged, the food grew
+less and less, till at length there was nothing. The weeds that grew in
+the street, the refuse of tanneries, the last ounce of offal, the mice
+and the cats, all had been devoured. On the lofty steeple of St. Bavon
+for days and days had floated a black flag to tell the Prince of Orange
+in Leyden that below it was despair as black. The last attempt at
+succour had been made. Batenburg had been defeated and slain, together
+with the Seigneurs of Clotingen and Carloo, and five or six hundred men.
+Now there was no more hope.
+
+Desperate expedients were suggested: That the women, children, aged and
+sick should be left in the city, while the able-bodied men cut a way
+through the battalions of their besiegers. On these non-combatants it
+was hoped that the Spaniard would have mercy--as though the Spaniard
+could have mercy, he who afterwards dragged the wounded and the ailing
+to the door of the hospital and there slaughtered them in cold blood;
+aye, and here and elsewhere, did other things too dreadful to write
+down. Says the old chronicler, "But this being understood by the
+women, they assembled all together, making the most pitiful cries and
+lamentations that could be heard, the which would have moved a heart of
+flint, so as it was not possible to abandon them."
+
+Next another plan was formed: that all the females and helpless should
+be set in the centre of a square of the fighting men, to march out
+and give battle to the foe till everyone was slain. Then the Spaniards
+hearing this and growing afraid of what these desperate men might do,
+fell back on guile. If they would surrender, the citizens of Haarlem
+were told, and pay two hundred and forty thousand florins, no punishment
+should be inflicted. So, having neither food nor hope, they listened
+to the voice of the tempter and surrendered, they who had fought until
+their garrison of four thousand was reduced to eighteen hundred men.
+
+
+
+It was noon and past on the fatal twelfth of July. The gates were open,
+the Spaniards, those who were left alive of them, Don Frederic at their
+head, with drums beating, banners flying, and swords sharpened for
+murder, were marching into the city of Haarlem. In a deep niche between
+two great brick piers of the cathedral were gathered four people whom we
+know. War and famine had left them all alive, yet they had borne their
+share of both. In every enterprise, however desperate, Foy and Martin
+had marched, or stood, or watched side by side, and well did the
+Spaniards know the weight of the great sword Silence and the red-headed
+giant who wielded it. Mother Martha, too, had not been idle. Throughout
+the siege she had served as the lieutenant of the widow Hasselaer, who
+with a band of three hundred women fought day and night alongside
+of their husbands and brothers. Even Elsa, who although she was too
+delicate and by nature timid and unfitted to go out to battle, had done
+her part, for she laboured at the digging of mines and the building of
+walls till her soft hands were rough and scarred.
+
+How changed they were. Foy, whose face had been so youthful, looked now
+like a man on the wrong side of middle age. The huge Martin might have
+been a great skeleton on which hung clothes, or rather rags and a
+rent bull's hide, with his blue eyes shining in deep pits beneath the
+massive, projecting skull. Elsa too had become quite small, like a
+child. Her sweet face was no longer pretty, only pitiful, and all the
+roundness of her figure had vanished--she might have been an emaciated
+boy. Of the four of them Martha the Mare, who was dressed like a man,
+showed the least change. Indeed, except that now her hair was snowy,
+that her features were rather more horse-like, that the yellow, lipless
+teeth projected even further, and the thin nervous hands had become
+almost like those of an Egyptian mummy, she was much as she always had
+been.
+
+Martin leaned upon the great sword and groaned. "Curses on them, the
+cowards," he muttered; "why did they not let us go out and die fighting?
+Fools, mad fools, who would trust to the mercy of the Spaniard."
+
+"Oh! Foy," said Elsa, throwing her thin arms about his neck, "you will
+not let them take me, will you? If it comes to the worst, you will kill
+me, won't you? Otherwise I must kill myself, and Foy, I am a coward, I
+am afraid--to do that."
+
+"I suppose so," he answered in a harsh, unnatural voice, "but oh! God,
+if Thou art, have pity upon her. Oh! God have pity."
+
+"Blaspheme not, doubt not!" broke in the shrill voice of Martha. "Has
+it not been as I told you last winter in the boat? Have you not been
+protected, and shall you not be protected to the end? Only blaspheme
+not, doubt not!"
+
+The niche in which they were standing was out of sight of the great
+square and those who thronged it, but as Martha spoke a band of
+victorious Spaniards, seven or eight of them, came round the corner and
+caught sight of the party in the nook.
+
+"There's a girl," said the sergeant in command of them, "who isn't bad
+looking. Pull her out, men."
+
+Some fellows stepped forward to do his bidding. Now Foy went mad. He did
+not kill Elsa as she had prayed him, he flew straight at the throat of
+the brute who had spoken, and next instant his sword was standing out
+a foot behind his neck. Then after him, with a kind of low cry, came
+Martin, plying the great blade Silence, and Martha after him with her
+long knife. It was all over in a minute, but before it was done there
+were five men down, three dead and two sore wounded.
+
+"A tithe and an offering!" muttered Martha as, bounding forward, she
+bent over the wounded men, and their comrades fled round the corner of
+the cathedral.
+
+There was a minute's pause. The bright summer sunlight shone upon the
+faces and armour of the dead Spaniards, upon the naked sword of Foy,
+who stood over Elsa crouched to the ground in a corner of the niche, her
+face hidden in her hands, upon the terrible blue eyes of Martin alight
+with a dreadful fire of rage. Then there came the sound of marching
+men, and a company of Spaniards appeared before them, and at their
+head--Ramiro and Adrian called van Goorl.
+
+"There they are, captain," said a soldier, one of those who had fled;
+"shall we shoot them?"
+
+Ramiro looked, carelessly enough at first, then again a long,
+scrutinising look. So he had caught them at last! Months ago he had
+learned that Elsa had been rescued from the Red Mill by Foy and Martin,
+and now, after much seeking, the birds were in his net.
+
+"No," he said, "I think not. Such desperate characters must be reserved
+for separate trial."
+
+"Where can they be kept, captain?" asked the sergeant sulkily.
+
+"I observed, friend, that the house which my son and I have taken as
+our quarters has excellent cellars; they can be imprisoned there for the
+present--that is, except the young lady, whom the Senor Adrian will look
+after. As it chances, she is his wife."
+
+At this the soldiers laughed openly.
+
+"I repeat--his wife, for whom he has been searching these many months,"
+said Ramiro, "and, therefore, to be respected. Do you understand, men?"
+
+Apparently they did understand, at least no one made any answer. Their
+captain, as they had found, was not a man who loved argument.
+
+"Now, then, you fellows," went on Ramiro, "give up your arms."
+
+Martin thought a while. Evidently he was wondering whether it would not
+be best to rush at them and die fighting. At that moment, as he said
+afterwards indeed, the old saying came into his mind, "A game is not
+lost until it is won," and remembering that dead men can never have
+another chance of winning games, he gave up the sword.
+
+"Hand that to me," said Ramiro. "It is a curious weapon to which I have
+taken a fancy."
+
+So sword Silence was handed to him, and he slung it over his shoulder.
+Foy looked at the kneeling Elsa, and he looked at his sword. Then an
+idea struck him, and he looked at the face of Adrian, his brother, whom
+he had last seen when the said Adrian ran to warn him and Martin at the
+factory, for though he knew that he was fighting with his father among
+the Spaniards, during the siege they had never met. Even then, in
+that dire extremity, with a sudden flash of thought he wondered how
+it happened that Adrian, being the villain that he was, had taken the
+trouble to come and warn them yonder in Leyden, thereby giving them time
+to make a very good defence in the shot tower.
+
+Foy looked up at his brother. Adrian was dressed in the uniform of a
+Spanish officer, with a breast-plate over his quilted doublet, and a
+steel cap, from the front of which rose a frayed and weather-worn plume
+of feathers. The face had changed; there was none of the old pomposity
+about those handsome features; it looked worn and cowed, like that of an
+animal which has been trained to do tricks by hunger and the use of the
+whip. Yet, through all the shame and degradation, Foy seemed to catch
+the glint of some kind of light, a light of good desire shining behind
+that piteous mask, as the sun sometimes shines through a sullen cloud.
+Could it be that Adrian was not quite so bad after all? That he was,
+in fact, the Adrian that he, Foy, had always believed him to be, vain,
+silly, passionate, exaggerated, born to be a tool and think himself
+the master, but beneath everything, well-meaning? Who could say? At the
+worst, too, was it not better that Elsa should become the wife of Adrian
+than that her life should cease there and then, and by her lover's hand?
+
+These things passed through his brain as the lightning passes through
+the sky. In an instant his mind was made up and Foy flung down his sword
+at the feet of a soldier. As he did so his eyes met the eyes of Adrian,
+and to his imagination they seemed to be full of thanks and promise.
+
+They took them all; with gibes and blows the soldiers haled them away
+through the tumult and the agony of the fallen town and its doomed
+defenders. Out of the rich sunlight they led them into a house that
+still stood not greatly harmed by the cannon-shot, but a little way
+from the shattered Ravelin and the gate which had been the scene of such
+fearful conflict--a house that was the home of one of the wealthiest
+merchants in Haarlem. Here Foy and Elsa were parted. She struggled to
+his arms, whence they tore her and dragged her away up the stairs, but
+Martin, Martha and Foy were thrust into a dark cellar, locked in and
+left.
+
+A while later the door of the cellar was unbarred and some hand, they
+could not see whose, passed through it water and food, good food such as
+they had not tasted for months; meat and bread and dried herrings, more
+than they could eat of them.
+
+"Perhaps it is poisoned," said Foy, smelling at it hungrily.
+
+"What need to take the trouble to poison us?" answered Martin. "Let us
+eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
+
+So like starving animals they devoured the food with thankfulness and
+then they slept, yes, in the midst of all their misery and doubts they
+slept.
+
+It seemed but a few minutes later--in fact it was eight hours--when the
+door opened again and there entered Adrian carrying a lantern in his
+hand.
+
+"Foy, Martin," he said, "get up and follow me if you would save your
+lives."
+
+Instantly they were wide awake.
+
+"Follow you--_you?_" stammered Foy in a choked voice.
+
+"Yes," Adrian answered quietly. "Of course you may not escape, but if
+you stop here what chance have you? Ramiro, my father, will be back
+presently and then----"
+
+"It is madness to trust ourselves to you," interrupted Martin, and
+Adrian seemed to wince at the contempt in his voice.
+
+"I knew that you would think that," he answered humbly, "but what else
+is to be done? I can pass you out of the city, I have made a boat ready
+for you to escape in, all at the risk of my own life; what more can I
+do? Why do you hesitate?"
+
+"Because we do not believe you," said Foy; "besides, there is Elsa. I
+will not go without Elsa."
+
+"I have thought of that," answered Adrian. "Elsa is here. Come, Elsa,
+show yourself."
+
+Then from the stairs Elsa crept into the cellar, a new Elsa, for she,
+too, had been fed, and in her eyes there shone a light of hope. A wild
+jealousy filled Foy's heart. Why did she look thus? But she, she ran to
+him, she flung her arms about his neck and kissed him, and Adrian did
+nothing, he only turned his head aside.
+
+"Foy," she gasped, "he is honest after all; he has only been
+unfortunate. Come quickly, there is a chance for us; come before that
+devil returns. Now he is at a council of the officers settling with Don
+Frederic who are to be killed, but soon he will be back, and then----"
+
+So they hesitated no more, but went.
+
+They passed out of the house, none stopping them--the guard had gone to
+the sack. At the gate by the ruined Ravelin there stood a sentry, but
+the man was careless, or drunken, or bribed, who knows? At least, Adrian
+gave him a pass-word, and, nodding his head, he let them by. A few
+minutes later they were at the Mere side, and there among some reeds lay
+the boat.
+
+"Enter and be gone," said Adrian.
+
+They scrambled into the boat and took the oars, while Martha began to
+push off.
+
+"Adrian," said Elsa, "what is to become of you?"
+
+"Why do you trouble about that?" he asked with a bitter laugh. "I go
+back to my death, my blood is the price of your freedom. Well, I owe it
+to you."
+
+"Oh! no," she cried, "come with us."
+
+"Yes," echoed Foy, although again that bitter pang of jealousy gripped
+his heart, "come with us--brother."
+
+"Do you really mean it?" Adrian asked, hesitating. "Think, I might
+betray you."
+
+"If so, young man, why did you not do it before?" growled Martin, and
+stretching out his great, bony arm he gripped him by the collar and
+dragged him into the boat.
+
+Then they rowed away.
+
+"Where are we going?" asked Martin.
+
+"To Leyden, I suppose," said Foy, "if we can get there, which, without a
+sail or weapons, seems unlikely."
+
+"I have put some arms in the boat," interrupted Adrian, "the best I
+could get," and from a locker he drew out a common heavy axe, a couple
+of Spanish swords, a knife, a smaller axe, a cross-bow and some bolts.
+
+"Not so bad," said Martin, rowing with his left hand as he handled the
+big axe with his right, "but I wish that I had my sword Silence, which
+that accursed Ramiro took from me and hung about his neck. I wonder
+why he troubled himself with the thing? It is too long for a man of his
+inches."
+
+"I don't know," said Adrian, "but when last I saw him he was working
+at its hilt with a chisel, which seemed strange. He always wanted that
+sword. During the siege he offered a large reward to any soldier who
+could kill you and bring it to him."
+
+"Working at the hilt with a chisel?" gasped Martin. "By Heaven, I had
+forgotten! The map, the map! Some wicked villain must have told him that
+the map of the treasure was there--that is why he wanted the sword."
+
+"Who could have told him?" asked Foy. "It was only known to you and
+me and Martha, and we are not of the sort to tell. What? Give away the
+secret of Hendrik Brant's treasure which he could die for and we were
+sworn to keep, to save our miserable lives? Shame upon the thought!"
+
+Martha heard, and looked at Elsa, a questioning look beneath which the
+poor girl turned a fiery red, though by good fortune in that light none
+could see her blushes. Still, she must speak lest the suspicion should
+lie on others.
+
+"I ought to have told you before," she said in a low voice, "but I
+forgot--I mean that I have always been so dreadfully ashamed. It was I
+who betrayed the secret of the sword Silence."
+
+"You? How did you know it?" asked Foy.
+
+"Mother Martha told me on the night of the church burning after you
+escaped from Leyden."
+
+Martin grunted. "One woman to trust another, and at her age too; what a
+fool!"
+
+"Fool yourself, you thick-brained Frisian," broke in Martha angrily,
+"where did you learn to teach your betters wisdom? I told the Jufvrouw
+because I knew that we might all of us be swept away, and I thought it
+well that then she should know where to look for a key to the treasure."
+
+"A woman's kind of reason," answered Martin imperturbably, "and a bad
+one at that, for if we had been finished off she must have found it
+difficult to get hold of the sword. But all this is done with. The point
+is, why did the Jufvrouw tell Ramiro?"
+
+"Because I am a coward," answered Elsa with a sob. "You know, Foy, I
+always was a coward, and I never shall be anything else. I told him to
+save myself."
+
+"From what?"
+
+"From being married."
+
+Adrian winced palpably, and Foy, noting it, could not resist pushing the
+point.
+
+"From being married? But I understand--doubtless Adrian will explain the
+thing," he added grimly--"that you were forced through some ceremony."
+
+"Yes," answered Elsa feebly, "I--I--was. I tried to buy myself off by
+telling Ramiro the secret, which will show you all how mad I was with
+terror at the thought of this hateful marriage"--here a groan burst
+from the lips of Adrian, and something like a chuckle from those of Red
+Martin. "Oh! I am so sorry," went on Elsa in confusion; "I am sure that
+I did not wish to hurt Adrian's feelings, especially after he has been
+so good to us."
+
+"Never mind Adrian's feelings and his goodness, but go on with the
+story," interrupted Foy.
+
+"There isn't much more to tell. Ramiro swore before God that if I gave
+him the clue he would let me go, and then--then, well, then, after I
+had fallen into the pit and disgraced myself, he said that it was not
+sufficient, and that the marriage must take place."
+
+At this point Foy and Martin laughed outright. Yes, even there they
+laughed.
+
+"Why, you silly child," said Foy, "what else did you expect him to say?"
+
+"Oh! Martin, do you forgive me?" said Elsa. "Immediately after I had
+done it I knew how shameful it was, and that he would try to hunt you
+down, and that is why I have been afraid to tell you ever since. But I
+pray you believe me; I only spoke because, between shame and fear, I did
+not know right from wrong. Do you forgive me?"
+
+"Lady," answered the Frisian, smiling in his slow fashion, "if I had
+been there unknown to Ramiro, and you had offered him this head of mine
+on a dish as a bribe, not only would I have forgiven you but I would
+have said that you did right. You are a maid, and you had to protect
+yourself from a very dreadful thing; therefore who can blame you?"
+
+"I can," said Martha. "Ramiro might have torn me to pieces with red-hot
+pincers before I told him."
+
+"Yes," said Martin, who felt that he had a debt to pay, "Ramiro might,
+but I doubt whether he would have gone to that trouble to persuade you
+to take a husband. No, don't be angry. 'Frisian thick of head, Frisian
+free of speech,' goes the saying."
+
+Not being able to think of any appropriate rejoinder, Martha turned
+again upon Elsa.
+
+"Your father died for that treasure," she said, "and Dirk van Goorl died
+for it, and your lover and his serving-man there went to the torture-den
+for it, and I--well, I have done a thing or two. But you, girl, why, at
+the first pinch, you betray the secret. But, as Martin says, I was fool
+enough to tell you."
+
+"Oh! you are hard," said Elsa, beginning to weep under Martha's bitter
+reproaches; "but you forget that at least none of you were asked to
+marry--oh! I mustn't say that. I mean to become the wife of one man;"
+then her eyes fell upon Foy and an inspiration seized her; here, at
+least, was one of whom she could make a friend--"when you happen to be
+very much in love with another."
+
+"Of course not," said Foy, "there is no need for you to explain."
+
+"I think there is a great deal to explain," went on Martha, "for you
+cannot fool me with pretty words. But now, hark you, Foy van Goorl, what
+is to be done? We have striven hard to save that treasure, all of us; is
+it to be lost at the last?"
+
+"Aye," echoed Martin, growing very serious, "is it to be lost at the
+last? Remember what the worshipful Hendrik Brant said to us yonder
+on that night at The Hague--that he believed that in a day to come
+thousands and tens of thousands of our people would bless the gold he
+entrusted to us."
+
+"I remember it all," answered Foy, "and other things too; his will, for
+instance," and he thought of his father and of those hours which Martin
+and he had spent in the Gevangenhuis. Then he looked up at Martha and
+said briefly: "Mother, though they call you mad, you are the wisest
+among us; what is your counsel?"
+
+She pondered awhile and answered: "This is certain, that so soon as
+Ramiro finds that we have escaped, having the key to it, he will take
+boat and sail to the place where the barrels are buried, knowing well
+that otherwise we shall be off with them. Yes, I tell you that by dawn,
+or within an hour of it, he will be there," and she stopped.
+
+"You mean," said Foy, "that we ought to be there before him."
+
+Martha nodded and answered, "If we can, but I think that at best there
+must be a fight for it."
+
+"Yes," said Martin, "a fight. Well, I should like another fight with
+Ramiro. That fork-tongued adder has got my sword, and I want to get it
+back again."
+
+"Oh!" broke in Elsa, "is there to be more fighting? I hoped that at last
+we were safe, and going straight to Leyden, where the Prince is. I hate
+this bloodshed; I tell you, Foy, it frightens me to death; I believe
+that I shall die of it."
+
+"You hear what she says?" asked Foy.
+
+"We hear," answered Martha. "Take no heed of her, the child has suffered
+much, she is weak and squeamish. Now I, although I believe that my death
+lies before me, I say, go on and fear not."
+
+"But I do take heed," said Foy. "Not for all the treasures in the world
+shall Elsa be put in danger again if she does not wish it; she shall
+decide, and she alone."
+
+"How good you are to me," she murmured, then she mused a moment. "Foy,"
+she said, "will you promise something to me?"
+
+"After your experience of Ramiro's oaths I wonder that you ask," he
+answered, trying to be cheerful.
+
+"Will you promise," she went on, taking no note, "that if I say yes and
+we go, not to Leyden, but to seek the treasure, and live through it,
+that you will take me away from this land of bloodshed and murder and
+torments, to some country where folk may live at peace, and see no one
+killed, except it be now and again an evil-doer? It is much to ask, but
+oh! Foy, will you promise?"
+
+"Yes, I promise," said Foy, for he, too, was weary of this daily terror.
+Who would not have been that had passed through the siege of Haarlem?
+
+Foy was steering, but now Martha slipped aft and took the tiller from
+his hand. For a moment she studied the stars that grew clearer in the
+light of the sinking moon, then shifted the helm a point or two to port
+and sat still.
+
+"I am hungry again," said Martin presently; "I feel as though I could
+eat for a week without stopping."
+
+Adrian looked up from over his oar, at which he was labouring
+dejectedly, and said:
+
+"There are food and wine in the locker. I hid them there. Perhaps Elsa
+could serve them to those who wish to eat."
+
+So Elsa, who was doing nothing, found the drink and victuals, and handed
+them round to the rowers, who ate and drank as best they might with a
+thankful heart, but without ceasing from their task. To men who have
+starved for months the taste of wholesome provender and sound wine is a
+delight that cannot be written in words.
+
+When at length they had filled themselves, Adrian spoke.
+
+"If it is your good will, brother," he said, addressing Foy, "as we do
+not know what lies in front, nor how long any of us have to live, I, who
+am an outcast and a scorn among you, wish to tell you a story."
+
+"Speak on," said Foy.
+
+So Adrian began from the beginning, and told them all his tale. He told
+them how at the first he had been led astray by superstitions, vanity,
+and love; how his foolish confidences had been written down by spies;
+how he had been startled and terrified into signing them with results
+of which they knew. Then he told them how he was hunted like a mad dog
+through the streets of Leyden after his mother had turned him from her
+door; how he took refuge in the den of Hague Simon, and there had fought
+with Ramiro and been conquered by the man's address and his own horror
+of shedding a father's blood. He told them of his admission into
+the Roman faith, of the dreadful scene in the church when Martha had
+denounced him, of their flight to the Red Mill. He told them of the
+kidnapping of Elsa, and how he had been quite innocent of it although
+he loved her dearly; of how at last he was driven into marrying her,
+meaning her no harm, to save her from the grip of Ramiro, and knowing at
+heart that it was no marriage; of how, when the flood burst upon them,
+he had been hustled from the mill where, since she could no longer be of
+service to him and might work him injury, as he discovered afterwards,
+Ramiro had left Elsa to her fate. Lastly, in a broken voice, he told
+them of his life during the long siege which, so he said, was as the
+life of a damned spirit, and of how, when death thinned the ranks of the
+Spaniards, he had been made an officer among them, and by the special
+malice of Ramiro forced to conduct the executions and murders of such
+Hollanders as they took.
+
+Then at last his chance had come. Ramiro, thinking that now he could
+never turn against him, had given him Elsa, and left him with her while
+he went about his duties and to secure a share of the plunder, meaning
+to deal with his prisoners on the morrow. So he, Adrian, a man in
+authority, had provided the boat and freed them. That was all he had to
+say, except to renounce any claim upon her who was called his wife, and
+to beg their forgiveness.
+
+Foy listened to the end. Then, dropping his oar for a moment, he put his
+arm about Adrian's waist and hugged him, saying in his old cheery voice:
+
+"I was right after all. You know, Adrian, I always stood up for you,
+notwithstanding your temper and queer ways. No, I never would believe
+that you were a villain, but neither could I ever have believed that you
+were quite such an ass."
+
+To this outspoken estimate of his character, so fallen and crushed was
+he, his brother had not the spirit to reply. He could merely tug at his
+oar and groan, while the tears of shame and repentance ran down his pale
+and handsome face.
+
+"Never mind, old fellow," said Foy consolingly. "It all went wrong,
+thanks to you, and thanks to you I believe that it will all come right
+again. So we will cry quits and forget the rest."
+
+Poor Adrian glanced up at Foy and at Elsa sitting on the thwart of the
+boat by his side.
+
+"Yes, brother," he answered, "for you and Elsa it may come right,
+but not for me in this world, for I--I have sold myself to the devil
+and--got no pay."
+
+After that for a while no one spoke; all felt that the situation was
+too tragic for speech; even the follies, and indeed the wickedness, of
+Adrian were covered up, were blotted out in the tragedy of his utter
+failure, yes, and redeemed by the depth of his atonement.
+
+
+
+The grey light of the summer morning began to grow on the surface of the
+great inland sea. Far behind them they beheld the sun's rays breaking
+upon the gilt crown that is set above the tower of St. Bavon's Church,
+soaring over the lost city of Haarlem and the doomed patriots who lay
+there presently to meet their death at the murderer's sword. They looked
+and shuddered. Had it not been for Adrian they would be prisoners now,
+and what that meant they knew. If they had been in any doubt, what they
+saw around must have enlightened them, for here and there upon the misty
+surface of the lake, or stranded in its shallows, were the half-burnt
+out hulls of ships, the remains of the conquered fleet of William
+the Silent; a poor record of the last desperate effort to relieve the
+starving city. Now and again, too, something limp and soft would cumber
+their oars, the corpse of a drowned or slaughtered man still clad
+perchance in its armour.
+
+At length they passed out of these dismal remains of lost men, and Elsa
+could look about her without shuddering. Now they were in fleet water,
+and in among the islands whereon the lush summer growth of weeds and the
+beautiful marsh flowers grew as greenly and bloomed as bright as though
+no Spaniard had trampled their roots under foot during all those winter
+months of siege and death. These islets, scores and hundreds of them,
+appeared on every side, but between them all Martha steered an unerring
+path. As the sun rose she stood up in the boat, and shading her eyes
+with her hand to shut out its level rays, looked before her.
+
+"There is the place," she said, pointing to a little bulrush-clad isle,
+from which a kind of natural causeway, not more than six feet wide,
+projected like a tongue among muddy shallows peopled by coots and
+water-hens with their red-beaked young.
+
+Martin rose too. Then he looked back behind him and said;
+
+"I see the cap of a sail upon the skyline. It is Ramiro."
+
+"Without doubt," answered Martha calmly. "Well, we have the half of an
+hour to work in. Pull, bow oar, pull, we will go round the island and
+beach her in the mud on the further side. They will be less likely to
+see us there, and I know a place whence we can push off in a hurry."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+ADRIAN COMES HOME AGAIN
+
+They landed on the island, wading to it through the mud, which at this
+spot had a gravelly bottom; all of them except Elsa, who remained on the
+boat to keep watch. Following otter-paths through the thick rushes they
+came to the centre of the islet, some thirty yards away. Here, at a spot
+which Martha ascertained by a few hurried pacings, grew a dense tuft of
+reeds. In the midst of these reeds was a duck's nest with the young just
+hatching out, off which the old bird flew with terrified quackings.
+
+Beneath this nest lay the treasure, if it were still there.
+
+"At any rate the place has not been disturbed lately," said Foy. Then,
+even in his frantic haste, lifting the little fledglings--for he
+loved all things that had life, and did not wish to see them hurt--he
+deposited them where they might be found again by the mother.
+
+"Nothing to dig with," muttered Martin, "not even a stone." Thereon
+Martha pushed her way to a willow bush that grew near, and with the
+smaller of the two axes, which she held in her hand, cut down the
+thickest of its stems and ran back with them. By the help of these
+sharpened stakes, and with their axes, they began to dig furiously, till
+at length the point of Foy's implement struck upon the head of a barrel.
+
+"The stuff is still here, keep to it, friends," he said, and they worked
+on with a will till three of the five barrels were almost free from the
+mud.
+
+"Best make sure of these," said Martin. "Help me, master," and between
+them one by one they rolled them to the water's edge, and with great
+efforts, Elsa aiding them, lifted them into the boat. As they approached
+with the third cask they found her staring white-faced over the tops of
+the feathery reeds.
+
+"What is it, sweet?" asked Foy.
+
+"The sail, the following sail," she answered.
+
+They rested the barrel of gold upon the gunwale and looked back across
+the little island. Yes, there it came, sure enough, a tall, white sail
+not eight hundred yards away and bearing down straight upon the place.
+Martin rolled the barrel into position.
+
+"I hoped that they would not find it," he said, "but Martha draws maps
+well, too well. Once, before she married, she painted pictures, and that
+is why."
+
+"What is to be done?" asked Elsa.
+
+"I don't know," he answered, and as he spoke Martha ran up, for she also
+had seen the boat. "You see," he went on, "if we try to escape they will
+catch us, for oars can't race a sail."
+
+"Oh!" said Elsa, "must we be taken after all?"
+
+"I hope not, girl," said Martha, "but it is as God wills. Listen,
+Martin," and she whispered in his ear.
+
+"Good," he said, "if it can be done, but you must watch your chance.
+Come, now, there is no time to lose. And you, lady, come also, for you
+can help to roll the last two barrels."
+
+Then they ran back to the hole, whence Foy and Adrian, with great toil,
+had just dragged the last of the tubs. For they, too, had seen the sail,
+and knew that time was short.
+
+"Heer, Adrian," said Martin, "you have the cross-bow and the bolts, and
+you used to be the best shot of all three of us; will you help me to
+hold the causeway?"
+
+Now Adrian knew that Martin said this, not because he was a good shot
+with the cross-bow, but because he did not trust him, and wished to have
+him close to his hand, but he answered:
+
+"With all my heart, as well as I am able."
+
+"Very good," said Martin. "Now let the rest of you get those two casks
+into the boat, leaving the Jufvrouw hidden in the reeds to watch by
+it, while you, Foy and Martha, come back to help us. Lady, if they sail
+round the island, call and let us know."
+
+So Martin and Adrian went down to the end of the little gravelly tongue
+and crouched among the tall meadow-sweet and grasses, while the others,
+working furiously, rolled the two barrels to the water-edge and shipped
+them, throwing rushes over them that they might not catch the eye of the
+Spaniards.
+
+The sailing boat drew on. In the stern-sheets of it sat Ramiro, an open
+paper, which he was studying, upon his knee, and still slung about his
+body the great sword Silence.
+
+"Before I am half an hour older," reflected Martin, for even now he did
+not like to trust his thoughts to Adrian, "either I will have that sword
+back again, or I shall be a dead man. But the odds are great, eleven of
+them, all tough fellows, and we but three and two women."
+
+Just then Ramiro's voice reached them across the stillness of the water.
+
+"Down with the sail," he cried cheerily, "for without a doubt that is
+the place--there are the six islets in a line, there in front the other
+island shaped like a herring, and there the little promontory marked
+'landing place.' How well this artist draws to be sure!"
+
+The rest of his remarks were lost in the creaking of the blocks as the
+sail came down.
+
+"Shallow water ahead, Senor," said a man in the bows sounding with a
+boat hook.
+
+"Good," answered Ramiro, throwing out the little anchor, "we will wade
+ashore."
+
+As he spoke the Spanish soldier with the boat-hook suddenly pitched
+head first into the water, a quarrel from Adrian's crossbow through his
+heart.
+
+"Ah!" said Ramiro, "so they are here before us. Well, there can't be
+many of them. Now then, prepare to land."
+
+Another quarrel whistled through the air and stuck in the mast, doing
+no hurt. After this no more bolts came, for in his eagerness Adrian had
+broken the mechanism of the bow by over-winding it, so that it became
+useless. They leaped into the water, Ramiro with them, and charged for
+the land, when of a sudden, almost at the tip of the little promontory,
+from among the reeds rose the gigantic shape of Red Martin, clad in his
+tattered jerkin and bearing in his hand a heavy axe, while behind him
+appeared Foy and Adrian.
+
+"Why, by the Saints!" cried Ramiro, "there's my weather-cock son again,
+fighting against us this time. Well, Weather-cock, this is your last
+veer," then he began to wade towards the promontory. "Charge," he cried,
+but not a man would advance within reach of that axe. They stood here
+and there in the water looking at it doubtfully, for although they were
+brave enough, there was none of them but knew of the strength and deeds
+of the red Frisian giant, and half-starved as he was, feared to meet him
+face to face. Moreover, he had a position of advantage, of that there
+could be no doubt.
+
+"Can I help you to land, friends?" said Martin, mocking them. "No, it is
+no use looking right or left, the mud there is very deep."
+
+"An arquebus, shoot him with an arquebus!" shouted the men in front; but
+there was no such weapon in the boat, for the Spaniards, who had left in
+a hurry, and without expecting to meet Red Martin, had nothing but their
+swords and knives.
+
+Ramiro considered a moment, for he saw that to attempt to storm this
+little landing-place would cost many lives, even if it were possible.
+Then he gave an order, "Back aboard." The men obeyed with alacrity. "Out
+oars and up anchor!" he cried.
+
+"He is clever," said Foy; "he knows that our boat must be somewhere, and
+he is going to seek for it."
+
+Martin nodded, and for the first time looked afraid. Then, as soon as
+Ramiro had begun to row round the islet, leaving Martha to watch that
+he did not return and rush the landing-stage, they crossed through the
+reeds to the other side and climbed into their boat. Scarcely were they
+there, when Ramiro and his men appeared, and a shout announced that they
+were discovered.
+
+On crept the Spaniards as near as they dared, that is to within a dozen
+fathoms of them, and anchored, for they were afraid to run their own
+heavy sailing cutter upon the mud lest they might be unable to get her
+off again. Also, for evident reasons, being without firearms and knowing
+the character of the defenders, they feared to make a direct attack. The
+position was curious and threatened to be prolonged. At last Ramiro rose
+and addressed them across the water.
+
+"Gentlemen and lady of the enemy," he said, "for I think that I see my
+little captive of the Red Mill among you, let us take counsel together.
+We have both of us made this expedition for a purpose, have we
+not--namely, to secure certain filthy lucre which, after all, would be
+of slight value to dead men? Now, as you, or some of you, know, I am a
+man opposed to violence; I wish to hurry the end of none, nor even
+to inflict suffering, if it can be avoided. But there is money in the
+question, to secure which I have already gone through a great deal of
+inconvenience and anxiety, and, to be brief, that money I must have,
+while you, on the other hand are doubtless anxious to escape hence with
+your lives. So I make you an offer. Let one of our party come under safe
+conduct on board your boat and search it, just to see if anything lies
+beneath those rushes for instance. Then, if it is found empty, we will
+withdraw to a distance and let you go, or the same if full, that is,
+upon its contents being unladen into the mud."
+
+"Are those all your terms?" asked Foy.
+
+"Not quite all, worthy Heer van Goorl. Among you I observe a young
+gentleman whom doubtless you have managed to carry off against his
+will, to wit, my beloved son, Adrian. In his own interests, for he will
+scarcely be a welcome guest in Leyden, I ask that, before you depart,
+you should place this noble cavalier ashore in a position where we can
+see him. Now, what is your answer?"
+
+"That you may go back to hell to look for it," replied Martin rudely,
+while Foy added:
+
+"What other answer do you expect from folk who have escaped out of your
+clutches in Haarlem?"
+
+As he said the words, at a nod from Martin, Martha, who by now had crept
+up to them, under cover of his great form and of surrounding reeds, let
+go the stern of the boat and vanished.
+
+"Plain words from plain, uncultivated people, not unnaturally irritated
+by the course of political events with which, although Fortune has mixed
+me up in them, I have nothing whatever to do," answered Ramiro. "But
+once more I beg of you to consider. It is probable that you have no food
+upon your boat, whereas we have plenty. Also, in due course, darkness
+will fall, which must give us a certain advantage; moreover, I have
+reason to hope for assistance. Therefore, in a waiting game like this
+the cards are with me, and as I think your poor prisoner, Adrian, will
+tell you, I know how to play a hand at cards."
+
+About eight yards from the cutter, in a thick patch of water-lilies,
+just at this moment an otter rose to take air--an old dog-otter, for it
+was grey-headed. One of the Spaniards in the boat caught sight of the
+ring it made, and picking up a stone from the ballast threw it at it
+idly. The otter vanished.
+
+"We have been seeking each other a long while, but have never come to
+blows yet, although, being a brave man, I know you would wish it,"
+said Red Martin modestly. "Senor Ramiro, will you do me the honour to
+overlook my humble birth and come ashore with me for a few minutes, man
+against man. The odds would be in your favour, for you have armour and I
+have nothing but a worn bull's hide, also you have my good sword Silence
+and I only a wood-man's axe. Still I will risk it, and, what is more,
+trusting to your good faith, we are willing to wager the treasure of
+Hendrik Brant upon the issue."
+
+So soon as they understood this challenge a roar of laughter went up
+from the Spaniards in the boat, in which Ramiro himself joined heartily.
+The idea of anyone voluntarily entering upon a single combat with the
+terrible Frisian giant, who for months had been a name of fear among the
+thousands that beleaguered Haarlem, struck them as really ludicrous.
+
+But of a sudden they ceased laughing, and one and all stared with a
+strange anxiety at the bottom of their boat, much as terrier dogs stare
+at the earth beneath which they hear invisible vermin on the move. Then
+a great shouting arose among them, and they looked eagerly over the
+gunwales; yes, and began to stab at the water with their swords. But all
+the while through the tumult and voices came a steady, regular sound as
+of a person knocking heavily on the further side of a thick door.
+
+"Mother of Heaven!" screamed someone in the cutter, "we are scuttled,"
+and they began to tear at the false bottom of their boat, while others
+stabbed still more furiously at the surface of the Mere.
+
+Now, rising one by one to the face of that quiet water, could be seen
+bubbles, and the line of them ran from the cutter towards the rowing
+boat. Presently, within six feet of it, axe in hand, rose the strange
+and dreadful figure of a naked, skeleton-like woman covered with mud and
+green weeds, and bleeding from great wounds in the back and sides.
+
+There it stood, shaking an axe at the terror-stricken Spaniards, and
+screaming in short gasps,
+
+"Paid back! paid back, Ramiro! Now sink and drown, you dog, or come,
+visit Red Martin on the shore."
+
+"Well done, Martha," roared Martin, as he dragged her dying into the
+boat. While he spoke, lo! the cutter began to fill and sink.
+
+"There is but one chance for it," cried Ramiro, "overboard and at them.
+It is not deep," and springing into the water, which reached to his
+neck, he began to wade towards the shore.
+
+"Push off," cried Foy, and they thrust and pulled. But the gold was
+heavy, and their boat had settled far into the mud. Do what they might,
+she would not stir. Then uttering some strange Frisian oath, Martin
+sprang over her stern, and putting out all his mighty strength thrust
+at it to loose her. Still she would not move. The Spaniards came up, now
+the water reached only to their thighs, and their bright swords flashed
+in the sunlight.
+
+"Cut them down!" yelled Ramiro. "At them for your lives' sake."
+
+The boat trembled, but she would not stir.
+
+"Too heavy in the bows," screamed Martha, and struggling to her feet,
+with one wild scream she launched herself straight at the throat of the
+nearest Spaniard. She gripped him with her long arms, and down they went
+together. Once they rose, then fell again, and through a cloud of mud
+might be seen struggling upon the bottom of the Mere till presently they
+lay still, both of them.
+
+The lightened boat lifted, and in answer to Martin's mighty efforts
+glided forward through the clinging mud. Again he thrust, and she was
+clear.
+
+"Climb in, Martin, climb in," shouted Foy as he stabbed at a Spaniard.
+
+"By heaven! no," roared Ramiro splashing towards him with the face of a
+devil.
+
+For a second Martin stood still. Then he bent, and the sword-cut fell
+harmless upon his leather jerkin. Now very suddenly his great arms shot
+out; yes, he seized Ramiro by the thighs and lifted, and there was seen
+the sight of a man thrown into the air as though he were a ball tossed
+by a child at play, to fall headlong upon the casks of treasure in the
+skiff prow where he lay still.
+
+Martin sprang forward and gripped the tiller with his outstretched hand
+as it glided away from him.
+
+"Row, master, row," he cried, and Foy rowed madly until they were clear
+of the last Spaniard, clear by ten yards. Even Elsa snatched a rollock,
+and with it struck a soldier on the hand who tried to stay them, forcing
+him to loose his grip; a deed of valour she boasted of with pride all
+her life through. Then they dragged Martin into the boat.
+
+"Now, you Spanish dogs," the great man roared back at them as he shook
+the water from his flaming hair and beard, "go dig for Brant's treasure
+and live on ducks' eggs here till Don Frederic sends to fetch you."
+
+
+
+The island had melted away into a mist of other islands. No living thing
+was to be seen save the wild creatures and birds of the great lake, and
+no sound was to be heard except their calling and the voices of the
+wind and water. They were alone--alone and safe, and there at a distance
+towards the skyline rose the church towers of Leyden, for which they
+headed.
+
+"Jufvrouw," said Martin presently, "there is another flagon of wine in
+that locker, and we should be glad of a pull at it."
+
+Elsa, who was steering the boat, rose and found the wine and a horn mug,
+which she filled and handed first to Foy.
+
+"Here's a health," said Foy as he drank, "to the memory of Mother
+Martha, who saved us all. Well, she died as she would have wished to
+die, taking a Spaniard for company, and her story will live on."
+
+"Amen," said Martin. Then a thought struck him, and, leaving his oars
+for a minute, for he rowed two as against Foy's and Adrian's one, he
+went forward to where Ramiro lay stricken senseless on the kegs of
+specie and jewels in the bows, and took from him the great sword
+Silence. But he strapped the Spaniard's legs together with his belt.
+
+"That crack on the head keeps him quiet enough," he said in explanation,
+"but he might come to and give trouble, or try to swim for it, since
+such cats have many lives. Ah! Senor Ramiro, I told you I would have my
+sword back before I was half an hour older, or go where I shouldn't want
+one." Then he touched the spring in the hilt and examined the cavity.
+"Why," he said, "here's my legacy left in it safe and sound. No wonder
+my good angel made me mad to get that sword again."
+
+"No wonder," echoed Foy, "especially as you got Ramiro with it," and he
+glanced at Adrian, who was labouring at the bow oar, looking, now that
+the excitement of the fight had gone by, most downcast and wretched.
+Well he might, seeing the welcome that, as he feared, awaited him in
+Leyden.
+
+For a while they rowed on in silence. All that they had gone through
+during the last four and twenty hours and the seven preceding months of
+war and privation, had broken their nerve. Even now, although they
+had escaped the danger and won back the buried gold, capturing the
+arch-villain who had brought them so much death and misery, and their
+home, which, for the present moment at any rate, was a strong place of
+refuge, lay before them, still they could not be at ease. Where so
+many had died, where the risks had been so fearful, it seemed almost
+incredible that they four should be living and hale, though weary, with
+a prospect of continuing to live for many years.
+
+That the girl whom he loved so dearly, and whom he had so nearly lost,
+should be sitting before him safe and sound, ready to become his wife
+whensoever he might wish it, seemed to Foy also a thing too good to
+be true. Too good to be true was it, moreover, that his brother, the
+wayward, passionate, weak, poetical-minded Adrian, made by nature to be
+the tool of others, and bear the burden of their evil doing, should have
+been dragged before it was over late, out of the net of the fowler,
+have repented of his sins and follies, and, at the risk of his own life,
+shown that he was still a man, no longer the base slave of passion and
+self-love. For Foy always loved his brother, and knowing him better than
+any others knew him, had found it hard to believe that however black
+things might look against him, he was at heart a villain.
+
+Thus he thought, and Elsa too had her thoughts, which may be guessed.
+They were silent all of them, till of a sudden, Elsa seated in the
+stern-sheets, saw Adrian suddenly let fall his oar, throw his arms wide,
+and pitch forward against the back of Martin. Yes, and in place of where
+he had sat appeared the dreadful countenance of Ramiro, stamped with a
+grin of hideous hate such as Satan might wear when souls escape him at
+the last. Ramiro recovered and sitting up, for to his feet he could
+not rise because of the sword strap, in his hand a thin, deadly-looking
+knife.
+
+"_Habet!_" he said with a short laugh, "_habes_, Weather-cock!" and he
+turned the knife against himself.
+
+But Martin was on him, and in five more seconds he lay trussed like a
+fowl in the bottom of the boat.
+
+"Shall I kill him?" said Martin to Foy, who with Elsa was bending over
+Adrian.
+
+"No," answered Foy grimly, "let him take his trial in Leyden. Oh! what
+accursed fools were we not to search him!"
+
+Ramiro's face turned a shade more ghastly.
+
+"It is your hour," he said in a hoarse voice, "you have won, thanks to
+that dog of a son of mine, who, I trust, may linger long before he dies,
+as die he must. Ah! well, this is what comes of breaking my oath to the
+Virgin and again lifting my hand against a woman." He looked at Elsa and
+shuddered, then went on: "It is your hour, make an end of me at once. I
+do not wish to appear thus before those boors."
+
+"Gag him," said Foy to Martin, "lest our ears be poisoned," and Martin
+obeyed with good will. Then he flung him down, and there the man lay,
+his back supported by the kegs of treasure he had worked so hard and
+sinned so deeply to win, making, as he knew well, his last journey to
+death and to whatever may lie beyond that solemn gate.
+
+They were passing the island that, many years ago, had formed the
+turning post of the great sledge race in which his passenger had been
+the fair Leyden heiress, Lysbeth van Hout. Ramiro could see her now as
+she was that day; he could see also how that race, which he just failed
+to win, had been for him an augury of disaster. Had not the Hollander
+again beaten him at the post, and that Hollander--Lysbeth's own son by
+another father--helped to it by her son born of himself, who now lay
+there death-stricken by him that gave him life. . . . They would take
+him to Lysbeth, he knew it; she would be his judge, that woman against
+whom he had piled up injury after injury, whom, even when she seemed
+to be in his power, he had feared more than any living being. . . . And
+after he had met her eyes for the last time, then would come the end.
+What sort of an end would it be for the captain red-handed from the
+siege of Haarlem, for the man who had brought Dirk van Goorl to
+his death, for the father who had just planted a dagger between the
+shoulders of his son because, at the last, that son had chosen to be
+true to his own people, and to deliver them from a dreadful doom? . . .
+Why did it come back to him, that horrible dream which had risen in his
+mind when, for the first time after many years, he met Lysbeth face to
+face there in the Gevangenhuis, that dream of the pitiful little man
+falling, falling through endless space, and at the bottom of the gulf
+two great hands, hands hideous and suggestive, reaching through the
+shadows to receive him?
+
+
+
+Like his son, Adrian, Ramiro was superstitious; more, his intellect, his
+reading, which in youth had been considerable, his observation of men
+and women, all led him to the conclusion that death is a wall with many
+doors in it; that on this side of the wall we may not linger or sleep,
+but must pass each of us through his appointed portal straight to the
+domain prepared for us. If so, what would be his lot, and who would be
+waiting to greet him yonder? Oh! terrors may attend the wicked after
+death, but in the case of some they do not tarry until death; they leap
+forward to him whom it is decreed must die, forcing attention with their
+eager, craving hands, with their obscure and ominous voices. . . . About
+him the sweet breath of the summer afternoon, the skimming swallows,
+the meadows starred with flowers; within him every hell at which the
+imagination can so much as hint.
+
+Before he passed the gates of Leyden, in those few short hours, Ramiro,
+to Elsa's eyes, had aged by twenty years.
+
+Their little boat was heavy laden, the wind was against them, and they
+had a dying man and a prisoner aboard. So it came about that the day was
+closing before the soldiers challenged them from the watergate, asking
+who they were and whither they went. Foy stood up and said:
+
+"We are Foy van Goorl, Red Martin, Elsa Brant, a wounded man and a
+prisoner, escaped from Haarlem, and we go to the house of Lysbeth van
+Goorl in the Bree Straat."
+
+Then they let them through the watergate, and there, on the further
+side, were many gathered who thanked God for their deliverance, and
+begged tidings of them.
+
+"Come to the house in the Bree Straat and we will tell you from the
+balcony," answered Foy.
+
+So they rowed from one cut and canal to another till at last they came
+to the private boat-house of the van Goorls, and entered it, and thus by
+the small door into the house.
+
+
+
+Lysbeth van Goorl, recovered from her illness now, but aged and grown
+stern with suffering, sat in an armchair in the great parlour of
+her home in the Bree Straat, the room where as a girl she had cursed
+Montalvo; where too not a year ago, she had driven his son, the traitor
+Adrian, from her presence. At her side was a table on which stood a
+silver bell and two brass holders with candles ready to be lighted. She
+rang the bell and a woman-servant entered, the same who, with Elsa, had
+nursed her in the plague.
+
+"What is that murmuring in the street?" Lysbeth asked. "I hear the sound
+of many voices. Is there more news from Haarlem?"
+
+"Alas! yes," answered the woman. "A fugitive says that the executioners
+there are weary, so now they tie the poor prisoners back to back and
+throw them into the mere to drown."
+
+A groan burst from Lysbeth's lips. "Foy, my son, is there," she
+muttered, "and Elsa Brant his affianced wife, and Martin his servant,
+and many another friend. Oh! God, how long, how long?" and her head sank
+upon her bosom.
+
+Soon she raised it again and said, "Light the candles, woman, this place
+grows dark, and in its gloom I see the ghosts of all my dead."
+
+They burned up--two stars of light in the great room.
+
+"Whose feet are those upon the stairs?" asked Lysbeth, "the feet of men
+who bear burdens. Open the large doors, woman, and let that enter which
+it pleases God to send us."
+
+So the doors were flung wide, and through them came people carrying
+a wounded man, then following him Foy and Elsa, and, lastly, towering
+above them all, Red Martin, who thrust before him another man. Lysbeth
+rose from her chair to look.
+
+"Do I dream?" she said, "or, son Foy, hath the Angel of the Lord
+delivered you out of the hell of Haarlem?"
+
+"We are here, mother," he answered.
+
+"And whom," she said, pointing to the figure covered with a cloak, "do
+you bring with you?"
+
+"Adrian, mother, who is dying."
+
+"Then, son Foy, take him hence; alive, dying, or dead, I have done
+with----" Here her eyes fell upon Red Martin and the man he held,
+"Martin the Frisian," she muttered, "but who----"
+
+Martin heard, and by way of answer lifted up his prisoner so that the
+fading light from the balcony windows fell full upon his face.
+
+"What!" she cried. "Juan de Montalvo as well as his son Adrian, and in
+this room----" Then she checked herself and added, "Foy, tell me your
+story."
+
+In few words and brief he told it, or so much as she need know to
+understand. His last words were: "Mother, be merciful to Adrian; from
+the first he meant no ill; he saved all our lives, and he lies dying by
+that man's dagger."
+
+"Lift him up," she said.
+
+So they lifted him up, and Adrian, who, since the knife pierced him had
+uttered no word, spoke for the first and last time, muttering hoarsely:
+
+"Mother, take back your words and forgive me--before I die."
+
+Now the sorrow-frozen heart of Lysbeth melted, and she bent over him and
+said, speaking so that all might hear:
+
+"Welcome to your home again, Adrian. You who once were led astray, have
+done bravely, and I am proud to call you son. Though you have left the
+faith in which you were bred, here and hereafter may God bless you and
+reward you, beloved Adrian!" Then she bent down and kissed his dying
+lips. Foy and Elsa kissed him also in farewell before they bore him,
+smiling happily to himself, to the chamber, his own chamber, where
+within some few hours death found him.
+
+Adrian had been borne away, and for a little while there was silence.
+Then, none commanding him, but as though an instinct pushed him forward,
+Red Martin began to move up the length of the long room, half dragging,
+half carrying his captive Ramiro. It was as if some automaton had
+suddenly been put in motion, some machine of gigantic strength that
+nothing could stop. The man in his grip set his heels in the floor and
+hung back, but Martin scarcely seemed to heed his resistance. On he
+came, and the victim with him, till they stood together before the oaken
+chair and the stern-faced, white-haired woman who sat in it, her
+cold countenance lit by the light of the two candles. She looked and
+shuddered. Then she spoke, asking:
+
+"Why do you bring this man to me, Martin?"
+
+"For judgment, Lysbeth van Goorl," he answered.
+
+"Who made me a judge over him?" she asked.
+
+"My master, Dirk van Goorl, your son, Adrian, and Hendrik Brant. Their
+blood makes you judge of his blood."
+
+"I will have none of it," Lysbeth said passionately, "let the people
+judge him." As she spoke, from the crowd in the street below there
+swelled a sudden clamour.
+
+"Good," said Martin, "the people shall judge," and he began to turn
+towards the window, when suddenly, by a desperate effort, Ramiro
+wrenched his doublet from his hand, and flung himself at Lysbeth's feet
+and grovelled there.
+
+"What do you seek?" she asked, drawing back her dress so that he should
+not touch it.
+
+"Mercy," he gasped.
+
+"Mercy! Look, son and daughter, this man asks for mercy who for many a
+year has given none. Well, Juan de Montalvo, take your prayer to God and
+to the people. I have done with you."
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" he cried again.
+
+"Eight months ago," she said, "I uttered that prayer to you, begging of
+you in the Name of Christ to spare the life of an innocent man, and what
+was your answer, Juan de Montalvo?"
+
+"Once you were my wife," he pleaded; "being a woman, does not that weigh
+with you?"
+
+"Once he was my husband, being a man did that weigh with you? The last
+word is said. Take him, Martin, to those who deal with murderers."
+
+Then that look came upon Montalvo which twice or thrice before Lysbeth
+has seen written in his face--once when the race was run and lost, and
+once when in after years she had petitioned for the life of her husband.
+Lo! it was no longer the face of a man, but such a countenance as might
+have been worn by a devil or a beast. The eyeball started, the grey
+moustache curled upwards, the cheek-bones grew high and sharp.
+
+"Night after night," he gasped, "you lay at my side, and I might have
+killed you, as I have killed that brat of yours--and I spared you, I
+spared you."
+
+"God spared me, Juan de Montalvo, that He might bring us to this hour;
+let Him spare you also if He will. I do not judge. He judges and the
+people," and Lysbeth rose from her chair.
+
+"Stay!" he cried, gnashing his teeth.
+
+"No, I stay not, I go to receive the last breath of him you have
+murdered, my son and yours."
+
+He raised himself upon his knees, and for a moment their eyes met for
+the last time.
+
+"Do you remember?" she said in a quiet voice, "many years ago, in this
+very room, after you had bought me at the cost of Dirk's life, certain
+words I spoke to you? Now I do not think that it was I who spoke, Juan
+de Montalvo."
+
+And she swept past him and though the wide doorway.
+
+
+
+Red Martin stood upon the balcony gripping the man Ramiro. Beneath him
+the broad street was packed with people, hundreds and thousands of them,
+a dense mass seething in the shadows, save here and again where a torch
+or a lantern flared showing their white faces, for the moon, which
+shone upon Martin and his captive, scarcely reached those down below. As
+gaunt, haggard, and long-haired, he stepped upon the balcony, they saw
+him and his burden, and there went up such a yell as shook the very
+roofs of Leyden. Martin held up his hand, and there was silence, deep
+silence, through which the breath of all that multitude rose in sighs,
+like the sighing of a little wind.
+
+"Citizens my Leyden, my masters," the Frisian cried, in a great, deep
+voice that echoed down the street, "I have a word to say to you. This
+man here--do you know him?"
+
+Back came an answering yell of "_Aye!_"
+
+"He is a Spaniard," went on Martin, "the noble Count Juan de Montalvo,
+who many years past forced one Lysbeth van Hout of this city into a
+false marriage, buying her at the price of the life of her affianced
+husband, Dirk van Goorl, that he might win her fortune."
+
+"We know it," they shouted.
+
+"Afterwards he was sent to the galleys for his crimes. He came back,
+and was made Governor of the Gevangenhuis by the bloody Alva, where
+he brought to death your brother and past burgomaster, Dirk van Goorl.
+Afterwards he kidnapped the person of Elsa Brant, the daughter of
+Hendrik Brant, whom the Inquisition murdered at The Hague. We rescued
+her from him, my master, Foy van Goorl, and I. Afterwards he served
+with the Spaniards as a captain of their forces in the siege of Haarlem
+yonder--Haarlem that fell three days ago, and whose citizens they are
+murdering to-night, throwing them two by two to drown in the waters of
+the Mere."
+
+"Kill him! Cast him down!" roared the mob. "Give him to us, Red Martin."
+
+Again the Frisian lifted his hand and again there was silence; a sudden,
+terrible silence.
+
+"This man had a son; my mistress, Lysbeth van Goorl, to her shame and
+sorrow, was the mother of him. That son, repenting, saved us from the
+sack of Haarlem, yea, through him the three of us, Foy van Goorl, Elsa
+Brant, and I, Martin Roos, their servant, are alive to-night. This man
+and his Spaniards overtook us on the lake, and there we conquered him
+by the help of Martha the Mare, Martha whom they made to carry her own
+husband to the fire. We conquered him, but she--she died in the fray;
+they stabbed her to death in the water as men stab an otter. Well, that
+son, the Heer Adrian, he was murdered in the boat with a knife-blow
+given by his own father from behind, and he lies here in this house dead
+or dying.
+
+"My master and I, we brought this man, who to-day is called Ramiro, to
+be judged by the woman whose husband and son he slew. But she would not
+judge him; she said, 'Take him to the people, let them judge.' So judge
+now, ye people," and with an effort of his mighty strength Martin swung
+the struggling body of Ramiro over the parapet of the balcony and let
+him hang there above their heads.
+
+They yelled, they screamed in their ravenous hate and rage; they leapt
+up as hounds leap at a wolf upon a wall.
+
+"Give him to us, give him to us!" that was their cry.
+
+Martin laughed aloud. "Take him then," he said; "take him, ye people,
+and judge him as you will," and with one great heave he hurled the thing
+that writhed between his hands far out into the centre of the street.
+
+The crowd below gathered themselves into a heap like water above a boat
+sinking in the heart of a whirlpool. For a minute or more they snarled
+and surged and twisted. Then they broke up and went away, talking in
+short, eager sentences. And there, small and dreadful on the stones, lay
+something that once had been a man.
+
+
+
+Thus did the burghers of Leyden pass judgment and execute it upon that
+noble Spaniard, the Count Juan de Montalvo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+TWO SCENES
+
+
+_Scene the First_
+
+Some months had gone by, and Alkmaar, that heroic little city of the
+north, had turned the flood of Spanish victory. Full of shame and
+rage, the armies of Philip and of Valdez marched upon Leyden, and from
+November, 1573, to the end of March, 1574, the town was besieged. Then
+the soldiers were called away to fight Louis of Nassau, and the leaguer
+was raised till, on the fatal field of Mook Heath, the gallant Louis,
+with his brother Henry and four thousand of their soldiers, perished,
+defeated by D'Avila. Now once more the victorious Spaniards threatened
+Leyden.
+
+In a large bare room of the Stadthuis of that city, at the beginning of
+the month of May, a man of middle-age might have been seen one morning
+walking up and down, muttering to himself as he walked. He was not a
+tall man and rather thin in figure, with brown eyes and beard, hair
+tinged with grey, and a wide brow lined by thought. This was William of
+Orange, called the Silent, one of the greatest and most noble of human
+beings who ever lived in any age; the man called forth by God to whom
+Holland owes its liberties, and who for ever broke the hideous yoke of
+religious fanaticism among the Teuton races.
+
+Sore was his trouble on this May morning. But last month two more of his
+brothers had found death beneath the sword of the Spaniard, and now this
+same Spaniard, with whom he had struggled for all these weary years, was
+marching in his thousands upon Leyden.
+
+"Money," he was muttering to himself. "Give me money, and I will save
+the city yet. With money ships can be built, more men can be raised,
+powder can be bought. Money, money, money--and I have not a ducat! All
+gone, everything, even to my mother's trinkets and the plate upon my
+table. Nothing is left, no, not the credit to buy a dozen geldings."
+
+As he thought thus one of his secretaries entered the room.
+
+"Well, Count," said the Prince, "have you been to them all?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And with what success?"
+
+"The burgomaster, van de Werff, promises to do everything he can, and
+will, for he is a man to lean on, but money is short. It has all left
+the country and there is not much to get."
+
+"I know it," groaned Orange, "you can't make a loaf from the crumbs
+beneath the table. Is the proclamation put up inviting all good citizens
+to give or lend in this hour of their country's need?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Thank you, Count, you can go; there is nothing more to do. We will ride
+for Delft to-night."
+
+"Sir," said the secretary, "there are two men in the courtyard who wish
+to see you."
+
+"Are they known?"
+
+"Oh yes, perfectly. One is Foy van Goorl, who went through the siege of
+Haarlem and escaped, the son of the worthy burgher, Dirk van Goorl, whom
+they did to death yonder in the Gevangenhuis; and the other a Friesland
+giant of a man called Red Martin, his servant, of whose feats of arms
+you may have heard. The two of them held a shot tower in this town
+against forty or fifty Spaniards, and killed I don't know how many."
+
+The Prince nodded. "I know. This Red Martin is a Goliath, a brave
+fellow. What do they want?"
+
+"I am not sure," said the secretary with a smile, "but they have brought
+a herring-cart here, the Frisian in the shafts for a horse, and the Heer
+van Goorl pushing behind. They say that it is laden with ammunition for
+the service of their country."
+
+"Then why do they not take it to the Burgomaster, or somebody in
+authority?"
+
+"I don't know, but they declare that they will only deliver it to you in
+person."
+
+"You are sure of your men, Count? You know," he added, with a smile, "I
+have to be careful."
+
+"Quite, they were identified by several of the people in the other
+room."
+
+"Then admit them, they may have something to say."
+
+"But, sir, they wish to bring in their cart."
+
+"Very well, let them bring it in if it will come through the door,"
+answered the Prince, with a sigh, for his thoughts were far from these
+worthy citizens and their cart.
+
+Presently the wide double doors were opened, and Red Martin appeared,
+not as he was after the siege of Haarlem, but as he used to be,
+well-covered and bland, with a beard even longer and more fiery than
+of yore. At the moment he was strangely employed, for across his great
+breast lay the broad belly-band of a horse, and by its means, harnessed
+between the shafts, he dragged a laden cart covered with an old sail.
+Moreover the load must have been heavy, for notwithstanding his strength
+and that of Foy, no weakling, who pushed behind, they had trouble in
+getting the wheels up a little rise at the threshold.
+
+Foy shut the doors, then they trundled their cart into the middle of
+the great room, halted and saluted. So curious was the sight, and so
+inexplicable, that the Prince, forgetting his troubles for a minute,
+burst out laughing.
+
+"I daresay it looks strange, sir," said Foy, hotly, the colour rising to
+the roots of his fair hair, "but when you have heard our story I am not
+sure that you will laugh at us."
+
+"Mynheer van Goorl," said the Prince with grave courtesy, "be assured
+that I laugh at no true men such as yourself and your servant, Martin
+the Frisian, and least of all at men who could hold yonder shot tower
+against fifty Spaniards, who could escape out of Haarlem and bring
+home with them the greatest devil in Don Frederic's army. It was your
+equipage I laughed at, not yourselves," and he bowed slightly first to
+the one and then to the other.
+
+"His Highness thinks perhaps," said Martin, "that the man who does
+an ass's work must necessarily be an ass," at which sally the Prince
+laughed again.
+
+"Sir," said Foy, "I crave your patience for a while, and on no mean
+matter. Your Highness has heard, perhaps, of one Hendrik Brant, who
+perished in the Inquisition."
+
+"Do you mean the goldsmith and banker who was said to be the richest man
+in the Netherlands?"
+
+"Yes, sir, the man whose treasure was lost."
+
+"I remember--whose treasure was lost--though it was reported that some
+of our own people got away with it," and his eyes wandered wonderingly
+to the sail which hid the burden on the cart.
+
+"Sir," went on Foy, "you heard right; Red Martin and I, with a pilot man
+who was killed, were they who got away with it, and by the help of the
+waterwife, who now is dead, and who was known as Mother Martha, or
+the Mare, we hid it in Haarlemer Meer, whence we recovered it after we
+escaped from Haarlem. If you care to know how, I will tell you later,
+but the tale is long and strange. Elsa Brant was with us at the
+time----"
+
+"She is Hendrik Brant's only child, and therefore the owner of his
+wealth, I believe?" interrupted the Prince.
+
+"Yes, sir, and my affianced wife."
+
+"I have heard of the young lady, and I congratulate you. Is she in
+Leyden?"
+
+"No, sir, her strength and mind were much broken by the horrors which
+she passed through in the siege of Haarlem, and by other events more
+personal to her. Therefore, when the Spaniards threatened their first
+leaguer of this place, I sent her and my mother to Norwich in England,
+where they may sleep in peace."
+
+"You were wise indeed, Heer van Goorl," replied the Prince with a sigh,
+"but it seems that you stopped behind?"
+
+"Yes, sir, Martin and I thought it our duty to see this war out. When
+Leyden is safe from the Spaniards, then we go to England, not before."
+
+"When Leyden is safe from the Spaniards----" and again the Prince
+sighed, adding, "well, you have a true heart, young sir, and a right
+spirit, for which I honour both of you. But I fear that things being
+thus the Jufvrouw cannot sleep so very peacefully in Norwich after all."
+
+"We must each bear our share of the basket," answered Foy sadly; "I must
+do the fighting and she the watching."
+
+"It is so, I know it, who have both fought and watched. Well, I hope
+that a time will come when you will both of you do the loving. And now
+for the rest of the story."
+
+"Sir, it is very short. We read your proclamation in the streets this
+morning, and learned from it for certain what we have heard before, that
+you are in sore want of money for the defence of Leyden and the war at
+large. Therefore, hearing that you were still in the city, and believing
+this proclamation of yours to be the summons and clear command for which
+we waited, we have brought you Hendrik Brant's treasure. It is there
+upon the cart."
+
+The Prince put his hand to his forehead and reeled back a step.
+
+"You do not jest with me, Foy van Goorl?" he said.
+
+"Indeed no."
+
+"But stay; this treasure is not yours to give, it belongs to Elsa
+Brant."
+
+"Sir, the legal title to it is in myself, for my father was Brant's
+lawful heir and executor, and I inherit his rights. Moreover, although
+a provision for her is charged upon it, it is Elsa's desire--I have
+it written here under her hand and witnessed--that the money should be
+used, every ducat of it, for the service of the country in such way as I
+might find good. Lastly, her father, Hendrik Brant, always believed that
+this wealth of his would in due season be of such service. Here is a
+copy of his will, in which he directs that we are to apply the money
+'for the defence of our country, the freedom of religious Faith, and the
+destruction of the Spaniards in such fashion and at such time or times
+as God shall reveal to us.' When he gave us charge of it also, his words
+to me were: 'I am certain that thousands and tens of thousands of our
+folk will live to bless the gold of Hendrik Brant.' On that belief too,
+thinking that God put it into his mind, and would reveal His purpose
+in His own hour, we have acted all of us, and therefore for the sake of
+this stuff we have gone to death and torture. Now it has come about as
+Brant foretold; now we understand why all these things have happened,
+and why we live, this man and I, to stand before you, sir, to-day,
+with the hoard unminished by a single florin, no, not even by Martin's
+legacy."
+
+"Man, you jest, you jest!" said Orange.
+
+Foy made a sign, and Martin going to the cart, pulled off the
+sail-cloth, revealing the five mud-stained barrels painted, each of
+them, with the mark B. There, too, ready for the purpose, were a hammer,
+mallet, and chisel. Resting the shafts of the cart upon a table, Martin
+climbed into it, and with a few great blows of the mallet, drove in
+the head of a cask selected at hazard. Beneath appeared wool, which he
+removed, not without fear lest there might be some mistake; then, as he
+could wait no longer, he tilted the barrel up and shot its contents out
+upon the floor.
+
+As it chanced this was the keg that contained the jewels into which,
+foreseeing troublous days, from time to time Brant had converted the
+most of his vast wealth. Now in one glittering stream of red and white
+and blue and green, breaking from their cases and wrappings that the
+damp had rotted, save for those pearls, the most valuable of them all,
+which were in the watertight copper box--they fell jingling to the open
+floor, where they rolled hither and thither like beans shot from a sack
+in the steading.
+
+"I think there is only this one tub of jewels," said Foy quietly; "the
+rest, which are much heavier, are full of gold coin. Here, sir, is the
+inventory so that you may check the list and see that we have kept back
+nothing."
+
+But William of Orange heeded him not, only he looked at the priceless
+gems and muttered, "Fleets of ships, armies of men, convoys of food,
+means to bribe the great and buy goodwill--aye, and the Netherlands
+themselves wrung from the grip of Spain, the Netherlands free and rich
+and happy! O God! I thank Thee Who thus hast moved the hearts of men to
+the salvation of this Thy people from sore danger."
+
+Then in the sudden ecstasy of relief and joy, the great Prince hid his
+face in his hands and wept.
+
+
+
+Thus it came about that the riches of Hendrik Brant, when Leyden lay
+at her last gasp, paid the soldiers and built the fleets which, in
+due time, driven by a great wind sent suddenly from heaven across
+the flooded meadows, raised the dreadful siege and signed the doom of
+Spanish rule in Holland. Therefore it would seem that not in vain was
+Hendrik Brant stubborn and foresighted, that his blood and the blood
+of Dirk van Goorl were not shed in vain; that not in vain also did
+Elsa suffer the worst torments of a woman's fear in the Red Mill on the
+marshes; and Foy and Martin play their parts like men in the shot-tower,
+the Gevangenhuis and the siege, and Mother Martha the Sword find a grave
+and rest in the waters of the Haarlem Meer.
+
+There are other morals to this story also, applicable, perhaps, to our
+life to-day, but the reader is left to guess them.
+
+
+_Scene the Second_
+
+Leyden is safe at last, and through the broken dykes Foy and Martin,
+with the rescuing ships, have sailed, shouting and red-handed, into her
+famine-stricken streets. For the Spaniards, those that are left of them,
+are broken and have fled away from their forts and flooded trenches.
+
+So the scene changes from warring, blood-stained, triumphant Holland to
+the quiet city of Norwich and a quaint gabled house in Tombland almost
+beneath the shadow of the tall spire of the cathedral, which now for
+about a year had been the home of Lysbeth van Goorl and Elsa Brant. Here
+to Norwich they had come in safety in the autumn of 1573 just before
+the first siege of Leyden was begun, and here they had dwelt for twelve
+long, doubtful, anxious months. News, or rather rumours, of what was
+passing in the Netherlands reached them from time to time; twice even
+there came letters from Foy himself, but the last of these had been
+received many weeks ago just as the iron grip of the second leaguer was
+closing round the city. Then Foy and Martin, so they learned from the
+letter, were not in the town but with the Prince of Orange in Delft,
+working hard at the fleet which was being built and armed for its
+relief.
+
+After this there was a long silence, and none could tell what had
+happened, although a horrible report reached them that Leyden had been
+taken, sacked, and burnt, and all its inhabitants massacred. They lived
+in comfort here in Norwich, for the firm of Munt and Brown, Dirk van
+Goorl's agents, were honest, and the fortune which he had sent over
+when the clouds were gathering thick, had been well invested by them
+and produced an ample revenue. But what comfort could there be for their
+poor hearts thus agonised by doubts and sickening fears?
+
+One evening they sat in the parlour on the ground floor of the house, or
+rather Lysbeth sat, for Elsa knelt by her, her head resting upon the arm
+of the chair, and wept.
+
+"Oh! it is cruel," she sobbed, "it is too much to bear. How can you be
+so calm, mother, when perhaps Foy is dead?"
+
+"If my son is dead, Elsa, that is God's Will, and I am calm, because
+now, as many a time before, I resign myself to the Will of God,
+not because I do not suffer. Mothers can feel, girl, as well as
+sweethearts."
+
+"Would that I had never left him," moaned Elsa.
+
+"You asked to leave, child; for my part I should have bided the best or
+the worst in Leyden."
+
+"It is true, it is because I am a coward; also he wished it."
+
+"He wished it, Elsa, therefore it is for the best; let us await the
+issue in patience. Come, our meal is set."
+
+They sat themselves down to eat, these two lonely women, but at their
+board were laid four covers as though they expected guests. Yet none
+were bidden--only this was Elsa's fancy.
+
+"Foy and Martin _might_ come," she said, "and be vexed if it seemed that
+we did not expect them." So for the last three months or more she had
+always set four covers at the table, and Lysbeth did not gainsay her. In
+her heart she too hoped that Foy might come.
+
+
+
+That very night Foy came, and with him Red Martin, the great sword
+Silence still strapped about his middle.
+
+"Hark!" said Lysbeth suddenly, "I hear my son's footsteps at the door.
+It seems, Elsa, that, after all, the ears of a mother are quicker than
+those of a lover."
+
+But Elsa never heard her, for now--now at length, she was wrapped in
+the arms of Foy; the same Foy, but grown older and with a long pale scar
+across his forehead.
+
+"Yet," went on Lysbeth to herself, with a faint smile on her white and
+stately face, "the son's lips are for the lover first."
+
+An hour later, or two, or three, for who reckoned time that night when
+there was so much to hear and tell, while the others knelt before her,
+Foy and Elsa hand in hand, and behind them Martin like a guardian giant,
+Lysbeth put up her evening prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
+
+"Almighty God," she said in her slow, sonorous voice, "Thy awful Hand
+that by my own faithless sin took from me my husband, hath given back
+his son and mine who shall be to this child a husband, and for us as for
+our country over sea, out of the night of desolation is arisen a dawn of
+peace. Above us throughout the years is Thy Everlasting Will, beneath
+us when our years are done, shall by Thy Everlasting Arms. So for the
+bitter and the sweet, for the evil and the good, for the past and for
+the present, we, Thy servants, render Thee glory, thanks, and praise, O
+God of our fathers, That fashioneth us and all according to Thy desire,
+remembering those things which we have forgotten and foreknowing
+those things which are not yet. Therefore to Thee, Who through so many
+dreadful days hast led us to this hour of joy, be glory and thanks, O
+Lord of the living and the dead. Amen."
+
+And the others echoed "To Thee be glory and thanks, O Lord of the living
+and the dead. Amen."
+
+
+
+Then, their prayer ended, the living rose, and, with separations done
+and fears appeased at last, leant towards each other in the love and
+hope of their beautiful youth.
+
+But Lysbeth sat silent in the new home, far from the land where she was
+born, and turned her stricken heart towards the dead.
+
+
+
+FINIS
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lysbeth, by H. Rider Haggard
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Lysbeth, A Tale Of The Dutch, by H. Rider Haggard
+#41 in our series by H. Rider Haggard
+
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+Title: Lysbeth, A Tale Of The Dutch
+
+Author: H. Rider Haggard
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5754]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LYSBETH, A TALE OF THE DUTCH ***
+
+
+
+
+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
+              and Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
+
+
+
+
+Lysbeth, A Tale Of The Dutch
+By H. Rider Haggard
+
+First Published 1901.
+
+
+
+                               LYSBETH
+
+                         A TALE OF THE DUTCH
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           H. RIDER HAGGARD
+
+
+
+                              DEDICATION
+
+  In token of the earnest reverence of a man of a later generation
+  for his character, and for that life work whereof we inherit the
+  fruits to-day, this tale of the times he shaped is dedicated to
+  the memory of one of the greatest and most noble-hearted beings
+  that the world has known; the immortal William, called the Silent,
+  of Nassau.
+
+
+
+                            AUTHOR'S NOTE
+
+There are, roughly, two ways of writing an historical romance--the
+first to choose some notable and leading characters of the time to be
+treated, and by the help of history attempt to picture them as they
+were; the other, to make a study of that time and history with the
+country in which it was enacted, and from it to deduce the necessary
+characters.
+
+In the case of "Lysbeth" the author has attempted this second method.
+By an example of the trials, adventures, and victories of a burgher
+family of the generation of Philip II. and William the Silent, he
+strives to set before readers of to-day something of the life of those
+who lived through perhaps the most fearful tyranny that the western
+world has known. How did they live, one wonders; how is it that they
+did not die of very terror, those of them who escaped the scaffold,
+the famine and the pestilence?
+
+This and another--Why were such things suffered to be?--seem problems
+worth consideration, especially by the young, who are so apt to take
+everything for granted, including their own religious freedom and
+personal security. How often, indeed, do any living folk give a
+grateful thought to the forefathers who won for us these advantages,
+and many others with them?
+
+The writer has sometimes heard travellers in the Netherlands express
+surprise that even in an age of almost universal decoration its noble
+churches are suffered to remain smeared with melancholy whitewash.
+Could they look backward through the centuries and behold with the
+mind's eye certain scenes that have taken place within these very
+temples and about their walls, they would marvel no longer. Here we
+are beginning to forget the smart at the price of which we bought
+deliverance from the bitter yoke of priest and king, but yonder the
+sword bit deeper and smote more often. Perhaps that is why in Holland
+they still love whitewash, which to them may be a symbol, a perpetual
+protest; and remembering stories that have been handed down as
+heirlooms to this day, frown at the sight of even the most modest
+sacerdotal vestment. Those who are acquainted with the facts of their
+history and deliverance will scarcely wonder at the prejudice.
+
+
+
+
+
+                               LYSBETH
+
+                         A TALE OF THE DUTCH
+
+
+
+
+                            BOOK THE FIRST
+
+                              THE SOWING
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I
+
+                       THE WOLF AND THE BADGER
+
+The time was in or about the year 1544, when the Emperor Charles V.
+ruled the Netherlands, and our scene the city of Leyden.
+
+Any one who has visited this pleasant town knows that it lies in the
+midst of wide, flat meadows, and is intersected by many canals filled
+with Rhine water. But now, as it was winter, near to Christmas indeed,
+the meadows and the quaint gabled roofs of the city lay buried beneath
+a dazzling sheet of snow, while, instead of boats and barges, skaters
+glided up and down the frozen surface of the canals, which were swept
+for their convenience. Outside the walls of the town, not far from the
+Morsch poort, or gate, the surface of the broad moat which surrounded
+them presented a sight as gay as it was charming. Just here one of the
+branches of the Rhine ran into this moat, and down it came the
+pleasure-seekers in sledges, on skates, or afoot. They were dressed,
+most of them, in their best attire, for the day was a holiday set
+apart for a kind of skating carnival, with sleighing matches, such
+games as curling, and other amusements.
+
+Among these merry folk might have been seen a young lady of two or
+three and twenty years of age, dressed in a coat of dark green cloth
+trimmed with fur, and close-fitting at the waist. This coat opened in
+front, showing a broidered woollen skirt, but over the bust it was
+tightly buttoned and surmounted by a stiff ruff of Brussels lace. Upon
+her head she wore a high-crowned beaver hat, to which the nodding
+ostrich feather was fastened by a jewelled ornament of sufficient
+value to show that she was a person of some means. In fact, this lady
+was the only child of a sea captain and shipowner named Carolus van
+Hout, who, whilst still a middle-aged man, had died about a year
+before, leaving her heiress to a very considerable fortune. This
+circumstance, with the added advantages of a very pretty face, in
+which were set two deep and thoughtful grey eyes, and a figure more
+graceful than was common among the Netherlander women, caused Lysbeth
+van Hout to be much sought after and admired, especially by the
+marriageable bachelors of Leyden.
+
+On this occasion, however, she was unescorted except by a serving
+woman somewhat older than herself, a native of Brussels, Greta by
+name, who in appearance was as attractive as in manner she was
+suspiciously discreet.
+
+As Lysbeth skated down the canal towards the moat many of the good
+burghers of Leyden took off their caps to her, especially the young
+burghers, one or two of whom had hopes that she would choose them to
+be her cavalier for this day's fete. Some of the elders, also, asked
+her if she would care to join their parties, thinking that, as she was
+an orphan without near male relations, she might be glad of their
+protection in times when it was wise for beautiful young women to be
+protected. With this excuse and that, however, she escaped from them
+all, for Lysbeth had already made her own arrangements.
+
+At that date there was living in Leyden a young man of four or five
+and twenty, named Dirk van Goorl, a distant cousin of her own. Dirk
+was a native of the little town of Alkmaar, and the second son of one
+of its leading citizens, a brass founder by trade. As in the natural
+course of events the Alkmaar business would descend to his elder
+brother, their father appointed him to a Leyden firm, in which, after
+eight or nine years of hard work, he had become a junior partner.
+While he was still living, Lysbeth's father had taken a liking to the
+lad, with the result that he grew intimate at the house which, from
+the first, was open to him as a kinsman. After the death of Carolus
+van Hout, Dirk had continued to visit there, especially on Sundays,
+when he was duly and ceremoniously received by Lysbeth's aunt, a
+childless widow named Clara van Ziel, who acted as her guardian. Thus,
+by degrees, favoured with such ample opportunity, a strong affection
+had sprung up between these two young people, although as yet they
+were not affianced, nor indeed had either of them said a word of open
+love to the other.
+
+This abstinence may seem strange, but some explanation of their self-
+restraint was to be found in Dirk's character. In mind he was patient,
+very deliberate in forming his purposes, and very sure in carrying
+them out. He felt impulses like other men, but he did not give way to
+them. For two years or more he had loved Lysbeth, but being somewhat
+slow at reading the ways of women he was not quite certain that she
+loved him, and above everything on earth he dreaded a rebuff. Moreover
+he knew her to be an heiress, and as his own means were still humble,
+and his expectations from his father small, he did not feel justified
+in asking her in marriage until his position was more assured. Had the
+Captain Carolus still been living the case would have been different,
+for then he could have gone to him. But he was dead, and Dirk's fine
+and sensitive nature recoiled from the thought that it might be said
+of him that he had taken advantage of the inexperience of a kinswoman
+in order to win her fortune. Also deep down in his mind he had a
+sincerer and quite secret reason for reticence, whereof more in its
+proper place.
+
+Thus matters stood between these two. To-day, however, though only
+with diffidence and after some encouragement from the lady, he had
+asked leave to be his cousin's cavalier at the ice fete, and when she
+consented, readily enough, appointed the moat as their place of
+meeting. This was somewhat less than Lysbeth expected, for she wished
+his escort through the town. But, when she hinted as much, Dirk
+explained that he would not be able to leave the works before three
+o'clock, as the metal for a large bell had been run into the casting,
+and he must watch it while it cooled.
+
+So, followed only by her maid, Greta, Lysbeth glided lightly as a bird
+down the ice path on to the moat, and across it, through the narrow
+cut, to the frozen mere beyond, where the sports were to be held and
+the races run. There the scene was very beautiful.
+
+Behind her lay the roofs of Leyden, pointed, picturesque, and covered
+with sheets of snow, while above them towered the bulk of the two
+great churches of St. Peter and St. Pancras, and standing on a mound
+known as the Burg, the round tower which is supposed to have been
+built by the Romans. In front stretched the flat expanse of white
+meadows, broken here and there by windmills with narrow waists and
+thin tall sails, and in the distance, by the church towers of other
+towns and villages.
+
+Immediately before her, in strange contrast to this lifeless
+landscape, lay the peopled mere, fringed around with dead reeds
+standing so still in the frosty air that they might have been painted
+things. On this mere half the population of Leyden seemed to be
+gathered; at least there were thousands of them, shouting, laughing,
+and skimming to and fro in their bright garments like flocks of gay-
+plumaged birds. Among them, drawn by horses with bells tied to their
+harness, glided many sledges of wickerwork and wood mounted upon iron
+runners, their fore-ends fashioned to quaint shapes, such as the heads
+of dogs or bulls, or Tritons. Then there were vendors of cakes and
+sweetmeats, vendors of spirits also, who did a good trade on this cold
+day. Beggars too were numerous, and among them deformities, who,
+nowadays, would be hidden in charitable homes, slid about in wooden
+boxes, which they pushed along with crutches. Lastly many loafers had
+gathered there with stools for fine ladies to sit on while the skates
+were bound to their pretty feet, and chapmen with these articles for
+sale and straps wherewith to fasten them. To complete the picture the
+huge red ball of the sun was sinking to the west, and opposite to it
+the pale full moon began already to gather light and life.
+
+The scene seemed so charming and so happy that Lysbeth, who was young,
+and now that she had recovered from the shock of her beloved father's
+death, light-hearted, ceased her forward movement and poised herself
+upon her skates to watch it for a space. While she stood thus a little
+apart, a woman came towards her from the throng, not as though she
+were seeking her, but aimlessly, much as a child's toy-boat is driven
+by light, contrary winds upon the summer surface of a pond.
+
+She was a remarkable-looking woman of about thirty-five years of age,
+tall and bony in make, with deep-set eyes, light grey of colour, that
+seemed now to flash fiercely and now to waver, as though in memory of
+some great dread. From beneath a coarse woollen cap a wisp of grizzled
+hair fell across the forehead, where it lay like the forelock of a
+horse. Indeed, the high cheekbones, scarred as though by burns, wide-
+spread nostrils and prominent white teeth, whence the lips had
+strangely sunk away, gave the whole countenance a more or less equine
+look which this falling lock seemed to heighten. For the rest the
+woman was poorly and not too plentifully clad in a gown of black
+woollen, torn and stained as though with long use and journeys, while
+on her feet she wore wooden clogs, to which were strapped skates that
+were not fellows, one being much longer than the other.
+
+Opposite to Lysbeth this strange, gaunt person stopped, contemplating
+her with a dreamy eye. Presently she seemed to recognise her, for she
+said in a quick, low voice, the voice of one who lives in terror of
+being overheard:--
+
+"That's a pretty dress of yours, Van Hout's daughter. Oh, yes, I know
+you; your father used to play with me when I was a child, and once he
+kissed me on the ice at just such a fete as this. Think of it! Kissed
+me, Martha the Mare," and she laughed hoarsely, and went on: "Yes,
+well-warmed and well-fed, and, without doubt, waiting for a gallant to
+kiss you"; here she turned and waved her hand towards the people--"all
+well-warmed and well-fed, and all with lovers and husbands and
+children to kiss. But I tell you, Van Hout's daughter, as I have dared
+to creep from my hiding hole in the great lake to tell all of them who
+will listen, that unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard, a day
+shall come when the folk of Leyden must perish by thousands of hunger
+behind those walls. Yes, yes, unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard
+and his Inquisition. Oh, I know him, I know him, for did they not make
+me carry my own husband to the stake upon my back? And have you heard
+why, Van Hout's daughter? Because what I had suffered in their
+torture-dens had made my face--yes, mine that once was so beautiful--
+like the face of a horse, and they said that 'a horse ought to be
+ridden.'"
+
+Now, while this poor excited creature, one of a whole class of such
+people who in those sad days might be found wandering about the
+Netherlands crazy with their griefs and sufferings, and living only
+for revenge, poured out these broken sentences, Lysbeth, terrified,
+shrank back before her. As she shrank the other followed, till
+presently Lysbeth saw her expression of rage and hate change to one of
+terror. In another instant, muttering something about a request for
+alms which she did not wait to receive, the woman had wheeled round
+and fled away as fast as her skates would carry her--which was very
+fast indeed.
+
+Turning about to find what had frightened her, Lysbeth saw standing on
+the bank of the mere, so close that she must have overheard every
+word, but behind the screen of a leafless bush, a tall, forbidding-
+looking woman, who held in her hand some broidered caps which
+apparently she was offering for sale. These caps she began to slowly
+fold up and place one by one in a hide satchel that was hung about her
+shoulders. All this while she was watching Lysbeth with her keen black
+eyes, except when from time to time she took them off her to follow
+the flight of that person who had called herself the Mare.
+
+"You keep ill company, lady," said the cap-seller in a harsh voice.
+
+"It was none of my seeking," answered Lysbeth, astonished into making
+a reply.
+
+"So much the better for you, lady, although she seemed to know you and
+to know also that you would listen to her song. Unless my eyes
+deceived me, which is not often, that woman is an evil-doer and a
+worker of magic like her dead husband Van Muyden; a heretic, a
+blasphemer of the Holy Church, a traitor to our Lord the Emperor, and
+one," she added with a snarl, "with a price upon her head that before
+night will, I hope, be in Black Meg's pocket." Then, walking with long
+firm steps towards a fat man who seemed to be waiting for her, the
+tall, black-eyed pedlar passed with him into the throng, where Lysbeth
+lost sight of them.
+
+Lysbeth watched them go, and shivered. To her knowledge she had never
+seen this woman before, but she knew enough of the times they lived in
+to be sure that she was a spy of the priests. Already there were such
+creatures moving about in every gathering, yes, and in many a private
+place, who were paid to obtain evidence against suspected heretics.
+Whether they won it by fair means or by foul mattered not, provided
+they could find something, and it need be little indeed, to justify
+the Inquisition in getting to its work.
+
+As for the other woman, the Mare, doubtless she was one of those
+wicked outcasts, accursed by God and man, who were called heretics;
+people who said dreadful things about the Pope and the Church and
+God's priests, having been misled and stirred up thereto by a certain
+fiend in human form named Luther. Lysbeth shuddered at the thought and
+crossed herself, for in those days she was an excellent Catholic. Yet
+the wanderer said that she had known her father, so that she must be
+as well born as herself--and then that dreadful story--no, she could
+not bear to think of it. But of course heretics deserved all these
+things; of that there could be no doubt whatever, for had not her
+father confessor told her that thus alone might their souls be saved
+from the grasp of the Evil One?
+
+The thought was comforting, still Lysbeth felt upset, and not a little
+rejoiced when she saw Dirk van Goorl skating towards her accompanied
+by another young man, also a cousin of her own on her mother's side
+who was destined in days to come to earn himself an immortal renown--
+young Pieter van de Werff. The two took off their bonnets to her, Dirk
+van Goorl revealing in the act a head of fair hair beneath which his
+steady blue eyes shone in a rather thick-set, self-contained face.
+Lysbeth's temper, always somewhat quick, was ruffled, and she showed
+it in her manner.
+
+"I thought, cousins, that we were to meet at three, and the kirk clock
+yonder has just chimed half-past," she said, addressing them both, but
+looking--not too sweetly--at Dirk van Goorl.
+
+"That's right, cousin," answered Pieter, a pleasant-faced and alert
+young man, "look at /him/, scold /him/, for he is to blame. Ever since
+a quarter past two have I--I who must drive a sledge in the great race
+and am backed to win--been waiting outside that factory in the snow,
+but, upon my honour, he did not appear until seven minutes since. Yes,
+we have done the whole distance in seven minutes, and I call that very
+good skating."
+
+"I thought as much," said Lysbeth. "Dirk can only keep an appointment
+with a church bell or a stadhuis chandelier."
+
+"It was not my fault," broke in Dirk in his slow voice; "I have my
+business to attend. I promised to wait until the metal had cooled
+sufficiently, and hot bronze takes no account of ice-parties and
+sledge races."
+
+"So I suppose that you stopped to blow on it, cousin. Well, the result
+is that, being quite unescorted, I have been obliged to listen to
+things which I did not wish to hear."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Dirk, taking fire at once.
+
+Then she told them something of what the woman who called herself the
+Mare had said to her, adding, "Doubtless the poor creature is a
+heretic and deserves all that has happened to her. But it is
+dreadfully sad, and I came here to enjoy myself, not to be sad."
+
+Between the two young men there passed a glance which was full of
+meaning. But it was Dirk who spoke. The other, more cautious, remained
+silent.
+
+"Why do you say that, Cousin Lysbeth?" he asked in a new voice, a
+voice thick and eager. "Why do you say that she deserves all that can
+happen to her? I have heard of this poor creature who is called Mother
+Martha, or the Mare, although I have never seen her myself. She was
+noble-born, much better born than any of us three, and very fair--once
+they called her the Lily of Brussels--when she was the Vrouw van
+Muyden, and she has suffered dreadfully, for one reason only, because
+she and hers did not worship God as you worship Him."
+
+"As we worship Him," broke in Van de Werff with a cough.
+
+"No," answered Dirk sullenly, "as our Cousin Lysbeth van Hout worships
+Him. For that reason only they killed her husband and her little son,
+and drove her mad, so that she lives among the reeds of the Haarlemer
+Meer like a beast in its den; yes, they, the Spaniards and their
+Spanish priests, as I daresay that they will kill us also."
+
+"Don't you think that it is getting rather cold standing here?"
+interrupted Pieter van de Werff before she could answer. "Look, the
+sledge races are just beginning. Come, cousin, give me your hand,"
+and, taking Lysbeth by the arm, he skated off into the throng,
+followed at a distance by Dirk and the serving-maid, Greta.
+
+"Cousin," he whispered as he went, "this is not my place, it is Dirk's
+place, but I pray you as you love him--I beg your pardon--as you
+esteem a worthy relative--do not enter into a religious argument with
+him here in public, where even the ice and sky are two great ears. It
+is not safe, little cousin, I swear to you that it is not safe."
+
+In the centre of the mere the great event of the day, the sledge
+races, were now in progress. As the competitors were many these must
+be run in heats, the winners of each heat standing on one side to
+compete in the final contest. Now these victors had a pretty
+prerogative not unlike that accorded to certain dancers in the
+cotillion of modern days. Each driver of a sledge was bound to carry a
+passenger in the little car in front of him, his own place being on
+the seat behind, whence he directed the horse by means of reins
+supported upon a guide-rod so fashioned that it lifted them above the
+head of the traveller in the car. This passenger he could select from
+among the number of ladies who were present at the games; unless,
+indeed, the gentleman in charge of her chose to deny him in set form;
+namely, by stepping forward and saying in the appointed phrase, "No,
+for this happy hour she is mine."
+
+Among the winners of these heats was a certain Spanish officer, the
+Count Don Juan de Montalvo, who, as it chanced, in the absence on
+leave of his captain, was at that date the commander of the garrison
+at Leyden. He was a man still young, only about thirty indeed,
+reported to be of noble birth, and handsome in the usual Castilian
+fashion. That is to say, he was tall, of a graceful figure, dark-eyed,
+strong-featured, with a somewhat humorous expression, and of very good
+if exaggerated address. As he had but recently come to Leyden, very
+little was known about this attractive cavalier beyond that he was
+well spoken of by the priests and, according to report, a favourite
+with the Emperor. Also the ladies admired him much.
+
+For the rest everything about him was handsome like his person, as
+might be expected in the case of a man reputed to be as rich as he was
+noble. Thus his sledge was shaped and coloured to resemble a great
+black wolf rearing itself up to charge. The wooden head was covered in
+wolf skin and adorned by eyes of yellow glass and great fangs of
+ivory. Round the neck also ran a gilded collar hung with a silver
+shield, whereon were painted the arms of its owner, a knight striking
+the chains from off a captive Christian saint, and the motto of the
+Montalvos, "Trust to God and me." His black horse, too, of the best
+breed, imported from Spain, glittered in harness decorated with
+gilding, and bore a splendid plume of dyed feathers rising from the
+head-band.
+
+Lysbeth happened to be standing near to the spot where this gallant
+had halted after his first victory. She was in the company of Dirk van
+Goorl alone--for as he was the driver of one of the competing sledges,
+her other cousin, Pieter van de Werff, had now been summoned away.
+Having nothing else to do at the moment, she approached and not
+unnaturally admired this brilliant equipage, although in truth it was
+the sledge and the horse rather than their driver which attracted her
+attention. As for the Count himself she knew him slightly, having been
+introduced to and danced a measure with him at a festival given by a
+grandee of the town. On that occasion he was courteous to her in the
+Spanish fashion, rather too courteous, she thought, but as this was
+the manner of Castilian dons when dealing with burgher maidens she
+paid no more attention to the matter.
+
+The Captain Montalvo saw Lysbeth among the throng and recognised her,
+for he lifted his plumed hat and bowed to her with just that touch of
+condescension which in those days a Spaniard showed when greeting one
+whom he considered his inferior. In the sixteenth century it was
+understood that all the world were the inferiors to those whom God had
+granted to be born in Spain, the English who rated themselves at a
+valuation of their own--and were careful to announce the fact--alone
+excepted.
+
+An hour or so later, after the last heat had been run, a steward of
+the ceremonies called aloud to the remaining competitors to select
+their passengers and prepare for the final contest. Accordingly each
+Jehu, leaving his horse in charge of an attendant, stepped up to some
+young lady who evidently was waiting for him, and led her by the hand
+to his sledge. While Lysbeth was watching this ceremony with amusement
+--for these selections were always understood to show a strong
+preference on behalf of the chooser for the chosen--she was astonished
+to hear a well-trained voice addressing her, and on looking up to see
+Don Juan de Montalvo bowing almost to the ice.
+
+"Senora," he said in Castilian, a tongue which Lysbeth understood well
+enough, although she only spoke it when obliged, "unless my ears
+deceived me, I heard you admiring my horse and sledge. Now, with the
+permission of your cavalier," and he bowed courteously to Dirk, "I
+name you as my passenger for the great race, knowing that you will
+bring me fortune. Have I your leave, Senor?"
+
+Now if there was a people on earth whom Dirk van Goorl hated, the
+Spaniards were that people, and if there lived a cavalier who he would
+prefer should not take his cousin Lysbeth for a lonely drive, that
+cavalier was the Count Juan de Montalvo. But as a young man, Dirk was
+singularly diffident and so easily confused that on the spur of the
+moment it was quite possible for a person of address to make him say
+what he did not mean. Thus, on the present occasion, when he saw this
+courtly Spaniard bowing low to him, a humble Dutch tradesman, he was
+overwhelmed, and mumbled in reply, "Certainly, certainly."
+
+If a glance could have withered him, without doubt Dirk would
+immediately have been shrivelled to nothing. To say that Lysbeth was
+angry is too little, for in truth she was absolutely furious. She did
+not like this Spaniard, and hated the idea of a long interview with
+him alone. Moreover, she knew that among her fellow townspeople there
+was a great desire that the Count should not win this race, which in
+its own fashion was the event of the year, whereas, if she appeared as
+his companion it would be supposed that she was anxious for his
+success. Lastly--and this was the chiefest sore--although in theory
+the competitors had a right to ask any one to whom they took a fancy
+to travel in their sledges, in practise they only sought the company
+of young women with whom they were on the best of terms, and who were
+already warned of their intention.
+
+In an instant these thoughts flashed through her mind, but all she did
+was to murmur something about the Heer van Goorl----
+
+"Has already given his consent, like an unselfish gentleman," broke in
+Captain Juan tendering her his hand.
+
+Now, without absolutely making a scene, which then, as to-day, ladies
+considered an ill-bred thing to do, there was no escape, since half
+Leyden gathered at these "sledge choosings," and many eyes were on her
+and the Count. Therefore, because she must, Lysbeth took the proferred
+hand, and was led to the sledge, catching, as she passed to it through
+the throng, more than one sour look from the men and more than one
+exclamation of surprise, real or affected, on the lips of the ladies
+of her acquaintance. These manifestations, however, put her upon her
+mettle. So determining that at least she would not look sullen or
+ridiculous, she began to enter into the spirit of the adventure, and
+smiled graciously while the Captain Montalvo wrapped a magnificent
+apron of wolf skins about her knees.
+
+When all was ready her charioteer took the reins and settled himself
+upon the little seat behind the sleigh, which was then led into line
+by a soldier servant.
+
+"Where is the course, Senor?" Lysbeth asked, hoping that it would be a
+short one.
+
+But in this she was to be disappointed, for he answered:
+
+"Up to the little Quarkel Mere, round the island in the middle of it,
+and back to this spot, something over a league in all. Now, Senora,
+speak to me no more at present, but hold fast and have no fear, for at
+least I drive well, and my horse is sure-footed and roughed for ice.
+This is a race that I would give a hundred gold pieces to win, since
+your countrymen, who contend against me, have sworn that I shall lose
+it, and I tell you at once, Senora, that grey horse will press me
+hard."
+
+Following the direction of his glance, Lysbeth's eye lit upon the next
+sledge. It was small, fashioned and painted to resemble a grey badger,
+that silent, stubborn, and, if molested, savage brute, which will not
+loose its grip until the head is hacked from off its body. The horse,
+which matched it well in colour, was of Flemish breed; rather a raw-
+boned animal, with strong quarters and an ugly head, but renowned in
+Leyden for its courage and staying power. What interested Lysbeth
+most, however, was to discover that the charioteer was none other than
+Pieter van de Werff, though now when she thought of it, she remembered
+he had told her that his sledge was named the Badger. In his choice of
+passenger she noted, too, not without a smile, that he showed his
+cautious character, disdainful of any immediate glory, so long as the
+end in view could be attained. For there in the sleigh sat no fine
+young lady, decked out in brave attire, who might be supposed to look
+at him with tender eyes, but a little fair-haired mate aged nine, who
+was in fact his sister. As he explained afterwards, the rules provided
+that a lady passenger must be carried, but said nothing of her age and
+weight.
+
+Now the competitors, eight of them, were in a line, and coming
+forward, the master of the course, in a voice that every one might
+hear, called out the conditions of the race and the prize for which it
+was to be run, a splendid glass goblet engraved with the cross-keys,
+the Arms of Leyden. This done, after asking if all were ready, he
+dropped a little flag, whereon the horses were loosed and away they
+went.
+
+Before a minute had passed, forgetting all her doubts and annoyances,
+Lysbeth was lost in the glorious excitement of the moment. Like birds
+in the heavens, cleaving the keen, crisp air, they sped forward over
+the smooth ice. The gay throng vanished, the dead reeds and stark
+bushes seemed to fly away from them. The only sounds in their ears
+were the rushing of the wind, the swish of the iron runners, and the
+hollow tapping of the hooves of their galloping horses. Certain
+sledges drew ahead in the first burst, but the Wolf and the Badger
+were not among these. The Count de Montalvo was holding in his black
+stallion, and as yet the grey Flemish gelding looped along with a
+constrained and awkward stride. When, passing from the little mere,
+they entered the straight of the canal, these two were respectively
+fourth and fifth. Up the course they sped, through a deserted snow-
+clad country, past the church of the village of Alkemaade. Now, half a
+mile or more away appeared the Quarkel Mere, and in the centre of it
+the island which they must turn. They reached it, they were round it,
+and when their faces were once more set homewards, Lysbeth noted that
+the Wolf and the Badger were third and fourth in the race, some one
+having dropped behind. Half a mile more and they were second and
+third; another half mile and they were first and second with perhaps a
+mile to go. Then the fight began.
+
+Yard by yard the speed increased, and yard by yard the black stallion
+drew ahead. Now in front of them lay a furlong or more of bad ice
+encumbered with lumps of frozen snow that had not been cleared away,
+which caused the sleigh to shake and jump as it struck. Lysbeth looked
+round.
+
+"The Badger is coming up," she said.
+
+Montalvo heard, and for the first time laid his whip upon the haunches
+of his horse, which answered gallantly. But still the Badger came up.
+The grey was the stronger beast, and had begun to put out his
+strength. Presently his ugly head was behind them, for Lysbeth felt
+the breath from his nostrils blowing on her, and saw their steam. Then
+it was past, for the steam blew back into her face; yes, and she could
+see the eager eyes of the child in the grey sledge. Now they were neck
+and neck, and the rough ice was done with. Six hundred yards away, not
+more, lay the goal, and all about them, outside the line of the
+course, were swift skaters travelling so fast that their heads were
+bent forward and down to within three feet of the ice.
+
+Van de Werff called to his horse, and the grey began to gain. Montalvo
+lashed the stallion, and once more they passed him. But the black was
+failing, and he saw it, for Lysbeth heard him curse in Spanish. Then
+of a sudden, after a cunning glance at his adversary, the Count pulled
+upon the right rein, and a shrill voice rose upon the air, the voice
+of the little girl in the other sledge.
+
+"Take care, brother," it cried, "he will overthrow us."
+
+True enough, in another moment the black would have struck the grey
+sideways. Lysbeth saw Van de Werff rise from his seat and throw his
+weight backward, dragging the grey on to his haunches. By an inch--not
+more--the Wolf sleigh missed the gelding. Indeed, one runner of it
+struck his hoof, and the high wood work of the side brushed and cut
+his nostril.
+
+"A foul, a foul!" yelled the skaters, and it was over. Once more they
+were speeding forward, but now the black had a lead of at least ten
+yards, for the grey must find his stride again. They were in the
+straight; the course was lined with hundreds of witnesses, and from
+the throats of every one of them arose a great cry, or rather two
+cries.
+
+"The Spaniard, the Spaniard wins!" said the first cry that was
+answered by another and a deeper roar.
+
+"No, Hollander, the Hollander! The Hollander comes up!"
+
+Then in the midst of the fierce excitement--bred of the excitement
+perhaps--some curious spell fell upon the mind of Lysbeth. The race,
+its details, its objects, its surroundings faded away; these physical
+things were gone, and in place of them was present a dream, a
+spiritual interpretation such as the omens and influences of the times
+she lived in might well inspire. What did she seem to see?
+
+She saw the Spaniard and the Hollander striving for victory, but not a
+victory of horses. She saw the black Spanish Wolf, at first
+triumphant, outmatch the Netherland Badger. Still, the Badger, the
+dogged Dutch badger, held on.
+
+Who would win? The fierce beast or the patient beast? Who would be the
+master in this fight? There was death in it. Look, the whole snow was
+red, the roofs of Leyden were red, and red the heavens; in the deep
+hues of the sunset they seemed bathed in blood, while about her the
+shouts of the backers and factions transformed themselves into a
+fierce cry as of battling peoples. All voices mingled in that cry--
+voices of hope, of agony, and of despair; but she could not interpret
+them. Something told her that the interpretation and the issue were in
+the mind of God alone.
+
+Perhaps she swooned, perhaps she slept and dreamed this dream; perhaps
+the sharp rushing air overcame her. At the least Lysbeth's eyes closed
+and her mind gave way. When they opened and it returned again their
+sledge was rushing past the winning post. But in front of it travelled
+another sledge, drawn by a gaunt grey horse, which galloped so hard
+that its belly seemed to lie upon the ice, a horse driven by a young
+man whose face was set like steel and whose lips were as the lips of a
+trap.
+
+Could that be the face of her cousin Pieter van de Werff, and, if so,
+what passion had stamped that strange seal thereon? She turned herself
+in her seat and looked at him who drove her.
+
+Was this a man, or was it a spirit escaped from doom? Blessed Mother
+of Christ! what a countenance! The eyeballs starting and upturned,
+nothing but the white of them to be seen; the lips curled, and,
+between, two lines of shining fangs; the lifted points of the
+mustachios touching the high cheekbones. No--no, it was neither a
+spirit nor a man, she knew now what it was; it was the very type and
+incarnation of the Spanish Wolf.
+
+Once more she seemed to faint, while in her ears there rang the cry--
+"The Hollander! Outstayed! Outstayed! Conquered is the accursed
+Spaniard!"
+
+Then Lysbeth knew that it was over, and again the faintness
+overpowered her.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II
+
+                          SHE WHO BUYS--PAYS
+
+When Lysbeth's mind recovered from its confusion she found herself
+still in the sledge and beyond the borders of the crowd that was
+engaged in rapturously congratulating the winner. Drawn up alongside
+of the Wolf was another sleigh of plain make, and harnessed to it a
+heavy Flemish horse. This vehicle was driven by a Spanish soldier,
+with whom sat a second soldier apparently of the rank of sergeant.
+There was no one else near; already people in the Netherlands had
+learnt to keep their distance from Spanish soldiers.
+
+"If your Excellency would come now," the sergeant was saying, "this
+little matter can be settled without any further trouble."
+
+"Where is she?" asked Montalvo.
+
+"Not more than a mile or so away, near the place called Steene Veld."
+
+"Tie her up in the snow to wait till to-morrow morning. My horse is
+tired and it may save us trouble," he began, then added, after
+glancing back at the crowd behind him and next at Lysbeth, "no, I will
+come."
+
+Perhaps the Count did not wish to listen to condolences on his defeat,
+or perhaps he desired to prolong the /tete-a-tete/ with his fair
+passenger. At any rate, without further hesitation, he struck his
+weary horse with the whip, causing it to amble forward somewhat
+stiffly but at a good pace.
+
+"Where are we going, Senor?" asked Lysbeth anxiously. "The race is
+over and I must seek my friends."
+
+"Your friends are engaged in congratulating the victor, lady," he
+answered in his suave and courteous voice, "and I cannot leave you
+alone upon the ice. Do not trouble; this is only a little matter of
+business which will scarcely take a quarter of an hour," and once more
+he struck the horse urging it to a better speed.
+
+Lysbeth thought of remonstrating, she thought even of springing from
+the sledge, but in the end she did neither. To seem to continue the
+drive with her cavalier would, she determined, look more natural and
+less absurd than to attempt a violent escape from him. She was certain
+that he would not put her down merely at her request; something in his
+manner told her so, and though she had no longing for his company it
+was better than being made ridiculous before half the inhabitants of
+Leyden. Moreover, the position was no fault of hers; it was the fault
+of Dirk van Goorl, who should have been present to take her from the
+sledge.
+
+As they drove along the frozen moat Montalvo leant forward and began
+to chat about the race, expressing regret at having lost it, but using
+no angry or bitter words. Could this be the man, wondered Lysbeth as
+she listened, whom she had seen deliberately attempt to overthrow his
+adversary in a foul heedless of dishonour or of who might be killed by
+the shock? Could this be the man whose face just now had looked like
+the face of a devil? Had these things happened, indeed, or was it not
+possible that her fancy, confused with the excitement and the speed at
+which they were travelling, had deceived her? Certainly it seemed to
+have been overcome at last, for she could not remember the actual
+finish of the race, or how they got clear of the shouting crowd.
+
+While she was still wondering thus, replying from time to time to
+Montalvo in monosyllables, the sledge in front of them turned the
+corner of one of the eastern bastions and came to a halt. The place
+where it stopped was desolate and lonely, for the town being in a
+state of peace no guard was mounted on the wall, nor could any living
+soul be found upon the snowy waste that lay beyond the moat. At first,
+indeed, Lysbeth was able to see nobody at all, for by now the sun had
+gone down and her eyes were not accustomed to the increasing light of
+the moon. Presently, however, she caught sight of a knot of people
+standing on the ice in a recess or little bay of the moat, and half
+hidden by a fringe of dead reeds.
+
+Montalvo saw also, and halted his horse within three paces of them.
+The people were five in number, three Spanish soldiers and two women.
+Lysbeth looked, and with difficulty stifled a cry of surprise and
+fear, for she knew the women. The tall, dark person, with lowering
+eyes, was none other than the cap-seller and Spanish spy, Black Meg.
+And she who crouched there upon the ice, her arms bound behind her,
+her grizzled locks, torn loose by some rough hand, trailing on the
+snow--surely it was the woman who called herself the Mare, and who
+that very afternoon spoke to her, saying that she had known her
+father, and cursing the Spaniards and their Inquisition. What were
+they doing here? Instantly an answer leapt into her mind, for she
+remembered Black Meg's words--that there was a price upon this
+heretic's head which before nightfall would be in her pocket. And why
+was there a square hole cut in the ice immediately in front of the
+captive? Could it be--no, that was too horrible.
+
+"Well, officer," broke in Montalvo, addressing the sergeant in a
+quiet, wearied voice, "what is all this about? Set out your case."
+
+"Excellency," replied the man, "it is a very simple matter. This
+creature here, so that woman is ready to take oath," and he pointed to
+Black Meg, "is a notorious heretic who has already been condemned to
+death by the Holy Office, and whose husband, a learned man who painted
+pictures and studied the stars, was burnt on a charge of witchcraft
+and heresy, two years ago at Brussels. But she managed to escape the
+stake, and since then has lived as a vagrant, hiding in the islands of
+the Haarlemer Meer, and, it is suspected, working murder and robbery
+on any of Spanish blood whom she can catch. Now she has been caught
+herself and identified, and, of course, the sentence being in full
+force against her, can be dealt with at once on your Excellency's
+command. Indeed, it would not have been necessary that you should be
+troubled about the thing at all had it not been that this worthy
+woman," and again he pointed to Black Meg, "who was the one who
+waylaid her, pulled her down and held her till we came, requires your
+certificate in order that she may claim the reward from the Treasurer
+of the Holy Inquisition. Therefore, you will be asked to certify that
+this is, indeed, the notorious heretic commonly known as Martha the
+Mare, but whose other name I forget, after which, if you will please
+to withdraw, we will see to the rest."
+
+"You mean that she will be taken to the prison to be dealt with by the
+Holy Office?" queried Montalvo.
+
+"Not exactly, Excellency," answered the sergeant with a discreet smile
+and a cough. "The prison, I am told, is quite full, but she may start
+for the prison and--there seems to be a hole in the ice into which,
+since Satan leads the footsteps of such people astray, this heretic
+might chance to fall--or throw herself."
+
+"What is the evidence?" asked Montalvo.
+
+Then Black Meg stood forward, and, with the rapidity and unction of a
+spy, poured out her tale. She identified the woman with one whom she
+had known who was sentenced to death by the Inquisition and escaped,
+and, after giving other evidence, ended by repeating the conversation
+which she had overheard between the accused and Lysbeth that
+afternoon.
+
+"You accompanied me in a fortunate hour, Senora van Hout," said the
+captain gaily, "for now, to satisfy myself, as I wish to be just, and
+do not trust these paid hags," and he nodded towards Black Meg, "I
+must ask you upon your oath before God whether or no you confirm that
+woman's tale, and whether or no this very ugly person named the Mare
+called down curses upon my people and the Holy Office? Answer, and
+quickly, if you please, Senora, for it grows cold here and my horse is
+beginning to shiver."
+
+Then, for the first time, the Mare raised her head, dragging at her
+hair, which had become frozen to the ice, until she tore it free.
+
+"Lysbeth van Hout," she cried in shrill, piercing tones, "would you,
+to please your Spanish lover, bring your father's playmate to her
+death? The Spanish horse is cold and cannot stay, but the poor
+Netherland Mare--ah! she may be thrust beneath the blue ice and bide
+there till her bones rot at the bottom of the moat. You have sought
+the Spaniards, you, whose blood should have warned you against them,
+and I tell you that it shall cost you dear; but if you say this word
+they seek, then it shall cost you everything, not only the body, but
+the spirit also. Woe to you, Lysbeth van Hout, if you cut me off
+before my work is done. I fear not death, nay I welcome it, but I tell
+you I have work to do before I die."
+
+Now, in an agony of mind, Lysbeth turned and looked at Montalvo.
+
+The Count was a man of keen perceptions, and understood it all.
+Leaning forward, his arm resting on the back of the sledge, as though
+to contemplate the prisoner, he whispered into Lysbeth's ear, so low
+that no one else could hear his words.
+
+"Senora," he said, "I have no wishes in this matter. I do not desire
+to drown that poor mad woman, but if you confirm the spy's story,
+drown she must. At present I am not satisfied, so everything turns
+upon your evidence. I do not know what passed between you this
+afternoon, and personally I do not care, only, if you should chance to
+have no clear recollection of the matter alleged, I must make one or
+two little stipulations--very little ones. Let me see, they are--that
+you will spend the rest of this evening's fete in my company. Further,
+that whenever I choose to call upon you, your door will be open to me,
+though I must remind you that, on three occasions already, when I have
+wished to pay my respects, it has been shut."
+
+Lysbeth heard and understood. If she would save this woman's life she
+must expose herself to the attentions of the Spaniard, which she
+desired least of anything in the world. More, speaking upon her oath
+in the presence of God, she must utter a dreadful lie, she who as yet
+had never lied. For thirty seconds or more she thought, staring round
+her with anguished eyes, while the scene they fell on sank into her
+soul in such fashion that never till her death's day did she forget
+its aspect.
+
+The Mare spoke no more, she only knelt searching her face with a stern
+and wondering glance. A little to the right stood Black Meg, glaring
+at her sullenly, for the blood-money was in danger. Behind the
+prisoner were two of the soldiers, one patting his hand to his face to
+hide a yawn, while the other beat his breast to warm himself. The
+third soldier, who was placed somewhat in front, stirred the surface
+of the hole with the shaft of his halbert to break up the thin film of
+ice which was forming over it, while Montalvo himself, still leaning
+sideways and forwards, watched her eyes with an amused and cynical
+expression. And over all, over the desolate snows and gabled roofs of
+the town behind; over the smooth blue ice, the martyr and the
+murderers; over the gay sledge and the fur-wrapped girl who sat within
+it, fell the calm light of the moon through a silence broken only by
+the beating of her heart, and now and again by the sigh of a frost-
+wind breathing among the rushes.
+
+"Well, Senora," asked Montalvo, "if you have sufficiently reflected
+shall I administer the oath in the form provided?"
+
+"Administer it," she said hoarsely.
+
+So, descending from the sledge, he stood in front of Lysbeth, and,
+lifting his cap, repeated the oath to her, an oath strong enough to
+blast her soul if she swore to it with false intent.
+
+"In the name of God the Son and of His Blessed Mother, you swear?" he
+asked.
+
+"I swear," she answered.
+
+"Good, Senora. Now listen to me. Did you meet that woman this
+afternoon?"
+
+"Yes, I met her on the ice."
+
+"And did she in your hearing utter curses upon the Government and the
+Holy Church, and call upon you to assist in driving the Spaniards from
+the land, as this spy, whom I believe is called Black Meg, has borne
+witness?"
+
+"No," said Lysbeth.
+
+"I am afraid that is not quite enough, Senora; I may have misquoted
+the exact words. Did the woman say anything of the sort?"
+
+For one second Lysbeth hesitated. Then she caught sight of the
+victim's watching, speculative eyes, and remembered that this crazed
+and broken creature once had been a child whom her father had kissed
+and played with, and that the crime of which she was accused was that
+she had escaped from death at the stake.
+
+"The water is cold to die in!" the Mare said, in a meditative voice,
+as though she were thinking aloud.
+
+"Then why did you run away from the warm fire, heretic witch?" jeered
+Black Meg.
+
+Now Lysbeth hesitated no longer, but again answered in a monosyllable,
+"No."
+
+"Then what did she do or say, Senora?"
+
+"She said she had known my father who used to play with her when she
+was a child, and begged for alms, that is all. Then that woman came
+up, and she ran away, whereon the woman said there was a price upon
+her head, and that she meant to have the money."
+
+"It is a lie," screamed Black Meg in fierce, strident tones.
+
+"If that person will not be silent, silence her," said Montalvo,
+addressing the sergeant. "I am satisfied," he went on, "that there is
+no evidence at all against the prisoner except the story of a spy, who
+says she believes her to be a vagrant heretic of bad character who
+escaped from the stake several years ago in the neighbourhood of
+Brussels, whither it is scarcely worth while to send to inquire about
+the matter. So that charge may drop. There remains the question as to
+whether or no the prisoner uttered certain words this afternoon,
+which, if she did utter them, are undoubtedly worthy of the death
+that, under my authority as acting commandant of this town, I have
+power to inflict. This question I foresaw, and that is why I asked the
+Senora, to whom the woman is alleged to have spoken the words, to
+accompany me here to give evidence. She has done so, and her evidence
+on oath as against the statement of a spy woman not on oath, is that
+no such words were spoken. This being so, as the Senora is a good
+Catholic whom I have no reason to disbelieve, I order the release of
+the prisoner, whom for my part I take for nothing more than a crazy
+and harmless wanderer."
+
+"At least you will detain her till I can prove that she is the heretic
+who escaped from the stake near Brussels," shouted Black Meg.
+
+"I will do nothing of the sort; the prison here is over-full already.
+Untie her arms and let her go."
+
+The soldiers obeyed, wondering somewhat, and the Mare scrambled to her
+feet. For a moment she stood looking at her deliverer. Then crying,
+"We shall met again, Lysbeth van Hout!" suddenly she turned and sped
+up a dyke at extraordinary speed. In a few seconds there was nothing
+to be seen of her but a black spot upon the white landscape, and
+presently she had vanished altogether.
+
+"Gallop as you will, Mare, I shall catch you yet," screamed Black Meg
+after her. "And you too, my pretty little liar, who have cheated me
+out of a dozen florins. Wait till you are up before the Inquisition as
+a heretic--for that's where you'll end. No fine Spanish lover will
+save you then. So you have gone to the Spanish, have you, and thrown
+over your fat-faced burgher; well, you will have enough of Spaniards
+before you have done with them, I can tell you."
+
+Twice had Montalvo tried to stop this flood of furious eloquence,
+which had become personal and might prove prejudicial to his
+interests, but without avail. Now he adopted other measures.
+
+"Seize her," he shouted to two of the soldiers; "that's it; now hold
+her under water in that hole till I tell you to let her up again."
+
+They obeyed, but it took all three of them to carry out the order, for
+Black Meg fought and bit like a wild cat, until at last she was thrust
+into the icy moat head downwards. When at length she was released,
+soaked and shivering, she crept off silently enough, but the look of
+fury which she cast at Montalvo and Lysbeth drew from the captain a
+remark that perhaps it would have been as well to have kept her under
+water two minutes longer.
+
+"Now, sergeant," he added, in a genial voice, "it is a cold night, and
+this has been a troublesome business for a feast-day, so here's
+something for you and your watch to warm yourselves with when you go
+off duty," and he handed him what in those days was a very handsome
+present. "By the way," he said, as the men saluted him gratefully,
+"perhaps you will do me a favour. It is only to take this black horse
+of mine to his stable and harness that grey trooper nag to the sledge
+instead, as I wish to go the round of the moat, and my beast is
+tired."
+
+Again the men saluted and set to work to change the horses, whereon
+Lysbeth, guessing her cavalier's purpose, turned as though to fly
+away, for her skates were still upon her feet. But he was watching.
+
+"Senora," he said in a quiet voice, "I think that you gave me the
+promise of your company for the rest of this evening, and I am
+certain," he added with a slight bow, "that you are a lady whom
+nothing would induce to tell an untruth. Had I not been sure of that I
+should scarcely have accepted your evidence so readily just now."
+
+Lysbeth winced visibly. "I thought, Senor, that you were going to
+return to the fete."
+
+"I do not remember saying so, Senora, and as a matter of fact I have
+pickets to visit. Do not be afraid, the drive is charming in this
+moonlight, and afterwards perhaps you will extend your hospitality so
+far as to ask me to supper at your house."
+
+Still she hesitated, dismay written on her face.
+
+"Jufvrouw Lysbeth," he said in an altered voice, "in my country we
+have a homely proverb which says, 'she who buys, pays.' You have
+bought and--the goods have been delivered. Do you understand? Ah!
+allow me to have the pleasure of arranging those furs. I knew that you
+were the soul of honour, and were but--shall we say teasing me?
+Otherwise, had you really wished to go, of course you would have
+skated away just now while you had the opportunity. That is why I gave
+it you, as naturally I should not desire to detain you against your
+will."
+
+Lysbeth heard and was aghast, for this man's cleverness overwhelmed
+her. At every step he contrived to put her in the wrong; moreover she
+was crushed by the sense that he had justice on his side. She /had/
+bought and she /must/ pay. Why had she bought? Not for any advantage
+of her own, but from an impulse of human pity--to save a fellow
+creature's life. And why should she have perjured herself so deeply in
+order to save that life? She was a Catholic and had no sympathy with
+such people. Probably this person was an Anabaptist, one of that
+dreadful sect which practised nameless immoralities, and ran stripped
+through the streets crying that they were "the naked Truth." Was it
+then because the creature had declared that she had known her father
+in her childhood? To some extent yes, but was not there more behind?
+Had she not been influenced by the woman's invocation about the
+Spaniards, of which the true meaning came home to her during that
+dreadful sledge race; at the moment, indeed, when she saw the Satanic
+look upon the face of Montalvo? It seemed to her that this was so,
+though at the time she had not understood it; it seemed to her that
+she was not a free agent; that some force pushed her forward which she
+could neither control nor understand.
+
+Moreover--and this was the worst of it--she felt that little good
+could come of her sacrifice, or that if good came, at least it would
+not be to her or hers. Now she was as a fish in a net, though why it
+was worth this brilliant Spaniard's while to snare her she could not
+understand, for she forgot that she was beautiful and a woman of
+property. Well, to save the blood of another she had bought, and in
+her own blood and happiness, or in that of those dear to her,
+assuredly she must pay, however cruel and unjust might be the price.
+
+Such were the thoughts that passed through Lysbeth's mind as the
+strong Flemish gelding lumbered forward, dragging the sledge at the
+same steady pace over rough ice and smooth. And all the while Montalvo
+behind her was chatting pleasantly about this matter and that; telling
+her of the orange groves in Spain, of the Court of the Emperor
+Charles, of adventures in the French wars, and many other things, to
+which conversation she made such answer as courtesy demanded and no
+more. What would Dirk think, she was wondering, and her cousin, Pieter
+van de Werff, whose good opinion she valued, and all the gossips of
+Leyden? She only prayed that they might not have missed her, or at
+least that they took it for granted that she had gone home.
+
+On this point, however, she was soon destined to be undeceived, for
+presently, trudging over the snow-covered ice and carrying his useless
+skates in his hand, they met a young man whom she knew as Dirk's
+fellow apprentice. On seeing them he stopped in front of the sledge in
+such a position that the horse, a steady and a patient animal, pulled
+up of its own accord.
+
+"Is the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout there?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes," she replied, but before she could say more Montalvo broke in,
+inquiring what might be the matter.
+
+"Nothing," he answered, "except that she was lost and Dirk van Goorl,
+my friend, send me to look for her this way while he took the other."
+
+"Indeed. Then, noble sir, perhaps you will find the Heer Dirk van
+Goorl and tell him that the Senora, his cousin, is merely enjoying an
+evening drive, and that if he comes to her house in an hour's time he
+will find her safe and sound, and with her myself, the Count Juan de
+Montalvo, whom she has honoured with an invitation to supper."
+
+Then, before the astonished messenger could answer; before, indeed,
+Lysbeth could offer any explanation of his words, Montalvo lashed up
+the horse and left him standing on the moat bewildered, his cap off
+and scratching his head.
+
+After this they proceeded on a journey which seemed to Lysbeth almost
+interminable. When the circuit of the walls was finished, Montalvo
+halted at one of the shut gates, and, calling to the guard within,
+summoned them to open. This caused delay and investigation, for at
+first the sergeant of the guard would not believe that it was his
+acting commandant who spoke without.
+
+"Pardon, Excellency," he said when he had inspected him with a
+lantern, "but I did not think that you would be going the rounds with
+a lady in your sledge," and holding up the light the man took a long
+look at Lysbeth, grinning visibly as he recognised her.
+
+"Ah, he is a gay bird, the captain, a very gay bird, and it's a pretty
+Dutch dickey he is teaching to pipe now," she heard him call to a
+comrade as he closed the heavy gates behind their sleigh.
+
+Then followed more visits to other military posts in the town, and
+with each visit a further explanation. All this while the Count
+Montalvo uttered no word beyond those of ordinary compliment, and
+ventured on no act of familiarity; his conversation and demeanour
+indeed remaining perfectly courteous and respectful. So far as it went
+this was satisfactory, but at length there came a moment when Lysbeth
+felt that she could bear the position no longer.
+
+"Senor," she said briefly, "take me home; I grow faint."
+
+"With hunger doubtless," he interrupted; "well, by heaven! so do I.
+But, my dear lady, as you are aware, duty must be attended to, and,
+after all, you may have found some interest in accompanying me on a
+tour of the pickets at night. I know your people speak roughly of us
+Spanish soldiers, but I hope that after this you will be able to bear
+testimony to their discipline. Although it is a fete day you will be
+my witness that we have not found a man off duty or the worse for
+drink. Here, you," he called to a soldier who stood up to salute him,
+"follow me to the house of the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, where I sup,
+and lead this sledge back to my quarters."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III
+
+                        MONTALVO WINS A TRICK
+
+Turning up the Bree Straat, then as now perhaps the finest in the town
+of Leyden, Montalvo halted his horse before a substantial house
+fronted with three round-headed gables, of which the largest--that
+over the entrance in the middle--was shaped into two windows with
+balconies. This was Lysbeth's house which had been left to her by her
+father, where, until such time as she should please to marry, she
+dwelt with her aunt, Clara van Ziel. The soldier whom he had summoned
+having run to the horse's head, Montalvo leapt from his driver's seat
+to assist the lady to alight. At the moment Lysbeth was occupied with
+wild ideas of swift escape, but even if she could make up her mind to
+try it there was an obstacle which her thoughtful cavalier had
+foreseen.
+
+"Jufvrouw van Hout," he said as he pulled up, "do you remember that
+you are still wearing skates?"
+
+It was true, though in her agitation she had forgotten all about them,
+and the fact put sudden flight out of the question. She could not
+struggle into her own house walking on the sides of her feet like the
+tame seal which old fisherman Hans had brought from northern seas. It
+would be too ridiculous, and the servants would certainly tell the
+story all about the town. Better for a while longer to put up with the
+company of this odious Spaniard than to become a laughing stock in an
+attempt to fly. Besides, even if she found herself on the other side
+of it, could she shut the door in his face? Would her promise let her,
+and would he consent?
+
+"Yes," she answered briefly, "I will call my servant."
+
+Then for the first time the Count became complimentary in a dignified
+Spanish manner.
+
+"Let no base-born menial hold the foot which it is an honour for an
+hidalgo of Spain to touch. I am your servant," he said, and resting
+one knee on the snow-covered step he waited.
+
+Again there was nothing to be done, so Lysbeth must needs thrust out
+her foot from which very delicately and carefully he unstrapped the
+skate.
+
+"What Jack can bear Jill must put up with," muttered Lysbeth to
+herself as she advanced the other foot. Just at that moment, however,
+the door behind them began to open.
+
+"She who buys," murmured Montalvo as he commenced on the second set of
+straps. Then the door swung wide, and the voice of Dirk van Goorl was
+heard saying in a tone of relief:
+
+"Yes, sure enough it is she, Tante Clara, and some one is taking off
+her boots."
+
+"Skates, Senor, skates," interrupted Montalvo, glancing backward over
+his shoulder, then added in a whisper as he bent once more to his
+task, "ahem--/pays/. You will introduce me, is it not so? I think it
+will be less awkward for you."
+
+So, as flight was impossible, for he held her by the foot, and an
+instinct told her that, especially to the man she loved, the only
+thing to do was to make light of the affair, Lysbeth said--
+
+"Dirk, Cousin Dirk, I think you know--this is--the Honourable Captain
+the Count Juan de Montalvo."
+
+"Ah! it is the Senor van Goorl," said Montalvo, pulling off the skate
+and rising from his knee, which, from his excess of courtesy, was now
+wet through. "Senor, allow me to return to you, safe and sound, the
+fair lady of whom I have robbed you for a while."
+
+"For a while, captain," blurted Dirk; "why, from first to last, she
+has been gone nearly four hours, and a fine state we have been in
+about her."
+
+"That will all be explained presently, Senor--at supper, to which the
+Jufvrouw has been so courteous as to ask me," then, aside and below
+his breath, again the ominous word of reminder--"/pays/." "Most
+happily, your cousin's presence was the means of saving a fellow-
+creature's life. But, as I have said, the tale is long. Senor--
+permit," and in another second Lysbeth found herself walking down her
+own hall upon the arm of the Spaniard, while Dirk, her aunt, and some
+guests followed obediently behind.
+
+Now Montalvo knew that his difficulties were over for that evening at
+any rate, since he had crossed the threshold and was a guest.
+
+Half unconsciously Lysbeth guided him to the balconied /sit-kamer/ on
+the first floor, which in our day would answer to the drawing-room.
+Here several other of her friends were gathered, for it had been
+arranged that the ice-festival should end with a supper as rich as the
+house could give. To these, too, she must introduce her cavalier, who
+bowed courteously to each in turn. Then she escaped, but, as she
+passed him, distinctly, she could swear, did she see his lips shape
+themselves to the hateful word--"/pays/."
+
+When she reached her chamber, so great was Lysbeth's wrath and
+indignation that almost she choked with it, till again reason came to
+her aid, and with reason a desire to carry the thing off as well as
+might be. So she told her maid Greta to robe her in her best garment,
+and to hang about her neck the famous collar of pearls which her
+father had brought from the East, that was the talk and envy of half
+the women in Leyden. On her head, too, she placed the cap of lovely
+lace which had been a wedding gift to her mother by her grandmother,
+the old dame who wove it. Then she added such golden ornaments as it
+was customary for women of her class of wear, and descended to the
+gathering room.
+
+Meanwhile Montalvo had not been idle. Taking Dirk aside, and pleading
+his travel-worn condition, he had prayed him to lead him to some room
+where he might order his dress and person. Dirk complied, though with
+an ill grace, but so pleasant did Montalvo make himself during those
+few minutes, that before he ushered him back to the company in some
+way Dirk found himself convinced that this particular Spaniard was
+not, as the saying went, "as black as his mustachios." He felt almost
+sure too, although he had not yet found time to tell him the details
+of it, that there was some excellent reason to account for his having
+carried off the adorable Lysbeth during an entire afternoon and
+evening.
+
+It is true that there still remained the strange circumstance of the
+attempted foul of his cousin Van de Werff's sledge in the great race,
+but, after all, why should there not be some explanation of this also?
+It had happened, if it did happen, at quite a distance from the
+winning post, when there were few people to see what passed. Indeed,
+now that he came to think of it, the only real evidence on the matter
+was that of his cousin, the little girl passenger, since Van de Werff
+himself had brought no actual accusation against his opponent.
+
+Shortly after they returned to the company it was announced that
+supper had been served, whereon ensued a pause. It was broken by
+Montalvo, who, stepping forward, offered his hand to Lysbeth, saying
+in a voice that all could hear:
+
+"Lady, my companion of the race, permit the humblest representative of
+the greatest monarch in the world to have an honour which doubtless
+that monarch would be glad to claim."
+
+That settled the matter, for as the acting commandant of the Spanish
+garrison of Leyden had chosen to refer to his official position, it
+was impossible to question his right of precedence over a number of
+folk, who, although prominent in their way, were but unennobled
+Netherlander burghers.
+
+Lysbeth, indeed, did find courage to point to a rather flurried and
+spasmodic lady with grey hair who was fanning herself as though the
+season were July, and wondering whether the cook would come up to the
+grand Spaniard's expectations, and to murmur "My aunt." But she got no
+further, for the Count instantly added in a low voice--
+
+"Doubtless comes next in the direct line, but unless my education has
+been neglected, the heiress of the house who is of age goes before the
+collateral--however aged."
+
+By this time they were through the door, so it was useless to argue
+the point further, and again Lysbeth felt herself overmatched and
+submitted. In another minute they had passed down the stairs, entered
+the dining hall, and were seated side by side at the head of the long
+table, of which the foot was occupied presently by Dirk van Goorl and
+her aunt, who was also his cousin, the widow Clara van Ziel.
+
+There was a silence while the domestics began their service, of which
+Montalvo took opportunity to study the room, the table and the guests.
+It was a fine room panelled with German oak, and lighted sufficiently,
+if not brilliantly, by two hanging brass chandeliers of the famous
+Flemish workmanship, in each of which were fixed eighteen of the best
+candles, while on the sideboards were branch candlesticks, also of
+worked brass. The light thus provided was supplemented by that from
+the great fire of peat and old ships' timber which burned in a wide
+blue-tiled fire-place, half way down the chamber, throwing its
+reflections upon many a flagon and bowl of cunningly hammered silver
+that adorned the table and the sideboards.
+
+The company was of the same character as the furniture, handsome and
+solid; people of means, every man and woman of them, accumulated by
+themselves or their fathers, in the exercise of the honest and
+profitable trade whereof at this time the Netherlands had a practical
+monopoly.
+
+"I have made no mistake," thought Montalvo to himself, as he surveyed
+the room and its occupants. "My little neighbour's necklace alone is
+worth more cash than ever I had the handling of, and the plate would
+add up handsomely. Well, before very long I hope to be in a position
+to make its inventory." Then, having first crossed himself devoutly,
+he fell to upon a supper that was well worth his attention, even in a
+land noted for the luxury of its food and wines and the superb
+appetites of those who consumed them.
+
+It must not be supposed, however, that the gallant captain allowed
+eating to strangle conversation. On the contrary, finding that his
+hostess was in no talkative mood, he addressed himself to his fellow
+guests, chatting with them pleasantly upon every convenient subject.
+Among these guests was none other than Pieter van de Werff, his
+conqueror in that afternoon's conquest, upon whose watchful and
+suspicious reserve he brought all his batteries to bear.
+
+First he congratulated Pieter and lamented his own ill-luck, and this
+with great earnestness, for as a matter of fact he had lost much more
+money on the event than he could afford to pay. Then he praised the
+grey horse and asked if he was for sale, offering his own black in
+part exchange.
+
+"A good nag," he said, "but one that I do not wish to conceal has his
+faults, which must be taken into consideration if it comes to the
+point of putting a price upon him. For instance, Mynheer van de Werff,
+you may have noticed the dreadful position in which the brute put me
+towards the end of the race. There are certain things that this horse
+always shies at, and one of them is a red cloak. Now I don't know if
+you saw that a girl in a red cloak suddenly appeared on the bank. In
+an instant the beast was round and you may imagine what my feelings
+were, being in charge of your fair kinswoman, for I thought to a
+certainty that we should be over. What is more, it quite spoilt my
+chance of the race, for after he has shied like that, the black turns
+sulky, and won't let himself go."
+
+When Lysbeth heard this amazing explanation, remembering the facts,
+she gasped. And yet now that she came to think of it, a girl in a red
+cloak did appear near them at the moment, and the horse /did/ whip
+round as though it had shied violently. Was it possible, she wondered,
+that the captain had not really intended to foul the Badger sledge?
+
+Meanwhile Van de Werff was answering in his slow voice. Apparently he
+accepted Montalvo's explanation; at least he said that he, too, saw
+the red-cloaked girl, and was glad that nothing serious had come of
+the mischance. As regarded the proposed deal, he should be most happy
+to go into it upon the lines mentioned, as the grey, although a very
+good horse, was aged, and he thought the barb one of the most
+beautiful animals that he had ever seen. At this point, as he had not
+the slightest intention of parting with his valuable charger, at any
+rate on such terms, Montalvo changed the subject.
+
+At length, when men, and, for the matter of that, women, too, had well
+eaten, and the beautiful tall Flemish glasses not for the first time
+were replenished with the best Rhenish or Spanish wines, Montalvo,
+taking advantage of a pause in the conversation, rose and said that he
+wished to claim the privilege of a stranger among them and propose a
+toast, namely, the health of his late adversary, Pieter van de Werff.
+
+At this the audience applauded, for they were all very proud of the
+young man's success, and some of them had won money over him. Still
+more did they applaud, being great judges of culinary matters, when
+the Spaniard began his speech by an elegant tribute to the surpassing
+excellence of the supper. Rarely, he assured them, and especially did
+he assure the honourable widow Van Ziel (who blushed all over with
+pleasure at his compliments, and fanned herself with such vigour that
+she upset Dirk's wine over his new tunic, cut in the Brussels style),
+the fame of whose skill in such matters had travelled so far as The
+Hague, for he had heard of it there himself--rarely even in the Courts
+of Kings and Emperors, or at the tables of Popes and Archbishops, had
+he eaten food so exquisitely cooked, or drunk wines of a better
+vintage.
+
+Then, passing on to the subject of his speech, Van de Werff, he
+toasted him and his horse and his little sister and his sledge, in
+really well-chosen and appropriate terms, not by any means overdoing
+it, for he confessed frankly that his defeat was a bitter
+disappointment to him, especially as every solder in the camp had
+expected him to win and--he was afraid--backed him for more than they
+could afford. Also, incidentally, so that every one might be well
+acquainted with it, he retold the story of the girl with the red
+cloak. Next, suddenly dropping his voice and adopting a quieter
+manner, he addressed himself to the Aunt Clara and the "well-beloved
+Heer Dirk," saying that he owed them both an apology, which he must
+take this opportunity to make, for having detained the lady at his
+right during so unreasonable a time that afternoon. When, however,
+they had heard the facts they would, he was sure, blame him no longer,
+especially if he told them that this breach of good manners had been
+the means of saving a human life.
+
+Immediately after the race, he explained, one of his sergeants had
+found him out to tell him that a woman, suspected of certain crimes
+against life and property and believed to be a notorious escaped witch
+or heretic, had been captured, asking for reasons which he need not
+trouble them with, that he would deal with the case at once. This
+woman also, so said the man, had been heard that every afternoon to
+make use of the most horrible, the most traitorous and blaspheming
+language to a lady of Leyden, the Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, indeed;
+as was deposed by a certain spy named Black Meg, who had overheard the
+conversation.
+
+Now, went on Montalvo, as he knew well, every man and woman in that
+room would share his horror of traitorous and blasphemous heretics--
+here most of the company crossed themselves, especially those who were
+already secret adherents of the New Religion. Still, even heretics had
+a right to a fair trial; at least he, who although a soldier by
+profession, was a man who honestly detested unnecessary bloodshed,
+held that opinion. Also long experience taught him great mistrust of
+the evidence of informers, who had a money interest in the conviction
+of the accused. Lastly, it did not seem well to him that the name of a
+young and noble lady should be mixed up in such a business. As they
+knew under the recent edicts, his powers in these cases were absolute;
+indeed, in his official capacity he was ordered at once to consign any
+suspected of Anabaptism or other forms of heresy to be dealt with by
+the appointed courts, and in the case of people who had escaped, to
+cause them, on satisfactory proof of their identity, to be executed
+instantly without further trial. Under these circumstances, fearing
+that did the lady knew his purpose she might take fright, he had, he
+confessed, resorted to artifice, as he was very anxious both for her
+sake and in the interest of justice that she should bear testimony in
+the matter. So he asked her to accompany him on a short drive while he
+attended to a business affair; a request to which she had graciously
+assented.
+
+"Friends," he went on in a still more solemn voice, "the rest of my
+story is short. Indeed I do congratulate myself on the decision that I
+took, for when confronted with the prisoner our young and honourable
+hostess was able upon oath to refute the story of the spy with the
+result that I in my turn was to save an unfortunate, and, as I
+believe, a half-crazed creature from an immediate and a cruel death.
+Is it not so, lady?" and helpless in the net of circumstance, not
+knowing indeed what else to do, Lysbeth bowed her head in assent.
+
+"I think," concluded Montalvo, "that after this explanation, what may
+have appeared to be a breach of manners will be forgiven. I have only
+one other word to add. My position is peculiar; I am an official here,
+and I speak boldly among friends taking the risk that any of you
+present will use what I say against me, which for my part I do not
+believe. Although there is no better Catholic and no truer Spaniard in
+the Netherlands, I have been accused of showing too great a sympathy
+with your people, and of dealing too leniently with those who have
+incurred the displeasure of our Holy Church. In the cause of right and
+justice I am willing to bear such aspersions; still this is a
+slanderous world, a world in which truth does not always prevail.
+Therefore, although I have told you nothing but the bare facts, I do
+suggest in the interests of your hostess--in my own humble interest
+who might be misrepresented, and I may add in the interest of every
+one present at this board--that it will perhaps be well that the
+details of the story which I have had the honour of telling you should
+not be spread about--that they should in fact find a grave within
+these walls? Friends, do you agree?"
+
+Then moved by a common impulse, and by a common if a secret fear, with
+the single exception of Lysbeth, every person present, yes, even the
+cautious and far-seeing young Van de Werff, echoed "We agree."
+
+"Friends," said Montalvo, "those simple words carry to my mind
+conviction deep as any vow however solemn; deep, if that were
+possible, as did the oath of your hostess, upon the faith of which I
+felt myself justified in acquitting the poor creature who was alleged
+to be an escaped heretic." Then with a courteous and all-embracing bow
+Montalvo sat down.
+
+"What a good man! What a delightful man!" murmured Aunt Clara to Dirk
+in the buzz of conversation which ensued.
+
+"Yes, yes, cousin, but----"
+
+"And what discrimination he has, what taste! Did you notice what he
+said about the cooking?"
+
+"I heard something, but----"
+
+"It is true that folk have told me that my capon stewed in milk, such
+as we had to-night-- Why, lad, what is the matter with your doublet?
+You fidget me by continually rubbing at it."
+
+"You have upset the red wine over it, that is all," answered Dirk,
+sulkily. "It is spoiled."
+
+"And little loss either; to tell you the truth, Dirk, I never saw a
+coat worse cut. You young men should learn in the matter of clothes
+from the Spanish gentlemen. Look at his Excellency, the Count
+Montalvo, for instance----"
+
+"See here, aunt," broke in Dirk with suppressed fury, "I think I have
+heard enough about Spaniards and the Captain Montalvo for one night.
+First of all he spirits off Lysbeth and is absent with her for four
+hours; then he invites himself to supper and places himself at the
+head of the table with her, setting me down to the dullest meal I ever
+ate at the other end----"
+
+"Cousin Dirk," said Aunt Clara with dignity, "your temper has got the
+better of your manners. Certainly you might learn courtesy as well as
+dress, even from so humble a person as a Spanish hidalgo and
+commander." Then she rose from the table, adding--"Come, Lysbeth, if
+you are ready, let us leave these gentlemen to their wine."
+
+After the ladies had gone the supper went on merrily. In those days,
+nearly everybody drank too much liquor, at any rate at feasts, and
+this company was no exception. Even Montalvo, his game being won and
+the strain on his nerves relaxed, partook pretty freely, and began to
+talk in proportion to his potations. Still, so clever was the man that
+in his cups he yet showed a method, for his conversation revealed a
+sympathy with Netherlander grievances and a tolerance of view in
+religious matters rarely displayed by a Spaniard.
+
+From such questions they drifted into a military discussion, and
+Montalvo, challenged by Van de Werff, who, as it happened, had not
+drunk too much wine, explained how, were he officer in command, he
+would defend Leyden from attack by an overwhelming force. Very soon
+Van de Werff saw that he was a capable soldier who had studied his
+profession, and being himself a capable civilian with a thirst for
+knowledge pressed the argument from point to point.
+
+"And suppose," he asked at length, "that the city were starving and
+still untaken, so that its inhabitants must either fall into the hands
+of the enemy or burn the place over their heads, what would you do
+then?"
+
+"Then, Mynheer, if I were a small man I should yield to the clamour of
+the starving folk and surrender----"
+
+"And if you were a big man, captain?"
+
+"If I were a big man--ah! if I were a big man, why then--I should cut
+the dykes and let the sea beat once more against the walls of Leyden.
+An army cannot live in salt water, Mynheer."
+
+"That would drown out the farmers and ruin the land for twenty years."
+
+"Quite so, Mynheer, but when the corn has to be saved, who thinks of
+spoiling the straw?"
+
+"I follow you, Senor, your proverb is good, although I have never
+heard it."
+
+"Many good things come from Spain, Mynheer, including this red wine.
+One more glass with you, for, if you will allow me to say it, you are
+a man worth meeting over a beaker--or a blade."
+
+"I hope that you will always retain the same opinion of me," answered
+Van de Werff as he drank, "at the trencher or in the trenches."
+
+Then Pieter went home, and before he slept that night made careful
+notes of all the Spaniard's suggested military dispositions, both of
+attackers and attacked, writing underneath them the proverb about the
+corn and the straw. There existed no real reason why he should have
+done so, as he was only a civilian engaged in business, but Pieter van
+de Werff chanced to be a provident young man who knew many things
+might happen which could not precisely be foreseen. As it fell out in
+after years, a time came when he was able to put Montalvo's advice to
+good use. All readers of the history of the Netherlands know how the
+Burgomaster Pieter van de Werff saved Leyden from the Spanish.
+
+As for Dirk van Goorl, he sought his lodging rather tipsy, and arm-in-
+arm with none other than Captain the Count Don Juan de Montalvo.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV
+
+                            THREE WAKINGS
+
+There were three persons in Leyden whose reflections when they awoke
+on the morning after the sledge race are not without interest, at any
+rate to the student of their history. First there was Dirk van Goorl,
+whose work made an early riser of him--to say nothing of a splitting
+headache which on this morning called him into consciousness just as
+the clock in the bell tower was chiming half-past four. Now there are
+few things more depressing than to be awakened by a bad headache at
+half-past four in the black frost of a winter dawn. Yet as Dirk lay
+and thought a conviction took hold of him that his depression was not
+due entirely to the headache or to the cold.
+
+One by one he recalled the events of yesterday. First he had been late
+for this appointment with Lysbeth, which evidently vexed her. Then the
+Captain Montalvo had swooped down and carried her away, as a hawk
+bears off a chicken under the very eyes of the hen-wife, while he--
+donkey that he was--could find no words in which to protest. Next,
+thinking it his duty to back the sledge wherein Lysbeth rode, although
+it was driven by a Spaniard, he had lost ten florins on that event,
+which, being a thrifty young man, did not at all please him. The rest
+of the fete he had spent hunting for Lysbeth, who mysteriously
+vanished with the Spaniard, an unentertaining and even an anxious
+pastime. Then came the supper, when once more the Count swooped down
+on Lysbeth, leaving him to escort his Cousin Clara, whom he considered
+an old fool and disliked, and who, having spoilt his new jacket by
+spilling wine over it, ended by abusing his taste in dress. Nor was
+that all--he had drunk a great deal more strong wine than was wise,
+for to this his head certified. Lastly he had walked home arm in arm
+with his lady-snatching Spaniard, and by Heaven! yes, he had sworn
+eternal friendship with him on the doorstep.
+
+Well, there was no doubt that the Count was an uncommonly good fellow
+--for a Spaniard. As for that story of the foul he had explained it
+quite satisfactorily, and he had taken his beating like a gentleman.
+Could anything be nicer or in better feeling than his allusions to
+Cousin Pieter in his after-supper speech? Also, and this was a graver
+matter, the man had shown that he was tolerant and kindly by the way
+in which he dealt with the poor creature called the Mare, a woman
+whose history Dirk knew well; one whose sufferings had made of her a
+crazy and rash-tongued wanderer, who, so it was rumoured, could use a
+knife.
+
+In fact, for the truth may as well be told at once, Dirk was a
+Lutheran, having been admitted to that community two years before. To
+be a Lutheran in those days, that is in the Netherlands, meant, it
+need scarcely be explained, that you walked the world with a halter
+round your neck and a vision of the rack and the stake before your
+eyes; circumstances under which religion became a more earnest and
+serious thing than most people find it in this century. Still even at
+that date the dreadful penalties attaching to the crime did not
+prevent many of the burgher and lower classes from worshipping God in
+their own fashion. Indeed, if the truth had been known, of those who
+were present at Lysbeth's supper on the previous night more than half,
+including Pieter van de Werff, were adherents of the New Faith.
+
+To dismiss religious considerations, however, Dirk could have wished
+that this kindly natured Spaniard was not quite so good-looking or
+quite so appreciative of the excellent points of the young Leyden
+ladies, and especially of Lysbeth's, with whose sterling character, he
+now remembered, Montalvo had assured him he was much impressed. What
+he feared was that this regard might be reciprocal. After all a
+Spanish hidalgo in command of the garrison was a distinguished person,
+and, alas! Lysbeth also was a Catholic. Dirk loved Lysbeth; he loved
+her with that patient sincerity which was characteristic of his race
+and his own temperament, but in addition to and above the reasons that
+have been given already it was this fact of the difference of religion
+which hitherto had built a wall between them. Of course she was
+unaware of anything of the sort. She did not know even that he
+belonged to the New Faith, and without the permission of the elders of
+his sect, he would not dare to tell her, for the lives of men and of
+their families could not be confided lightly to the hazard of a girl's
+discretion.
+
+Herein lay the real reason why, although Dirk was so devoted to
+Lysbeth, and although he imagined that she was not indifferent to him,
+as yet no word had passed between them of love or marriage. How could
+he who was a Lutheran ask a Catholic to become his wife without
+telling her the truth? And if he told her the truth, and she consented
+to take the risk, how could he drag her into that dreadful net?
+Supposing even that she kept to her own faith, which of course she
+would be at liberty to do, although equally, of course, he was bound
+to try to convert her, their children, if they had any, must be
+brought up in his beliefs. Then, sooner or later, might come the
+informer, that dreadful informer whose shadow already lay heavy upon
+thousands of homes in the Netherlands, and after the informer the
+officer, and after the officer the priest, and after the priest the
+judge, and after the judge--the executioner and the stake.
+
+In this case, what would happen to Lysbeth? She might prove herself
+innocent of the horrible crime of heresy, if by that time she was
+innocent, but what would life become to the loving young woman whose
+husband and children, perhaps, had been haled off to the slaughter
+chambers of the Papal Inquisition? This was the true first cause why
+Dirk had remained silent, even when he was sorely tempted to speak;
+yes, although his instinct told him that his silence had been
+misinterpreted and set down to over-caution, or indifference, or to
+unnecessary scruples.
+
+The next to wake up that morning was Lysbeth, who, if she was not
+troubled with headache resulting from indulgence--and in that day
+women of her class sometimes suffered from it--had pains of her own to
+overcome. When sifted and classified these pains resolved themselves
+into a sense of fiery indignation against Dirk van Goorl. Dirk had
+been late for his appointment, alleging some ridiculous excuse about
+the cooling of a bell, as though she cared whether the bell were hot
+or cold, with the result that she had been thrown into the company of
+that dreadful Martha the Mare. After the Mare--aggravated by Black Meg
+--came the Spaniard. Here again Dirk had shown contemptible
+indifference and insufficiency, for he allowed her to be forced into
+the Wolf sledge against her will. Nay, he had actually consented to
+the thing. Next, in a fateful sequence followed all the other
+incidents of that hideous carnival; the race, the foul, if it was a
+foul; the dreadful nightmare vision called into her mind by the look
+upon Montalvo's face; the trial of the Mare, her own unpremeditated
+but indelible perjury; the lonely drive with the man who compelled her
+to it; the exhibition of herself before all the world as his willing
+companion; and the feast in which he appeared as her cavalier, and was
+accepted of the simple company almost as an angel entertained by
+chance.
+
+What did he mean? Doubtless, for on that point she could scarcely be
+mistaken, he meant to make love to her, for had he not in practice
+said as much? And now--this was the terrible thing--she was in his
+power, since if he chose to do so, without doubt he could prove that
+she had sworn a false oath for her own purposes. Also that lie weighed
+upon her mind, although it had been spoken in a good cause; if it was
+good to save a wretched fanatic from the fate which, were the truth
+known, without doubt her crime deserved.
+
+Of course, the Spaniard was a bad man, if an attractive one, and he
+had behaved wickedly, if with grace and breeding; but who expected
+anything else from a Spaniard, who only acted after his kind and for
+his own ends? It was Dirk--Dirk--that was to blame, not so much--and
+here again came the rub--for his awkwardness and mistakes of
+yesterday, as for his general conduct. Why had he not spoken to her
+before, and put her beyond the reach of such accidents as these to
+which a woman of her position and substance must necessarily be
+exposed? The saints knew that she had given him opportunity enough.
+She had gone as far as a maiden might, and not for all the Dirks on
+earth would she go one inch further. Why had she ever come to care for
+his foolish face? Why had she refused So-and-so, and So-and-so and So-
+and-so--all of them honourable men--with the result that now no other
+bachelor ever came near her, comprehending that she was under bond to
+her cousin? In the past she had persuaded herself that it was because
+of something she felt but could not see, of a hidden nobility of
+character which after all was not very evident upon the surface, that
+she loved Dirk van Goorl. But where was this something, this nobility?
+Surely a man who was a man ought to play his part, and not leave her
+in this false position, especially as there could be no question of
+means. She would not have come to him empty-handed, very far from it,
+indeed. Oh! were it not for the unlucky fact that she still happened
+to care about him--to her sorrow--never, never would she speak to him
+again.
+
+The last of our three friends to awake on this particular morning,
+between nine and ten o'clock, indeed, when Dirk had been already two
+hours at his factory and Lysbeth was buying provisions in the market
+place, was that accomplished and excellent officer, Captain the Count
+Juan de Montalvo. For a few seconds after his dark eyes opened he
+stared at the ceiling collecting his thoughts. Then, sitting up in
+bed, he burst into a prolonged roar of laughter. Really the whole
+thing was too funny for any man of humour to contemplate without being
+moved to merriment. That gaby, Dirk van Goorl; the furiously indignant
+but helpless Lysbeth; the solemn, fat-headed fools of Netherlanders at
+the supper, and the fashion in which he had played his own tune on the
+whole pack of them as though they were the strings of a fiddle--oh! it
+was delicious.
+
+As the reader by this time may have guessed, Montalvo was not the
+typical Spaniard of romance, and, indeed, of history. He was not
+gloomy and stern; he was not even particularly vengeful or
+bloodthirsty. On the contrary, he was a clever and utterly
+unprincipled man with a sense of humour and a gift of /bonhomie/ which
+made him popular in all places. Moreover, he was brave, a good
+soldier; in a certain sense sympathetic, and, strange to say, no
+bigot. Indeed, which seems to have been a rare thing in those days,
+his religious views were so enlarged that he had none at all. His
+conduct, therefore, if from time to time it was affected by passing
+spasms of acute superstition, was totally uninfluenced by any settled
+spiritual hopes or fears, a condition which, he found, gave him great
+advantages in life. In fact, had it suited his purpose, Montalvo was
+prepared, at a moment's notice, to become Lutheran or Calvinist, or
+Mahomedan, or Mystic, or even Anabaptist; on the principle, he would
+explain, that it is easy for the artist to paint any picture he likes
+upon a blank canvas.
+
+And yet this curious pliancy of mind, this lack of conviction, this
+absolute want of moral sense, which ought to have given the Count such
+great advantages in his conflict with the world, were, in reality, the
+main source of his weakness. Fortune had made a soldier of the man,
+and he filled the part as he would have filled any part. But nature
+intended him for a play-actor, and from day to day he posed and mimed
+and mouthed through life in this character or in that, though never in
+his own character, principally because he had none. Still, far down in
+Montalvo's being there was something solid and genuine, and that
+something not good but bad. It was very rarely on view; the hand of
+circumstance must plunge deep to find it, but it dwelt there; the
+strong, cruel Spanish spirit which would sacrifice anything to save,
+or even to advance, itself. It was this spirit that Lysbeth had seen
+looking out of his eyes on the yesterday, which, when he knew that the
+race was lost, had prompted him to try to kill his adversary, although
+he killed himself and her in the attempt. Nor did she see it then for
+the last time, for twice more at least in her life she was destined to
+meet and tremble at its power.
+
+In short, although Montalvo was a man who really disliked cruelty, he
+could upon occasion be cruel to the last degree; although he
+appreciated friends, and desired to have them, he could be the foulest
+of traitors. Although without a cause he would do no hurt to a living
+thing, yet if that cause were sufficient he would cheerfully consign a
+whole cityful to death. No, not cheerfully, he would have regretted
+their end very much, and often afterwards might have thought of it
+with sympathy and even sorrow. This was where he differed from the
+majority of his countrymen in that age, who would have done the same
+thing, and more brutally, from honest principle, and for the rest of
+their lives rejoiced at the memory of the deed.
+
+Montalvo had his ruling passion; it was not war, it was not women; it
+was money. But here again he did not care about the money for itself,
+since he was no miser, and being the most inveterate of gamblers never
+saved a single stiver. He wanted it to spend and to stake upon the
+dice. Thus again, in variance to the taste of most of his countrymen,
+he cared little for the other sex; he did not even like their society,
+and as for their passion and the rest he thought it something of a
+bore. But he did care intensely for their admiration, so much so that
+if no better game were at hand, he would take enormous trouble to
+fascinate even a serving maid or a fish girl. Wherever he went it was
+his ambition to be reported the man the most admired of the fair in
+that city, and to attain this end he offered himself upon the altar of
+numerous love affairs which did not amuse him in the least. Of course,
+the indulgence of this vanity meant expense, since the fair require
+money and presents, and he who pursues them should be well dressed and
+horsed and able to do things in the very finest style. Also their
+relatives must be entertained, and when they were entertained
+impressed with the sense that they had the honour to be guests of a
+grandee of Spain.
+
+Now that of a grandee has never been a cheap profession; indeed, as
+many a pauper peer knows to-day, rank without resources is a terrific
+burden. Montalvo had the rank, for he was a well-born man, whose sole
+heritage was an ancient tower built by some warlike ancestor in a
+position admirably suited to the purpose of the said ancestor, namely,
+the pillage of travellers through a neighbouring mountain pass. When,
+however, travellers ceased to use that pass, or for other reasons
+robbery became no longer productive, the revenues of the Montalvo
+family declined till at the present date they were practically nil.
+Thus it came about that the status of the last representative of this
+ancient stock was that of a soldier of fortune of the common type,
+endowed, unfortunately for himself, with grand ideas, a gambler's
+fatal fire, expensive tastes, and more than the usual pride of race.
+
+Although, perhaps, he had never defined them very clearly, even to
+himself, Juan de Montalvo had two aims in life: first to indulge his
+every freak and fancy to the full, and next--but this was secondary
+and somewhat nebulous--to re-establish the fortunes of his family. In
+themselves they were quite legitimate aims, and in those times, when
+fishers of troubled waters generally caught something, and when men of
+ability and character might force their way to splendid positions,
+there was no reason why they should not have led him to success. Yet
+so far, at any rate, in spite of many opportunities, he had not
+succeeded although he was now a man of more than thirty. The causes of
+his failures were various, but at the bottom of them lay his lack of
+stability and genuineness.
+
+A man who is always playing a part amuses every one but convinces
+nobody. Montalvo convinced nobody. When he discoursed on the mysteries
+of religion with priests, even priests who in those days for the most
+part were stupid, felt that they assisted in a mere intellectual
+exercise. When his theme was war his audience guessed that his object
+was probably love. When love was his song an inconvenient instinct was
+apt to assure the lady immediately concerned that it was love of self
+and not of her. They were all more or less mistaken, but, as usual,
+the women went nearest to the mark. Montalvo's real aim was self, but
+he spelt it, Money. Money in large sums was what he wanted, and what
+in this way or that he meant to win.
+
+Now even in the sixteenth century fortunes did not lie to the hand of
+every adventurer. Military pay was small, and not easily recoverable;
+loot was hard to come by, and quickly spent. Even the ransom of a rich
+prisoner or two soon disappeared in the payment of such debts of
+honour as could not be avoided. Of course there remained the
+possibility of wealthy marriage, which in a country like the
+Netherlands, that was full of rich heiresses, was not difficult to a
+high-born, handsome, and agreeable man of the ruling Spanish caste.
+Indeed, after many chances and changes the time had come at length
+when Montalvo must either marry or be ruined. For his station his
+debts, especially his gaming debts, were enormous, and creditors met
+him at every turn. Unfortunately for him, also, some of these
+creditors were persons who had the ear of people in authority. So at
+last it came about that an intimation reached him that this scandal
+must be abated, or he must go back to Spain, a country which, as it
+happened, he did not in the least wish to visit. In short, the sorry
+hour of reckoning, that hour which overtakes all procrastinators, had
+arrived, and marriage, wealthy marriage, was the only way wherewith it
+could be defied. It was a sad alternative to a man who for his own
+very excellent reasons did not wish to marry, but this had to be
+faced.
+
+Thus it came about that, as the only suitable /partie/ in Leyden, the
+Count Montalvo had sought out the well-favoured and well-endowed
+Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout to be his companion in the great sledge
+race, and taken so much trouble to ensure to himself a friendly
+reception at her house.
+
+So far, things went well, and, what was more, the opening of the chase
+had proved distinctly entertaining. Also, the society of the place,
+after his appropriation of her at a public festival and their long
+moonlight /tete-a-tete/, which by now must be common gossip's talk,
+would be quite prepared for any amount of attention which he might see
+fit to pay to Lysbeth. Indeed, why should he not pay attention to an
+unaffianced woman whose rank was lower if her means were greater than
+his own? Of course, he knew that her name had been coupled with that
+of Dirk van Goorl. He was perfectly aware also that these two young
+people were attached to each other, for as they walked home together
+on the previous night Dirk, possibly for motives of his own, had
+favoured him with a semi-intoxicated confidence to that effect. But as
+they were not affianced what did that matter? Indeed, had they been
+affianced, what would it matter? Still, Dirk van Goorl was an
+obstacle, and, therefore, although he seemed to be a good fellow, and
+he was sorry for him, Dirk van Goorl must be got out of the way, since
+he was convinced that Lysbeth was one of those stubborn-natured
+creatures who would probably decline to marry himself until this young
+Leyden lout had vanished. And yet he did not wish to be mixed up with
+duels, if for no other reason because in a duel the unexpected may
+always happen, and that would be a poor end. Certainly also he did not
+wish to be mixed up with murder; first, because he intensely disliked
+the idea of killing anybody, unless he was driven to it; and secondly,
+because murder has a nasty way of coming out. One could never be quite
+sure in what light the despatching of a young Netherlander of
+respectable family and fortune would be looked at by those in
+authority.
+
+Also, there was another thing to be considered. If this young man died
+it was impossible to know exactly how Lysbeth would take his death.
+Thus she might elect to refuse to marry or decide to mourn him for
+four or five years, which for all practical purposes would be just as
+bad. And yet while Dirk lived how could he possibly persuade her to
+transfer her affections to himself? It seemed, therefore, that Dirk
+ought to decease. For quite a quarter of an hour Montalvo thought the
+matter over, and then, just as he had given it up and determined to
+leave things to chance, for a while at least, inspiration came, a
+splendid, a heaven-sent inspiration.
+
+Dirk must not die, Dirk must live, but his continued existence must be
+the price of the hand of Lysbeth van Hout. If she was half as fond of
+the man as he believed, it was probable that she would be delighted to
+marry anybody else in order to save his precious neck, for that was
+just the kind of sentimental idiotcy of which nine women out of ten
+really enjoyed the indulgence. Moreover, this scheme had other merits;
+it did every one a good turn. Dirk would be saved from extinction for
+which he should be grateful: Lysbeth, besides earning the honour of an
+alliance, perhaps only temporary, with himself, would be able to go
+through life wrapped in a heavenly glow of virtue arising from the
+impression that she had really done something very fine and tragic,
+while he, Montalvo, under Providence, the humble purveyor of these
+blessings, would also benefit to some small extent.
+
+The difficulty was: How could the situation be created? How could the
+interesting Dirk be brought to a pass that would give the lady an
+opportunity of exercising her finer feelings on his behalf? If only he
+were a heretic now! Well, by the Pope why shouldn't he be a heretic?
+If ever a fellow had the heretical cut this fellow had; flat-faced,
+sanctimonious-looking, and with a fancy for dark-coloured stockings--
+he had observed that all heretics, male and female, wore dark-coloured
+stockings, perhaps by way of mortifying the flesh. He could think of
+only one thing against it, the young man had drunk too much last
+night. But there were certain breeds of heretics who did not mind
+drinking too much. Also the best could slip sometimes, for, as he had
+learned from the old Castilian priest who taught him Latin, /humanum
+est/, etc.
+
+This, then, was the summary of his reflections. (1) That to save the
+situation, within three months or so he must be united in holy
+matrimony with Lysbeth van Hout. (2) That if it proved impossible to
+remove the young man, Dirk van Goorl, from his path by overmatching
+him in the lady's affections, or by playing on her jealousy (Query:
+Could a woman be egged into becoming jealous of that flounder of a
+fellow and into marrying some one else out of pique?), stronger
+measures must be adopted. (3) That such stronger measures should
+consist of inducing the lady to save her lover from death by uniting
+herself in marriage with one who for her sake would do violence to his
+conscience and manipulate the business. (4) That this plan would be
+best put into execution by proving the lover to be a heretic, but if
+unhappily this could not be proved because he was not, still he must
+figure in that capacity for this occasion only. (5) That meanwhile it
+would be well to cultivate the society of Mynheer van Goorl as much as
+possible, first because he was a person with whom, under the
+circumstances, he, Montalvo, would naturally wish to become intimate,
+and secondly, because he was quite certain to be an individual with
+cash to lend.
+
+Now, these researches after heretics invariably cost money, for they
+involved the services of spies. Obviously, therefore, friend Dirk, the
+Dutch Flounder, was a man to provide the butter in which he was going
+to be fried. Why, if any Hollander had a spark of humour he would see
+the joke of it himself--and Montalvo ended his reflections as he had
+begun them, with a merry peal of laughter, after which he rose and ate
+a most excellent breakfast.
+
+
+
+It was about half-past five o'clock that afternoon before the Captain
+and Acting-Commandant Montalvo returned from some duty to which he had
+been attending, for it may be explained that he was a zealous officer
+and a master of detail. As he entered his lodgings the soldier who
+acted as his servant, a man selected for silence and discretion,
+saluted and stood at attention.
+
+"Is the woman here?" he asked.
+
+"Excellency, she is here, though I had difficulty enough in persuading
+her to come, for I found her in bed and out of humour."
+
+"Peace to your difficulties. Where is she?"
+
+"In the small inner room, Excellency."
+
+"Good, then see that no one disturbs us, and--stay, when she goes out
+follow her and note her movements till you trace her home."
+
+The man saluted, and Montalvo passed upstairs into the inner room,
+carefully shutting both doors behind him. The place was unlighted, but
+through the large stone-mullioned window the rays of the full moon
+poured brightly, and by them, seated in a straight-backed chair,
+Montalvo saw a draped form. There was something forbidding, something
+almost unnatural, in the aspect of this sombre form perched thus upon
+a chair in expectant silence. It reminded him--for he had a touch of
+inconvenient imagination--of an evil bird squatted upon the bough of a
+dead tree awaiting the dawn that it might go forth to devour some
+appointed prey.
+
+"Is that you, Mother Meg?" he asked in tones from which most of the
+jocosity had vanished. "Quite like old times at The Hague--isn't it?"
+
+The moonlit figure turned its head, for he could see the light shine
+upon the whites of the eyes.
+
+"Who else, Excellency," said a voice hoarse and thick with rheum, a
+voice like the croak of a crow, "though it is little thanks to your
+Excellency. Those must be strong who can bathe in Rhine water through
+a hole in the ice and take no hurt."
+
+"Don't scold, woman," he answered, "I have no time for it. If you were
+ducked yesterday, it served you right for losing your cursed temper.
+Could you not see that I had my own game to play, and you were
+spoiling it? Must I be flouted before my men, and listen while you
+warn a lady with whom I wish to stand well against me?"
+
+"You generally have a game to play, Excellency, but when it ends in my
+being first robbed and then nearly drowned beneath the ice--well, that
+is a game which Black Meg does not forget."
+
+"Hush, mother, you are not the only person with a memory. What was the
+reward? Twelve florins? Well, you shall have them, and five more;
+that's good pay for a lick of cold water. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"No, Excellency. I wanted the life, that heretic's life. I wanted to
+baste her while she burned, or to tread her down while she was buried.
+I have a grudge against the woman because I know, yes, because I
+know," she repeated fiercely, "that if I do not kill her she will try
+to kill me. Her husband and her young son were burnt, upon my evidence
+mostly, but this is the third time she has escaped me."
+
+"Patience, mother, patience, and I dare say that everything will come
+right in the end. You have bagged two of the family--Papa heretic and
+Young Hopeful. Really you should not grumble if the third takes a
+little hunting, or wonder that in the meanwhile you are not popular
+with Mama. Now, listen. You know the young woman whom it was necessary
+that I should humour yesterday. She is rich, is she not?"
+
+"Yes, I know her, and I knew her father. He left her house, furniture,
+jewellery, and thirty thousand crowns, which are placed out at good
+interest. A nice fortune for a gallant who wants money, but it will be
+Dirk van Goorl's, not yours."
+
+"Ah! that is just the point. Now what do you know about Dirk van
+Goorl?"
+
+"A respectable, hard-working burgher, son of well-to-do parents,
+brass-workers who live at Alkmaar. Honest, but not very clever; the
+kind of man who grows rich, becomes a Burgomaster, founds a hospital
+for the poor, and has a fine monument put up to his memory."
+
+"Mother, the cold water has dulled your wits. When I ask you about a
+man I want to learn what you know /against/ him."
+
+"Naturally, Excellency, naturally, but against this one I can tell you
+nothing. He has no lovers, he does not gamble, he does not drink
+except a glass after dinner. He works in his factory all day, goes to
+bed early, rises early, and calls on the Jufvrouw van Hout on Sundays;
+that is all."
+
+"Where does he attend Mass?"
+
+"At the Groote Kerke once a week, but he does not take the Sacrament
+or go to confession."
+
+"That sounds bad, mother, very bad. You don't mean to say that he is a
+heretic?"
+
+"Probably he is, Excellency; most of them are about here."
+
+"Dear me, how very shocking. Do you know, I should not like that
+excellent young woman, a good Catholic too, like you and me, mother,
+to become mixed up with one of these dreadful heretics, who might
+expose her to all sorts of dangers. For, mother, who can touch pitch
+and not be defiled?"
+
+"You waste time, Excellency," replied his visitor with a snort. "What
+do you want?"
+
+"Well, in the interests of this young lady, I want to prove that this
+man /is/ a heretic, and it has struck me that--as one accustomed to
+this sort of thing--you might be able to find the evidence."
+
+"Indeed, Excellency, and has it struck you what my face would look
+like after I had thrust my head into a wasp's nest for your amusement?
+Do you know what it means to me if I go peering about among the
+heretics of Leyden? Well, I will tell you; it means that I should be
+killed. They are a strong lot, and a determined lot, and so long as
+you leave them alone they will leave you alone, but if you interfere
+with them, why then it is good night. Oh! yes, I know all about the
+law and the priests and the edicts and the Emperor. But the Emperor
+cannot burn a whole people, and though I hate them, I tell you," she
+added, standing up suddenly and speaking in a fierce, convinced voice,
+"that in the end the law and the edicts and the priests will get the
+worst of this fight. Yes, these Hollanders will beat them all and cut
+the throats of you Spaniards, and thrust those of you who are left
+alive out of their country, and spit upon your memories and worship
+God in their own fashion, and be proud and free, when you are dogs
+gnawing the bones of your greatness; dogs kicked back into your
+kennels to rot there. Those are not my own words," said Meg in a
+changed voice as she sat down again. "They are the words of that
+devil, Martha the Mare, which she spoke in my hearing when we had her
+on the rack, but somehow I think that they will come true, and that is
+why I always remember them."
+
+"Indeed, her ladyship the Mare is a more interesting person than I
+thought, though if she can talk like that, perhaps, after all, it
+would have been as well to drown her. And now, dropping prophecy and
+leaving posterity to arrange for itself, let us come to business. How
+much? For evidence which would suffice to procure his conviction,
+mind."
+
+"Five hundred florins, not a stiver less, so, Excellency, you need not
+waste your time trying to beat me down. You want good evidence,
+evidence on which the Council, or whoever they may appoint, will
+convict, and that means the unshaken testimony of two witnesses. Well,
+I tell you, it isn't easy to come by; there is great danger to the
+honest folk who seek it, for these heretics are desperate people, and
+if they find a spy while they are engaged in devil-worship at one of
+their conventicles, why--they kill him."
+
+"I know all that, mother. What are you trying to cover up that you are
+so talkative? It isn't your usual way of doing business. Well, it is a
+bargain--you shall have your money when you produce the evidence. And
+now really if we stop here much longer people will begin to make
+remarks, for who shall escape aspersion in this censorious world? So
+good-night, mother, good-night," and he turned to leave the room.
+
+"No, Excellency," she croaked with a snort of indignation, "no pay, no
+play; I don't work on the faith of your Excellency's word alone."
+
+"How much?" he asked again.
+
+"A hundred florins down."
+
+Then for a while they wrangled hideously, their heads held close
+together in the patch of moonlight, and so loathsome did their faces
+look, so plainly was the wicked purpose of their hearts written upon
+them, that in that faint luminous glow they might have been mistaken
+for emissaries from the under-world chaffering over the price of a
+human soul. At last the bargain was struck for fifty florins, and
+having received it into her hand Black Meg departed.
+
+"Sixty-seven in all," she muttered to herself as she regained the
+street. "Well, it was no use holding out for any more, for he hasn't
+got the cash. The man's as poor as Lazarus, but he wants to live like
+Dives, and, what is more, he gambles, as I learned at The Hague. Also,
+there's something queer about his past; I have heard as much as that.
+It must be looked into, and perhaps the bundle of papers which I
+helped myself to out of his desk while I was waiting"--and she touched
+the bosom of her dress to make sure that they were safe--"may tell me
+a thing or two, though likely enough they are only unpaid bills. Ah!
+most noble cheat and captain, before you have done with her you may
+find that Black Meg knows how to pay back hot water for cold!"
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V
+
+                          THE DREAM OF DIRK
+
+On the day following Montalvo's interview with Black Meg Dirk received
+a message from that gentleman, sent to his lodging by an orderly,
+which reminded him that he had promised to dine with him this very
+night. Now he had no recollection of any such engagement. Remembering
+with shame, however, that there were various incidents of the evening
+of the supper whereof his memory was most imperfect, he concluded that
+this must be one of them. So much against his own wishes Dirk sent
+back an answer to say that he would appear at the time and place
+appointed.
+
+This was the third thing that had happened to annoy him that day.
+First he had met Pieter van de Werff, who informed him that all Leyden
+was talking about Lysbeth and the Captain Montalvo, to whom she was
+said to have taken a great fancy. Next when he went to call at the
+house in the Bree Straat he was told that both Lysbeth and his cousin
+Clara had gone out sleighing, which he did not believe, for as a thaw
+had set in the snow was no longer in a condition suitable to that
+amusement. Moreover, he could almost have sworn that, as he crossed
+the street, he caught sight of Cousin Clara's red face peeping at him
+from between the curtains of the upstairs sitting-room. Indeed he said
+as much to Greta, who, contrary to custom, had opened the door to him.
+
+"I am sorry if Mynheer sees visions," answered that young woman
+imperturbably. "I told Mynheer that the ladies had gone out
+sleighing."
+
+"I know you did, Greta; but why should they go out sleighing in a wet
+thaw?"
+
+"I don't know, Mynheer. Ladies do those things that please them. It is
+not my place to ask their reasons."
+
+Dirk looked at Greta, and was convinced that she was lying. He put his
+hand in his pocket, to find to his disgust that he had forgotten his
+purse. Then he thought of giving her a kiss and trying to melt the
+truth out of her in this fashion, but remembering that if he did, she
+might tell Lysbeth, which would make matters worse than ever,
+refrained. So the end of it was that he merely said "Oh! indeed," and
+went away.
+
+"Great soft-head," reflected Greta, as she watched his retreating
+form, "he knew I was telling lies, why didn't he push past me, or--do
+anything. Ah! Mynheer Dirk, if you are not careful that Spaniard will
+take your wind. Well, he is more amusing, that's certain. I am tired
+of these duck-footed Leydeners, who daren't wink at a donkey lest he
+should bray, and among such holy folk somebody a little wicked is
+rather a change." Then Greta, who, it may be remembered, came from
+Brussels, and had French blood in her veins, went upstairs to make a
+report to her mistress, telling her all that passed.
+
+"I did not ask you to speak falsehoods as to my being out sleighing
+and the rest. I told you to answer that I was not at home, and mind
+you say the same to the Captain Montalvo if he calls," said Lysbeth
+with some acerbity as she dismissed her.
+
+In truth she was very sore and angry, and yet ashamed of herself
+because it was so. But things had gone so horribly wrong, and as for
+Dirk, he was the most exasperating person in the world. It was owing
+to his bad management and lack of readiness that her name was coupled
+with Montalvo's at every table in Leyden. And now what did she hear in
+a note from the Captain himself, sent to make excuses for not having
+called upon her after the supper party, but that Dirk was going to
+dine with him that night? Very well, let him do it; she would know how
+to pay him back, and if necessary was ready to act up to any situation
+which he had chosen to create.
+
+Thus thought Lysbeth, stamping her foot with vexation, but all the
+time her heart was sore. All the time she knew well enough that she
+loved Dirk, and, however strange might be his backwardness in speaking
+out his mind, that he loved her. And yet she felt as though a river
+was running between them. In the beginning it had been a streamlet,
+but now it was growing to a torrent. Worse still the Spaniard was upon
+her bank of the river.
+
+After he had to some extent conquered his shyness and irritation Dirk
+became aware that he was really enjoying his dinner at Montalvo's
+quarters. There were three guests besides himself, two Spanish
+officers and a young Netherlander of his own class and age, Brant by
+name. He was the only son of a noted and very wealthy goldsmith at The
+Hague, who had sent him to study certain mysteries of the metal
+worker's art under a Leyden jeweller famous for the exquisite beauty
+of his designs. The dinner and the service were both of them perfect
+in style, but better than either proved the conversation, which was of
+a character that Dirk had never heard at the tables of his own class
+and people. Not that there was anything even broad about it, as might
+perhaps have been expected. No, it was the talk of highly accomplished
+and travelled men of the world, who had seen much and been actors in
+many moving events; men who were not overtrammelled by prejudices,
+religious or other, and who were above all things desirous of making
+themselves agreeable and instructive to the stranger within their
+gates. The Heer Brant also, who had but just arrived in Leyden, showed
+himself an able and polished man, one that had been educated more
+thoroughly than was usual among his class, and who, at the table of
+his father, the opulent Burgomaster of The Hague, from his youth had
+associated with all classes and conditions of men. Indeed it was there
+that he made the acquaintance of Montalvo, who recognising him in the
+street had asked him to dinner.
+
+After the dishes were cleared, one of the Spanish officers rose and
+begged to be excused, pleading some military duty. When he had saluted
+his commandant and gone, Montalvo suggested that they should play a
+game of cards. This was an invitation which Dirk would have liked to
+decline, but when it came to the point he did not, for fear of seeming
+peculiar in the eyes of these brilliant men of the world.
+
+So they began to play, and as the game was simple very soon he picked
+up the points of it, and what is more, found them amusing. At first
+the stakes were not high, but they doubled themselves in some
+automatic fashion, till Dirk was astonished to find that he was
+gambling for considerable sums and winning them. Towards the last his
+luck changed a little, but when the game came to an end he found
+himself the richer by about three hundred and fifty florins.
+
+"What am I do to with this?" he asked colouring up, as with sighs,
+which in one instance were genuine enough, the losers pushed the money
+across to him.
+
+"Do with it?" laughed Montalvo, "did anybody ever hear such an
+innocent! Why, buy your lady-love, or somebody else's lady-love, a
+present. No, I'll tell you a better use than this, you give us
+to-morrow night at your lodging the best dinner that Leyden can
+produce, and a chance of winning some of this coin back again. Is it
+agreed?"
+
+"If the other gentlemen wish it," said Dirk, modestly, "though my
+apartment is but a poor place for such company."
+
+"Of course we wish it," replied the three as with one voice, and the
+hour for meeting having been fixed they parted, the Heer Brant walking
+with Dirk to the door of his lodging.
+
+"I was going to call on you to-morrow," he said, "to bring to you a
+letter of introduction from my father, though that should scarcely be
+needed as, in fact, we are cousins--second cousins only, our mothers
+having been first cousins."
+
+"Oh! yes, Brant of The Hague, of whom my mother used to speak, saying
+that they were kinsmen to be proud of, although she had met them but
+little. Well, welcome, cousin; I trust that we shall be friends."
+
+"I am sure of it," answered Brant, and putting his arm through Dirk's
+he pressed it in a peculiar fashion that caused him to start and look
+round. "Hush!" muttered Brant, "not here," and they began to talk of
+their late companions and the game of cards which they had played, an
+amusement as to the propriety of which Dirk intimated that he had
+doubts.
+
+Young Brant shrugged his shoulders. "Cousin," he said, "we live in the
+world, so it is as well to understand the world. If the risking of a
+few pieces at play, which it will not ruin us to lose, helps us to
+understand it, well, for my part I am ready to risk them, especially
+as it puts us on good terms with those who, as things are, it is wise
+we should cultivate. Only, cousin, if I may venture to say it, be
+careful not to take more wine than you can carry with discretion.
+Better lose a thousand florins than let drop one word that you cannot
+remember."
+
+"I know, I know," answered Dirk, thinking of Lysbeth's supper, and at
+the door of his lodgings they parted.
+
+Like most Netherlanders, when Dirk made up his mind to do anything he
+did it thoroughly. Thus, having undertaken to give a dinner party, he
+determined to give a good dinner. In ordinary circumstances his first
+idea would have been to consult his cousins, Clara and Lysbeth. After
+that monstrous story about the sleighing, however, which by inquiry
+from the coachman of the house, whom he happened to meet, he
+ascertained to be perfectly false, this, for the young man had some
+pride, he did not feel inclined to do. So in place of it he talked
+first to his landlady, a worthy dame, and by her advice afterwards
+with the first innkeeper of Leyden, a man of resource and experience.
+The innkeeper, well knowing that this customer would pay for anything
+which he ordered, threw himself into the affair heartily, with the
+result that by five o'clock relays of cooks and other attendants were
+to be seen streaming up Dirk's staircase, carrying every variety of
+dish that could be supposed to tempt the appetite of high-class
+cavaliers.
+
+Dirk's apartment consisted of two rooms situated upon the first floor
+of an old house in a street that had ceased to be fashionable. Once,
+however, it had been a fine house, and, according to the ideas of the
+time, the rooms themselves were fine, especially the sitting chamber,
+which was oak-panelled, low, and spacious, with a handsome fireplace
+carrying the arms of its builder. Out of it opened his sleeping room--
+which had no other doorway--likewise oak-panelled, with tall
+cupboards, not unlike the canopy of a tomb in shape and general
+appearance.
+
+The hour came, and with it the guests. The feast began, the cooks
+streamed up and down bearing relays of dishes from the inn. Above the
+table hung a six-armed brass chandelier, and in each of its sockets
+guttered a tallow candle furnishing light to the company beneath,
+although outside of its bright ring there was shadow more or less
+dense. Towards the end of dinner a portion of the rush wick of one of
+these candles fell into the brass saucer beneath, causing the molten
+grease to burn up fiercely. As it chanced, by the light of this sudden
+flare, Montalvo, who was sitting opposite to the door, thought that he
+caught sight of a tall, dark figure gliding along the wall towards the
+bedroom. For one instant he saw it, then it was gone.
+
+"/Caramba/, my friend," he said, addressing Dirk, whose back was
+turned towards the figure, "have you any ghosts in this gloomy old
+room of yours? Because, if so, I think I have just seen one."
+
+"Ghosts!" answered Dirk, "no, I never heard of any; I do not believe
+in ghosts. Take some more of that pasty."
+
+Montalvo took some more pasty, and washed it down with a glass of
+wine. But he said no more about ghosts--perhaps an explanation of the
+phenomenon had occurred to him; at any rate he decided to leave the
+subject alone.
+
+After the dinner they gambled, and this evening the stakes began where
+those of the previous night left off. For the first hour Dirk lost,
+then the luck turned and he won heavily, but always from Montalvo.
+
+"My friend," said the captain at last, throwing down his cards,
+"certainly you are fated to be unfortunate in your matrimonial
+adventures, for the devil lives in your dice-box, and his highness
+does not give everything. I pass," and he rose from the table.
+
+"I pass also," said Dirk following him into the window place, for he
+wished to take no more money. "You have been very unlucky, Count," he
+said.
+
+"Very, indeed, my young friend," answered Montalvo, yawning, "in fact,
+for the next six months I must live on--well--well, nothing, except
+the recollection of your excellent dinner."
+
+"I am sorry," muttered Dirk, confusedly, "I did not wish to take your
+money; it was the turn of those accursed dice. See here, let us say no
+more about it."
+
+"Sir," said Montalvo, with a sudden sternness, "an officer and a
+gentleman cannot treat a debt of honour thus; but," he added with a
+little laugh, "if another gentleman chances to be good enough to
+charge a debt of honour for a debt of honour, the affair is different.
+If, for instance, it would suit you to lend me four hundred florins,
+which, added to the six hundred which I have lost to-night, would make
+a thousand in all, well, it will be a convenience to me, though should
+it be any inconvenience to you, pray do not think of such a thing."
+
+"Certainly," answered Dirk, "I have won nearly as much as that, and
+here at my own table. Take them, I beg of you, captain," and emptying
+a roll of gold into his hand, he counted it with the skill of a
+merchant, and held it towards him.
+
+Montalvo hesitated. Then he took the money, pouring it carelessly into
+his pocket.
+
+"You have not checked the sum," said Dirk.
+
+"My friend, it is needless," answered his guest, "your word is rather
+better than any bond," and again he yawned, remarking that it was
+getting late.
+
+Dirk waited a few moments, thinking in his coarse, business-like way
+that the noble Spaniard might wish to say something about a written
+acknowledgment. As, however, this did not seem to occur to him, and
+the matter was not one of ordinary affairs, he led the way back to the
+table, where the other two were now showing their skill in card
+tricks.
+
+A few minutes later the two Spaniards took their departure, leaving
+Dirk and his cousin Brant alone.
+
+"A very successful evening," said Brant, "and, cousin, you won a great
+deal."
+
+"Yes," answered Dirk, "but all the same I am a poorer man than I was
+yesterday."
+
+Brant laughed. "Did he borrow of you?" he asked. "Well, I thought he
+would, and what's more, don't you count on that money. Montalvo is a
+good sort of fellow in his own fashion, but he is an extravagant man
+and a desperate gambler, with a queer history, I fancy--at least,
+nobody knows much about him, not even his brother officers. If you ask
+them they shrug their shoulders and say that Spain is a big kettle
+full of all sorts of fish. One thing I do know, however, that he is
+over head and ears in debt; indeed, there was trouble about it down at
+The Hague. So, cousin, don't you play with him more than you can help,
+and don't reckon on that thousand florins to pay your bills with. It
+is a mystery to me how the man gets on, but I am told that a foolish
+old vrouw in Amsterdam lent him a lot till she discovered--but there,
+I don't talk scandal. And now," he added, changing his voice, "is this
+place private?"
+
+"Let's see," said Dirk, "they have cleared the things away, and the
+old housekeeper has tidied up my bedroom. Yes, I think so. Nobody ever
+comes up here after ten o'clock. What is it?"
+
+Brant touched his arm, and, understanding the truth, Dirk led the way
+into the window-place. There, standing with his back to the room, and
+his hands crossed in a peculiar fashion, he uttered the word,
+"/Jesus/," and paused. Brant also crossed his hands and answered, or,
+rather, continued, "/wept/." It was the password of those of the New
+Religion.
+
+"You are one of us, cousin?" said Dirk.
+
+"I and all my house, my father, my mother, my sister, and the maiden
+whom I am to marry. They told me at The Hague that I must seek of you
+or the young Heer Pieter van de Werff, knowledge of those things which
+we of the Faith need to know; who are to be trusted, and who are not
+to be trusted; where prayer is held, and where we may partake of the
+pure Sacrament of God the Son."
+
+Dirk took his cousin's hand and pressed it. The pressure was returned,
+and thenceforward brother could not have trusted brother more
+completely, for now between them was the bond of a common and burning
+faith.
+
+Such bonds the reader may say, tie ninety out of every hundred people
+to each other in the present year of grace, but it is not to be
+observed that a like mutual confidence results. No, because the
+circumstances have changed. Thanks very largely to Dirk van Goorl and
+his fellows of that day, especially to one William of Orange, it is no
+longer necessary for devout and God-fearing people to creep into holes
+and corners, like felons hiding from the law, that they may worship
+the Almighty after some fashion as pure as it is simple, knowing the
+while that if they are found so doing their lot and the lot of their
+wives and children will be the torment and the stake. Now the
+thumbscrew and the rack as instruments for the discomfiture of
+heretics are relegated to the dusty cases of museums. But some short
+generations since all this was different, for then a man who dared to
+disagree with certain doctrines was treated with far less mercy than
+is shown to a dog on the vivisector's table.
+
+Little wonder, therefore, that those who lay under such a ban, those
+who were continually walking in the cold shadow of this dreadful doom,
+clung to each other, loved each other, and comforted each other to the
+last, passing often enough hand-in-hand through the fiery gates to
+that country in which there is no more pain. To be a member of the New
+Religion in the Netherlands under the awful rule of Charles the
+Emperor and Philip the King was to be one of a vast family. It was not
+"sir" or "mistress" or "madame," it was "my father" and "my mother,"
+or "my sister" and "my brother;" yes, and between people who were of
+very different status and almost strangers in the flesh; strangers in
+the flesh but brethren in spirit.
+
+It will be understood that in these circumstances Dirk and Brant,
+already liking each other, and being already connected by blood, were
+not slow in coming to a complete understanding and fellowship.
+
+There they sat in the window-place telling each other of their
+families, their hopes and fears, and even of their lady-loves. In
+this, as in every other respect, Hendrik Brant's story was one of
+simple prosperity. He was betrothed to a lady of The Hague, the only
+daughter of a wealthy wine-merchant, who, according to his account,
+seemed to be as beautiful as she was good and rich, and they were to
+be married in the spring. But when Dirk told him of his affair, he
+shook his wise young head.
+
+"You say that both she and her aunt are Catholics?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, cousin, this is the trouble. I think that she is fond of me, or,
+at any rate, she was until a few days since," he added ruefully, "but
+how can I, being a 'heretic,' ask her to plight her troth to me unless
+I tell her? And that, you know, is against the rule; indeed, I
+scarcely dare to do so."
+
+"Had you not best consult with some godly elder who by prayer and
+words may move your lady's heart till the light shines on her?" asked
+Brant.
+
+"Cousin, it has been done, but always there is the other in the way,
+that red-nosed Aunt Clara, who is a mad idolator; also there is the
+serving-woman, Greta, whom I take for little better than a spy.
+Therefore, between the two of them I see little chance that Lysbeth
+will ever hear the truth this side of marriage. And yet how dare I
+marry her? Is it right that I should marry her and therefore, perhaps,
+bring her too to some dreadful fate such as may wait for you or me?
+Moreover, now since this man Montalvo has crossed my path, all things
+seem to have gone wrong between me and Lysbeth; indeed but yesterday
+her door was shut on me."
+
+"Women have their fancies," answered Brant, slowly; "perhaps he has
+taken hers; she would not be the first who walked that plank. Or,
+perhaps, she is vexed with you for not speaking out ere this; for,
+man, not knowing what you are, how can she read your mind?"
+
+"Perhaps, perhaps," said Dirk, "but I know not what to do," and in his
+perplexity he struck his forehead with his hand.
+
+"Then, brother, in that case what hinders that we should ask Him Who
+can tell you?" said Brant, calmly.
+
+Dirk understood what he meant at once. "It is a wise thought, and a
+good one, cousin. I have the Holy Book; first let us pray, and then we
+can seek wisdom there."
+
+"You are rich, indeed," answered Brant; "sometime you must tell me how
+and where you came by it."
+
+"Here in Leyden, if one can afford to pay for them, such goods are not
+hard to get," said Dirk; "what /is/ hard is to keep them safely, for
+to be found with a Bible in your pocket is to carry your own death-
+warrant."
+
+Brant nodded. "Is it safe to show it here?" he asked.
+
+"As safe as anywhere, cousin; the window is shuttered, the door is, or
+will be, locked, but who can say that he is safe this side of the
+stake in a land where the rats and mice carry news and the wind bears
+witness? Come, I will show you were I keep it," and going to the
+mantelpiece he took down a candle-stick, a quaint brass, ornamented on
+its massive oblong base with two copper snails, and lit the candle.
+"Do you like the piece?" he asked; "it is my own design, which I cast
+and filed out in my spare hours," and he gazed at the holder with the
+affection of an artist. Then without waiting for an answer, he led the
+way to the door of his sitting-room and paused.
+
+"What is it?" asked Brant.
+
+"I thought I heard a sound, that is all, but doubtless the old vrouw
+moves upon the stairs. Turn the key, cousin, so, now come on."
+
+They entered the sleeping chamber, and having glanced round and made
+sure that it was empty, and the window shut, Dirk went to the head of
+the bed, which was formed of oak-panels, the centre one carved with a
+magnificent coat-of-arms, fellow to that in the fireplace of the
+sitting-room. At this panel Dirk began to work, till presently it slid
+aside, revealing a hollow, out of which he took a book bound in boards
+covered with leather. Then, having closed the panel, the two young men
+returned to the sitting-room, and placed the volume upon the oak table
+beneath the chandelier.
+
+"First let us pray," said Brant.
+
+It seems curious, does it not, that two young men as a /finale/ to a
+dinner party, and a gambling match at which the stakes had not been
+low; young men who like others had their weaknesses, for one of them,
+at any rate, could drink too much wine at times, and both being human
+doubtless had further sins to bear, should suggest kneeling side by
+side to offer prayers to their Maker before they studied the
+Scriptures? But then in those strange days prayer, now so common (and
+so neglected) an exercise, was an actual luxury. To these poor hunted
+men and women it was a joy to be able to kneel and offer thanks and
+petitions to God, believing themselves to be safe from the sword of
+those who worshipped otherwise. Thus it came about that, religion
+being forbidden, was to them a very real and earnest thing, a thing to
+be indulged in at every opportunity with solemn and grateful hearts.
+So there, beneath the light of the guttering candles, they knelt side
+by side while Brant, speaking for both of them, offered up a prayer--a
+sight touching enough and in its way beautiful.
+
+The words of his petition do not matter. He prayed for their Church;
+he prayed for their country that it might be made strong and free; he
+even prayed for the Emperor, the carnal, hare-lipped, guzzling, able
+Hapsburg self-seeker. Then he prayed for themselves and all who were
+dear to them, and lastly, that light might be vouchsafed to Dirk in
+his present difficulty. No, not quite lastly, for he ended with a
+petition that their enemies might be forgiven, yes, even those who
+tortured them and burnt them at the stake, since they knew not what
+they did. It may be wondered whether any human aspirations could have
+been more thoroughly steeped in the true spirit of Christianity.
+
+When at length he had finished they rose from their knees.
+
+"Shall I open the Book at a hazard," asked Dirk, "and read what my eye
+falls on?"
+
+"No," answered Brant, "for it savours of superstition; thus did the
+ancients with the writings of the poet Virgilius, and it is not
+fitting that we who hold the light should follow the example of those
+blind heathen. What work of the Book, brother, are you studying now?"
+
+"The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, which I have never read
+before," he answered.
+
+"Then begin where you left off, brother, and read your chapter.
+Perhaps we may find instruction in it; if not, no answer is vouchsafed
+to us to-night."
+
+So from the black-letter volume before him Dirk began to read the
+seventh chapter, in which, as it chances, the great Apostle deals with
+the marriage state. On he read, in a quiet even voice, till he came to
+the twelfth and four following verses, of which the last three run:
+"For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the
+unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children
+unclean; but now they are holy. But if the unbelieving depart, let him
+depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases; but
+God has called us to peace. For what knowest thou, O wife, whether
+thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou
+shalt save thy wife?" Dirk's voice trembled, and he paused.
+
+"Continue to the end of the chapter," said Brant, so the reader went
+on.
+
+There is a sound. They do not hear it, but the door of the bedchamber
+behind them opens ever so little. They do not see it, but between door
+and lintel something white thrusts itself, a woman's white face
+crowned with black hair, and set in it two evil, staring eyes. Surely,
+when first he raised his head in Eden, Satan might have worn such a
+countenance as this. It cranes itself forward till the long, thin neck
+seems to stretch; then suddenly a stir or a movement alarms it, and
+back the face draws like the crest of a startled snake. Back it draws,
+and the door closes again.
+
+The chapter is read, the prayer is prayed, and strange may seem the
+answer to that prayer, an answer to shake out faith from the hearts of
+men; men who are impatient, who do not know that as the light takes
+long in travelling from a distant star, so the answer from the Throne
+to the supplication of trust may be long in coming. It may not come
+to-day or to-morrow. It may not come in this generation or this
+century; the prayer of to-day may receive its crown when the
+children's children of the lips that uttered it have in their turn
+vanished in the dust. And yet that Divine reply may in no wise be
+delayed; even as our liberty of this hour may be the fruit of those
+who died when Dirk van Goorl and Hendrik Brant walked upon the earth;
+even as the vengeance that but now is falling on the Spaniard may be
+the reward of the deeds of shame that he worked upon them and upon
+their kin long generations gone. For the Throne is still the Throne,
+and the star is still the star; from the one flows justice and from
+the other light, and to them time and space are naught.
+
+Dirk finished the chapter and closed the Book.
+
+"It seems that you have your answer, Brother," said Brant quietly.
+
+"Yes," replied Dirk, "it is written large enough:--'The unbelieving
+wife is sanctified by the husband . . . how knowest thou, O man,
+whether thou shalt save thy wife?' Had the Apostle foreseen my case he
+could not have set the matter forth more clearly."
+
+"He, or the Spirit in him, knew all cases, and wrote for every man
+that ever shall be born," answered Brant. "This is a lesson to us. Had
+you looked sooner you would have learned sooner, and mayhap much
+trouble might have been spared. As it is, without doubt you must make
+haste and speak to her at once, leaving the rest with God."
+
+"Yes," said Dirk, "as soon as may be, but there is one thing more;
+ought I tell her all the truth?"
+
+"I should not be careful to hide it, friend, and now, good night. No,
+do not come to the door with me. Who can tell, there may be watchers
+without, and it is not wise that we should be seen together so late."
+
+
+
+When his cousin and new-found friend had gone Dirk sat for a while,
+till the guttering tallow lights overhead burned to the sockets
+indeed. Then, taking the candle from the snail-adorned holder, he lit
+it, and, having extinguished those in the chandeliers, went into his
+bedroom and undressed himself. The Bible he returned to its hiding-
+place and closed the panel, after which he blew out the light and
+climbed into the tall bed.
+
+As a rule Dirk was a most excellent sleeper; when he laid his head on
+the pillow his eyes closed nor did they open again until the appointed
+and accustomed hour. But this night he could not sleep. Whether it was
+the dinner or the wine, or the gambling, or the prayer and the
+searching of the Scriptures with his cousin Brant, the result remained
+the same; he was very wakeful, which annoyed him the more as a man of
+his race and phlegm found it hard to attribute this unrest to any of
+these trivial causes. Still, as vexation would not make him sleep, he
+lay awake watching the moonlight flood the chamber in broad bars and
+thinking.
+
+Somehow as Dirk thought thus he grew afraid; it seemed to him as
+though he shared that place with another presence, an evil and
+malignant presence. Never in his life before had he troubled over or
+been troubled by tales of spirits, yet now he remembered Montalvo's
+remark about a ghost, and of a surety he felt as though one were with
+him there. In this strange and new alarm he sought for comfort and
+could think of none save that which an old and simple pastor had
+recommended to him in all hours of doubt and danger, namely, if it
+could be had, to clasp a Bible to his heart and pray.
+
+Well, both things were easy. Raising himself in bed, in a moment he
+had taken the book from its hiding-place and closed the panel. Then
+pressing it against his breast between himself and the mattress he lay
+down again, and it would seem that the charm worked, for presently he
+was asleep.
+
+Yet Dirk dreamed a very evil dream. He dreamed that a tall black
+figure leaned over him, and that a long white hand was stretched out
+to his bed-head where it wandered to and fro, till at last he heard
+the panel slide home with a rattling noise.
+
+Then it seemed to him that he woke, and that his eyes met two eyes
+bent down over him, eyes which searched him as though they would read
+the very secrets of his heart. He did not stir, he could not, but lo!
+in this dream of his the figure straightened itself and glided away,
+appearing and disappearing as it crossed the bars of moonlight until
+it vanished by the door.
+
+A while later and Dirk woke up in truth, to find that although the
+night was cold enough the sweat ran in big drops from his brow and
+body. But now strangely enough his fear was gone, and, knowing that he
+had but dreamed a dream, he turned over, touched the Bible on his
+breast, and fell sleeping like a child, to be awakened only by the
+light of the rising winter sun pouring on his face.
+
+Then Dirk remembered that dream of the bygone night, and his heart
+grew heavy, for it seemed to him that this vision of a dark woman
+searching his face with those dreadful eyes was a portent of evil not
+far away.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI
+
+                       THE BETROTHAL OF LYSBETH
+
+On the following morning when Montalvo entered his private room after
+breakfast, he found a lady awaiting him, in whom, notwithstanding the
+long cloak and veil she wore, he had little difficulty in recognising
+Black Meg. In fact Black Meg had been waiting some while, and being a
+person of industrious habits she had not neglected to use her time to
+the best advantage.
+
+The reader may remember that when Meg visited the gallant Captain
+Montalvo upon a previous occasion, she had taken the liberty of
+helping herself to certain papers which she found lying just inside an
+unlocked desk. These papers on examination, as she feared might be the
+case, for the most part proved to be quite unimportant--unpaid
+accounts, military reports, a billet or two from ladies, and so forth.
+But in thinking the matter over Black Meg remembered that this desk
+had another part to it, which seemed to be locked, and, therefore,
+just in case they should prove useful, she took with her a few
+skeleton keys and one or two little instruments of steel and attended
+the pleasure of her noble patron at an hour when she believed that he
+would be at breakfast in another room. Things went well; he was at
+breakfast and she was left alone in the chamber with the desk. The
+rest may be guessed. Replacing the worthless bundle in the unlocked
+part, by the aid of her keys and instruments she opened the inner
+half. There sure enough were letters hidden, and in a little drawer
+two miniatures framed in gold, one of a lady, young and pretty with
+dark eyes, and the other of two children, a boy and a girl of five or
+six years of age. Also there was a curling lock of hair labelled in
+Montalvo's writing--"Juanita's hair, which she gave me as a keepsake."
+
+Here was treasure indeed whereof Black Meg did not fail to possess
+herself. Thrusting the letters and other articles into the bosom of
+her dress to be examined at leisure, she was clever enough, before
+closing and re-locking the desk, to replace them with a dummy bundle,
+hastily made up from some papers that lay about.
+
+When everything had been satisfactorily arranged she went outside and
+chattered for a while with the soldier on guard, only re-entering the
+room by one door as Montalvo appeared in it through the other.
+
+"Well, my friend," he said, "have you the evidence?"
+
+"I have some evidence, Excellency," she answered. "I was present at
+the dinner that you ate last night, although none of it came my way,
+and--I was present afterwards."
+
+"Indeed. I thought I saw you slip in, and allow me to congratulate you
+on that; it was very well thought out and done, just as folk were
+moving up and down the stairs. Also, when I went home, I believe that
+I recognised a gentleman in the street whom I have been given to
+understand you honour with your friendship, a short, stout person with
+a bald head; let me see, he was called the Butcher at The Hague, was
+he not? No, do not pout, I have no wish to pry into the secrets of
+ladies, but still in my position here it is my business to know a
+thing or two. Well, what did you see?"
+
+"Excellency, I saw the young man I was sent to watch and Hendrik
+Brant, the son of the rich goldsmith at The Hague, praying side by
+side upon their knees."
+
+"That is bad, very bad," said Montalvo shaking his head, "but----"
+
+"I saw," she went on in her hoarse voice, "the pair of them read the
+Bible."
+
+"How shocking!" replied Montalvo with a simulated shudder. "Think of
+it, my orthodox friend, if you are to be believed, these two persons,
+hitherto supposed to be respectable, have been discovered in the crime
+of consulting that work upon which our Faith is founded. Well, those
+who could read anything so dull must, indeed, as the edicts tell us,
+be monsters unworthy to live. But, if you please, your proofs. Of
+course you have this book?"
+
+Then Black Meg poured forth all her tale--how she had watched and seen
+something, how she had listened and heard little, how she had gone to
+the secret panel, bending over the sleeping man, and found--nothing.
+
+"You are a poor sort of spy, mother," commented the captain when she
+had done, "and, upon my soul, I do not believe that even a Papal
+inquisitor could hang that young fellow on your evidence. You must go
+back and get some more."
+
+"No," answered Black Meg with decision, "if you want to force your way
+into conventicles you had best do it yourself. As I wish to go on
+living here is no job for me. I have proved to you that this young man
+is a heretic, so now give me my reward."
+
+"Your reward? Ah! your reward. No, I think not at present, for a
+reward presupposes services--and I see none."
+
+Black Meg began to storm.
+
+"Be silent," said Montalvo, dropping his bantering tone. "Look, I will
+be frank with you. I do not want to burn anybody. I am sick of all
+this nonsense about religion, and for aught I care every Netherlander
+in Leyden may read the Bible until he grows tired. I seek to marry
+that Jufvrouw Lysbeth van Hout, and to do this I desire to prove that
+the man whom she loves, Dirk van Goorl, is a heretic. What you have
+told me may or may not be sufficient for my purpose. If it is
+sufficient you shall be paid liberally after my marriage; if not--
+well, you have had enough. As for your evidence, for my part I may say
+that I do not believe a word of it, for were it true you would have
+brought the Bible."
+
+As he spoke he rang a bell which stood upon a table, and before Meg
+could answer the soldier appeared.
+
+"Show this good woman out," he said, adding, in a loud voice, "Mother,
+I will do my best for you and forward your petition to the proper
+quarter. Meanwhile, take this trifle in charity," and he pressed a
+florin into her hand. "Now, guard, the prisoners, the prisoners. I
+have no time to waste--and listen--let me be troubled with no more
+beggars, or you will hear of it."
+
+
+
+That afternoon Dirk, filled with a solemn purpose, and dressed in his
+best suit, called at the house in the Bree Straat, where the door was
+again opened by Greta, who looked at him expectantly.
+
+"Is your mistress in?" he stammered. "I have come to see your
+mistress."
+
+"Alas! Mynheer," answered the young woman, "you are just too late. My
+mistress and her aunt, the Vrouw Clara, have gone away to stay for a
+week or ten days as the Vrouw Clara's health required a change."
+
+"Indeed," said Dirk aghast, "and where have they gone?"
+
+"Oh! Mynheer, I do not know that, they did not tell me," and no other
+answer could he extract from her.
+
+So Dirk went away discomfited and pondering. An hour later the Captain
+Montalvo called, and strange to say proved more fortunate. By hook or
+by crook he obtained the address of the ladies, who were visiting, it
+appeared, at a seaside village within the limits of a ride. By a
+curious coincidence that very afternoon Montalvo, also seeking rest
+and change of air, appeared at the inn of this village, giving it out
+that he proposed to lodge there for a while.
+
+As he walked upon the beach next day, whom should he chance to meet
+but the Vrouw Clara van Ziel, and never did the worthy Clara spend a
+more pleasant morning. So at least she declared to Lysbeth when she
+brought her cavalier back to dinner.
+
+The reader may guess the rest. Montalvo paid his court, and in due
+course Montalvo was refused. He bore the blow with a tender
+resignation.
+
+"Confess, dear lady," he said, "that there is some other man more
+fortunate."
+
+Lysbeth did not confess, but, on the other hand, neither did she deny.
+
+"If he makes you happy I shall be more than satisfied," the Count
+murmured, "but, lady, loving you as I do, I do not wish to see you
+married to a heretic."
+
+"What do you mean, Senor?" asked Lysbeth, bridling.
+
+"Alas!" he answered, "I mean that, as I fear, the worthy Heer Dirk van
+Goorl, a friend of mine for whom I have every respect, although he has
+outstripped me in your regard, has fallen into that evil net."
+
+"Such accusations should not be made," said Lysbeth sternly, "unless
+they can be proved. Even then----" and she stopped.
+
+"I will inquire further," replied the swain. "For myself I accept the
+position, that is until you learn to love me, if such should be my
+fortune. Meanwhile I beg of you at least to look upon me as a friend,
+a true friend who would lay down his life to serve you."
+
+Then, with many a sigh, Montalvo departed home to Leyden upon his
+beautiful black horse, but not before he had enjoyed a few minutes'
+earnest conversation with the worthy Tante Clara.
+
+"Now, if only this old lady were concerned," he reflected as he rode
+away, "the matter might be easy enough, and the Saints know it would
+be one to me, but unhappily that obstinate pig of a Hollander girl has
+all the money in her own right. In what labours do not the necessities
+of rank and station involve a man who by disposition requires only
+ease and quiet! Well, my young friend Lysbeth, if I do not make you
+pay for these exertions before you are two months older, my name is
+not Juan de Montalvo."
+
+
+
+Three days later the ladies returned to Leyden. Within an hour of
+their arrival the Count called, and was admitted.
+
+"Stay with me," said Lysbeth to her Aunt Clara as the visitor was
+announced, and for a while she stayed. Then, making an excuse, she
+vanished from the room, and Lysbeth was left face to face with her
+tormentor.
+
+"Why do you come here?" she asked; "I have given you my answer."
+
+"I come for your own sake," he replied, "to give you my reasons for
+conduct which you may think strange. You remember a certain
+conversation?"
+
+"Perfectly," broke in Lysbeth.
+
+"A slight mistake, I think, Jufvrouw, I mean a conversation about an
+excellent friend of yours, whose spiritual affairs seem to interest
+you."
+
+"What of it, Senor?"
+
+"Only this; I have made inquiries and----"
+
+Lysbeth looked up unable to conceal her anxiety.
+
+"Oh! Jufvrouw, let me beg of you to learn to control your expression;
+the open face of childhood is so dangerous in these days."
+
+"He is my cousin."
+
+"I know; were he anything more, I should be so grieved, but we can
+most of us spare a cousin or two."
+
+"If you would cease amusing yourself, Senor----"
+
+"And come to the point? Of course I will. Well, the result of my
+inquiries has been to find out that this worthy person /is/ a heretic
+of the most pernicious sort. I said inquiries, but there was no need
+for me to make any. He has been----"
+
+"Not denounced," broke in Lysbeth.
+
+"Oh! my dear lady, again that tell-tale emotion from which all sorts
+of things might be concluded. Yes--denounced--but fortunately to
+myself as a person appointed under the Edict. It will, I fear, be my
+duty to have him arrested this evening--you wish to sit down, allow me
+to hand you a chair--but I shall not deal with the case myself.
+Indeed, I propose to pass him over to the worthy Ruard Tapper, the
+Papal Inquisitor, you know--every one has heard of the unpleasant
+Tapper--who is to visit Leyden next week, and who, no doubt, will make
+short work of him."
+
+"What has he done?" asked Lysbeth in a low voice, and bending down her
+head to hide the working of her features.
+
+"Done? My dear lady, it is almost too dreadful to tell you. This
+misguided and unfortunate young man, with another person whom the
+witnesses have not been able to identify, was seen at midnight reading
+the Bible."
+
+"The Bible! Why should that be wrong?"
+
+"Hush! Are you also a heretic? Do you not know that all this heresy
+springs from the reading of the Bible? You see, the Bible is a very
+strange book. It seems that there are many things in it which, when
+read by an ordinary layman, appear to mean this or that. When read by
+a consecrated priest, however, they mean something quite different. In
+the same way, there are many doctrines which the layman cannot find in
+the Bible that to the consecrated eye are plain as the sun and the
+moon. The difference between heresy and orthodoxy is, in short, the
+difference between what can actually be found in the letter of this
+remarkable work, and what is really there--according to their
+holinesses."
+
+"Almost thou persuadest me----" began Lysbeth bitterly.
+
+"Hush! lady--to be, what you are, an angel."
+
+There came a pause.
+
+"What will happen to him?" asked Lysbeth.
+
+"After--after the usual painful preliminaries to discover accomplices,
+I presume the stake, but possibly, as he has the freedom of Leyden, he
+might get off with hanging."
+
+"Is there no escape?"
+
+Montalvo walked to the window, and looking out of it remarked that he
+thought it was going to snow. Then suddenly he wheeled round, and
+staring hard at Lysbeth asked,
+
+"Are you really interested in this heretic, and do you desire to save
+him?"
+
+Lysbeth heard and knew at once that the buttons were off the foils.
+The bantering, whimsical tone was gone. Now her tormentor's voice was
+stern and cold, the voice of a man who was playing for great stakes
+and meant to win them.
+
+She also gave up fencing.
+
+"I am and I do," she answered.
+
+"Then it can be done--at a price."
+
+"What price?"
+
+"Yourself in marriage within three weeks."
+
+Lysbeth quivered slightly, then sat still.
+
+"Would not my fortune do instead?" she asked.
+
+"Oh! what a poor substitute you offer me," Montalvo said, with a
+return to his hateful banter. Then he added, "That offer might be
+considered were it not for the abominable laws which you have here. In
+practice it would be almost impossible for you to hand over any large
+sum, much of which is represented by real estate, to a man who is not
+your husband. Therefore I am afraid I must stipulate that you and your
+possessions shall not be separated."
+
+Again Lysbeth sat silent. Montalvo, watching her with genuine
+interest, saw signs of rebellion, perchance of despair. He saw the
+woman's mental and physical loathing of himself conquering her fears
+for Dirk. Unless he was much mistaken she was about to defy him,
+which, as a matter of fact, would have proved exceedingly awkward, as
+his pecuniary resources were exhausted. Also on the very insufficient
+evidence which he possessed he would not have dared to touch Dirk, and
+thus to make himself a thousand powerful enemies.
+
+"It is strange," he said, "that the irony of circumstances should
+reduce me to pleading for a rival. But, Lysbeth van Hout, before you
+answer I beg you to think. Upon the next movements of your lips it
+depends whether that body you love shall be stretched upon the rack,
+whether those eyes which you find pleasant shall grow blind with agony
+in the darkness of a dungeon, and whether that flesh which you think
+desirable shall scorch and wither in the furnace. Or, on the other
+hand, whether none of these things shall happen, whether this young
+man shall go free, to be for a month or two a little piqued--a little
+bitter--about the inconstancy of women, and then to marry some opulent
+and respected heretic. Surely you could scarcely hesitate. Oh! where
+is the self-sacrificing spirit of the sex of which we hear so much?
+Choose."
+
+Still there was no answer. Montalvo, playing his trump card, drew from
+his vest an official-looking document, sealed and signed.
+
+"This," he said, "is the information to be given to the incorruptible
+Ruard Trapper. Look, here written on it is your cousin's name. My
+servant waits for me in your kitchen. If you hesitate any longer, I
+call him and in your presence charge him to hand that paper to the
+messenger who starts this afternoon for Brussels. Once given it cannot
+be recalled and the pious Dirk's doom is sealed."
+
+Lysbeth's spirit began to break. "How can I?" she asked. "It is true
+that we are not affianced; perhaps for this very reason which I now
+learn. But he cares for me and knows that I care for him. Must I then,
+in addition to the loss of him, be remembered all his life as little
+better than a light-of-love caught by the tricks and glitter of such a
+man as you? I tell you that first I will kill myself."
+
+Again Montalvo went to the window, for this hint of suicide was most
+disconcerting. No one can marry a dead woman, and Lysbeth was scarcely
+likely to leave a will in his favour. It seemed that what troubled her
+particularly was the fear lest the young man should think her conduct
+light. Well, why should she not give him a reason which he would be
+the first to acknowledge as excellent for breaking with him? Could
+she, a Catholic, be expected to wed a heretic, and could he not be
+made to tell her that he was a heretic?
+
+Behold an answer to his question! The Saints themselves, desiring that
+this pearl of price should continue to rest in the bosom of the true
+Church, had interfered in his behalf, for there in the street below
+was Dirk van Goorl approaching Lysbeth's door. Yes, there he was
+dressed in his best burgher's suit, his brow knit with thought, his
+step hesitating; a very picture of the timid, doubtful lover.
+
+"Lysbeth van Hout," said the Count, turning to her, "as it chances the
+Heer Dirk van Goorl is at your door. You will admit him, and this
+matter can be settled one way or the other. I wish to point out to you
+how needless it is that the young man should be left believing that
+you have treated him ill. All which is necessary is that you should
+ask whether or no he is of your faith. If I know him, he will not lie
+to you. Then it remains only for you to say--for doubtless the man
+comes here to seek your hand--that however much it may grieve you to
+give such an answer, you can take no heretic to husband. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Lysbeth bowed her head.
+
+"Then listen. You will admit your suitor; you will allow him to make
+his offer to you now--if he is so inclined; you will, before giving
+any answer, ask him of his faith. If he replies that he is a heretic,
+you will dismiss him as kindly as you wish. If he replies that he is a
+true servant of the Church, you will say that you have heard a
+different tale and must have time to make inquiries. Remember also
+that if by one jot you do otherwise than I have bid you, when Dirk van
+Goorl leaves the room you see him for the last time, unless it pleases
+you--to attend his execution. Whereas if you obey and dismiss him
+finally, as the door shuts behind him I put this Information in the
+fire and satisfy you that the evidence upon which it is based is for
+ever deprived of weight and done with."
+
+Lysbeth looked a question.
+
+"I see you are wondering how I should know what you do or do not do.
+It is simple. I shall be the harmless but observant witness of your
+interview. Over this doorway hangs a tapestry; you will grant me the
+privilege--not a great one for a future husband--of stepping behind
+it."
+
+"Never, never," said Lysbeth, "I cannot be put to such a shame. I defy
+you."
+
+As she spoke came the sound of knocking at the street door. Glancing
+up at Montalvo, for the second time she saw that look which he had
+worn at the crisis of the sledge race. All its urbanity, its careless
+/bonhomie/, had vanished. Instead of these appeared a reflection of
+the last and innermost nature of the man, the rock foundation, as it
+were, upon which was built the false and decorated superstructure that
+he showed to the world. There were the glaring eyes, there the
+grinning teeth of the Spanish wolf; a ravening brute ready to rend and
+tear, if so he might satisfy himself with the meat his soul desired.
+
+"Don't play tricks with me," he muttered, "and don't argue, for there
+is no time. Do as I bid you, girl, or on your head will be this psalm-
+singing fellow's blood. And, look you, don't try setting him on me,
+for I have my sword and he is unarmed. If need be a heretic may be
+killed at sight, you know, that is by one clothed with authority. When
+the servant announces him go to the door and order that he is to be
+admitted," and picking up his plumed hat, which might have betrayed
+him, Montalvo stepped behind the arras.
+
+For a moment Lysbeth stood thinking. Alas! she could see no possible
+escape, she was in the toils, the rope was about her throat. Either
+she must obey or, so she thought, she must give the man she loved to a
+dreadful death. For his sake she would do it, for his sake and might
+God forgive her! Might God avenge her and him!
+
+Another instant and there came a knock upon the door. She opened it.
+
+"The Heer van Goorl stands below," said the voice of Greta, "wishing
+to see you, madam."
+
+"Admit him," answered Lysbeth, and going to a chair almost in the
+centre of the room, she seated herself.
+
+Presently Dirk's step sounded on the stair, that known, beloved step
+for which so often she had listened eagerly. Again the door opened and
+Greta announced the Heer van Goorl. That she could not see the Captain
+Montalvo evidently surprised the woman, for her eyes roamed round the
+room wonderingly, but she was too well trained, or too well bribed, to
+show her astonishment. Gentlemen of this kidney, as Greta had from
+time to time remarked, have a faculty for vanishing upon occasion.
+
+So Dirk walked into the fateful chamber as some innocent and
+unsuspecting creature walks into a bitter snare, little knowing that
+the lady whom he loved and whom he came to win was set as a bait to
+ruin him.
+
+"Be seated, cousin," said Lysbeth, in a voice so forced and strained
+that it caused him to look up. But he saw nothing, for her head was
+turned away from him, and for the rest his mind was too preoccupied to
+be observant. By nature simple and open, it would have taken much to
+wake Dirk into suspicion in the home and presence of his love and
+cousin, Lysbeth.
+
+"Good day to you, Lysbeth," he said awkwardly; "why, how cold your
+hand is! I have been trying to find you for some time, but you have
+always been out or away, leaving no address."
+
+"I have been to the sea with my Aunt Clara," she answered.
+
+Then for a while--five minutes or more--there followed a strained and
+stilted conversation.
+
+"Will the booby never come to the point?" reflected Montalvo,
+surveying him through a join in the tapestry. "By the Saints, what a
+fool he looks!"
+
+"Lysbeth," said Dirk at last, "I want to speak to you."
+
+"Speak on, cousin," she answered.
+
+"Lysbeth, I--I--have loved you for a long while, and I--have come to
+ask you to marry me. I have put it off for a year or more for reasons
+which I hope to tell you some day, but I can keep silent no longer,
+especially now when I see that a much finer gentleman is trying to win
+you--I mean the Spanish Count, Montalvo," he added with a jerk.
+
+She said nothing in reply. So Dirk went on pouring out all his honest
+passion in words that momentarily gathered weight and strength, till
+at length they were eloquent enough. He told her how since first they
+met he had loved her and only her, and how his one desire in life was
+to make her happy and be happy with her. Pausing at length he began to
+speak of his prospects--then she stopped him.
+
+"Your pardon, Dirk," she said, "but I have a question to ask of you,"
+and her voice died away in a kind of sob. "I have heard rumours about
+you," she went on presently, "which must be cleared up. I have heard,
+Dirk, that by faith you are what is called a heretic. Is it true?"
+
+He hesitated before answering, feeling that much depended on that
+answer. But it was only for an instant, since Dirk was far too honest
+a man to lie.
+
+"Lysbeth," he said, "I will tell to you what I would not tell to any
+other living creature, not being one of my own brotherhood, for
+whether you accept me or reject me, I know well that I am as safe in
+speaking to you as when upon my knees I speak to the God I serve. I
+/am/ what you call a heretic. I am a member of that true faith to
+which I hope to draw you, but which if you do not wish it I should
+never press upon you. It is chiefly because I am what I am that for so
+long I have hung back from speaking to you, since I did not know
+whether it would be right--things being thus--to ask you to mix your
+lot with mine, or whether I ought to marry you, if you would marry me,
+keeping this secret from you. Only the other night I sought counsel of
+--well, never mind of whom--and we prayed together, and together
+searched the Word of God. And there, Lysbeth, by some wonderful mercy,
+I found my prayer answered and my doubts solved, for the great St.
+Paul had foreseen this case, as in that Book all cases are foreseen,
+and I read how the unbelieving wife may be sanctified by the husband,
+and the unbelieving husband by the wife. Then everything grew clear to
+me, and I determined to speak. And now, dear, I have spoken, and it is
+for you to answer."
+
+"Dirk, dear Dirk," she replied almost with a cry, "alas! for the
+answer which I must give you. Renounce the error of your ways, make
+confession, and be reconciled to the Church and--I will marry you.
+Otherwise I cannot, no, and although I love you, you and no other man"
+--here she put an energy into her voice that was almost dreadful--
+"with all my heart and soul and body; I cannot, I cannot, I cannot!"
+
+Dirk heard, and his ruddy face turned ashen grey.
+
+"Cousin," he replied, "you seek of me the one thing which I must not
+give. Even for your sake I may not renounce my vows and my God as I
+behold Him. Though it break my heart to bid you farewell and live
+without you, here I pay you back in your own words--I cannot, I
+cannot, I cannot!"
+
+Lysbeth looked at him, and lo! his short, massive form and his square-
+cut, honest countenance in that ardour of renunciation had suffered a
+change to things almost divine. At that moment--to her sight at least
+--this homely Hollander wore the aspect of an angel. She ground her
+teeth and pressed her hands upon her heart. "For his sake--to save
+him," she muttered to herself--then she spoke.
+
+"I respect you for it, I love you for it more than ever; but, Dirk, it
+is over between us. One day, here or hereafter, you will understand
+and you will forgive."
+
+"So be it," said Dirk hastily, stretching out his hand to find his
+hat, for he was too blind to see. "It is a strange answer to my
+prayer, a very strange answer; but doubtless you are right to follow
+your lights as I am sure that I am right to follow mine. We must carry
+our cross, dear Lysbeth, each of us; you see that we must carry our
+cross. Only I beg of you--I don't speak as a jealous man, because the
+thing has gone further than jealousy--I speak as a friend, and come
+what may while I live you will always find me that--I beg of you,
+beware of the Spaniard, Montalvo. I know that he followed you to the
+coast; I have heard too he boasts that he will marry you. The man is
+wicked, although he took me in at first. I feel it--his presence seems
+to poison the air, yes, this very air I breathe. But oh! and I should
+like him to hear me say it, because I am sure that he is at the bottom
+of all this, his hour will come. For whatever he does he will be paid
+back; he will be paid back here and hereafter. And now, good-bye. God
+bless you and protect you, dear Lysbeth. If you think it wrong you are
+quite right not to marry me, and I know that you will keep my secret.
+Good-bye, again," and lifting her hand Dirk kissed it. Then he
+stumbled from the room.
+
+As for Lysbeth she cast herself at full length, and in the bitterness
+of her heart beat her brow upon the boards.
+
+
+
+When the front door had shut behind Dirk, but not before, Montalvo
+emerged from his hiding place and stood over the prostrate Lysbeth. He
+tried to adopt his airy and sarcastic manner, but he was shaken by the
+scene which he had overheard, shaken and somewhat frightened also, for
+he felt that he had called into being passions of which the force and
+fruits could not be calculated.
+
+"Bravo! my little actress," he began, then gave it up and added in his
+natural voice, "you had best rise and see me burn this paper."
+
+Lysbeth struggled to her knees and watched him thrust the document
+between two glowing peats.
+
+"I have fulfilled my promise," he said, "and that evidence is done
+with, but in case you should think of playing any tricks and not
+fulfilling yours, please remember that I have fresh evidence
+infinitely more valuable and convincing, to gain which, indeed, I
+condescended to a stratagem not quite in keeping with my traditions.
+With my own ears I heard this worthy gentleman, who is pleased to
+think so poorly of me, admit that he is a heretic. That is enough to
+burn him any day, and I swear that if within three weeks we are not
+man and wife, burn he shall."
+
+While he was speaking Lysbeth had risen slowly to her feet. Now she
+confronted him, no longer the Lysbeth whom he had known, but a new
+being filled like a cup with fury that was the more awful because it
+was so quiet.
+
+"Juan de Montalvo," she said in a low voice, "your wickedness has won
+and for Dirk's sake my person and my goods must pay its price. So be
+it since so it must be, but listen. I make no prophecies about you; I
+do not say that this or that shall happen to you, but I call down upon
+you the curse of God and the execration of men."
+
+Then she threw up her hands and began to pray. "God, Whom it has
+pleased that I should be given to a fate far worse than death; O God,
+blast the mind and the soul of this monster. Let him henceforth never
+know a peaceful hour; let misfortune come upon him through me and
+mine; let fears haunt his sleep. Let him live in heavy labour and die
+in blood and misery, and through me; and if I bear children to him,
+let the evil be upon them also."
+
+She ceased. Montalvo looked at her and tried to speak. Again he looked
+and again he tried to speak, but no words would come.
+
+Then the fear of Lysbeth van Hout fell upon him, that fear which was
+to haunt him all his life. He turned and crept from the room, and his
+face was like the face of an old man, nor, notwithstanding the height
+of his immediate success, could his heart have been more heavy if
+Lysbeth had been an angel sent straight from Heaven to proclaim to him
+the unalterable doom of God.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII
+
+                     HENDRIK BRANT HAS A VISITOR
+
+Nine months had gone by, and for more then eight of them Lysbeth had
+been known as the Countess Juan de Montalvo. Indeed of this there
+could be no doubt, since she was married with some ceremony by the
+Bishop in the Groote Kerk before the eyes of all men. Folk had
+wondered much at these hurried nuptials, though some of the more ill-
+natured shrugged their shoulders and said that when a young woman had
+compromised herself by long and lonely drives with a Spanish cavalier,
+and was in consequence dropped by her own admirer, why the best thing
+she could do was to marry as soon as possible.
+
+So the pair, who looked handsome enough before the altar, were wed,
+and went to taste of such nuptial bliss as was reserved for them in
+Lysbeth's comfortable house in the Bree Straat. Here they lived almost
+alone, for Lysbeth's countrymen and women showed their disapproval of
+her conduct by avoiding her company, and, for reasons of his own,
+Montalvo did not encourage the visiting of Spaniards at his house.
+Moreover, the servants were changed, while Tante Clara and the girl
+Greta had also disappeared. Indeed, Lysbeth, finding out the false
+part which they had played towards her, dismissed them both before her
+marriage.
+
+It will be guessed that after the events that led to their union
+Lysbeth took little pleasure in her husband's society. She was not one
+of those women who can acquiesce in marriage by fraud or capture, and
+even learn to love the hand which snared them. So it came about that
+to Montalvo she spoke very seldom; indeed after the first week of
+marriage she only saw him on rare occasions. Very soon he found out
+that his presence was hateful to her, and turned her detestation to
+account with his usual cleverness. In other words, Lysbeth bought
+freedom by parting with her property--in fact, a regular tariff was
+established, so many guilders for a week's liberty, so many for a
+month's.
+
+This was an arrangement that suited Montalvo well enough, for in his
+heart he was terrified of this woman, whose beautiful face had frozen
+into a perpetual mask of watchful hatred. He could not forget that
+frightful curse which had taken deep root in his superstitious mind,
+and already seemed to flourish there, for it was true that since she
+spoke it he had never known a quiet hour. How could he when he was
+haunted night and day by the fear lest his wife should murder him?
+
+Surely, if ever Death looked out of a woman's eyes it looked out of
+hers, and it seemed to him that such a deed might trouble her
+conscience little; that she might consider it in the light of an
+execution, and not as a murder. Bah! he could not bear to think of it.
+What would it be to drink his wine one day and then feel a hand of
+fire gripping at his vitals because poison had been set within the
+cup; or, worse still, if anything could be worse, to wake at night and
+find a stiletto point grating against his backbone? Little wonder that
+Montalvo slept alone and was always careful to lock his door.
+
+He need not have taken such precautions; whatever her eyes might say,
+Lysbeth had no intention of killing this man. In that prayer of hers
+she had, as it were, placed the matter in the hand of a higher Power,
+and there she meant to leave it, feeling quite convinced that although
+vengeance might tarry it would fall at last. As for her money, he
+could have it. From the beginning her instinct told her that her
+husband's object was not amorous, but purely monetary, a fact of which
+she soon had plentiful proof, and her great, indeed her only hope was
+that when the wealth was gone he would go too. An otter, says the
+Dutch proverb, does not nest in a dry dyke.
+
+But oh! what months those were, what dreadful months! From time to
+time she saw her husband--when he wanted cash--and every night she
+heard him returning home, often with unsteady steps. Twice or thrice a
+week also she was commanded to prepare a luxurious meal for himself
+and some six or eight companions, to be followed by a gambling party
+at which the stakes ruled high. Then in the morning, before he was up,
+strange people would arrive, Jews some of them, and wait till they
+could see him, or catch him as he slipped from the house by a back
+way. These men, Lysbeth discovered, were duns seeking payment of old
+debts. Under such constant calls her fortune, which if substantial was
+not great, melted rapidly. Soon the ready money was gone, then the
+shares in certain ships were sold, then the land and the house itself
+were mortgaged.
+
+So the time went on.
+
+
+
+Almost immediately after his refusal by Lysbeth, Dirk van Goorl had
+left Leyden, and returned to Alkmaar, where his father lived. His
+cousin and friend, however, Hendrik Brant, remained there studying the
+jeweller's art under the great master of filigree work, who was known
+as Petrus. One morning, as Hendrik was sitting at breakfast in his
+lodging, it was announced that a woman who would not give her name,
+wished to see him. Moved more by curiosity than by any other reason,
+he ordered her to be admitted. When she entered he was sorry, for in
+the gaunt person and dark-eyed face he recognised one against whom he
+had been warned by the elders of his church as a spy, a creature who
+was employed by the papal inquisitors to get up cases against
+heretics, and who was known as Black Meg.
+
+"What is your business with me?" Brant asked sternly.
+
+"Nothing to your hurt, worthy Heer, believe me, nothing to your hurt.
+Oh! yes, I know that tales are told against me, who only earn an
+honest living in an honest way, to keep my poor husband, who is an
+imbecile. Once alas! he followed that mad Anabaptist fool, John of
+Leyden, the fellow who set up as a king, and said that men might have
+as many wives as they wished. That was what sent my husband silly,
+but, thanks be to the Saints, he has repented of his errors and is
+reconciled to the Church and Christian marriage, and now, I, who have
+a forgiving nature, am obliged to support him."
+
+"Your business?" said Brant.
+
+"Mynheer," she answered, dropping her husky voice, "you are a friend
+of the Countess Montalvo, she who was Lysbeth van Hout?"
+
+"No, I am acquainted with her, that is all."
+
+"At least you are a friend of the Heer Dirk van Goorl who has left
+this town for Alkmaar; he who was her lover?"
+
+"Yes, I am his cousin, but he is not the lover of any married woman."
+
+"No, no, of course not; love cannot look through a bridal veil, can
+it? Still, you are his friend, and, therefore, perhaps, her friend,
+and--she isn't happy."
+
+"Indeed? I know nothing of her present life: she must reap the field
+which she has sown. That door is shut."
+
+"Not altogether perhaps. I thought it might interest Dirk van Goorl to
+learn that it is still ajar."
+
+"I don't see why it should. Fish merchants are not interested in
+rotten herrings; they write off the loss and send out the smack for a
+fresh cargo."
+
+"The first fish we catch is ever the finest, Mynheer, and if we
+haven't quite caught it, oh! what a fine fish is that."
+
+"I have no time to waste in chopping riddles. What is your errand?
+Tell it, or leave it untold, but be quick."
+
+Black Meg leant forward, and the hoarse voice sank to a cavernous
+whisper.
+
+"What will you give me," she asked, "if I prove to you that the
+Captain Montalvo is not married at all to Lysbeth van Hout?"
+
+"It does not much matter what I would give you, for I saw the thing
+done in the Groote Kerk yonder."
+
+"Things are not always done that seem to be done."
+
+"Look here, woman, I have had enough of this," and Brant pointed to
+the door.
+
+Black Meg did not stir, only she produced a packet from the bosom of
+her dress and laid it on the table.
+
+"A man can't have two wives living at once, can he?"
+
+"No, I suppose not--that is, legally."
+
+"Well, if I show you that Montalvo has two wives, how much?"
+
+Brant became interested. He hated Montalvo; he guessed, indeed he knew
+something of the part which the man had played in this infamous
+affair, and knew also that it would be a true kindness to Lysbeth to
+rid her of him.
+
+"If you /proved/ it," he said, "let us say two hundred florins."
+
+"It is not enough, Mynheer."
+
+"It is all I have to offer, and, mind you, what I promise to pay."
+
+"Ah! yes, the other promises and doesn't pay--the rogue, the rogue,"
+she added, striking a bony fist upon the table. "Well, I agree, and I
+ask no bond, for you merchant folk are not like cavaliers, your word
+is as good as your paper. Now read these," and she opened the packet
+and pushed its contents towards him.
+
+With the exception of two miniatures, which he placed upon one side,
+they were letters written in Spanish and in a very delicate hand.
+Brant knew Spanish well, and in twenty minutes he had read them all.
+They proved to be epistles from a lady who signed herself Juanita de
+Montalvo, written to the Count Juan de Montalvo, whom she addressed as
+her husband. Very piteous documents they were also, telling a tale
+that need not be set out here of heartless desertion; pleading for the
+writer's sake and for the sake of certain children, that the husband
+and father would return to them, or at least remit them means to live,
+for they, his wife and family, were sunk in great poverty.
+
+"All this is sad enough," said Brant with a gesture of disgust as he
+glanced at the miniature of the lady and her children, "but it proves
+nothing. How are we to know that she is the man's wife?"
+
+Black Meg put her hand into the bosom of her dress and produced
+another letter dated not more than three months ago. It was, or
+purported to be, written by the priest of the village where the lady
+lived, and was addressed to the Captain the Count Juan de Montalvo at
+Leyden. In substance this epistle was an earnest appeal to the noble
+count from one who had a right to speak, as the man who had christened
+him, taught him, and married him to his wife, either to return to her
+or to forward her the means to join him. "A dreadful rumour," the
+letter ended, "has reached us here in Spain that you have taken to
+wife a Dutch lady at Leyden named Van Hout, but this I do not believe,
+since never could you have committed such a crime before God and man.
+Write, write at once, my son, and disperse this black cloud of scandal
+which is gathering on your honoured and ancient name."
+
+"How did you come by these, woman?" asked Brant.
+
+"The last I had from a priest who brought it from Spain. I met him at
+The Hague, and offered to deliver the letter, as he had no safe means
+of sending it to Leyden. The others and the pictures I stole out of
+Montalvo's room."
+
+"Indeed, most honest merchant, and what might you have been doing in
+his Excellency's room?"
+
+"I will tell you," she answered, "for, as he never gave me my pay, my
+tongue is loosed. He wished for evidence that the Heer Dirk van Goorl
+was a heretic, and employed me to find it."
+
+Brant's face hardened, and he became more watchful.
+
+"Why did he wish such evidence?"
+
+"To use it to prevent the marriage of Jufvrouw Lysbeth with the Heer
+Dirk van Goorl."
+
+"How?"
+
+Meg shrugged her shoulders. "By telling his secret to her so that she
+might dismiss him, I suppose, or more likely by threatening that, if
+she did not, he would hand her lover over to the Inquisitors."
+
+"I see. And did you get the evidence?"
+
+"Well, I hid in the Heer Dirk's bedroom one night, and looking through
+a door saw him and another young man, whom I do not know, reading the
+Bible, and praying together."
+
+"Indeed; what a terrible risk you must have run, for had those young
+men, or either of them, chanced to catch you, it is quite certain that
+you would not have left that room alive. You know these heretics think
+that they are justified in killing a spy at sight, and, upon my word,
+I do not blame them. In fact, my good woman," and he leaned forward
+and looked her straight in the eyes, "were I in the same position I
+would have knocked you on the head as readily as though you had been a
+rat."
+
+Black Meg shrank back, and turned a little blue about the lips.
+
+"Of course, Mynheer, of course, it is a rough game, and the poor
+agents of God must take their risks. Not that the other young man had
+any cause to fear. I wasn't paid to watch him, and--as I have said--I
+neither know nor care who he is."
+
+"Well, who can say, that may be fortunate for you, especially if he
+should ever come to know or to care who you are. But it is no affair
+of ours, is it? Now, give me those letters. What, do you want your
+money first? Very well," and, rising, Brant went to a cupboard and
+produced a small steel box, which he unlocked; and, having taken from
+it the appointed sum, locked it again. "There you are," he said; "oh,
+you needn't stare at the cupboard; the box won't live there after
+to-day, or anywhere in this house. By the way, I understand that
+Montalvo never paid you."
+
+"Not a stiver," she answered with a sudden access of rage; "the low
+thief, he promised to pay me after his marriage, but instead of
+rewarding her who put him in that warm nest, I tell you that already
+he has squandered every florin of the noble lady's money in gambling
+and satisfying such debts as he was obliged to, so that to-day I
+believe that she is almost a beggar."
+
+"I see," said Brant, "and now good morning, and look you, if we should
+chance to meet in the town, you will understand that I do not know
+you."
+
+"I understand, Mynheer," said Black Meg with a grin and vanished.
+
+When she had gone Brant rose and opened the window. "Bah!" he said,
+"the air is poisoned. But I think I frightened her, I think that I
+have nothing to fear. Yet who can tell? My God! she saw me reading the
+Bible, and Montalvo knows it! Well, it is some time ago now, and I
+must take my chance."
+
+Ah! who could tell indeed?
+
+Then, taking the miniatures and documents with him, Brant started to
+call upon his friend and co-religionist, the Heer Pieter van de Werff,
+Dirk van Goorl's friend, and Lysbeth's cousin, a young man for whose
+judgment and abilities he had a great respect. As a result of this
+visit, these two gentlemen left that afternoon for Brussels, the seat
+of Government, where they had very influential friends.
+
+It will be sufficient to tell the upshot of their visit. Just at that
+time the Government of the Netherlands wished for its own reasons to
+stand well with the citizen class, and when those in authority learned
+of the dreadful fraud that had been played off upon a lady of note who
+was known to be a good Catholic, for the sole object of robbing her of
+her fortune, there was indignation in high places. Indeed, an order
+was issued, signed by a hand which could not be resisted--so deeply
+was one woman moved by the tale of another's wrong--that the Count
+Montalvo should be seized and put upon his trial, just as though he
+were any common Netherland malefactor. Moreover, since he was a man
+with many enemies, no one was found to stand between him and the Royal
+decree.
+
+
+
+Three days later Montalvo made an announcement to Lysbeth. For a
+wonder he was supping at home alone with his wife, whose presence he
+had commanded. She obeyed and attended, sitting at the further end of
+the table, whence she rose from time to time to wait upon him with her
+own hands. Watching him the while with her quiet eyes, she noticed
+that he was ill at ease.
+
+"Cannot you speak?" he asked at last and savagely. "Do you think it is
+pleasant for a man to sit opposite a woman who looks like a corpse in
+her coffin till he wishes she were one?"
+
+"So do I," answered Lysbeth, and again there was silence.
+
+Presently she broke it. "What do you want?" she asked. "More money?"
+
+"Of course I want money," he answered furiously.
+
+"Then there is none; everything has gone, and the notary tells me that
+no one will advance another stiver on the house. All my jewellery is
+sold also."
+
+He glanced at her hand. "You have still that ring," he said.
+
+She looked at it. It was a hoop of gold set with emeralds of
+considerable value which her husband had given her before marriage and
+always insisted upon her wearing. In fact, it had been bought with the
+money which he borrowed from Dirk van Goorl.
+
+"Take it," she said, smiling for the first time, and drawing off the
+ring she passed it over to him. He turned his head aside as he
+stretched his hand towards the trinket lest his face should betray the
+shame which even he must feel.
+
+"If your child should be a son," he muttered, "tell him that his
+father had nothing but a piece of advice to leave him; that he should
+never touch a dice-box."
+
+"Are you going away then?" she asked.
+
+"For a week or two I must. I have been warned that a difficulty has
+arisen, about which I need not trouble you. Doubtless you will hear of
+it soon enough, and though it is not true, I must leave Leyden until
+the thing blows over. In fact I am going now."
+
+"You are about to desert me," she answered; "having got all my money,
+I say that you are going to desert me who am--thus! I see it in your
+face."
+
+Montalvo turned away and pretended not to hear.
+
+"Well, thank God for it," Lysbeth added, "only I wish that you could
+take your memory and everything else of yours with you."
+
+As these bitter words passed her lips the door opened, and there
+entered one of his own subalterns, followed by four soldiers and a man
+in a lawyer's robe.
+
+"What is this?" asked Montalvo furiously.
+
+The subaltern saluted as he entered:
+
+"My captain, forgive me, but I act under orders, and they are to
+arrest you alive, or," he added significantly, "dead."
+
+"Upon what charge?" asked Montalvo.
+
+"Here, notary, you had best read the charge," said the subaltern, "but
+perhaps the lady would like to retire first," he added awkwardly.
+
+"No," answered Lysbeth, "it might concern me."
+
+"Alas! Senora, I fear it does," put in the notary. Then he began to
+read the document, which was long and legal. But she was quick to
+understand. Before ever it was done Lysbeth knew that she was not the
+lawful wife of Count Juan de Montalvo, and that he was to be put upon
+his trial for his betrayal of her and the trick he had played the
+Church. So she was free--free, and overcome by that thought she
+staggered, fell, and swooned away.
+
+When her eyes opened again, Montalvo, officer, notary, and soldiers,
+all had vanished.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII
+
+                          THE MARE'S STABLE
+
+When Lysbeth's reason returned to her in that empty room, her first
+sense was one of wild exultation. She was free, she was not Montalvo's
+wife, never again could she be obliged to see him, never again could
+she be forced to endure the contamination of his touch--that was her
+thought. She was sure that the story was true; were it not true who
+could have moved the authorities to take action against him? Moreover,
+now that she had the key, a thousand things were explained, trivial
+enough in themselves, each of them, but in their sum amounting to
+proof positive of his guilt. Had he not spoken of some entanglement in
+Spain and of children? Had he not in his sleep--but it was needless to
+remember all these things. She was free! She was free! and there on
+the table still lay the symbol of her bondage, the emerald ring that
+was to give him the means of flight, a flight from this charge which
+he knew was hanging over him. She took it up, dashed it to the ground
+and stamped upon it. Next she fell upon her knees, praising and
+blessing God, and then, worn out, crept away to rest.
+
+The morning came, the still and beautiful autumn morning, but now all
+her exultation had left her, and Lysbeth was depressed and heavy
+hearted. She rose and assisted the one servant who remained in the
+house to prepare their breakfast, taking no heed of the sidelong
+glances that the woman cast at her. Afterwards she went to the market
+to spend some of her last florins in necessaries. Here and in the
+streets she became aware that she was the object of remark, for people
+nudged each other and stared at her. Moreover, as she hurried home
+appalled, her quick ear caught the conversation of two coarse women
+while they walked behind her.
+
+"She's got it now," said one.
+
+"Serve her right, too," answered the other, "for running after and
+marrying a Spanish don."
+
+"Marrying?" broke in the first, "it was the best that she could do.
+She couldn't stop to ask questions. Some corpses must be buried
+quickly."
+
+Glancing behind her, Lysbeth saw the creature nip her nostrils with
+her fingers, as though to shut out an evil smell.
+
+Then she could bear it no longer, and turned upon them.
+
+"You are evil slanderers," she said, and walked away swiftly, pursued
+by the sound of their loud, insulting laughter.
+
+At the house she was told that two men were waiting to see her. They
+proved to be creditors clamouring for large sums of money, which she
+could not pay. Lysbeth told them that she knew nothing of the matter.
+Thereupon they showed her her own writing at the foot of deeds, and
+she remembered that she had signed more things than she chose to keep
+count of, everything indeed that the man who called himself her
+husband put before her, if only to win an hour of blessed freedom from
+his presence. At length the duns went away vowing that they would have
+their money if they dragged the bed from under her.
+
+After that came loneliness and silence. No friend appeared to cheer
+her. Indeed, she had no friends left, for by her husband's command she
+had broken off her acquaintance with all who after the strange
+circumstances connected with her marriage were still inclined to know
+her. He said that he would have no chattering Dutch vrouws about the
+house, and they said and believed that the Countess de Montalvo had
+become too proud to associate with those of her own class and people.
+
+Midday came and she could eat no food; indeed, she had touched none
+for twenty-four hours; her gorge rose against it, although in her
+state she needed food. Now the shame of her position began to come
+home to Lysbeth. She was a wife and no wife; soon she must bear the
+burden of motherhood, and oh! what would that child be? And what
+should she be, its mother? What, too, would Dirk think of her? Dirk,
+for whom she had done and suffered all these things. Through the long
+afternoon hours she lay upon her bed thinking such thoughts as these
+till at length her mind gave and Lysbeth grew light-headed. Her brain
+became a chaos, a perfect hell of distorted imaginations.
+
+Then out of its turmoil and confusion rose a vision and a desire; a
+vision of peace and a desire for rest. But what rest was there for her
+except the rest of death? Well, why not die? God would forgive her,
+the Mother of God would plead for her who was shamed and broken-
+hearted and unfit to live. Even Dirk would think kindly of her when
+she was dead, though, doubtless, now if he met her he would cover his
+eyes with his hand. She was burning hot and she was thirsty. How cool
+the water would be on this fevered night. What could be better than to
+slip into it and slowly let it close above her poor aching head? She
+would go out and look at the water; in that, at any rate, there could
+be no harm.
+
+She wrapped herself in a long cloak and drew its hood over her head.
+Then she slipped from the house and stole like a ghost through the
+darkling streets and out of the Maren or Sea Poort, where the guard
+let her pass thinking that she was a country woman returning to her
+village. Now the moon was rising, and by the light of it Lysbeth
+recognised the place. Here was the spot where she had stood on the day
+of the ice carnival, when that woman who was called Martha the Mare,
+and who said that she had known her father, had spoken to her. On that
+water she had galloped in Montalvo's sledge, and up yonder canal the
+race was run. She followed along its banks, remembering the reedy mere
+some miles away spotted with islets that were only visited from time
+to time by fishermen and wild-fowlers; the great Haarlemer Meer which
+covered many thousands of acres of ground. That mere she felt must
+look very cool and beautiful on such a night as this, and the wind
+would whisper sweetly among the tall bulrushes which fringed its
+banks.
+
+On Lysbeth went and on; it was a long, long walk, but at last she came
+there, and, oh! the place was sweet and vast and lonely. For so far as
+her eye could reach in the light of the low moon there was nothing but
+glimmering water broken here and there by the reed-wreathed islands.
+Hark! how the frogs croaked and the bitterns boomed among the rushes.
+Look where the wild ducks swam leaving behind them broad trails of
+silver as their breasts broke the surface of the great mere into
+rippling lines.
+
+There, on an island, not a bowshot from her, grew tufts of a daisy-
+like marsh bloom, white flowers such as she remembered gathering when
+she was a child. A desire came upon her to pluck some of these
+flowers, and the water was shallow; surely she could wade to the
+island, or if not what did it matter? Then she could turn to the bank
+again, or she might stay to sleep a while in the water; what did it
+matter? She stepped from the bank--how sweet and cool it felt to her
+feet! Now it was up to her knees, now it reached her middle, and now
+the little wavelets beat against her breast. But she would not go
+back, for there ahead of her was the island, and the white flowers
+were so close that she could count them, eight upon one bunch and
+twelve upon the next. Another step and the water struck her in the
+face, one more and it closed above her head. She rose, and a low cry
+broke from her lips.
+
+Then, as in a dream, Lysbeth saw a skiff glide out from among the
+rushes before her. She saw also a strange mutilated face, which she
+remembered dimly, bending over the edge of the boat, and a long, brown
+hand stretched out to clasp her, while a hoarse voice bade her keep
+still and fear nothing.
+
+After this came a sound of singing in her ears and--darkness.
+
+
+
+When Lysbeth woke again she found herself lying upon the ground, or
+rather upon a soft mattress of dry reeds and aromatic grasses. Looking
+round her she saw that she was in a hut, reed-roofed and plastered
+with thick mud. In one corner of this hut stood a fireplace with a
+chimney artfully built of clay, and on the fire of turfs boiled an
+earthen pot. Hanging from the roof by a string of twisted grass was a
+fish, fresh caught, a splendid pike, and near to it a bunch of smoked
+eels. Over her also was thrown a magnificent rug of otter skins.
+Noting these things, she gathered that she must be in the hovel of
+some fisherman.
+
+Now by degrees the past came back to Lysbeth, and she remembered her
+parting with the man who called himself her husband; remembered also
+her moonlight flight and how she had waded out into the waters of the
+great mere to pluck the white flowers, and how, as they closed above
+her head a hand had been stretched out to save her. Lysbeth
+remembered, and remembering, she sighed aloud. The sound of her
+sighing seemed to attract the attention of some one who was listening
+outside the hut; at any rate a rough door was opened or pushed aside
+and a figure entered.
+
+"Are you awake, lady?" asked a hoarse voice.
+
+"Yes," answered Lysbeth, "but tell me, how did I come here, and who
+are you?"
+
+The figure stepped back so that the light from the open door fell full
+upon it. "Look, Carolus van Hout's daughter and Juan Montalvo's wife;
+those who have seen me once do not forget me."
+
+Lysbeth sat up on the bed and stared at the gaunt, powerful form, the
+deep-set grey eyes, the wide-spread nostrils, the scarred, high cheek-
+bones, the teeth made prominent by some devil's work upon the lips,
+and the grizzled lock of hair that hung across the forehead. In an
+instant she knew her.
+
+"You are Martha the Mare," she said.
+
+"Yes, I am the Mare, none other, and you are in the Mare's stable.
+What has he been doing to you, that Spanish dog, that you came last
+night to ask the Great Water to hide you and your shame?"
+
+Lysbeth made no answer; the story seemed hard to begin with this
+strange woman. Then Martha went on:
+
+"What did I tell you, Lysbeth van Hout? Did I not say that your blood
+should warn you against the Spaniards? Well, well, you saved me from
+the ice and I have saved you from the water. Ah! who was it that led
+me to row round by that outer isle last night because I could not
+sleep? But what does it matter; God willed it so, and here you lie in
+the Mare's stable. Nay, do not answer me, first you must eat."
+
+Then, going to the pot, she took it from the fire, pouring its
+contents into an earthen basin, and, at the smell of them, for the
+first time for days Lysbeth felt hungry. Of what that stew was
+compounded she never learned, but she ate it to the last spoonful and
+was thankful, while Martha, seated on the ground beside her, watched
+her with delight, from time to time stretching out a long, thin hand
+to touch the brown hair that hung about her shoulders.
+
+"Come out and look," said Martha when her guest had done eating. And
+she led her through the doorway of the hut.
+
+Lysbeth gazed round her, but in truth there was not much to see. The
+hut itself was hidden away in a little clump of swamp willows that
+grew upon a mound in the midst of a marshy plain, broken here and
+there by patches of reed and bulrushes. Walking across this plain for
+a hundred yards or so, they came to more reeds, and in them a boat
+hidden cunningly, for here was the water of the lake, and, not fifty
+paces away, what seemed to be the shore of an island. The Mare bade
+her get into the boat and rowed her across to this island, then round
+it to another, and thence to another and yet another.
+
+"Now tell me," she said, "upon which of them is my stable built?"
+
+Lysbeth shook her head helplessly.
+
+"You cannot tell, no, nor any living man; I say that no man lives who
+could find it, save I myself, who know the path there by night or by
+day. Look," and she pointed to the vast surface of the mere, "on this
+great sea are thousands of such islets, and before they find me the
+Spaniards must search them all, for here upon the lonely waters no
+spies or hound will help them." Then she began to row again without
+even looking round, and presently they were in the clump of reeds from
+which they had started.
+
+"I must be going home," faltered Lysbeth.
+
+"No," answered Martha, "it is too late, you have slept long. Look, the
+sun is westering fast, this night you must stop with me. Oh! do not be
+afraid, my fare is rough, but it is sweet and fresh and plenty; fish
+from the mere as much as you will, for who can catch them better than
+I? And water-fowl that I snare, yes, and their eggs; moreover, dried
+flesh and bacon which I get from the mainland, for there I have
+friends whom sometimes I meet at night."
+
+So Lysbeth yielded, for the great peace of this lake pleased her. Oh!
+after all that she had gone through it was like heaven to watch the
+sun sinking towards the quiet water, to hear the wild-fowl call, to
+see the fish leap and the halcyons flash by, and above all to be sure
+that by nothing short of a miracle could this divine silence, broken
+only by Nature's voices, be defiled with the sound of the hated
+accents of the man who had ruined and betrayed her. Yes, she was
+weary, and a strange unaccustomed langour crept over her; she would
+rest there this night also.
+
+So they went back to the hut, and made ready their evening meal, and
+as she fried the fish over the fire of peats, verily Lysbeth found
+herself laughing like a girl again. Then they ate it with appetite,
+and after it was done, Mother Martha prayed aloud; yes, and without
+fear, although she knew Lysbeth to be a Catholic, read from her one
+treasure, a Testament, crouching there in the light of the fire and
+saying:
+
+"See, lady, what a place this is for a heretic to hide in. Where else
+may a woman read from the Bible and fear no spy or priest?"
+Remembering a certain story, Lysbeth shivered at her words.
+
+"Now," said the Mare, when she had finished reading, "tell me before
+you sleep, what it was that brought you into the waters of the
+Haarlemer Meer, and what that Spanish man has done to you. Do not be
+afraid, for though I am mad, or so they say, I can keep counsel, and
+between you and me are many bonds, Carolus van Hout's daughter, some
+of which you know and see, and some that you can neither know nor see,
+but which God will weave in His own season."
+
+Lysbeth looked at the weird countenance, distorted and made unhuman by
+long torment of body and mind, and found in it something to trust;
+yes, even signs of that sympathy which she so sorely needed. So she
+told her all the tale from the first word of it to the last.
+
+The Mare listened in silence, for no story of evil perpetrated by a
+Spaniard seemed to move or astonish her, only when Lysbeth had done,
+she said:
+
+"Ah! child, had you but known of me, and where to find me, you should
+have asked my aid."
+
+"Why, mother, what could you have done?" answered Lysbeth.
+
+"Done? I would have followed him by night until I found my chance in
+some lonely place, and there I would have----" Then she stretched out
+her bony hand to the red light of the fire, and Lysbeth saw that in it
+was a knife.
+
+She sank back aghast.
+
+"Why are you frightened, my pretty lady?" asked the Mare. "I tell you
+that I live on for only one thing--to kill Spaniards, yes, priests
+first and then the others. Oh! I have a long count to pay; for every
+time that he was tortured a life, for every groan he uttered at the
+stake a life; yes, so many for the father and half as many for the
+son. Well, I shall live to be old, I know that I shall live to be old,
+and the count will be discharged, ay, to the last stiver."
+
+As she spoke, the outlawed Water Wife had risen, and the flare of the
+fire struck full upon her. It was an awful face that Lysbeth beheld by
+the light of it, full of fierceness and energy, the face of an
+inspired avenger, dread and unnatural, yet not altogether repulsive.
+Indeed, that countenance was such as an imaginative artist might give
+to one of the beasts in the Book of Revelation. Amazed and terrified,
+Lysbeth said nothing.
+
+"I frighten you, gentle one," went on the Mare, "you who, although you
+have suffered, are still full of the milk of human kindness. Wait,
+woman, wait till they have murdered the man you love, till your heart
+is like my heart, and you also live on, not for love's sake, not for
+life's sake, but to be a Sword, a Sword, a Sword in the hand of God!"
+
+"Cease, I pray you," said Lysbeth in a low voice; "I am faint, I am
+ill."
+
+Ill she was indeed, and before morning there, in that lonely hovel on
+the island of the mere, a son was born to her.
+
+
+
+When she was strong enough her nurse spoke:
+
+"Will you keep the brat, or shall I kill it?" she asked.
+
+"How can I kill my child?" said Lysbeth.
+
+"It is the Spaniard's child also, and remember the curse you told me
+of, your own curse uttered on this thing before ever you were married?
+If it lives that curse shall cling to it, and through it you, too,
+shall be accursed. Best let me kill it and have done."
+
+"How can I kill my own child? Touch it not," answered Lysbeth
+sullenly.
+
+So the black-eyed boy lived and throve.
+
+
+
+Somewhat slowly, lying there in the island hut, Lysbeth won back her
+strength. The Mare, or Mother Martha, as Lysbeth had now learned to
+call her, tended her as few midwives would have done. Food, too, she
+had in plenty, for Martha snared the fowl and caught the fish, or she
+made visits to the mainland, and thence brought eggs and milk and
+flesh, which, so she said, the boors of that country gave her as much
+as she wanted of them. Also, to while away the hours, she would read
+to her out of the Testament, and from that reading Lysbeth learnt many
+things which until then she had not known. Indeed, before it was done
+with--Catholic though she was--she began to wonder in what lay the
+wickedness of these heretics, and how it came about that they were
+worthy of death and torment, since, sooth to say, in this Book she
+could find no law to which their lives and doctrine seemed to give
+offence.
+
+Thus it happened that Martha, the fierce, half-crazy water-dweller,
+sowed the seed in Lysbeth's heart that was to bear fruit in due
+season.
+
+When three weeks had gone by and Lysbeth was on her feet again, though
+as yet scarcely strong enough to travel, Martha told her that she had
+business which would keep her from home a night, but what the business
+was she refused to say. Accordingly on a certain afternoon, having
+left good store of all things to Lysbeth's hand, the Mare departed in
+her skiff, nor did she return till after midday on the morrow. Now
+Lysbeth talked of leaving the island, but Martha would not suffer it,
+saying that if she desired to go she must swim, and indeed when
+Lysbeth went to look she found that the boat had been hidden
+elsewhere. So, nothing loth, she stayed on, and in the crisp autumn
+air her health and beauty came back to her, till she was once more
+much as she had been before the day when she went sledging with Juan
+de Montalvo.
+
+On a November morning, leaving her infant in the hut with Martha, who
+had sworn to her on the Bible that she would not harm it, Lysbeth
+walked to the extremity of the island. During the night the first
+sharp frost of late autumn had fallen, making a thin film of ice upon
+the surface of the lake, which melted rapidly as the sun grew high.
+The air too was very clear and calm, and among the reeds, now turning
+golden at their tips, the finches flew and chirped, forgetful that
+winter was at hand. So sweet and peaceful was the scene that Lysbeth,
+also forgetful of many things, surveyed it with a kind of rapture. She
+knew not why, but her heart was happy that morning; it was as though a
+dark cloud had passed from her life; as though the blue skies of peace
+and joy were spread about her. Doubtless other clouds might appear
+upon the horizon; doubtless in their season they would appear, but she
+felt that this horizon was as yet a long way off, and meanwhile above
+her bent the tender sky, serene and sweet and happy.
+
+Upon the crisp grass behind her suddenly she heard a footfall, a new
+footfall, not that of the long, stealthy stride of Martha, who was
+called the Mare, and swung round upon her heel to meet it.
+
+Oh, God! Who was this? Oh, God! there before her stood Dirk van Goorl.
+Dirk, and no other than Dirk, unless she dreamed, Dirk with his kind
+face wreathed in a happy smile, Dirk with his arms outstretched
+towards her. Lysbeth said nothing, she could not speak, only she stood
+still gazing, gazing, gazing, and always he came on, till now his arms
+were round her. Then she sprang back.
+
+"Do not touch me," she cried, "remember what I am and why I stay
+here."
+
+"I know well what you are, Lysbeth," he answered slowly; "you are the
+holiest and purest woman who ever walked this earth; you are an angel
+upon this earth; you are the woman who gave her honour to save the man
+she loved. Oh! be silent, be silent, I have heard the story; I know it
+every word, and here I kneel before you, and, next to my God, I
+worship you, Lysbeth, I worship you."
+
+"But the child," she murmured, "it lives, and it is mine and the
+man's."
+
+Dirk's face hardened a little, but he only answered:
+
+"We must bear our burdens; you have borne yours, I must bear mine,"
+and he seized her hands and kissed them, yes, and the hem of her
+garment and kissed it also.
+
+So these two plighted their troth.
+
+Afterwards Lysbeth heard all the story. Montalvo had been put upon his
+trial, and, as it chanced, things went hard with him. Among his judges
+one was a great Netherlander lord, who desired to uphold the rights of
+his countrymen; one was a high ecclesiastic, who was furious because
+of the fraud that had been played upon the Church, which had been
+trapped into celebrating a bigamous marriage; and a third was a
+Spanish grandee, who, as it happened, knew the family of the first
+wife who had been deserted.
+
+Therefore, for the luckless Montalvo, when the case had been proved to
+the hilt against him by the evidence of the priest who brought the
+letter, of the wife's letters, and of the truculent Black Meg, who now
+found an opportunity of paying back "hot water for cold," there was
+little mercy. His character was bad, and it was said, moreover, that
+because of his cruelties and the shame she had suffered at his hands,
+Lysbeth van Hout had committed suicide. At least, this was certain,
+that she was seen running at night towards the Haarlemer Meer, and
+that after this, search as her friends would, nothing more could be
+heard of her.
+
+So, that an example might be made, although he writhed and fenced his
+best, the noble captain, Count Juan de Montalvo, was sent to serve for
+fourteen years in the galleys as a common slave. And there, for the
+while, was an end of him.
+
+
+
+There also was an end of the strange and tragic courtship of Dirk van
+Goorl and Lysbeth van Hout.
+
+Six months afterwards they were married, and by Dirk's wish took the
+child, who was christened Adrian, to live with them. A few months
+later Lysbeth entered the community of the New Religion, and less than
+two years after her marriage a son was born to her, the hero of this
+story, who was named Foy.
+
+As it happened, she bore no other children.
+
+
+
+
+                           BOOK THE SECOND
+
+                             THE RIPENING
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX
+
+                   ADRIAN, FOY, AND MARTIN THE RED
+
+Many years had gone by since Lysbeth found her love again upon the
+island in the Haarlemer Meer. The son that she bore there was now a
+grown man, as was her second son, Foy, and her own hair showed grey
+beneath the lappets of her cap.
+
+Fast, fast wove the loom of God during those fateful years, and the
+web thereof was the story of a people's agony and its woof was dyed
+red with their blood. Edict had followed edict, crime had been heaped
+upon crime. Alva, like some inhuman and incarnate vengeance, had
+marched his army, quiet and harmless as is the tiger when he stalks
+his prey, across the fields of France. Now he was at Brussels, and
+already the heads of the Counts Egmont and Hoorn had fallen; already
+the Blood Council was established and at its work. In the Low
+Countries law had ceased to exist, and there anything might happen
+however monstrous or inhuman. Indeed, with one decree of the Holy
+Office, confirmed by a proclamation of Philip of Spain, all the
+inhabitants of the Netherlands, three millions of them, had been
+condemned to death. Men's minds were full of terror, for on every side
+were burnings and hangings and torturings. Without were fightings,
+within were fears, and none knew whom they could trust, since the
+friend of to-day might be the informer or judge of to-morrow. All this
+because they chose to worship God in their own fashion unaided by
+images and priests.
+
+
+
+Although so long a time had passed, as it chanced those personages
+with whom we have already made acquaintance in this history were still
+alive. Let us begin with two of them, one of whom we know and one of
+whom, although we have heard of him before, will require some
+introduction--Dirk van Goorl and his son Foy.
+
+
+
+Scene--an upper room above a warehouse overlooking the market-place of
+Leyden, a room with small windows and approached by two staircases;
+time, a summer twilight. The faint light which penetrated into this
+chamber through the unshuttered windows, for to curtain them would
+have been to excite suspicion, showed that about twenty people were
+gathered there, among whom were one or two women. For the most part
+they were men of the better class, middle-aged burghers of sober mien,
+some of whom stood about in knots, while others were seated upon
+stools and benches. At the end of the room addressing them was a man
+well on in middle life, with grizzled hair and beard, small and
+somewhat mean of stature, yet one through whose poor exterior goodness
+seemed to flow like light through some rough casement of horn. This
+was Jan Arentz, the famous preacher, by trade a basket-maker, a man
+who showed himself steadfast to the New Religion through all
+afflictions, and who was gifted with a spirit which could remain
+unmoved amidst the horrors of perhaps the most terrible persecution
+that Christians have suffered since the days of the Roman Emperors. He
+was preaching now and these people were his congregation.
+
+"I come not to bring peace but a sword," was his text, and certainly
+this night it was most appropriate and one easy of illustration. For
+there, on the very market-place beneath them, guarded by soldiers and
+surrounded with the rabble of the city, two members of his flock, men
+who a fortnight before had worshipped in that same room, at this
+moment were undergoing martyrdom by fire!
+
+Arentz preached patience and fortitude. He went back into recent
+history and told his hearers how he himself had passed a hundred
+dangers; how he had been hunted like a wolf, how he had been tried,
+how he had escaped from prisons and from the swords of soldiers, even
+as St. Paul had done before him, and how yet he lived to minister to
+them this night. He told them that they must have no fear, that they
+must go on quite happy, quite confident, taking what it pleased God to
+send them, feeling that it would all be for the best; yes, that even
+the worst would be for the best. What was the worst? Some hours of
+torment and death. And what lay beyond the death? Ah! let them think
+of that. The whole world was but a brief and varying shadow, what did
+it matter how or when they walked out of that shadow into the perfect
+light? The sky was very black, but behind it the sun shone. They must
+look forward with the eye of faith; perhaps the sufferings of the
+present generation were part of the scheme of things; perhaps from the
+earth which they watered with their blood would spring the flower of
+freedom, that glorious freedom in whose day all men would be able to
+worship their Creator responsible only to the Bible law and their own
+conscience, not to the dogmas or doctrines of other men.
+
+As Arentz spoke thus, eloquently, sweetly, spoke like one inspired,
+the twilight deepened and the flare of those sacrificial fires
+flickered on the window pane, and the mixed murmurs of the crowd of
+witnesses broke upon his listeners' ears. The preacher paused and
+looked down upon the dreadful scene below, for from where he stood he
+could behold it all.
+
+"Mark is dead," he said, "and our dear brother, Andreas Jansen, is
+dying; the executioners heap the faggots round him. You think it
+cruel, you think it piteous, but I say to you, No. I say that it is a
+holy and a glorious sight, for we witness the passing of souls to
+bliss. Brethren, let us pray for him who leaves us, and for ourselves
+who stay behind. Yes, and let us pray for those who slay him that know
+not what they do. We watch his sufferings, but I tell you that Christ
+his Lord watches also; Christ who hung upon the Cross, the victim of
+such men as these. He stands with him in the fire, His hand compasses
+him, His voice supports him. Brethren, let us pray."
+
+Then at his bidding every member of that little congregation knelt in
+prayer for the passing spirit of Andreas Jansen.
+
+Again Arentz looked through the window.
+
+"He dies!" he cried; "a soldier has thrust him through with a pike in
+mercy, his head falls forward. Oh! God, if it be Thy will, grant to us
+a sign."
+
+Some strange breath passed through that upper chamber, a cold breath
+which blew upon the brows of the worshippers and stirred their hair,
+bringing with it a sense of the presence of Andreas Jansen, the
+martyr. Then, there upon the wall opposite to the window, at the very
+spot where their brother and companion, Andreas, saint and martyr, was
+wont to kneel, appeared the sign, or what they took to be a sign. Yes,
+there upon the whitewashed wall, reflected, mayhap, from the fires
+below, and showing clearly in the darkened room, shone the vision of a
+fiery cross. For a second it was seen. Then it was gone, but to every
+soul in this room the vision of that cross had brought its message; to
+each a separate message, an individual inspiration, for in the light
+of it they read strange lessons of life and death. The cross vanished
+and there was silence.
+
+"Brethren," said the voice of Arentz, speaking in the darkness, "you
+have seen. Through the fire and through the shadow, follow the Cross
+and fear not."
+
+
+
+The service was over, and below in the emptied market-place the
+executioners collected the poor calcined fragments of the martyrs to
+cast them with contumely and filthy jests into the darkling waters of
+the river. Now, one by one and two by two, the worshippers slipped
+away through some hidden door opening on an alley. Let us look at
+three of their number as they crept through bye streets back to a
+house on the Bree Straat with which we are acquainted, two of them
+walking in front and one behind.
+
+The pair were Dirk van Goorl and his son Foy--there was no mistaking
+their relationship. Save that he had grown somewhat portly and
+thoughtful, Dirk was the Dirk of five and twenty years ago, thickset,
+grey-eyed, bearded, a handsome man according to the Dutch standard,
+whose massive, kindly countenance betrayed the massive, kindly mind
+within. Very like him was his son Foy, only his eyes were blue instead
+of grey, and his hair was yellow. Though they seemed sad enough just
+now, these were merry and pleasant eyes, and the round, the somewhat
+childlike face was merry also, the face of a person who looked upon
+the bright side of things.
+
+There was nothing remarkable or distinguished about Foy's appearance,
+but from it the observer, who met him for the first time, received an
+impression of energy, honesty, and good-nature. In truth, such were
+apt to set him down as a sailor-man, who had just returned from a long
+journey, in the course of which he had come to the conclusion that
+this world was a pleasant place, and one well worth exploring. As Foy
+walked down the street with his quick and nautical gait, it was
+evident that even the solemn and dreadful scene which he had just
+experienced had not altogether quenched his cheery and hopeful spirit.
+Yet of all those who listened to the exhortation of the saint-like
+Arentz, none had laid its burden of faith and carelessness for the
+future to heart more entirely than Foy van Goorl.
+
+But of this power of looking on the bright side of things the credit
+must be given to his nature and not to his piety, for Foy could not be
+sad for long. /Dum spiro, spero/ would have been his motto had he
+known Latin, and he did not mean to grow sorrowful--over the prospect
+of being burnt, for instance--until he found himself fast to the
+stake. It was this quality of good spirits in a depressing and
+melancholy age that made of Foy so extraordinarily popular a
+character.
+
+Behind these two followed a much more remarkable-looking personage,
+the Frisian, Martin Roos, or Red Martin, so named from his hair, which
+was red to the verge of flame colour, and his beard of a like hue that
+hung almost to his breast. There was no other such beard in Leyden;
+indeed the boys, taking advantage of his good nature, would call to
+him as he passed, asking him if it was true that the storks nested in
+it every spring. This strange-looking man, who was now perhaps a
+person of forty years of age, for ten years or more had been the
+faithful servant of Dirk van Goorl, whose house he had entered under
+circumstances which shall be told of in their place.
+
+Any one glancing at Martin casually would not have said that he was a
+giant, and yet his height was considerable; to be accurate, when he
+stood upright, something over six feet three inches. The reason why he
+did not appear to be tall was that in truth his great bulk shortened
+him to the eye, and also because his carried himself ill, more from a
+desire to conceal his size than for any other reason. It was in girth
+of chest and limb that Martin was really remarkable, so much so that a
+short-armed man standing before him could not make his fingers touch
+behind his back. His face was fair as a girl's, and almost as flat as
+a full moon, for of nose he had little. Nature, indeed, had furnished
+him with one of ordinary, if not excessive size, but certain incidents
+in Martin's early career, which in our day would be designated as that
+of a prize-fighter, had caused it to spread about his countenance in
+an interesting and curious fashion. His eyebrows, however, remained
+prominent. Beneath them appeared a pair of very large, round, and
+rather mild blue eyes, covered with thick white lids absolutely devoid
+of lashes, which eyes had a most unholy trick of occasionally taking
+fire when their owner was irritated. Then they could burn and blaze
+like lamps tied to a barge on a dark night, with an effect that was
+all the more alarming because the rest of his countenance remained
+absolutely impassive.
+
+Suddenly while this little company went homewards a sound arose in the
+quiet street as of people running. Instantly all three of them pressed
+themselves into the doorway of a house and crouched down. Martin
+lifted his ear and listened.
+
+"Three people," he whispered; "a woman who flies and two men who
+follow."
+
+At that moment a casement was thrown open forty paces or so away, and
+a hand, bearing a torch, thrust out of it. By its light they saw the
+pale face of a lady speeding towards them, and after her two Spanish
+soldiers.
+
+"The Vrouw Andreas Jansen," whispered Martin again, "flying from two
+of the guard who burned her husband."
+
+The torch was withdrawn and the casement shut with a snap. In those
+days quiet burghers could not afford to be mixed up in street
+troubles, especially if soldiers had to do with them. Once more the
+place was empty and quiet, except for the sound of running feet.
+
+Opposite to the doorway the lady was overtaken. "Oh! let me go," she
+sobbed, "oh! let me go. Is it not enough that you have killed my
+husband? Why must I be hunted from my house thus?"
+
+"Because you are so pretty, my dear," answered one of the brutes,
+"also you are rich. Catch hold of her, friend. Lord! how she kicks!"
+
+Foy made a motion as though to start out of the doorway, but Martin
+pressed him back with the flat of his hand, without apparent effort,
+and yet so strongly that the young man could not move.
+
+"My business, masters," he muttered; "you would make a noise," and
+they heard his breath come thick.
+
+Now, moving with curious stealthiness for one of so great a bulk,
+Martin was out of the porch. By the summer starlight the watchers
+could see that, before they had caught sight of, or even heard, him,
+he gripped the two soldiers, small men, like most Spaniards, by the
+napes of their necks, one in either hand, and was grinding their faces
+together. This, indeed, was evident, for his great shoulders worked
+visibly and their breastplates clicked as they touched. But the men
+themselves made no sound at all. Then Martin seemed to catch them
+round the middle, and behold! in another second the pair of them had
+gone headlong into the canal, which ran down the centre of the street.
+
+"My God! he has killed them," muttered Dirk.
+
+"And a good job, too, father," said Foy, "only I wish that I had
+shared in it."
+
+Martin's great form loomed in the doorway. "The Vrouw Jansen has fled
+away," he said, "and the street is quite quiet now, so I think that we
+had better be moving before any see us, my masters."
+
+Some days later the bodies of these Spanish soldiers were found with
+their faces smashed flat. It was suggested in explanation of this
+plight, that they had got drunk and while fighting together had fallen
+from the bridge on to the stonework of a pier. This version of their
+end found a ready acceptance, as it consorted well with the
+reputations of the men. So there was no search or inquiry.
+
+"I had to finish the dogs," Martin explained apologetically--"may the
+Lord Jesus forgive me--because I was afraid that they might know me
+again by my beard."
+
+"Alas! alas!" groaned Dirk, "what times are these. Say nothing of this
+dreadful matter to your mother, son, or to Adrian either." But Foy
+nudged Martin in the ribs and muttered, "Well done, old fellow, well
+done!"
+
+After this experience, which the reader must remember was nothing
+extraordinary in those dark and dreadful days when neither the lives
+of men nor the safety of women--especially Protestant men and women--
+were things of much account, the three of them reached home without
+further incident, and quite unobserved. Arriving at the house, they
+entered it near the Watergate by a back door that led into the
+stableyard. It was opened by a woman whom they followed into a little
+room where a light burned. Here she turned and kissed two of them,
+Dirk first and then Foy.
+
+"Thank God that I see you safe," she said. "Whenever you go to the
+Meeting-place I tremble until I hear your footsteps at the door."
+
+"What's the use of that, mother?" said Foy. "Your fretting yourself
+won't make things better or worse."
+
+"Ah! dear, how can I help it?" she replied softly; "we cannot all be
+young and cheerful, you know."
+
+"True, wife, true," broke in Dirk, "though I wish we could; we should
+be lighter-hearted so," and he looked at her and sighed.
+
+Lysbeth van Goorl could no longer boast the beauty which was hers when
+first we met her, but she was still a sweet and graceful woman, her
+figure remaining almost as slim as it had been in girlhood. The grey
+eyes also retained their depth and fire, only the face was worn,
+though more by care and the burden of memories than with years. The
+lot of the loving wife and mother was hard indeed when Philip the King
+ruled in Spain and Alva was his prophet in the Netherlands.
+
+"Is it done?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, wife, our brethren are now saints in Paradise, therefore
+rejoice."
+
+"It is very wrong," she answered with a sob, "but I cannot. Oh!" she
+added with a sudden blaze of indignation, "if He is just and good, why
+does God suffer His servants to be killed thus?"
+
+"Perhaps our grandchildren will be able to answer that question,"
+replied Dirk.
+
+"That poor Vrouw Jansen," broke in Lysbeth, "just married, and so
+young and pretty. I wonder what will become of her."
+
+Dirk and Foy looked at each other, and Martin, who was hovering about
+near the door, slunk back guiltily into the passage as though /he/ had
+attempted to injure the Vrouw Jansen.
+
+"To-morrow we will look to it, wife. And now let us eat, for we are
+faint with hunger."
+
+Ten minutes later they were seated at their meal. The reader may
+remember the room; it was that wherein Montalvo, ex-count and captain,
+made the speech which charmed all hearers on the night when he had
+lost the race at the ice-carnival. The same chandelier hung above
+them, some portion of the same plate, even, repurchased by Dirk, was
+on the table, but how different were the company and the feast! Aunt
+Clara, the fatuous, was long dead, and with her many of the companions
+of that occasion, some naturally, some by the hand of the executioner,
+while others had fled the land. Pieter van de Werff still lived,
+however, and though regarded with suspicion by the authorities, was a
+man of weight and honour in the town, but to-night he was not present
+there. The food, too, if ample was plain, not on account of the
+poverty of the household, for Dirk had prospered in his worldly
+affairs, being hard-working and skilful, and the head of the brass
+foundry to which in those early days he was apprenticed, but because
+in such times people thought little of the refinements of eating. When
+life itself is so doubtful, its pleasures and amusements become of
+small importance. The ample waiting service of the maid Greta, who
+long ago had vanished none knew where, and her fellow domestics was
+now carried on by the man, Martin, and one old woman, since, as every
+menial might be a spy, even the richest employed few of them. In short
+all the lighter and more cheerful parts of life were in abeyance.
+
+"Where is Adrian?" asked Dirk.
+
+"I do not know," answered Lysbeth. "I thought that perhaps----"
+
+"No," replied her husband hastily; "he did not accompany us; he rarely
+does."
+
+"Brother Adrian likes to look underneath the spoon before he licks
+it," said Foy with his mouth full.
+
+The remark was enigmatic, but his parents seemed to understand what
+Foy meant; at least it was followed by an uncomfortable and
+acquiescent silence. Just then Adrian came in, and as we have not seen
+him since, some four and twenty years ago, he made his entry into the
+world on the secret island in the Haarlemer Meer, here it may be as
+well to describe his appearance.
+
+He was a handsome young man, but of quite a different stamp from his
+half-brother, Foy, being tall, slight, and very graceful in figure;
+advantages which he had inherited from his mother Lysbeth. In
+countenance, however, he differed from her so much that none would
+have guessed him to be her son. Indeed, Adrian's face was pure
+Spanish, there was nothing of a Netherlander about his dark beauty.
+Spanish were the eyes of velvet black, set rather close together,
+Spanish also the finely chiselled features and the thin, spreading
+nostrils, Spanish the cold, yet somewhat sensual mouth, more apt to
+sneer than smile; the straight, black hair, the clear, olive skin, and
+that indifferent, half-wearied mien which became its wearer well
+enough, but in a man of his years of Northern blood would have seemed
+unnatural or affected.
+
+He took his seat without speaking, nor did the others speak to him
+till his stepfather Dirk said:
+
+"You were not at the works to-day, Adrian, although we should have
+been glad of your help in founding the culverin."
+
+"No, father"--he called him father--answered the young man in a
+measured and rather melodious voice. "You see we don't quite know who
+is going to pay for that piece. Or at any rate I don't quite know, as
+nobody seems to take me into confidence, and if it should chance to be
+the losing side, well, it might be enough to hang me."
+
+Dirk flushed up, but made no answer, only Foy remarked:
+
+"That's right, Adrian, look after your own skin."
+
+"Just now I find it more interesting," went on Adrian loftily and
+disregardful of his brother, "to study those whom the cannon may shoot
+than to make the cannon which is to shoot them."
+
+"Hope you won't be one of them," interrupted Foy again.
+
+"Where have you been this evening, son?" asked Lysbeth hastily,
+fearing a quarrel.
+
+"I have been mixing with the people, mother, at the scene on the
+market-place yonder."
+
+"Not the martyrdom of our good friend, Jansen, surely?"
+
+"Yes, mother, why not? It is terrible, it is a crime, no doubt, but
+the observer of life should study these things. There is nothing more
+fascinating to the philosopher than the play of human passions. The
+emotions of the brutal crowd, the stolid indifference of the guard,
+the grief of the sympathisers, the stoical endurance of the victims
+animated by religious exaltation----"
+
+"And the beautiful logic of the philosopher, with his nose in the air,
+while he watches his friend and brother in the Faith being slowly
+burnt to death," broke out Foy with passion.
+
+"Hush! hush!" said Dirk, striking his fist upon the table with a blow
+that caused the glasses to ring, "this is no subject for word-
+chopping. Adrian, you would have been better with us than down below
+at that butchery, even though you were less safe," he added, with
+meaning. "But I wish to run none into danger, and you are of an age to
+judge for yourself. I beg you, however, to spare us your light talk
+about scenes that we think dreadful, however interesting you may have
+found them."
+
+Adrian shrugged his shoulders and called to Martin to bring him some
+more meat. As the great man approached him he spread out his fine-
+drawn nostrils and sniffed.
+
+"You smell, Martin," he said, "and no wonder. Look, there is blood
+upon your jerkin. Have you been killing pigs and forgotten to change
+it?"
+
+Martin's round blue eyes flashed, then went pale and dead again.
+
+"Yes, master," he answered, in his thick voice, "I have been killing
+pigs. But your dress also smells of blood and fire; perhaps you went
+too near the stake." At that moment, to put an end to the
+conversation, Dirk rose and said grace. Then he went out of the room
+accompanied by his wife and Foy, leaving Adrian to finish his meal
+alone, which he did reflectively and at leisure.
+
+When he left the eating chamber Foy followed Martin across the
+courtyard to the walled-in stables, and up a ladder to the room where
+the serving man slept. It was a queer place, and filled with an
+extraordinary collection of odds and ends; the skins of birds, otters,
+and wolves; weapons of different makes, notably a very large two-
+handed sword, plain and old-fashioned, but of excellent steel; bits of
+harness and other things.
+
+There was no bed in this room for the reason that Martin disdained a
+bed, a few skins upon the floor being all that he needed to lie on.
+Nor did he ask for much covering, since so hardy was he by nature,
+that except in the very bitterest weather his woollen vest was enough
+for him. Indeed, he had been known to sleep out in it when the frost
+was so sharp that he rose with his hair and beard covered with
+icicles.
+
+Martin shut the door and lit three lanterns, which he hung to hooks
+upon the wall.
+
+"Are you ready for a turn, master?" he asked.
+
+Foy nodded as he answered, "I want to get the taste of it all out of
+my mouth, so don't spare me. Lay on till I get angry, it will make me
+forget," and taking a leathern jerkin off a peg he pulled it over his
+head.
+
+"Forget what, master?"
+
+"Oh! the prayings and the burnings and Vrouw Jansen, and Adrian's sea-
+lawyer sort of talk."
+
+"Ah, yes, that's the worst of them all for us," and the big man leapt
+forward and whispered. "Keep an eye on him, Master Foy."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Foy sharply and flushing.
+
+"What I say."
+
+"You forget; you are talking of my brother, my own mother's son. I
+will hear no harm of Adrian; his ways are different to ours, but he is
+good-hearted at bottom. Do you understand me, Martin?"
+
+"But not your father's son, master. It's the sire sets the strain; I
+have bred horses, and I know."
+
+Foy looked at him and hesitated.
+
+"No," said Martin, answering the question in his eyes. "I have nothing
+against him, but he always sees the other side, and that's bad. Also
+he is Spanish----"
+
+"And you don't like Spaniards," broke in Foy. "Martin, you are a pig-
+headed, prejudiced, unjust jackass."
+
+Martin smiled. "No, master, I don't like Spaniards, nor will you
+before you have done with them. But then it is only fair as they don't
+like me."
+
+"I say, Martin," said Foy, following a new line of thought, "how did
+you manage that business so quietly, and why didn't you let me do my
+share?"
+
+"Because you'd have made a noise, master, and we didn't want the watch
+on us; also, being fulled armed, they might have bettered you."
+
+"Good reasons, Martin. How did you do it? I couldn't see much."
+
+"It is a trick I learned up there in Friesland. Some of the Northmen
+sailors taught it me. There is a place in a man's neck, here at the
+back, and if he is squeezed there he loses his senses in a second.
+Thus, master--" and putting out his great hand he gripped Foy's neck
+in a fashion that caused him the intensest agony.
+
+"Drop it," said Foy, kicking at his shins.
+
+"I didn't squeeze; I was only showing you," answered Martin, opening
+his eyes. "Well, when their wits were gone of course it was easy to
+knock their heads together, so that they mightn't find them again. You
+see," he added, "if I had left them alive--well, they are dead anyway,
+and getting a hot supper by now, I expect. Which shall it be, master?
+Dutch stick or Spanish point?"
+
+"Stick first, then point," answered Foy.
+
+"Good. We need 'em both nowadays," and Martin reached down a pair of
+ash plants fitted into old sword hilts to protect the hands of the
+players.
+
+They stood up to each other on guard, and then against the light of
+the lanterns it could be seen how huge a man was Martin. Foy, although
+well-built and sturdy, and like all his race of a stout habit, looked
+but a child beside the bulk of this great fellow. As for their stick
+game, which was in fact sword exercise, it is unnecessary to follow
+its details, for the end of it was what might almost have been
+expected. Foy sprang to and fro slashing and cutting, while Martin the
+solid scarcely moved his weapon. Then suddenly there would be a parry
+and a reach, and the stick would fall with a thud all down the length
+of Foy's back, causing the dust to start from his leathern jerkin.
+
+"It's no good," said Foy at last, rubbing himself ruefully. "What's
+the use of guarding against you, you great brute, when you simply
+crash through my guard and hit me all the same? That isn't science."
+
+"No, master," answered Martin, "but it is business. If we had been
+using swords you would have been in pieces by now. No blame to you and
+no credit to me; my reach is longer and my arm heavier, that is all."
+
+"At any rate I am beaten," said Foy; "now take the rapiers and give me
+a chance."
+
+Then they went at it with the thrusting-swords, rendered harmless by a
+disc of lead upon their points, and at this game the luck turned. Foy
+was active as a cat in the eye of a hawk, and twice he managed to get
+in under Martin's guard.
+
+"You're dead, old fellow," he said at the second thrust.
+
+"Yes, young master," answered Martin, "but remember that I killed you
+long ago, so that you are only a ghost and of no account. Although I
+have tried to learn its use to please you, I don't mean to fight with
+a toasting fork. This is my weapon," and, seizing the great sword
+which stood in the corner, he made it hiss through the air.
+
+Foy took it from his hand and looked at it. It was a long straight
+blade with a plain iron guard, or cage, for the hands, and on it, in
+old letters, was engraved one Latin word, /Silentium/, "Silence."
+
+"Why is it called 'Silence,' Martin?"
+
+"Because it makes people silent, I suppose, master."
+
+"What is its history, and how did you come by it?" asked Foy in a
+malicious voice. He knew that the subject was a sore one with the huge
+Frisian.
+
+Martin turned red as his own beard and looked uncomfortable. "I
+believe," he answered, staring upwards, "that it was the ancient Sword
+of Justice of a little place up in Friesland. As to how I came by it,
+well, I forget."
+
+"And you call yourself a good Christian," said Foy reproachfully. "Now
+I have heard that your head was going to be chopped off with this
+sword, but that somehow you managed to steal it first and got away."
+
+"There was something of the sort," mumbled Martin, "but it is so long
+ago that it slips my mind. I was so often in broils and drunk in those
+days--may the dear Lord forgive me--that I can't quite remember
+things. And now, by your leave, I want to go to sleep."
+
+"You old liar," said Foy shaking his head at him, "you killed that
+poor executioner and made off with his sword. You know you did, and
+now you are ashamed to own the truth."
+
+"May be, may be," answered Martin vacuously; "so many things happen in
+the world that a fool man cannot remember them all. I want to go to
+sleep."
+
+"Martin," said Foy, sitting down upon a stool and dragging off his
+leather jerkin, "what used you to do before you turned holy? You have
+never told me all the story. Come now, speak up. I won't tell Adrian."
+
+"Nothing worth mentioning, Master Foy."
+
+"Out with it, Martin."
+
+"Well, if you wish to know, I am the son of a Friesland boor."
+
+"--And an Englishwoman from Yarmouth: I know all that."
+
+"Yes," repeated Martin, "an Englishwoman from Yarmouth. She was very
+strong, my mother; she could hold up a cart on her shoulders while my
+father greased the wheels, that is for a bet; otherwise she used to
+make my father hold the cart up while /she/ greased the wheels. Folk
+would come to see her do the trick. When I grew up I held the cart and
+they both greased the wheels. But at last they died of the plague, the
+pair of them, God rest their souls! So I inherited the farm----"
+
+"And--" said Foy, fixing him with his eye.
+
+"And," jerked out Martin in an unwilling fashion, "fell into bad
+habits."
+
+"Drink?" suggested the merciless Foy.
+
+Martin sighed and hung his great head. He had a tender conscience.
+
+"Then you took to prize-fighting," went on his tormentor; "you can't
+deny it; look at your nose."
+
+"I did, master, for the Lord hadn't touched my heart in those days,
+and," he added, brisking up, "it wasn't such a bad trade, for nobody
+ever beat me except a Brussels man once when I was drunk. He broke my
+nose, but afterwards, when I was sober--" and he stopped.
+
+"You killed the Spanish boxer here in Leyden," said Foy sternly.
+
+"Yes," echoed Martin, "I killed him sure enough, but--oh! it was a
+pretty fight, and he brought it on himself. He was a fine man, that
+Spaniard, but the devil wouldn't play fair, so I just had to kill him.
+I hope that they bear in mind up above that I /had/ to kill him."
+
+"Tell me about it, Martin, for I was at The Hague at the time, and
+can't remember. Of course I don't approve of such things"--and the
+young rascal clasped his hands and looked pious--"but as it is all
+done with, one may as well hear the story of the fight. To spin it
+won't make you more wicked than you are."
+
+Then suddenly Martin the unreminiscent developed a marvellous memory,
+and with much wealth of detail set out the exact circumstances of that
+historic encounter.
+
+"And after he had kicked me in the stomach," he ended, "which, master,
+you will know he had no right to do, I lost my temper and hit out with
+all my strength, having first feinted and knocked up his guard with my
+left arm----"
+
+"And then," said Foy, growing excited, for Martin really told the
+story very well, "what happened?"
+
+"Oh, his head went back between his shoulders, and when they picked
+him up, his neck was broken. I was sorry, but I couldn't help it, the
+Lord knows I couldn't help it; he shouldn't have called me 'a dirty
+Frisian ox' and kicked me in the stomach."
+
+"No, that was very wrong of him. But they arrested you, didn't they,
+Martin?"
+
+"Yes, for the second time they condemned me to death as a brawler and
+a manslayer. You see, the other Friesland business came up against me,
+and the magistrates here had money on the Spaniard. Then your dear
+father saved me. He was burgomaster of that year, and he paid the
+death fine for me--a large sum--afterwards, too, he taught me to be
+sober and think of my soul. So you know why Red Martin will serve him
+and his while there is a drop of blood left in his worthless carcase.
+And now, Master Foy, I'm going to sleep, and God grant that those
+dirty Spanish dogs mayn't haunt me."
+
+"Don't you fear for that, Martin," said Foy as he took his departure,
+"/absolvo te/ for those Spaniards. Through your strength God smote
+them who were not ashamed to rob and insult a poor new widowed woman
+after helping to murder her husband. Yes, Martin, you may enter that
+on the right side of the ledger--for a change--for they won't haunt
+you at night. I'm more afraid lest the business should be traced home
+to us, but I don't think it likely since the street was quite empty."
+
+"Quite empty," echoed Martin nodding his head. "Nobody saw me except
+the two soldiers and Vrouw Jansen. They can't tell, and I'm sure that
+she won't. Good-night, my young master."
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X
+
+                       ADRIAN GOES OUT HAWKING
+
+In a house down a back street not very far from the Leyden prison, a
+man and a woman sat at breakfast on the morning following the burning
+of the Heer Jansen and his fellow martyr. These also we have met
+before, for they were none other than the estimable Black Meg and her
+companion, named the Butcher. Time, which had left them both strong
+and active, had not, it must be admitted, improved their personal
+appearance. Black Meg, indeed, was much as she had always been, except
+that her hair was now grey and her features, which seemed to be
+covered with yellow parchment, had become sharp and haglike, though
+her dark eyes still burned with their ancient fire. The man, Hague
+Simon, or the Butcher, scoundrel by nature and spy and thief by trade,
+one of the evil spawn of an age of violence and cruelty, boasted a
+face and form that became his reputation well. His countenance was
+villainous, very fat and flabby, with small, pig-like eyes, and
+framed, as it were, in a fringe of sandy-coloured whiskers, running
+from the throat to the temple, where they faded away into a great
+expanse of utterly bald head. The figure beneath was heavy, pot-
+haunched, and supported upon a pair of bowed but sturdy legs.
+
+But if they were no longer young, and such good looks as they ever
+possessed had vanished, the years had brought them certain
+compensations. Indeed, it was a period in which spies and all such
+wretches flourished, since, besides other pickings, by special
+enactment a good proportion of the realized estates of heretics was
+paid over to the informers as blood-money. Of course, however, humble
+tools like the Butcher and his wife did not get the largest joints of
+the heretic sheep, for whenever one was slaughtered, there were always
+many honest middlemen of various degree to be satisfied, from the
+judge down to the executioner, with others who never showed their
+faces.
+
+Still, when the burnings and torturings were brisk, the amount
+totalled up very handsomely. Thus, as the pair sat at their meal this
+morning, they were engaged in figuring out what they might expect to
+receive from the estate of the late Heer Jansen, or at least Black Meg
+was so employed with the help of a deal board and a bit of chalk. At
+last she announced the result, which was satisfactory. Simon held up
+his fat hands in admiration.
+
+"Clever little dove," he said, "you ought to have been a lawyer's wife
+with your head for figures. Ah! it grows near, it grows near."
+
+"What grows near, you fool?" asked Meg in her deep mannish voice.
+
+"That farm with an inn attached of which I dream, standing in rich
+pasture land with a little wood behind it, and in the wood a church.
+Not too large; no, I am not ambitious; let us say a hundred acres,
+enough to keep thirty or forty cows, which you would milk while I
+marketed the butter and the cheeses----"
+
+"And slit the throats of the guests," interpolated Meg.
+
+Simon looked shocked. "No, wife, you misjudge me. It is a rough world,
+and we must take queer cuts to fortune, but once I get there,
+respectability for me and a seat in the village church, provided, of
+course, that it is orthodox. I know that you come of the people, and
+your instincts are of the people, but I can never forget that my
+grandfather was a gentleman," and Simon puffed himself out and looked
+at the ceiling.
+
+"Indeed," sneered Meg, "and what was your grandmother, or, for the
+matter of that, how do you know who was your grandfather? Country
+house! The old Red Mill, where you hide goods out there in the swamp,
+is likely to be your only country house. Village church? Village
+gallows more likely. No, don't you look nasty at me, for I won't stand
+it, you dirty little liar. I have done things, I know; but I wouldn't
+have got my own aunt burned for an Anabaptist, which she wasn't, in
+order to earn twenty florins, so there."
+
+Simon turned purple with rage; that aunt story was one which touched
+him on the raw. "Ugly----" he began.
+
+Instantly Meg's hand shot out and grasped the neck of a bottle,
+whereon he changed his tune.
+
+"The sex, the sex!" he murmured, turning aside to mop his bald head
+with a napkin; "well, it's only their pretty way, they will have their
+little joke. Hullo, there is someone knocking at the door."
+
+"And mind how you open it," said Meg, becoming alert. "Remember we
+have plenty of enemies, and a pike blade comes through a small crack."
+
+"Can you live with the wise and remain a greenhorn? Trust me." And
+placing his arm about his spouse's waist, Simon stood on tiptoe and
+kissed her gently on the cheek in token of reconciliation, for Meg had
+a nasty memory in quarrels. Then he skipped away towards the door as
+fast as his bandy legs would carry him.
+
+The colloquy there was long and for the most part carried on through
+the keyhole, but in the end their visitor was admitted, a beetle-
+browed brute of much the same stamp as his host.
+
+"You are nice ones," he said sulkily, "to be so suspicious about an
+old friend, especially when he comes on a job."
+
+"Don't be angry, dear Hans," interrupted Simon in a pleading voice.
+"You know how many bad characters are abroad in these rough times;
+why, for aught we could tell, you might have been one of these
+desperate Lutherans, who stick at nothing. But about the business?"
+
+"Lutherans, indeed," snarled Hans; "well, if they are wise they'd
+stick at your fat stomach; but it is a Lutheran job that I have come
+from The Hague to talk about."
+
+"Ah!" said Meg, "who sent you?"
+
+"A Spaniard named Ramiro, who has recently turned up there, a humorous
+dog connected with the Inquisition, who seems to know everybody and
+whom nobody knows. However, his money is right enough, and no doubt he
+has authority behind him. He says that you are old friends of his."
+
+"Ramiro? Ramiro?" repeated Meg reflectively, "that means Oarsman,
+doesn't it, and sounds like an alias? Well, I've lots of acquaintances
+in the galleys, and he may be one of them. What does he want, and what
+are the terms?"
+
+Hans leant forward and whispered for a long while. The other two
+listened in silence, only nodding from time to time.
+
+"It doesn't seem much for the job," said Simon when Hans had finished.
+
+"Well, friend, it is easy and safe; a fat merchant and his wife and a
+young girl. Mind you, there is no killing to be done if we can help
+it, and if we can't help it the Holy Office will shield us. Also it is
+only the letter which he thinks that the young woman may carry that
+the noble Ramiro wants. Doubtless it has to do with the sacred affairs
+of the Church. Any valuables about them we may keep as a perquisite
+over and above the pay."
+
+Simon hesitated, but Meg announced with decision,
+
+"It is good enough; these merchant woman generally have jewels hidden
+in their stays."
+
+"My dear," interrupted Simon.
+
+"Don't 'my dear' me," said Meg fiercely. "I have made up my mind, so
+there's an end. We meet by the Boshhuysen at five o'clock at the big
+oak in the copse, where we will settle the details."
+
+After this Simon said no more, for he had this virtue, so useful in
+domestic life--he knew when to yield.
+
+
+
+On this same morning Adrian rose late. The talk at the supper table on
+the previous night, especially Foy's coarse, uneducated sarcasm, had
+ruffled his temper, and when Adrian's temper was ruffled he generally
+found it necessary to sleep himself into good humour. As the
+bookkeeper of the establishment, for his stepfather had never been
+able to induce him to take an active part in its work, which in his
+heart he considered beneath him, Adrian should have been in the office
+by nine o'clock. Not having risen before ten, however, nor eaten his
+breakfast until after eleven, this was clearly impossible. Then he
+remembered that here was a good chance of finishing a sonnet, of which
+the last lines were running in his head. It chanced that Adrian was a
+bit of a poet, and, like most poets, he found quiet essential to the
+art of composition. Somehow, when Foy was in the house, singing and
+talking, and that great Frisian brute, Martin, was tramping to and
+fro, there was never any quiet, for even when he could not hear them,
+the sense of their presence exasperated his nerves. So now was his
+opportunity, especially as his mother was out--marketing, she said--
+but in all probability engaged upon some wretched and risky business
+connected with the people whom she called martyrs. Adrian determined
+to avail himself of it and finish his sonnet.
+
+This took some time. First, as all true artists know, the Muse must be
+summoned, and she will rarely arrive under an hour's appropriate and
+gloomy contemplation of things in general. Then, especially in the
+case of sonnets, rhymes, which are stubborn and remorseless things,
+must be found and arranged. The pivot and object of this particular
+poem was a certain notable Spanish beauty, Isabella d'Ovanda by name.
+She was the wife of a decrepit but exceedingly noble Spaniard, who
+might almost have been her grandfather, and who had been sent as one
+of a commission appointed by King Philip II. to inquire into certain
+financial matters connected with the Netherlands.
+
+This grandee, who, as it happened, was a very industrious and
+conscientious person, among other cities, had visited Leyden in order
+to assess the value of the Imperial dues and taxes. The task did not
+take him long, because the burghers rudely and vehemently declared
+that under their ancient charter they were free from any Imperial dues
+or taxes whatsoever, nor could the noble marquis's arguments move them
+to a more rational view. Still, he argued for a week, and during that
+time his wife, the lovely Isabella, dazzled the women of the town with
+her costumes and the men with her exceedingly attractive person.
+
+Especially did she dazzle the romantic Adrian; hence the poetry. On
+the whole the rhymes went pretty well, though there were difficulties,
+but with industry he got round them. Finally the sonnet, a high-flown
+and very absurd composition, was completed.
+
+By now it was time to eat; indeed, there are few things that make a
+man hungrier than long-continued poetical exercise, so Adrian ate. In
+the midst of the meal his mother returned, pale and anxious-faced, for
+the poor woman had been engaged in making arrangements for the safety
+of the beggared widow of the martyred Jansen, a pathetic and even a
+dangerous task. In his own way Adrian was fond of his mother, but
+being a selfish puppy he took but little note of her cares or moods.
+Therefore, seizing the opportunity of an audience he insisted upon
+reading to her his sonnet, not once but several times.
+
+"Very pretty, my son, very pretty," murmured Lysbeth, through whose
+bewildered brain the stilted and meaningless words buzzed like bees in
+an empty hive, "though I am sure I cannot guess how you find the heart
+in such times as these to write poetry to fine ladies whom you do not
+know."
+
+"Poetry, mother," said Adrian sententiously, "is a great consoler; it
+lifts the mind from the contemplation of petty and sordid cares."
+
+"Petty and sordid cares!" repeated Lysbeth wonderingly, then she added
+with a kind of cry: "Oh! Adrian, have you no heart that you can watch
+a saint burn and come home to philosophise about his agonies? Will you
+never understand? If you could have seen that poor woman this morning
+who only three months ago was a happy bride." Then bursting into tears
+Lysbeth turned and fled from the room, for she remembered that what
+was the fate of the Vrouw Jansen to-day to-morrow might be her own.
+
+This show of emotion quite upset Adrian whose nerves were delicate,
+and who being honestly attached to his mother did not like to see her
+weeping.
+
+"Pest on the whole thing," he thought to himself, "why can't we go
+away and live in some pleasant place where they haven't got any
+religion, unless it is the worship of Venus? Yes, a place of orange
+groves, and running streams, and pretty women with guitars, who like
+having sonnets read to them, and----"
+
+At this moment the door opened and Martin's huge and flaming poll
+appeared.
+
+"The master wants to know if you are coming to the works, Heer Adrian,
+and if not will you be so good as to give me the key of the strong-box
+as he needs the cash book."
+
+With a groan Adrian rose to go, then changed his mind. No, after that
+perfumed vision of green groves and lovely ladies it was impossible
+for him to face the malodorous and prosaic foundry.
+
+"Tell them I can't come," he said, drawing the key from his pocket.
+
+"Very good, Heer Adrian, why not?"
+
+"Because I am writing."
+
+"Writing what?" queried Martin.
+
+"A sonnet."
+
+"What's a sonnet?" asked Martin blankly.
+
+"Ill-educated clown," murmured Adrian, then--with a sudden
+inspiration, "I'll show you what a sonnet is; I will read it to you.
+Come in and shut the door." Martin obeyed, and was duly rewarded with
+the sonnet, of which he understood nothing at all except the name of
+the lady, Isabella d'Ovanda. But Martin was not without the guile of
+the serpent.
+
+"Beautiful," he said, "beautiful! Read it again, master."
+
+Adrian did so with much delight, remembering the tale of how the music
+of Orpheus had charmed the very beasts.
+
+"Ah!" said Martin, "that's a love-letter, isn't it, to that splendid,
+black-eyed marchioness, whom I saw looking at you?"
+
+"Well, not exactly," said Adrian, highly pleased, although to tell the
+truth he could not recollect upon what occasion the fair Isabella had
+favoured him with her kind glances. "Yet I suppose that you might call
+it so, an idealised love-letter, a letter in which ardent and distant
+yet tender admiration is wrapt with the veil of verse."
+
+"Quite so. Well, Master Adrian, just you send it to her."
+
+"You don't think that she might be offended?" queried Adrian
+doubtfully.
+
+"Offended!" said Martin, "if she is I know nothing of women" (as a
+matter of fact he didn't.) "No, she will be very pleased; she'll take
+it away and read it by herself, and sleep with it under her pillow
+until she knows it by heart, and then I daresay she will ask you to
+come and see her. Well, I must be off, but thank you for reading me
+the beautiful poetry letter, Heer Adrian."
+
+"Really," reflected Adrian, as the door closed behind him, "this is
+another instance of the deceitfulness of appearances. I always thought
+Martin a great, brutal fool, yet in his breast, uncultured as it is,
+the sacred spark still smoulders." And then and there he made up his
+mind that he would read Martin a further selection of poems upon the
+first opportunity.
+
+If only Adrian could have been a witness to the scene which at that
+very moment was in progress at the works! Martin having delivered the
+key of the box, sought out Foy, and proceeded to tell him the story.
+More, perfidious one, he handed over a rough draft of the sonnet which
+he had surreptitiously garnered from the floor, to Foy, who, clad in a
+leather apron, and seated on the edge of a casting, read it eagerly.
+
+"I told him to send it," went on Martin, "and, by St. Peter, I think
+he will, and then if he doesn't have old Don Diaz after him with a
+pistol in one hand and a stiletto in the other, my name isn't Martin
+Roos."
+
+"Of course, of course," gasped Foy, kicking his legs into the air with
+delight, "why, they call the old fellow 'Singe jaloux.' Oh! it's
+capital, and I only hope that he opens the lady's letters."
+
+Thus did Foy, the commonplace and practical, make a mock of the poetic
+efforts of the high-souled and sentimental Adrian.
+
+Meanwhile Adrian, feeling that he required air after his literary
+labours, fetched his peregrine from its perch--for he was fond of
+hawking--and, setting it on his wrist, started out to find a quarry on
+the marshes near the town.
+
+Before he was halfway down the street he had forgotten all about the
+sonnet and the lovely Isabella. His was a curious temperament, and
+this sentimentality, born of vainness and idle hours, by no means
+expressed it all. That he was what we should nowadays call a prig we
+know, and also that he possessed his father's, Montalvo's, readiness
+of speech without his father's sense of humour. In him, as Martin had
+hinted, the strain of the sire predominated, for in all essentials
+Adrian was as Spanish in mind as in appearance.
+
+For instance, the sudden and violent passions into which he was apt to
+fall if thwarted or overlooked were purely Spanish; there seemed to be
+nothing of the patient, phlegmatic Netherlander about this side of
+him. Indeed it was this temper of his perhaps more than any other
+desire or tendency that made him so dangerous, for, whereas the
+impulses of his heart were often good enough, they were always liable
+to be perverted by some access of suddenly provoked rage.
+
+From his birth up Adrian had mixed little with Spaniards, and every
+influence about him, especially that of his mother, the being whom he
+most loved on earth, had been anti-Spanish, yet were he an hidalgo
+fresh from the Court at the Escurial, he could scarcely have been more
+Castilian. Thus he had been brought up in what might be called a
+Republican atmosphere, yet he was without sympathy for the love of
+liberty which animated the people of Holland. The sturdy independence
+of the Netherlanders, their perpetual criticism of kings and
+established rules, their vulgar and unheard-of assumption that the
+good things of the world were free to all honest and hard-working
+citizens, and not merely the birthright of blue blood, did not appeal
+to Adrian. Also from childhood he had been a member of the dissenting
+Church, one of the New Religion. Yet, at heart, he rejected this faith
+with its humble professors and pastors, its simple, and sometimes
+squalid rites; its long and earnest prayers offered to the Almighty in
+the damp of a cellar or the reek of a cowhouse.
+
+Like thousands of his Spanish fellow-countrymen, he was
+constitutionally unable to appreciate the fact that true religion and
+true faith are the natural fruits of penitence and effort, and that
+individual repentance and striving are the only sacrifices required of
+man.
+
+For safety's sake, like most politic Netherlanders, Adrian was called
+upon from time to time to attend worship in the Catholic churches. He
+did not find the obligation irksome. In fact, the forms and rites of
+that stately ceremonial, the moving picture of the Mass in those dim
+aisles, the pealing of the music and the sweet voices of hidden
+choristers--all these things unsealed a fountain in his bosom and at
+whiles moved him well nigh to tears. The system appealed to him also,
+and he could understand that in it were joy and comfort. For here was
+to be found forgiveness of sins, not far off in the heavens, but at
+hand upon the earth; forgiveness to all who bent the head and paid the
+fee. Here, ready made by that prince of armourers, a Church that
+claimed to be directly inspired, was a harness of proof which, after
+the death he dreaded (for he was full of spiritual fears and
+superstitions), would suffice to turn the shafts of Satan from his
+poor shivering soul, however steeped in crime. Was not this a more
+serviceable and practical faith than that of these loud-voiced, rude-
+handed Lutherans among whom he lived; men who elected to cast aside
+this armour and trust instead to a buckler forged by their faith and
+prayers--yes, and to give up their evil ways and subdue their own
+desires that they might forge it better?
+
+Such were the thoughts of Adrian's secret heart, but as yet he had
+never acted on them, since, however much he might wish to do so, he
+had not found the courage to break away from the influence of his
+surroundings. His surroundings--ah! how he hated them! How he hated
+them! For very shame's sake, indeed, he could not live in complete
+idleness among folk who were always busy, therefore he acted as
+accountant in his stepfather's business, keeping the books of the
+foundry in a scanty and inefficient fashion, or writing letters to
+distant customers, for he was a skilled clerk, to order the raw
+materials necessary to the craft. But of this occupation he was weary,
+for he had the true Spanish dislike and contempt of trade. In his
+heart he held that war was the only occupation worthy of a man,
+successful war, of course, against foes worth plundering, such as
+Cortes and Pizarro had waged upon the poor Indians of New Spain.
+
+Adrian had read a chronicle of the adventures of these heroes, and
+bitterly regretted that he had come into the world too late to share
+them. The tale of heathen foemen slaughtered by thousands, and of the
+incalculable golden treasures divided among their conquerors, fired
+his imagination--especially the treasures. At times he would see them
+in his sleep, baskets full of gems, heaps of barbaric gold and guerdon
+of fair women slaves, all given by heaven to the true soldier whom it
+had charged with the sacred work of Christianising unbelievers by
+means of massacre and the rack.
+
+Oh! how deeply did he desire such wealth and the power which it would
+bring with it; he who was dependent upon others that looked down upon
+him as a lazy dreamer, who had never a guilder to spare in his pouch,
+who had nothing indeed but more debts than he cared to remember. But
+it never occurred to him to set to work and grow rich like his
+neighbours by honest toil and commerce. No, that was the task of
+slaves, like these low Hollander fellows among whom his lot was cast.
+
+Such were the main characteristics of Adrian, surnamed van Goorl;
+Adrian the superstitious but unspiritual dreamer, the vain Sybarite,
+the dull poet, the chopper of false logic, the weak and passionate
+self-seeker, whose best and deepest cravings, such as his love for his
+mother and another love that shall be told of, were really little more
+than a reflection of his own pride and lusts, or at least could be
+subordinated to their fulfilment. Not that he was altogether bad;
+somewhere in him there was a better part. Thus: he was capable of good
+purposes and of bitter remorse; under certain circumstances even he
+might become capable also of a certain spurious spiritual exaltation.
+But if this was to bloom in his heart, it must be in a prison strong
+enough to protect from the blows of temptation. Adrian tempted would
+always be Adrian overcome. He was fashioned by nature to be the tool
+of others or of his own desires.
+
+It may be asked what part had his mother in him; where in his weak
+ignoble nature was the trace of her pure and noble character? It seems
+hard to find. Was this want to be accounted for by the circumstances
+connected with his birth, in which she had been so unwilling an agent?
+Had she given him something of her body but naught of that which was
+within her own control--her spirit? Who can say? This at least is
+true, that from his mother's stock he had derived nothing beyond a
+certain Dutch doggedness of purpose which, when added to his other
+qualities, might in some events make him formidable--a thing to fear
+and flee from.
+
+
+
+Adrian reached the Witte Poort, and paused on this side of the moat to
+reflect about things in general. Like most young men of his time and
+blood, as has been said, he had military leanings, and was convinced
+that, given the opportunity, he might become one of the foremost
+generals of his age. Now he was engaged in imagining himself besieging
+Leyden at the head of a great army, and in fancy disposing his forces
+after such fashion as would bring about its fall in the shortest
+possible time. Little did he guess that within some few years this
+very question was to exercise the brain of Valdez and other great
+Spanish captains.
+
+Whilst he was thus occupied suddenly a rude voice called,
+
+"Wake up, Spaniard," and a hard object--it was a green apple--struck
+him on his flat cap nearly knocking out the feather. Adrian leaped
+round with an oath, to catch sight of two lads, louts of about
+fifteen, projecting their tongues and jeering at him from behind the
+angles of the gate-house. Now Adrian was not popular with the youth of
+Leyden, and he knew it well. So, thinking it wisest to take no notice
+of this affront, he was about to continue on his way when one of the
+youths, made bold by impunity, stepped from his corner and bowed
+before him till the ragged cap in his hand touched the dust, saying,
+in a mocking voice,
+
+"Hans, why do you disturb the noble hidalgo? Cannot you see that the
+noble hidalgo is going for a walk in the country to look for his most
+high father, the honourable duke of the Golden Fleece, to whom he is
+taking a cockolly bird as a present?"
+
+Adrian heard and winced at the sting of the insult, as a high-bred
+horse winces beneath the lash. Of a sudden rage boiled in his veins
+like a fountain of fire, and drawing the dagger from his girdle, he
+rushed at the boys, dragging the hooded hawk, which had become
+dislodged from his wrist, fluttering through the air after him. At
+that moment, indeed, he would have been capable of killing one or both
+of them if he could have caught them, but, fortunately for himself and
+them, being prepared for an onslaught, they vanished this way and that
+up the narrow lanes. Presently he stopped, and, still shaking with
+wrath, replaced the hawk on his wrist and walked across the bridge.
+
+"They shall pay for it," he muttered. "Oh! I will not forget, I will
+not forget."
+
+Here it may be explained that of the story of his birth Adrian had
+heard something, but not all. He knew, for instance, that his father's
+name was Montalvo, that the marriage with his mother for some reason
+was declared to be illegal, and that this Montalvo had left the
+Netherlands under a cloud to find his death, so he had been told,
+abroad. More than this Adrian did not know for certain, since
+everybody showed a singular reticence in speaking to him of the
+matter. Twice he had plucked up courage to question his mother on the
+subject, and on each occasion her face had turned cold and hard as
+stone, and she answered almost in the same words:
+
+"Son, I beg you to be silent. When I am dead you will find all the
+story of your birth written down, but if you are wise you will not
+read."
+
+Once he had asked the same question of his stepfather, Dirk van Goorl,
+whereupon Dirk looked ill at ease and answered:
+
+"Take my advice, lad, and be content to know that you are here and
+alive with friends to take care of you. Remember that those who dig in
+churchyards find bones."
+
+"Indeed," replied Adrian haughtily; "at least I trust that there is
+nothing against my mother's reputation."
+
+At these words, to his surprise, Dirk suddenly turned pale as a sheet
+and stepped towards him as though he were about to fly at his throat.
+
+"You dare to doubt your mother," he began, "that angel out of
+Heaven--" then ceased and added presently, "Go! I beg your pardon; I
+should have remembered that you at least are innocent, and it is but
+natural that the matter weighs upon your mind."
+
+So Adrian went, also that proverb about churchyards and bones made
+such an impression on him that he did no more digging. In other words
+he ceased to ask questions, trying to console his mind with the
+knowledge that, however his father might have behaved to his mother,
+at least he was a man of ancient rank and ancient blood, which blood
+was his to-day. The rest would be forgotten, although enough of it was
+still remembered to permit of his being taunted by those street louts,
+and when it was forgotten the blood, that precious blue blood of an
+hidalgo of Spain, must still remain his heritage.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI
+
+                  ADRIAN RESCUES BEAUTY IN DISTRESS
+
+All that long evening Adrian wandered about the causeways which
+pierced the meadowlands and marshes, pondering these things and
+picturing himself as having attained to the dignity of a grandee of
+Spain, perhaps even--who could tell--to the proud rank of a Knight of
+the Golden Fleece entitled to stand covered in the presence of his
+Sovereign. More than one snipe and other bird such as he had come to
+hawk rose at his feet, but so preoccupied was he that they were out of
+flight before he could unhood his falcon. At length, after he had
+passed the church of Weddinvliet, and, following the left bank of the
+Old Vliet, was opposite to the wood named Boshhuyen after the half-
+ruined castle that stood in it, he caught sight of a heron winging its
+homeward way to the heronry, and cast off his peregrine out of the
+hood. She saw the quarry at once and dashed towards it, whereon the
+heron, becoming aware of the approach of its enemy, began to make
+play, rising high into the air in narrow circles. Swiftly the falcon
+climbed after it in wider rings till at length she hovered high above
+and stooped, but in vain. With a quick turn of the wings the heron
+avoided her, and before the falcon could find her pitch again, was far
+on its path towards the wood.
+
+Once more the peregrine climbed and stooped with a like result. A
+third time she soared upwards in great circles, and a third time
+rushed downwards, now striking the quarry full and binding to it.
+Adrian, who was following their flight as fast as he could run,
+leaping some of the dykes in his path and splashing through others,
+saw and paused to watch the end. For a moment hawk and quarry hung in
+the air two hundred feet above the tallest tree beneath them, for at
+the instant of its taking the heron had begun to descend to the grove
+for refuge, a struggling black dot against the glow of sunset. Then,
+still bound together, they rushed downward headlong, for their spread
+and fluttering wings did not serve to stay their fall, and vanished
+among the tree-tops.
+
+"Now my good hawk will be killed in the boughs--oh! what a fool was I
+to fly so near the wood," thought Adrian to himself as again he
+started forward.
+
+Pushing on at his best pace, soon he was wandering about among the
+trees as near to that spot where he had seen the birds fall as he
+could guess it, calling to the falcon and searching for her with his
+eyes. But here, in the dense grove, the fading light grew faint, so
+that at length he was obliged to abandon the quest in despair, and
+turned to find his way to the Leyden road. When within twenty paces of
+it, suddenly he came upon hawk and heron. The heron was stone dead,
+and the brave falcon so injured that it seemed hopeless to try to save
+her, for as he feared, they had crashed through the boughs of a tree
+in their fall. Adrian looked at her in dismay, for he loved this bird,
+which was the best of its kind in the city, having trained her himself
+from a nestling. Indeed there had always been a curious sympathy
+between himself and this fierce creature of which he made a companion
+as another man might of a dog. Even now he noted with a sort of pride
+that broken-winged and shattered though she was, her talons remained
+fixed in the back of the quarry, and her beak through the neck.
+
+He stroked the falcon's head, whereon the bird, recognising him,
+loosed her grip of the heron and tried to flutter to her accustomed
+perch upon his wrist, only to fall to the ground, where she lay
+watching him with her bright eyes. Then, because there was no help for
+it, although he choked with grief at the deed, Adrian struck her on
+the head with his staff until she died.
+
+"Goodbye, friend," he muttered; "at least that is the best way to go
+hence, dying with a dead foe beneath," and, picking up the peregrine,
+he smoothed her ruffled feathers and placed her tenderly in his
+satchel.
+
+Then it was, just as Adrian rose to his feet, standing beneath the
+shadow of the big oak upon which the birds had fallen, that coming
+from the road, which was separated from him by a little belt of
+undergrowth, he heard the sound of men's voices growling and
+threatening, and with them a woman's cry for help. At any other time
+he would have hesitated and reconnoitred, or, perhaps, have retreated
+at once, for he knew well the dangers of mixing himself up in the
+quarrels of wayfarers in those rough days. But the loss of the hawk
+had exasperated his nerves, making any excitement or adventure welcome
+to him. Therefore, without pausing to think, Adrian pushed forward
+through the brushwood to find himself in the midst of a curious scene.
+
+Before him ran the grassy road or woodland lane. In the midst of it,
+sprawling on his back, for he had been pulled from his horse, lay a
+stout burgher, whose pockets were being rifled by a heavy-browed
+footpad, who from time to time, doubtless to keep him quiet,
+threatened his victim with a knife. On the pillion of the burgher's
+thickset Flemish horse, which was peacefully cropping at the grass,
+sat a middle-aged female, who seemed to be stricken dumb with terror,
+while a few paces away a second ruffian and a tall, bony woman were
+engaged in dragging a girl from the back of a mule.
+
+Acting on the impulse of the moment, Adrian shouted,
+
+"Come on, friends, here are the thieves," whereon the robber woman
+took to flight and the man wheeled round, as he turned snatching a
+naked knife from his girdle. But before he could lift it Adrian's
+heavy staff crashed down upon the point of his shoulder, causing him
+to drop the dagger with a howl of pain. Again the staff rose and fell,
+this time upon his head, staggering him and knocking off his cap, so
+that the light, such as it was, shone upon his villainous fat face,
+the fringe of sandy-coloured whisker running from throat to temples,
+and the bald head above, which Adrian knew at once for that of Hague
+Simon, or the Butcher. Fortunately for him, however, the Butcher was
+too surprised, or too much confused by the blow which he had received
+upon his head, to recognise his assailant. Nor, having lost his knife,
+and believing doubtless that Adrian was only the first of a troop of
+rescuers, did he seem inclined to continue the combat, but, calling to
+his companion to follow him, he began to run after the woman with a
+swiftness almost incredible in a man of his build and weight, turning
+presently into the brushwood, where he and his two fellow thieves
+vanished away.
+
+Adrian dropped the point of his stick and looked round him, for the
+whole affair had been so sudden, and the rout of the enemy so
+complete, that he was tempted to believe he must be dreaming. Not
+eighty seconds ago he was hiding the dead falcon in his satchel, and
+now behold! he was a gallant knight who, unarmed, except for a dagger,
+which he forgot to draw, had conquered two sturdy knaves and a female
+accomplice, bristling with weapons, rescuing from their clutches
+Beauty (for doubtless the maiden was beautiful), and, incidentally,
+her wealthy relatives. Just then the lady, who had been dragged from
+the mule to the ground, where she still lay, struggled to her knees
+and looked up, thereby causing the hood of her travelling cloak to
+fall back from her head.
+
+Thus it was, softened and illuminated by the last pale glow of this
+summer evening, that Adrian first saw the face of Elsa Brant, the
+woman upon whom, in the name of love, he was destined to bring so much
+sorrow.
+
+The hero Adrian, overthrower of robbers, looked at the kneeling Elsa,
+and knew that she was lovely, as, under the circumstances, was right
+and fitting, and the rescued Elsa, gazing at the hero Adrian, admitted
+to herself that he was handsome, also that his appearance on the scene
+had been opportune, not to say providential.
+
+Elsa Brant, the only child of that Hendrik Brant, the friend and
+cousin of Dirk van Goorl, who was already figured in this history, was
+just nineteen. Her eyes, and her hair which curled, were brown, her
+complexion was pale, suggesting delicacy of constitution, her mouth
+small, with a turn of humour about it, and her chin rather large and
+firm. She was of middle height, if anything somewhat under it, with an
+exquisitely rounded and graceful figure and perfect hands. Lacking the
+stateliness of a Spanish beauty, and the coarse fulness of outline
+which has always been admired in the Netherlands, Elsa was still
+without doubt a beautiful woman, though how much of her charm was
+owing to her bodily attractions, and how much to her vivacious mien
+and to a certain stamp of spirituality that was set upon her face in
+repose, and looked out of her clear large eyes when she was
+thoughtful, it would not be easy to determine. At any rate, her charms
+were sufficient to make a powerful impression upon Adrian, who,
+forgetting all about the Marchioness d'Ovanda, inspirer of sonnets,
+became enamoured of her then and there; partly for her own sake and
+partly because it was the right kind of thing for a deliverer to do.
+
+But it cannot be said, however deep her feelings of gratitude, that
+Elsa became enamoured of Adrian. Undoubtedly, as she had recognised,
+he was handsome, and she much admired the readiness and force with
+which he had smitten that singularly loathsome-looking individual who
+had dragged her from the mule. But as it chanced, standing where he
+did, the shadow of his face lay on the grass beside her. It was a
+faint shadow, for the light faded, still it was there, and it
+fascinated her, for seen thus the fine features became sinister and
+cruel, and their smile of courtesy and admiration was transformed into
+a most unpleasant sneer. A trivial accident of light, no doubt, and
+foolish enough that Elsa should notice it under such circumstances.
+But notice it she did, and what is more, so quickly are the minds of
+women turned this way or that, and so illogically do they draw a right
+conclusion from some pure freak of chance, it raised her prejudice
+against him.
+
+"Oh! Senor," said Elsa, clasping her hands, "how can I thank you
+enough?"
+
+This speech was short and not original. Yet there were two things
+about it that Adrian noted with satisfaction; first, that it was
+uttered in a soft and most attractive voice, and secondly, that the
+speaker supposed him to be a Spaniard of noble birth.
+
+"Do not thank me at all, gracious lady," he replied, making his lowest
+bow. "To put to flight two robber rogues and a woman was no great
+feat, although I had but this staff for weapon," he added, perhaps
+with a view to impressing upon the maiden's mind that her assailants
+had been armed while he, the deliverer, was not.
+
+"Ah!" she answered, "I daresay that a brave knight like you thinks
+nothing of fighting several men at once, but when that wretch with the
+big hands and the flat face caught hold of me I nearly died of fright.
+At the best of times I am a dreadful coward, and--no, I thank you,
+Senor, I can stand now and alone. See, here comes the Heer van
+Broekhoven under whose escort I am travelling, and look, he is
+bleeding. Oh! worthy friend, are you hurt?"
+
+"Not much, Elsa," gasped the Heer, for he was still breathless with
+fright and exhaustion, "but that ruffian--may the hangman have him--
+gave me a dig in the shoulder with his knife as he rose to run.
+However," he added with satisfaction, "he got nothing from me, for I
+am an old traveller, and he never thought to look in my hat."
+
+"I wonder why they attacked us," said Elsa.
+
+The Heer van Broekhoven rubbed his head thoughtfully. "To rob us, I
+suppose, for I heard the woman say, 'Here they are; look for the
+letter on the girl, Butcher.'"
+
+As he spoke Elsa's face turned grave, and Adrian saw her glance at the
+animal she had been riding and slip her arm through its rein.
+
+"Worthy sir," went on Van Broekhoven, "tell us whom we have to thank."
+
+"I am Adrian, called Van Goorl," Adrian replied with dignity.
+
+"Van Goorl!" said the Heer. "Well, this is strange; Providence could
+not have arranged it better. Listen, wife," he went on, addressing the
+stout lady, who all this while had sat still upon the horse, so
+alarmed and bewildered that she could not speak, "here is a son of
+Dirk van Goorl, to whom we are charged to deliver Elsa."
+
+"Indeed," answered the good woman, recovering herself somewhat, "I
+thought from the look of him that he was a Spanish nobleman. But
+whoever he is I am sure that we are all very much obliged to him, and
+if he could show us the way out of this dreadful wood, which doubtless
+is full of robbers, to the house of our kinsfolk, the Broekhovens of
+Leyden, I should be still more grateful."
+
+"Madam, you have only to accept my escort, and I assure you that you
+need fear no more robbers. Might I in turn ask this lady's name?"
+
+"Certainly, young sir, she is Elsa Brant, the only child of Hendrik
+Brant, the famous goldsmith of The Hague, but doubtless now that you
+know her name you know all that also, for she must be some kind of
+cousin to you. Husband, help Elsa on to her mule."
+
+"Let that be my duty," said Adrian, and, springing forward, he lifted
+Elsa to the saddle gracefully enough. Then, taking her mule by the
+bridle, he walked onwards through the wood praying in his heart that
+the Butcher and his companions would not find courage to attack them
+again before they were out of its depths."
+
+"Tell me, sir, are you Foy?" asked Elsa in a puzzled voice.
+
+"No," answered Adrian, shortly, "I am his brother."
+
+"Ah! that explains it. You see I was perplexed, for I remember Foy
+when I was quite little; a beautiful boy, with blue eyes and yellow
+hair, who was always very kind to me. Once he stopped at my father's
+house at The Hague with his father."
+
+"Indeed," said Adrian, "I am glad to hear that Foy was ever beautiful.
+I can only remember that he was very stupid, for I used to try to
+teach him. At any rate, I am afraid you will not think him beautiful
+now--that is, unless you admire young men who are almost as broad as
+they are long."
+
+"Oh! Heer Adrian," she answered, laughing, "I am afraid that fault can
+be found with most of us North Holland folk, and myself among the
+number. You see it is given to very few of us to be tall and noble-
+looking like high-born Spaniards--not that I should wish to resemble
+any Spaniard, however lovely she might be," Elsa added, with a slight
+hardening of her voice and face. "But," she went on hurriedly, as
+though sorry that the remark had escaped her, "you, sir, and Foy are
+strangely unlike to be brothers; is it not so?"
+
+"We are half-brothers," said Adrian looking straight before him; "we
+have the same mother only; but please do not call me 'sir,' call me
+'cousin.'"
+
+"No, I cannot do that," she replied gaily, "for Foy's mother is no
+relation of mine. I think that I must call you 'Sir Prince,' for, you
+see, you appeared at exactly the right time; just like the Prince in
+the fairy-tales, you know."
+
+Here was an opening not to be neglected by a young man of Adrian's
+stamp.
+
+"Ah!" he said in a tender voice, and looking up at the lady with his
+dark eyes, "that is a happy name indeed. I would ask no better lot
+than to be your Prince, now and always charged to defend you from
+every danger." (Here, it may be explained, that, however exaggerated
+his language, Adrian honestly meant what he said, seeing that already
+he was convinced that to be the husband of the beautiful heiress of
+one of the wealthiest men in the Netherlands would be a very
+satisfactory walk in life for a young man in his position.)
+
+"Oh! Sir Prince," broke in Elsa hurriedly, for her cavalier's ardour
+was somewhat embarrassing, "you are telling the story wrong; the tale
+I mean did not go on like that at all. Don't you remember? The hero
+rescued the lady and handed her over--to--to--her father."
+
+"Of whom I think he came to claim her afterwards," replied Adrian with
+another languishing glance, and a smile of conscious vanity at the
+neatness of his answer. Their glances met, and suddenly Adrian became
+aware that Elsa's face had undergone a complete change. The piquante,
+half-amused smile had passed out of it; it was strained and hard and
+the eyes were frightened.
+
+"Oh! now I understand the shadow--how strange," she exclaimed in a new
+voice.
+
+"What is the matter? What is strange?" he asked.
+
+"Oh!--only that your face reminded me so much of a man of whom I am
+terrified. No, no, I am foolish, it is nothing, those footpads have
+upset me. Praise be to God that we are out of that dreadful wood!
+Look, neighbour Broekhoven, here is Leyden before us. Are not those
+red roofs pretty in the twilight, and how big the churches seem. See,
+too, there is water all round the walls; it must be a very strong
+town. I should think that even the Spaniards could not take it, and
+oh! I am sure that it would be a good thing if we might find a city
+which we were quite, quite certain the Spaniards could never take--
+all, all of us," and she sighed heavily.
+
+"If I were a Spanish general with a proper army," began Adrian
+pompously, "I would take Leyden easily enough. Only this afternoon I
+studied its weak spots, and made a plan of attack which could scarcely
+fail, seeing that the place would only be defended by a mob of
+untrained, half-armed burghers."
+
+Again that curious look returned into Elsa's eyes.
+
+"If you were a Spanish general," she said slowly. "How can you jest
+about such a thing as the sacking of a town by Spaniards? Do you know
+what it means? That is how they talk; I have heard them," and she
+shuddered, then went on: "You are not a Spaniard, are you, sir, that
+you can speak like that?" And without waiting for an answer Elsa urged
+her mule forward, leaving him a little behind.
+
+Presently as they passed through the Witte Poort, he was at her side
+again and chatting to her, but although she replied courteously
+enough, he felt that an invisible barrier had arisen between them.
+Yes, she had read his secret heart; it was as though she had been a
+party to his thoughts when he stood by the bridge this afternoon
+designing plans for the taking of Leyden, and half wishing that he
+might share in its capture. She mistrusted him, and was half afraid of
+him, and Adrian knew that it was so.
+
+Ten minutes' ride through the quiet town, for in those days of terror
+and suspicion unless business took them abroad people did not frequent
+the streets much after sundown, brought the party to the van Goorl's
+house in the Bree Straat. Here Adrian dismounted and tried to open the
+door, only to find that it was locked and barred. This seemed to
+exasperate a temper already somewhat excited by the various events and
+experiences of the day, and more especially by the change in Elsa's
+manner; at any rate he used the knocker with unnecessary energy. After
+a while, with much turning of keys and drawing of bolts, the door was
+opened, revealing Dirk, his stepfather, standing in the passage,
+candle in hand, while behind, as though to be ready for any emergency,
+loomed the great stooping shape of Red Martin.
+
+"Is that you, Adrian?" asked Dirk in a voice at once testy and
+relieved. "Then why did you not come to the side entrance instead of
+forcing us to unbar here?"
+
+"Because I bring you a guest," replied Adrian pointing to Elsa and her
+companions. "It did not occur to me that you would wish guests to be
+smuggled in by a back door as though--as though they were ministers of
+our New Religion."
+
+The bow had been drawn at a venture but the shaft went home, for Dirk
+started and whispered: "Be silent, fool." Then he added aloud, "Guest!
+What guest?"
+
+"It is I, cousin Dirk, I, Elsa, Hendrik Brant's daughter," she said,
+sliding from her mule.
+
+"Elsa Brant!" ejaculated Dirk. "Why, how came you here?"
+
+"I will tell you presently," she answered; "I cannot talk in the
+street," and she touched her lips with her finger. "These are my
+friends, the van Broekhovens, under whose escort I have travelled from
+The Hague. They wish to go on to the house of their relations, the
+other Broekhovens, if some one will show them the way."
+
+Then followed greetings and brief explanations. After these the
+Broekhovens departed to the house of their relatives, under the care
+of Martin, while, its saddle having been removed and carried into the
+house at Elsa's express request, Adrian led the mule round to the
+stable.
+
+
+
+When Dirk had kissed and welcomed his young cousin he ushered her,
+still accompanied by the saddle, into the room where his wife and Foy
+were at supper, and with them the Pastor Arentz, that clergyman who
+had preached to them on the previous night. Here he found Lysbeth, who
+had risen from the table anxiously awaiting his return. So dreadful
+were the times that a knocking on the door at an unaccustomed hour was
+enough to throw those within into a paroxysm of fear, especially if at
+the moment they chanced to be harbouring a pastor of the New Faith, a
+crime punishable with death. That sound might mean nothing more than a
+visit from a neighbour, or it might be the trump of doom to every soul
+within the house, signifying the approach of the familiars of the
+Inquisition and of a martyr's crown. Therefore Lysbeth uttered a sigh
+of joy when her husband appeared, followed only by a girl.
+
+"Wife," he said, "here is our cousin, Elsa Brant, come to visit us
+from The Hague, though why I know not as yet. You remember Elsa, the
+little Elsa, with whom we used to play so many years ago."
+
+"Yes, indeed," answered Lysbeth, as she put her arms about her and
+embraced her, saying, "welcome, child, though," she added, glancing at
+her, "you should no longer be called child who have grown into so fair
+a maid. But look, here is the Pastor Arentz, of whom you may have
+heard, for he is the friend of your father and of us all."
+
+"In truth, yes," answered Elsa curtseying, a salute which Arentz
+acknowledged by saying gravely,
+
+"Daughter, I greet you in the name of the Lord, who has brought you to
+this house safely, for which give thanks."
+
+"Truly, Pastor, I have need to do so since--" and suddenly she
+stopped, for her eyes met those of Foy, who was gazing at her with
+such wonder and admiration stamped upon his open face that Elsa
+coloured at the sight. Then, recovering herself, she held out her
+hand, saying, "Surely you are my cousin Foy; I should have known you
+again anywhere by your hair and eyes."
+
+"I am glad," he answered simply, for it flattered him to think that
+this beautiful young lady remembered her old playmate, whom she had
+not seen for at least eleven years, adding, "but I do not think I
+should have known you."
+
+"Why?" she asked, "have I changed so much?"
+
+"Yes," Foy answered bluntly, "you used to be a thin little girl with
+red arms, and now you are the most lovely maiden I ever saw."
+
+At this speech everybody laughed, including the Pastor, while Elsa,
+reddening still more, replied, "Cousin, I remember that /you/ used to
+be rude, but now you have learned to flatter, which is worse. Nay, I
+beg of you, spare me," for Foy showed signs of wishing to argue the
+point. Then turning from him she slipped off her cloak and sat down on
+the chair which Dirk had placed for her at the table, reflecting in
+her heart that she wished it had been Foy who rescued her from the
+wood thieves, and not the more polished Adrian.
+
+Afterwards as the meal went on she told the tale of their adventure.
+Scarcely was it done when Adrian entered the room. The first thing he
+noticed was that Elsa and Foy were seated side by side, engaged in
+animated talk, and the second, that there was no cover for him at the
+table.
+
+"Have I your permission to sit down, mother?" he asked in a loud
+voice, for no one had seen him come in.
+
+"Certainly, son, why not?" answered Lysbeth, kindly. Adrian's voice
+warned her that his temper was ruffled.
+
+"Because there is no place for me, mother, that is all, though
+doubtless it is more worthily filled by the Rev. Pastor Arentz. Still,
+after a man has been fighting for his life with armed thieves, well--a
+bit of food and a place to eat it in would have been welcome."
+
+"Fighting for your life, son!" said Lysbeth astonished. "Why, from
+what Elsa has just been telling us, I gathered that the rascals ran
+away at the first blow which you struck with your staff."
+
+"Indeed, mother; well, doubtless if the lady says that, it was so. I
+took no great note; at the least they ran and she was saved, with the
+others; a small service not worth mentioning, still useful in its
+way."
+
+"Oh! take my chair, Adrian," said Foy rising, "and don't make such a
+stir about a couple of cowardly footpads and an old hag. You don't
+want us to think you a hero because you didn't turn tail and leave
+Elsa and her companions in their hands, do you?"
+
+"What you think, or do not think, is a matter of indifference to me,"
+replied Adrian, seating himself with an injured air.
+
+"Whatever my cousin Foy may think, Heer Adrian," broke in Elsa
+anxiously, "I am sure I thank God who sent so brave a gentleman to
+help us. Yes, yes, I mean it, for it makes me sick to remember what
+might have happened if you had not rushed at those wicked men like--
+like----"
+
+"Like David on the Philistines," suggested Foy.
+
+"You should study your Bible, lad," put in Arentz with a grave smile.
+"It was Samson who slew the Philistines; David conquered the giant
+Goliath, though it is true that he also was a Philistine."
+
+"Like Samson--I mean David--on Goliath," continued Elsa confusedly.
+"Oh! please, cousin Foy, do not laugh; I believe that you would have
+left me at the mercy of that dreadful man with a flat face and the
+bald head, who was trying to steal my father's letter. By the way,
+cousin Dirk, I have not given it to you yet, but it is quite safe,
+sewn up in the lining of the saddle, and I was to tell you that you
+must read it by the old cypher."
+
+"Man with a flat face," said Dirk anxiously, as he slit away at the
+stitches of the saddle to find the letter; "tell me about him. What
+was he like, and what makes you think he wished to take the paper from
+you?"
+
+So Elsa described the appearance of the man and of the black-eyed hag,
+his companion, and repeated also the words that the Heer van
+Broekhoven had heard the woman utter before the attack took place.
+
+"That sounds like the spy, Hague Simon, him whom they call the
+Butcher, and his wife, Black Meg," said Dirk. "Adrian, you must have
+seen these people, was it they?"
+
+For a moment Adrian considered whether he should tell the truth; then,
+for certain reasons of his own, decided that he would not. Black Meg,
+it may be explained, in the intervals of graver business was not
+averse to serving as an emissary of Venus. In short, she arranged
+assignations, and Adrian was fond of assignations. Hence his
+reticence.
+
+"How should I know?" he answered, after a pause; "the place was
+gloomy, and I have only set eyes upon Hague Simon and his wife about
+twice in my life."
+
+"Softly, brother," said Foy, "and stick to the truth, however gloomy
+the wood may have been. You know Black Meg pretty well at any rate,
+for I have often seen you--" and he stopped suddenly, as though sorry
+that the words had slipped from his tongue.
+
+"Adrian, is this so?" asked Dirk in the silence which followed.
+
+"No, stepfather," answered Adrian.
+
+"You hear," said Dirk addressing Foy. "In future, son, I trust that
+you will be more careful with your words. It is no charge to bring
+lightly against a man that he has been seen in the fellowship of one
+of the most infamous wretches in Leyden, a creature whose hands are
+stained red with the blood of innocent men and women, and who, as your
+mother knows, once brought me near to the scaffold."
+
+Suddenly the laughing boyish look passed out of the face of Foy, and
+it grew stern.
+
+"I am sorry for my words," he said, "since Black Meg does other things
+besides spying, and Adrian may have had business of his own with her
+which is no affair of mine. But, as they are spoke, I can't eat them,
+so you must decide which of us is--not truthful."
+
+"Nay, Foy, nay," interposed Arentz, "do not put it thus. Doubtless
+there is some mistake, and have I not told you before that you are
+over rash of tongue?"
+
+"Yes, and a great many other things," answered Foy, "every one of them
+true, for I am a miserable sinner. Well, all right, there is a
+mistake, and it is," he added, with an air of radiant innocency that
+somehow was scarcely calculated to deceive, "that I was merely poking
+a stick into Adrian's temper. I never saw him talking to Black Meg.
+Now, are you satisfied?"
+
+Then the storm broke, as Elsa, who had been watching the face of
+Adrian while he listened to Foy's artless but somewhat fatuous
+explanation, saw that it must break.
+
+"There is a conspiracy against me," said Adrian, who had grown white
+with rage; "yes, everything has conspired against me to-day. First the
+ragamuffins in the street make a mock of me, and then my hawk is
+killed. Next it chances that I rescue this lady and her companions
+from robbers in the wood. But, do I get any thanks for this? No, I
+come home to find that I am so much forgotten that no place is even
+laid for me at table; more, to be jeered at for the humble services
+that I have done. Lastly, I have the lie given to me, and without
+reproach, by my brother, who, were he not my brother, should answer
+for it at the sword's point."
+
+"Oh! Adrian, Adrian," broke in Foy, "don't be a fool; stop before you
+say something you will be sorry for."
+
+"That isn't all," went on Adrian, taking no heed. "Whom do I find at
+this table? The worthy Heer Arentz, a minister of the New Religion.
+Well, I protest. I belong to the New Religion myself, having been
+brought up in that faith, but it must be well known that the presence
+of a pastor here in our house exposes everybody to the risk of death.
+If my stepfather and Foy choose to take that risk, well and good, but
+I maintain that they have no right to lay its consequences upon my
+mother, whose eldest son I am, nor even upon myself."
+
+Now Dirk rose and tapped Adrian on the shoulder. "Young man," he said
+coldly and with glittering eyes, "listen to me. The risks which I and
+my son, Foy, and my wife, your mother, take, we run for conscience
+sake. You have nothing to do with them, it is our affair. But since
+you have raised the question, if your faith is not strong enough to
+support you I acknowledge that I have no right to bring you into
+danger. Look you, Adrian, you are no son of mine; in you I have
+neither part nor lot, yet I have cared for you and supported you since
+you were born under very strange and unhappy circumstances. Yes, you
+have shared whatever I had to give with my own son, without preference
+or favour, and should have shared it even after my death. And now, if
+these are your opinions, I am tempted to say to you that the world is
+wide and that, instead of idling here upon my bounty, you would do
+well to win your own way through it as far from Leyden as may please
+you."
+
+"You throw your benefits in my teeth, and reproach me with my birth,"
+broke in Adrian, who by now was almost raving with passion, "as though
+it were a crime in me to have other blood running in my veins than
+that of Netherlander tradesfolk. Well, if so, it would seem that the
+crime was my mother's, and not mine, who----"
+
+"Adrian, Adrian!" cried Foy, in warning, but the madman heeded not.
+
+"Who," he went on furiously, "was content to be the companion, for I
+understand that she was never really married to him, of some noble
+Spaniard before she became the wife of a Leyden artisan."
+
+He ceased, and at this moment there broke from Lysbeth's lips a low
+wail of such bitter anguish that it chilled even his mad rage to
+silence.
+
+"Shame on thee, my son," said the wail, "who art not ashamed to speak
+thus of the mother that bore thee."
+
+"Ay," echoed Dirk, in the stillness that followed, "shame on thee!
+Once thou wast warned, but now I warn no more."
+
+Then he stepped to the door, opened it, and called, "Martin, come
+hither."
+
+Presently, still in that heavy silence, which was broken only by the
+quick breath of Adrian panting like some wild beast in a net, was
+heard the sound of heavy feet shuffling down the passage. Then Martin
+entered the room, and stood there gazing about him with his large blue
+eyes, that were like the eyes of a wondering child.
+
+"Your pleasure, master," he said at length.
+
+"Martin Roos," replied Dirk, waving back Arentz who rose to speak,
+"take that young man, my stepson, the Heer Adrian, and lead him from
+my house--without violence if possible. My order is that henceforth
+you are not to suffer him to set foot within its threshold; see that
+it is not disobeyed. Go, Adrian, to-morrow your possessions shall be
+sent to you, and with them such money as shall suffice to start you in
+the world."
+
+Without comment or any expression of surprise, the huge Martin
+shuffled forward towards Adrian, his hand outstretched as though to
+take him by the arm.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Adrian, as Martin advanced down the room, "you set
+your mastiff on me, do you? Then I will show you how a gentleman
+treats dogs," and suddenly, a naked dagger shining in his hand, he
+leaped straight at the Frisian's throat. So quick and fierce was the
+onslaught that only one issue to it seemed possible. Elsa gasped and
+closed her eyes, thinking when she opened them to see that knife
+plunged to the hilt in Martin's breast, and Foy sprang forward. Yet in
+this twinkling of an eye the danger was done with, for by some
+movement too quick to follow, Martin had dealt his assailant such a
+blow upon the arm that the poniard, jarred from his grasp, flew
+flashing across the room to fall in Lysbeth's lap. Another second and
+the iron grip had closed upon Adrian's shoulder, and although he was
+strong and struggled furiously, yet he could not loose the hold of
+that single hand.
+
+"Please cease fighting, Mynheer Adrian, for it is quite useless," said
+Martin to his captive in a voice as calm as though nothing unusual had
+happened. Then he turned and walked with him towards the door.
+
+On the threshold Martin stopped, and looking over his shoulder said,
+"Master, I think that the Heer is dead, do you still wish me to put
+him into the street?"
+
+They crowded round and stared. It was true, Adrian seemed to be dead;
+at least his face was like that of a corpse, while from the corner of
+his mouth blood trickled in a thin stream.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII
+
+                             THE SUMMONS
+
+"Wretched man!" said Lysbeth wringing her hands, and with a shudder
+shaking the dagger from her lap as though it had been a serpent, "you
+have killed my son."
+
+"Your pardon, mistress," replied Martin placidly; "but that is not so.
+The master ordered me to remove the Heer Adrian, whereon the Heer
+Adrian very naturally tried to stab me. But I, having been accustomed
+to such things in my youth," and he looked deprecatingly towards the
+Pastor Arentz, "struck the Heer Adrian upon the bone of his elbow,
+causing the knife to jump from his hand, for had I not done so I
+should have been dead and unable to execute the commands of my master.
+Then I took the Heer Adrian by the shoulder, gently as I might, and
+walked away with him, whereupon he died of rage, for which I am very
+sorry but not to blame."
+
+"You are right, man," said Lysbeth, "it is you who are to blame, Dirk;
+yes, you have murdered my son. Oh! never mind what he said, his temper
+was always fierce, and who pays any heed to the talk of a man in a mad
+passion?"
+
+"Why did you let your brother be thus treated, cousin Foy?" broke in
+Elsa quivering with indignation. "It was cowardly of you to stand
+still and see that great red creature crush the life out of him when
+you know well that it was because of your taunts that he lost his
+temper and said things that he did not mean, as I do myself sometimes.
+No, I will never speak to you again--and only this afternoon he saved
+me from the robbers!" and she burst into weeping.
+
+"Peace, peace! this is no time for angry words," said the Pastor
+Arentz, pushing his way through the group of bewildered men and
+overwrought women. "He can scarcely be dead; let me look at him, I am
+something of a doctor," and he knelt by the senseless and bleeding
+Adrian to examine him.
+
+"Take comfort, Vrouw van Goorl," he said presently, "your son is not
+dead, for his heart beats, nor has his friend Martin injured him in
+any way by the exercise of his strength, but I think that in his fury
+he has burst a blood-vessel, for he bleeds fast. My counsel is that he
+should be put to bed and his head cooled with cold water till the
+surgeon can be fetched to treat him. Lift him in your arms, Martin."
+
+So Martin carried Adrian, not to the street, but to his bed, while
+Foy, glad of an excuse to escape the undeserved reproaches of Elsa and
+the painful sight of his mother's grief, went to seek the physician.
+In due course he returned with him, and, to the great relief of all of
+them, the learned man announced that, notwithstanding the blood which
+he had lost, he did not think that Adrian would die, though, at the
+best, he must keep his bed for some weeks, have skilful nursing and be
+humoured in all things.
+
+While his wife Lysbeth and Elsa were attending to Adrian, Dirk and his
+son, Foy, for the Pastor Arentz had gone, sat upstairs talking in the
+sitting-room, that same balconied chamber in which once Dirk had been
+refused while Montalvo hid behind the curtain. Dirk was much
+disturbed, for when his wrath had passed he was a tender-hearted man,
+and his stepson's plight distressed him greatly. Now he was justifying
+himself to Foy, or, rather, to his own conscience.
+
+"A man who could speak so of his own mother, was not fit to stop in
+the same house with her," he said; "moreover, you heard his words
+about the pastor. I tell you, son, I am afraid of this Adrian."
+
+"Unless that bleeding from his mouth stops soon you will not have
+cause to fear him much longer," replied Foy sadly, "but if you want my
+opinion about the business, father, why here it is--I think that you
+have made too much of a small matter. Adrian is--Adrian; he is not one
+of us, and he should not be judged as though he were. You cannot
+imagine me flying into a fury because the women forgot to set my place
+at table, or trying to stab Martin and bursting a blood vessel because
+you told him to lead me out of the room. No, I should know better, for
+what is the use of any ordinary man attempting to struggle against
+Martin? He might as well try to argue with the Inquisition. But then I
+am I, and Adrian is Adrian."
+
+"But the words he used, son. Remember the words."
+
+"Yes, and if I had spoken them they would have meant a great deal, but
+in Adrian's mouth I think no more of them than if they came from some
+angry woman. Why, he is always sulking, or taking offence, or flying
+into rages over something or other, and when he is like that it all
+means--just nothing except that he wants to use fine talk and show off
+and play the Don over us. He did not really mean to lie to me when he
+said that I had not seen him talking to Black Meg, he only meant to
+contradict, or perhaps to hide something up. As a matter of fact, if
+you want to know the truth, I believe that the old witch took notes
+for him to some young lady, and that Hague Simon supplied him with
+rats for his hawks."
+
+"Yes, Foy, that may be so, but how about his talk of the pastor? It
+makes me suspicious, son. You know the times we live in, and if he
+should go that way--remember it is in his blood--the lives of every
+one of us are in his hand. The father tried to burn me once, and I do
+not wish the child to finish the work."
+
+"Then when they come out of his hand, you are at liberty to cut off
+mine," answered Foy hotly. "I have been brought up with Adrian, and I
+know what he is; he is vain and pompous, and every time he looks at
+you and me he thanks God that he was not made like that. Also he has
+failings and vices, and he is lazy, being too fine a gentleman to work
+like a common Flemish burgher, and all the rest of it. But, father, he
+has a good heart, and if any man outside this house were to tell me
+that Adrian is capable of playing the traitor and bringing his own
+family to the scaffold, well, I would make him swallow his words, or
+try to, that is all. As regards what he said about my mother's first
+marriage"--and Foy hung his head--"of course it is a subject on which
+I have no right to talk, but, father, speaking as one man to another--
+he /is/ sadly placed and innocent, whatever others may have been, and
+I don't wonder that he feels sore about the story."
+
+As he spoke the door opened and Lysbeth entered.
+
+"How goes it with Adrian, wife?" Dirk asked hastily.
+
+"Better, husband, thank God, though the doctor stays with him for this
+night. He has lost much blood, and at the best must lie long abed;
+above all none must cross his mood or use him roughly," and she looked
+at her husband with meaning.
+
+"Peace, wife," Dirk answered with irritation. "Foy here has just read
+me one lecture upon my dealings with your son, and I am in no mood to
+listen to another. I served the man as he deserved, neither less nor
+more, and if he chose to go mad and vomit blood, why it is no fault of
+mine. You should have brought him up to a soberer habit."
+
+"Adrian is not as other men are, and ought not to be measured by the
+same rule," said Lysbeth, almost repeating Foy's words.
+
+"So I have been told before, wife, though I, who have but one standard
+of right and wrong, find the saying hard. But so be it. Doubtless the
+rule for Adrian is that which should be used to measure angels--or
+Spaniards, and not one suited to us poor Hollanders who do our work,
+pay our debts, and don't draw knives on unarmed men!"
+
+"Have you read the letter from your cousin Brant?" asked Lysbeth,
+changing the subject.
+
+"No," answered Dirk, "what with daggers, swoonings, and scoldings it
+slipped my mind," and drawing the paper from his tunic he cut the silk
+and broke the seals. "I had forgotten," he went on, looking at the
+sheets of words interspersed with meaningless figures; "it is in our
+private cypher, as Elsa said, or at least most of it is. Get the key
+from my desk, son, and let us set to work, for our task is likely to
+be long."
+
+Foy obeyed, returning presently with an old Testament of a very scarce
+edition. With the help of this book and an added vocabulary by slow
+degrees they deciphered the long epistle, Foy writing it down sentence
+by sentence as they learned their significance. When at length the
+task was finished, which was not till well after midnight, Dirk read
+the translation aloud to Lysbeth and his son. It ran thus:
+
+
+ "Well-beloved cousin and old friend, you will be astonished to see
+  my dear child Elsa, who brings you this paper sewn in her saddle,
+  where I trust none will seek it, and wonder why she comes to you
+  without warning. I will tell you.
+
+ "You know that here the axe and the stake are very busy, for at The
+  Hague the devil walks loose; yes, he is the master in this land.
+  Well, although the blow has not yet fallen on me, since for a
+  while I have bought off the informers, hour by hour the sword
+  hangs over my head, nor can I escape it in the end. That I am
+  suspected of the New Faith is not my real crime. You can guess it.
+  Cousin, they desire my wealth. Now I have sworn that no Spaniard
+  shall have this, no, not if I must sink it in the sea to save it
+  from them, since it has been heaped up to another end. Yet they
+  desire it sorely, and spies are about my path and about my bed.
+  Worst among them all, and at the head of them, is a certain
+  Ramiro, a one-eyed man, but lately come from Spain, it is said as
+  an agent of the Inquisition, whose manners are those of a person
+  who was once a gentleman, and who seems to know this country well.
+  This fellow has approached me, offering if I will give him three-
+  parts of my wealth to secure my escape with the rest, and I have
+  told him that I will consider the offer. For this reason only I
+  have a little respite, since he desires that my money should go
+  into his pocket and not into that of the Government. But, by the
+  help of God, neither of them shall touch it.
+
+ "See you, Dirk, the treasure is not here in the house as they
+  think. It is hidden, but in a spot where it cannot stay.
+
+ "Therefore, if you love me, and hold that I have been a good friend
+  to you, send your son Foy with one other strong and trusted man--
+  your Frisian servant, Martin, if possible--on the morrow after you
+  receive this. When night falls he should have been in The Hague
+  some hours, and have refreshed himself, but let him not come near
+  me or my house. Half an hour after sunset let him, followed by his
+  serving man, walk up and down the right side of the Broad Street
+  in The Hague, as though seeking adventures, till a girl, also
+  followed by a servant, pushes up against him as if on purpose, and
+  whispers in his ear, 'Are you from Leyden, sweetheart?' Then he
+  must say 'Yes,' and accompany her till he comes to a place where
+  he will learn what must be done and how to do it. Above all, he
+  must follow no woman who may accost him and does not repeat these
+  words. The girl who addresses him will be short, dark, pretty, and
+  gaily dressed, with a red bow upon her left shoulder. But let him
+  not be misled by look or dress unless she speaks the words.
+
+ "If he reaches England or Leyden safely with the stuff let him hide
+  it for the present, friend, till your heart tells you it is
+  needed. I care not where, nor do I wish to know, for if I knew,
+  flesh and blood are weak, and I might give up the secret when they
+  stretch me on the rack.
+
+ "Already you have my will sent to you three months ago, and
+  enclosed in it a list of goods. Open it now and you will find that
+  under it my possessions pass to you and your heirs absolutely as
+  my executors, for such especial trusts and purposes as are set out
+  therein. Elsa has been ailing, and it is known that the leech has
+  ordered her a change. Therefore her journey to Leyden will excite
+  no wonder, neither, or so I hope, will even Ramiro guess that I
+  should enclose a letter such as this in so frail a casket. Still,
+  there is danger, for spies are many, but having no choice, and my
+  need being urgent, I must take the risks. If the paper is seized
+  they cannot read it, for they will never make out the cypher,
+  since, even did they know of them, no copies of our books can be
+  found in Holland. Moreover, were this writing all plain Dutch or
+  Spanish, it tells nothing of the whereabouts of the treasure, of
+  its destination, or of the purpose to which it is dedicate.
+  Lastly, should any Spaniard chance to find that wealth, it will
+  vanish, and, mayhap, he with it."
+
+
+"What can he mean by that?" interrupted Foy.
+
+"I know not," answered Dirk. "My cousin Brant is not a person who
+speaks at random, so perhaps we have misinterpreted the passage." Then
+he went on reading:
+
+
+ "Now I have done with the pelf, which must take its chance. Only, I
+  pray you--I trust it to your honour and to your love of an old
+  friend to bury it, burn it, cast it to the four winds of heaven
+  before you suffer a Spaniard to touch a gem or a piece of gold.
+
+ "I send to you to-day Elsa, my only child. You will know my reason.
+  She will be safer with you in Leyden than here at The Hague, since
+  if they take me they might take her also. The priests and their
+  tools do not spare the young, especially if their rights stand
+  between them and money. Also she knows little of my desperate
+  strait; she is ignorant even of the contents of this letter, and I
+  do not wish that she should share these troubles. I am a doomed
+  man, and she loves me, poor child. One day she will hear that it
+  is over, and that will be sad for her, but it would be worse if
+  she knew all from the beginning. When I bid her good-bye
+  to-morrow, it will be for the last time--God give me strength to
+  bear the blow.
+
+ "You are her guardian, as you deal with her--nay, I must be crazy
+  with my troubles, for none other would think it needful to remind
+  Dirk van Goorl or his son of their duty to the dead. Farewell,
+  friend and cousin. God guard you and yours in these dreadful times
+  with which it has pleased Him to visit us for a season, that
+  through us perhaps this country and the whole world may be
+  redeemed from priestcraft and tyranny. Greet your honoured wife,
+  Lysbeth, from me; also your son Foy, who used to be a merry lad,
+  and whom I hope to see again within a night or two, although it
+  may be fated that we shall not meet. My blessing on him,
+  especially if he prove faithful in all these things. May the
+  Almighty who guards us give us a happy meeting in the hereafter
+  which is at hand. Pray for me. Farewell, farewell.--Hendrik Brant.
+
+ "P.S. I beg the dame Lysbeth to see that Elsa wears woollen when
+  the weather turns damp or cold, since her chest is somewhat
+  delicate. This was my wife's last charge, and I pass it on to you.
+  As regards her marriage, should she live, I leave that to your
+  judgment with this command only, that her inclination shall not be
+  forced, beyond what is right and proper. When I am dead, kiss her
+  for me, and tell her that I loved her beyond any creature now
+  living on the earth, and that wherever I am from day to day I wait
+  to welcome her, as I shall wait to welcome you and yours, Dirk van
+  Goorl. In case these presents miscarry, I will send duplicates of
+  them, also in mixed cypher, whenever chance may offer."
+
+
+
+Having finished reading the translation of this cypher document, Dirk
+bent his head while he folded it, not wishing that his face should be
+seen. Foy also turned aside to hide the tears which gathered in his
+eyes, while Lysbeth wept openly.
+
+"A sad letter and sad times!" said Dirk at length.
+
+"Poor Elsa," muttered Foy, then added, with a return of hopefulness,
+"perhaps he is mistaken, he may escape after all."
+
+Lysbeth shook her head as she answered,
+
+"Hendrik Brant is not the man to write like that if there was any hope
+for him, nor would he part with his daughter unless he knew that the
+end must be near at hand."
+
+"Why, then, does he not fly?" asked Foy.
+
+"Because the moment he stirred the Inquisition would pounce upon him,
+as a cat pounces upon a mouse that tries to run from its corner,"
+replied his father. "While the mouse sits still the cat sits also and
+purrs; when it moves----"
+
+There was a silence in which Dirk, having fetched the will of Hendrik
+Brant from a safe hiding place, where it had lain since it reached his
+hands some months before, opened the seals and read it aloud.
+
+It proved to be a very short document, under the terms of which Dirk
+van Goorl and his heirs inherited all the property, real and personal,
+of Hendrik Brant, upon trust, (1) to make such ample provision for his
+daughter Elsa as might be needful or expedient; (2) to apply the
+remainder of the money "for the defence of our country, the freedom of
+religious Faith, and the destruction of the Spaniards in such fashion
+and at such time or times as God should reveal to them, which," added
+the will, "assuredly He will do."
+
+Enclosed in this document was an inventory of the property that
+constituted the treasure. At the head came an almost endless list of
+jewels, all of them carefully scheduled. These were the first three
+items:
+
+"Item: The necklace of great pearls that I exchanged with the Emperor
+Charles when he took a love for sapphires, enclosed in a watertight
+copper box.
+
+"Item: A coronet and stomacher of rubies mounted in my own gold work,
+the best that ever I did, which three queens have coveted, and none
+was rich enough to buy.
+
+"Item: The great emerald that my father left me, the biggest known,
+having magic signs of ancients engraved upon the back of it, and
+enclosed in a chased case of gold."
+
+Then came other long lists of precious stones, too numerous to
+mention, but of less individual value, and after them this entry:
+
+"Item: Four casks filled with gold coin (I know not the exact weight
+or number)."
+
+At the bottom of this schedule was written, "A very great treasure,
+the greatest of all the Netherlands, a fruit of three generations of
+honest trading and saving, converted by me for the most part into
+jewels, that it may be easier to move. This is the prayer of me,
+Hendrik Brant, who owns it for his life; that this gold may prove the
+earthly doom of any Spaniard who tries to steal it, and as I write it
+comes into my mind that God will grant this my petition. Amen. Amen.
+Amen! So say I, Hendrik Brant, who stand at the Gate of Death."
+
+All of this inventory Dirk read aloud, and when he had finished
+Lysbeth gasped with amazement.
+
+"Surely," she said, "this little cousin of ours is richer than many
+princes. Yes, with such a dowry princes would be glad to take her in
+marriage."
+
+"The fortune is large enough," answered Dirk. "But, oh! what a burden
+has Hendrik Brant laid upon our backs, for under this will the wealth
+is left, not straight to the lawful heiress, Elsa, but to me and my
+heirs on the trusts started, and they are heavy. Look you, wife, the
+Spaniards know of this vast hoard, and the priests know of it, and no
+stone on earth or hell will they leave unturned to win that money. I
+say that, for his own sake, my cousin Hendrik would have done better
+to accept the offer of the Spanish thief Ramiro and give him three-
+fourths and escape to England with the rest. But that is not his
+nature, who was ever stubborn, and who would die ten times over rather
+than enrich the men he hates. Moreover, he, who is no miser, has saved
+this fortune that the bulk of it may be spent for his country in the
+hour of her need, and alas! of that need we are made the judges, since
+he is called away. Wife, I foresee that these gems and gold will breed
+bloodshed and misery to all our house. But the trust is laid upon us
+and it must be borne. Foy, to-morrow at dawn you and Martin will start
+for The Hague to carry out the command of your cousin Brant."
+
+"Why should my son's life be risked on this mad errand?" asked
+Lysbeth.
+
+"Because it is a duty, mother," answered Foy cheerfully, although he
+tried to look depressed. He was young and enterprising; moreover, the
+adventure promised to be full of novelty.
+
+In spite of himself Dirk smiled and bade him summon Martin.
+
+A minute later Foy was in the great man's den and kicking at his
+prostrate form. "Wake up, you snoring bull," he said, "awake!"
+
+Martin sat up, his red beard showing like a fire in the shine of the
+taper. "What is it now, Master Foy?" he asked yawning. "Are they after
+us about those two dead soldiers?"
+
+"No, you sleepy lump, it's treasure."
+
+"I don't care about treasure," replied Martin, indifferently.
+
+"It's Spaniards."
+
+"That sounds better," said Martin, shutting his mouth. "Tell me about
+it, Master Foy, while I pull on my jerkin."
+
+So Foy told him as much as he could in two minutes.
+
+"Yes, it sounds well," commented Martin, critically. "If I know
+anything of those Spaniards, we shan't get back to Leyden without
+something happening. But I don't like that bit about the women; as
+likely as not they will spoil everything."
+
+Then he accompanied Foy to the upper room, and there received his
+instructions from Dirk with a solemn and unmoved countenance.
+
+"Are you listening?" asked Dirk, sharply. "Do you understand?"
+
+"I think so, master," replied Martin. "Hear;" and he repeated sentence
+by sentence every word that had fallen from Dirk's lips, for when he
+chose to use it Martin's memory was good. "One or two questions,
+master," he said. "This stuff must be brought through at all hazards?"
+
+"At all hazards?" answered Dirk.
+
+"And if we cannot bring it through, it must be hidden in the best way
+possible?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And if people should try to interfere with us, I understand that we
+must fight?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And if in the fighting we chance to kill anybody I shall not be
+reproached and called a murderer by the pastor or others?"
+
+"I think not," replied Dirk.
+
+"And if anything should happen to my young master here, his blood will
+not be laid upon my head?"
+
+Lysbeth groaned. Then she stood up and spoke.
+
+"Martin, why do you ask such foolish questions? Your peril my son must
+share, and if harm should come to him as may chance, we shall know
+well that it is no fault of yours. You are not a coward or a traitor,
+Martin."
+
+"Well, I think not, mistress, at least not often; but you see here are
+two duties: the first, to get this money through, the second, to
+protect the Heer Foy. I wish to know which of these is the more
+important."
+
+It was Dirk who answered.
+
+"You go to carry out the wishes of my cousin Brant; they must be
+attended to before anything else."
+
+"Very good," replied Martin; "you quite understand, Heer Foy?"
+
+"Oh! perfectly," replied that young man, grinning.
+
+"Then go to bed for an hour or two, as you may have to keep awake
+to-morrow night; I will call you at dawn. Your servant, master and
+mistress, I hope to report myself to you within sixty hours, but if I
+do not come within eighty, or let us say a hundred, it may be well to
+make inquiries," and he shuffled back to his den.
+
+
+
+Youth sleeps well whatever may be behind or before it, and it was not
+until Martin had called to him thrice next morning that Foy opened his
+eyes in the grey light, and, remembering, sprang from his bed.
+
+"There's no hurry," said Martin, "but it will be as well to get out of
+Leyden before many people are about."
+
+As he spoke Lysbeth entered the room fully dressed, for she had not
+slept that night, carrying in her hand a little leathern bag.
+
+"How is Adrian, mother?" asked Foy, as she stooped down to kiss him.
+
+"He sleeps, and the doctor, who is still with him, says that he does
+well," she answered. "But see here, Foy, you are about to start upon
+your first adventure, and this is my present to you--this and my
+blessing." Then she untied the neck of the bag and poured from it
+something that lay upon the table in a shining heap no larger than
+Martin's fist. Foy took hold of the thing and held it up, whereon the
+little heap stretched itself out marvellously, till it was as large
+indeed as the body garment of a man.
+
+"Steel shirt!" exclaimed Martin, nodding his head in approval, and
+adding, "good wear for those who mix with Spaniards."
+
+"Yes," said Lysbeth, "my father brought this from the East on one of
+his voyages. I remember he told me that he paid for it its weight in
+gold and silver, and that even then it was sold to him only by the
+special favour of the king of that country. The shirt, they said, was
+ancient, and of such work as cannot now be made. It had been worn from
+father to son in one family for three hundred years, but no man that
+wore it ever died by body-cut or thrust, since sword or dagger cannot
+pierce that steel. At least, son, this is the story, and, strangely
+enough, when I lost all the rest of my heritage--" and she sighed,
+"this shirt was left to me, for it lay in its bag in the old oak
+chest, and none noticed it or thought it worth the taking. So make the
+most of it, Foy; it is all that remains of your grandfather's fortune,
+since this house is now your father's."
+
+Beyond kissing his mother in thanks, Foy made no answer; he was too
+much engaged in examining the wonders of the shirt, which as a worker
+in metals he could well appreciate. But Martin said again:
+
+"Better than money, much better than money. God knew that and made
+them leave the mail."
+
+"I never saw the like of it," broke in Foy; "look, it runs together
+like quicksilver and is light as leather. See, too, it has stood sword
+and dagger stroke before to-day," and holding it in a sunbeam they
+perceived in many directions faint lines and spots upon the links
+caused in past years by the cutting edge of swords and the points of
+daggers. Yet never a one of those links was severed or broken.
+
+"I pray that it may stand them again if your body be inside of it,"
+said Lysbeth. "Yet, son, remember always that there is One who can
+guard you better than any human mail however perfect," and she left
+the room.
+
+Then Foy drew on the coat over his woollen jersey, and it fitted him
+well, though not so well as in after years, when he had grown thicker.
+Indeed, when his linen shirt and his doublet were over it none could
+have guessed that he was clothed in armour of proof.
+
+"It isn't fair, Martin," he said, "that I should be wrapped in steel
+and you in nothing."
+
+Martin smiled. "Do you take me for a fool, master," he said, "who have
+seen some fighting in my day, private and public? Look here," and,
+opening his leathern jerkin, he showed that he was clothed beneath in
+a strange garment of thick but supple hide.
+
+"Bullskin," said Martin, "tanned as we know how up in Friesland. Not
+as good as yours, but will turn most cuts or arrows. I sat up last
+night making one for you, it was almost finished before, but the steel
+is cooler and better for those who can afford it. Come, let us go and
+eat; we should be at the gates at eight when they open."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII
+
+                    MOTHER'S GIFTS ARE GOOD GIFTS
+
+At a few minutes to eight that morning a small crowd of people had
+gathered in front of the Witte Poort at Leyden waiting for the gate to
+be opened. They were of all sorts, but country folk for the most part,
+returning to their villages, leading mules and donkeys slung with
+empty panniers, and shouting greetings through the bars of the gate to
+acquaintances who led in other mules laden with vegetables and
+provisions. Among these stood some priests, saturnine and silent,
+bent, doubtless, upon dark business of their own. A squad of Spanish
+soldiers waited also, the insolence of the master in their eyes; they
+were marching to some neighbouring city. There, too, appeared Foy van
+Goorl and Red Martin, who led a pack mule; Foy dressed in the grey
+jerkin of a merchant, but armed with a sword and mounted on a good
+mare; Martin riding a Flemish gelding that nowadays would only have
+been thought fit for the plough, since no lighter-boned beast could
+carry his weight. Among these moved a dapper little man, with sandy
+whiskers and sly face, asking their business and destination of the
+various travellers, and under pretence of guarding against the
+smuggling of forbidden goods, taking count upon his tablets of their
+merchandise and baggage.
+
+Presently he came to Foy.
+
+"Name?" he said, shortly, although he knew him well enough.
+
+"Foy van Goorl and Martin, his father's servant, travelling to The
+Hague with specimens of brassware, consigned to the correspondents of
+our firm," answered Foy, indifferently.
+
+"You are very glib," sneered the sandy-whiskered man; "what is the
+mule laden with? It may be Bibles for all I know."
+
+"Nothing half so valuable, master," replied Foy; "it is a church
+chandelier in pieces."
+
+"Unpack it and show me the pieces," said the officer.
+
+Foy flushed with anger and set his teeth, but Martin, administering to
+him a warning nudge in the ribs, submitted with prompt obedience.
+
+It was a long business, for each arm of the chandelier had been
+carefully wrapped in hay bands, and the official would not pass them
+until every one was undone, after which they must be done up again.
+While the pair of them were engaged upon this tedious and unnecessary
+task, two fresh travellers arrived at the gate, a long, bony person,
+clothed in a priest-like garb with a hood that hid the head, and a
+fierce, dissolute-looking individual of military appearance and armed
+to the teeth. Catching sight of young van Goorl and his servant, the
+long person, who seemed to ride very awkwardly with legs thrust
+forward, whispered something to the soldier man, and they passed on
+without question through the gate.
+
+When Foy and Martin followed them twenty minutes later, they were out
+of sight, for the pair were well mounted and rode hard.
+
+"Did you recognise them?" asked Martin so soon as they were clear of
+the crowd.
+
+"No," said Foy; "who are they?"
+
+"The papist witch, Black Meg, dressed like a man, and the fellow who
+came here from The Hague yesterday, whither they are going to report
+that the Heer Adrian routed them, and that the Broekhovens with the
+Jufvrouw Elsa got through unsearched."
+
+"What does it all mean, Martin?"
+
+"It means, master, that we shall have a warm welcome yonder; it means
+that some one guesses we know about this treasure, and that we shan't
+get the stuff away without trouble."
+
+"Will they waylay us?"
+
+Martin shrugged his shoulders as he answered, "It is always well to be
+ready, but I think not. Coming back they may waylay us, not going. Our
+lives are of little use without the money; also they cannot be had for
+the asking."
+
+Martin was right, for travelling slowly they reached the city without
+molestation, and, riding to the house of Dirk's correspondent, put up
+their horses; ate, rested, delivered the sample chandelier, and
+generally transacted the business which appeared to be the object of
+their journey. In the course of conversation they learned from their
+host that things were going very ill here at The Hague for all who
+were supposed to favour the New Religion. Tortures, burnings,
+abductions, and murders were of daily occurrence, nor were any brought
+to judgment for these crimes. Indeed, soldiers, spies, and government
+agents were quartered on the citizens, doing what they would, and none
+dared to lift a hand against them. Hendrik Brant, they heard also, was
+still at large and carrying on business as usual in his shop, though
+rumour said that he was a marked man whose time would be short.
+
+Foy announced that they would stay the night, and a little after
+sunset called to Martin to accompany him, as he wished to walk in the
+Broad Street to see the sights of the town.
+
+"Be careful, Mynheer Foy," said their host in warning, "for there are
+many strange characters about, men and women. Oh! yes, this mere is
+full of pike, and fresh bait is snapped up sharply."
+
+"We will be wary," replied Foy, with the cheerful air of a young man
+eager for excitement. "Hague pike don't like Leyden perch, you know;
+they stick in their throats."
+
+"I hope so, I hope so," said the host, "still I pray you be careful.
+You will remember where to find the horses if you want them; they are
+fed and I will keep them saddled. Your arrival here is known, and for
+some reason this house is being watched."
+
+Foy nodded and they started out; Foy going first, and Red Martin,
+staring round him like a bewildered bumpkin, following at his heel,
+with his great sword, which was called Silence, girt about his middle,
+and hidden as much as possible beneath his jerkin.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't look so big, Martin," Foy whispered over his
+shoulder; "everybody is staring at you and that red beard of yours,
+which glows like a kitchen fire."
+
+"I can't help it, master," said Martin, "my back aches with stooping
+as it is, and, as for the beard, well, God made it so."
+
+"At least you might dye it," answered Foy; "if it were black you would
+be less like a beacon on a church tower."
+
+"Another day, master; it is a long business dyeing a beard like mine;
+I think it would be quicker to cut it off." Then he stopped, for they
+were in the Broad Street.
+
+Here they found many people moving to and fro, but although the
+company were so numerous it was difficult to distinguish them, for no
+moon shone, and the place was lighted by lanterns set up on poles at
+long distances from each other. Foy could see, however, that they were
+for the most part folk of bad character, disreputable women, soldiers
+of the garrison, half-drunk sailors from every country, and gliding in
+and out among them all, priests and other observers of events. Before
+they had been long in the crowd a man stumbled against Foy rudely, at
+the same time telling him to get out of the path. But although his
+blood leapt at the insult and his hand went to his sword hilt, Foy
+took no notice, for he understood at once that it was sought to
+involve him in a quarrel. Next a woman accosted him, a gaily-dressed
+woman, but she had no bow upon her shoulder, so Foy merely shook his
+head and smiled. For the rest of that walk, however, he was aware that
+this woman was watching him, and with her a man whose figure he could
+not distinguish, for he was wrapped in a black cloak.
+
+Thrice did Foy, followed by Martin, thus promenade the right side of
+the Broad Street, till he was heartily weary of the game indeed, and
+began to wonder if his cousin Brant's plans had not miscarried.
+
+As he turned for the fourth time his doubts were answered, for he
+found himself face to face with a small woman who wore upon her
+shoulder a large red bow, and was followed by another woman, a buxom
+person dressed in a peasant's cap. The lady with the red bow, making
+pretence to stumble, precipitated herself with an affected scream
+right into his arms, and as he caught her, whispered, "Are you from
+Leyden, sweetheart?" "Yes." "Then treat me as I treat you, and follow
+always where I lead. First make pretence to be rid of me."
+
+As she finished whispering Foy heard a warning stamp from Martin,
+followed by the footsteps of the pair who he knew were watching them,
+which he could distinguish easily, for here at the end of the street
+there were fewer people. So he began to act as best he could--it was
+not very well, but his awkwardness gave him a certain air of
+sincerity.
+
+"No, no," he said, "why should I pay for your supper? Come, be going,
+my good girl, and leave me and my servant to see the town in peace."
+
+"Oh! Mynheer, let me be your guide, I beg you," answered she of the
+red bow clasping her hands and looking up into his face. Just then he
+heard the first woman who had accosted him speaking to her companion
+in a loud voice.
+
+"Look," she said, "Red Bow is trying her best. Ah! my dear, do you
+think that you'll get a supper out of a holy Leyden ranter, or a skin
+off an eel for the asking?"
+
+"Oh! he isn't such a selfish fish as he looks," answered Red Bow over
+her shoulder, while her eyes told Foy that it was his turn to play.
+
+So he played to the best of his ability, with the result that ten
+minutes later any for whom the sight had interest might have observed
+a yellow-haired young gallant and a black-haired young woman walking
+down the Broad Street with their arms affectionately disposed around
+each other's middles. Following them was a huge and lumbering serving
+man with a beard like fire, who, in a loyal effort to imitate the
+actions of his master, had hooked a great limb about the neck of Red
+Bow's stout little attendant, and held her thus in a chancery which,
+if flattering, must have been uncomfortable. As Martin explained to
+the poor woman afterwards, it was no fault of his, since in order to
+reach her waist he must have carried her under his arm.
+
+Foy and his companion chatted merrily enough, if in a somewhat jerky
+fashion, but Martin attempted no talk. Only as he proceeded he was
+heard to mutter between his teeth, "Lucky the Pastor Arentz can't see
+us now. He would never understand, he is so one-sided." So at least
+Foy declared subsequently in Leyden.
+
+Presently, at a hint from his lady, Foy turned down a side street,
+unobserved, as he thought, till he heard a mocking voice calling after
+them, "Good-night, Red Bow, hope you will have a fine supper with your
+Leyden shopboy."
+
+"Quick," whispered Red Bow, and they turned another corner, then
+another, and another. Now they walked down narrow streets, ill-kept
+and unsavoury, with sharp pitched roofs, gabled and overhanging so
+much that here and there they seemed almost to meet, leaving but a
+ribbon of star-specked sky winding above their heads. Evidently it was
+a low quarter of the town and a malodourous quarter, for the canals,
+spanned by picturesque and high-arched bridges, were everywhere, and
+at this summer season the water in them was low, rotten, and almost
+stirless.
+
+At length Red Bow halted and knocked upon a small recessed door, which
+instantly was opened by a man who bore no light.
+
+"Come in," he whispered, and all four of them passed into a darksome
+passage. "Quick, quick!" said the man, "I hear footsteps."
+
+Foy heard them also echoing down the empty street, and as the door
+closed it seemed to him that they stopped in the deep shadow of the
+houses. Then, holding each other by the hand, they crept along black
+passages and down stairs till at length they saw light shining through
+the crevices of an ill-fitting door. It opened mysteriously at their
+approach, and when they had all entered, shut behind them.
+
+Foy uttered a sigh of relief for he was weary of this long flight, and
+looked round him to discover that they were in a large windowless
+cellar, well furnished after a fashion by oak benches and a table set
+out with cold meats and flagons of wine. At the foot of this table
+stood a middle-aged man, prematurely grey, and with a face worn as
+though by constant care.
+
+"Welcome, Foy van Goorl," said the man in a gentle voice. "Many years
+have passed since last we met; still I should have known you anywhere,
+though I think you would not have known me."
+
+Foy looked at him and shook his head.
+
+"I thought so," went on the man with a smile. "Well, I am Hendrik
+Brant, your cousin, once the burgomaster of The Hague and its richest
+citizen, but to-day a hunted rat who must receive his guests in secret
+cellars. Tell me now, did my daughter, Elsa, reach your good father's
+house in safety, and is she well?"
+
+So Foy told him all that story.
+
+"As I thought, as I thought," said Hendrik. "Ramiro knew of her
+journey and guessed that she might carry some letter. Oh!" he went on,
+shaking his fist in a kind of frenzy, and addressing the two women who
+had played the parts of Red Bow and her servant, "who among you is the
+traitor? Can it be that you, whom my bounty has fed, betray me? Nay,
+girls, do not weep, I know that it is not so, and yet, in this city,
+the very walls have ears, yes, even this deep vault gives up its
+secrets. Well, if only I can save my fortune from those wolves, what
+do I care? Then they may take my carcase and tear it. At least, my
+daughter is safe--for a while, and now I have but one desire left on
+earth--to rob them of my wealth also."
+
+Then he turned to the girl decked out in the gay clothes, who, now
+that the chase was over, sat upon a bench with her face hidden in her
+hand, and said, "Tell me your story, Gretchen," whereon she lifted her
+head and repeated all that happened.
+
+"They press us hard," muttered Brant, "but, friends, we will beat them
+yet. Eat now, and drink while you may."
+
+So they sat down and ate and drank while Hendrik watched them, and the
+man who had led them to the vault listened without the door.
+
+When they had finished, Brant bade the two women, Red Bow and the
+other, leave the cellar and send in the sentry, replacing him as
+guards. He entered, a hard-faced, grizzled man, and, taking a seat at
+the table, began to fill himself with food and wine.
+
+"Hearken, my cousin Foy," said Brant presently, "this is the plan. A
+league away, near to the mouth of the great canal, lie certain boats,
+a score or over of them, laden with trading goods and timber, in the
+charge of honest men who know nothing of their cargo, but who have
+orders to fire them if they should be boarded. Among these boats is
+one called the /Swallow/, small, but the swiftest on this coast, and
+handy in a sea. Her cargo is salt, and beneath it eight kegs of
+powder, and between the powder and the salt certain barrels, which
+barrels are filled with treasure. Now, presently, if you have the
+heart for it--and if you have not, say so, and I will go myself--this
+man here, Hans, under cover of the darkness, will row you down to the
+boat /Swallow/. Then you must board her, and at the first break of
+dawn hoist her sail and stand out to sea, and away with her where the
+wind drives, tying the skiff behind. Like enough you will find foes
+waiting for you at the mouth of the canal, or elsewhere. Then I can
+give you only one counsel--get out with the /Swallow/ if you can, and
+if you cannot, escape in the skiff or by swimming, but before you
+leave her fire the slow-matches that are ready at the bow and the
+stern, and let the powder do its work and blow my wealth to the waters
+and the winds. Will you do it? Think, think well before you answer."
+
+"Did we not come from Leyden to be at your command, cousin?" said Foy
+smiling. Then he added, "But why do you not accompany us on this
+adventure? You are in danger here, and even if we get clear with the
+treasure, what use is money without life?"
+
+"To me none, any way," answered Brant; "but you do not understand. I
+live in the midst of spies, I am watched day and night; although I
+came here disguised and secretly, it is probable that even my presence
+in this house is known. More, there is an order out that if I attempt
+to leave the town by land or water, I am to be seized, whereon my
+house will be searched instantly, and it will be found that my bullion
+is gone. Think, lad, how great is this wealth, and you will understand
+why the crows are hungry. It is talked of throughout the Netherlands,
+it has been reported to the King in Spain, and I learn that orders
+have come from him concerning its seizure. But there is another band
+who would get hold of it first, Ramiro and his crew, and that is why I
+have been left safe so long, because the thieves strive one against
+the other and watch each other. Most of all, however, they watch me
+and everything that is mine. For though they do not believe that I
+should send the treasure away and stay behind, yet they are not sure."
+
+"You think that they will pursue us, then?" asked Foy.
+
+"For certain. Messengers arrived from Leyden to announce your coming
+two hours before you set foot in the town, and it will be wonderful
+indeed if you leave it without a band of cut-throats at your heels. Be
+not deceived, lad, this business is no light one."
+
+"You say the little boat sails fast, master?" queried Martin.
+
+"She sails fast, but perhaps others are as swift. Moreover, it may
+happen that you will find the mouth of the canal blocked by the
+guardship, which was sent there a week ago with orders to search every
+craft that passes from stem to stern. Or--you may slip past her."
+
+"My master and I are not afraid of a few blows," said Martin, "and we
+are ready to take our risks like brave men; still, Mynheer Brant, this
+seems to me a hazardous business, and one in which your money may well
+get itself lost. Now, I ask you, would it not be better to take this
+treasure out of the boat where you have hidden it, and bury it, and
+convey it away by land?"
+
+Brant shook his head. "I have thought of that," he said, "as I have
+thought of everything, but it cannot now be done; also there is no
+time to make fresh plans."
+
+"Why?" asked Foy.
+
+"Because day and night men are watching the boats which are known to
+belong to me, although they are registered in other names, and only
+this evening an order was signed that they must be searched within an
+hour of dawn. My information is good, as it should be since I pay for
+it dearly."
+
+"Then," said Foy, "there is nothing more to be said. We will try to
+get to the boat and try to get her away; and if we can get her away we
+will try to hide the treasure, and if we can't we will try to blow her
+up as you direct and try to escape ourselves. Or--" and he shrugged
+his shoulders.
+
+Martin said nothing, only he shook his great red head, nor did the
+silent pilot at the table speak at all.
+
+Hendrik Brant looked at them, and his pale, careworn face began to
+work. "Have I the right?" he muttered to himself, and for an instant
+or two bent his head as though in prayer. When he lifted it again his
+mind seemed to be made up.
+
+"Foy van Goorl," he said, "listen to me, and tell your father, my
+cousin and executor, what I say, since I have no time to write it;
+tell him word for word. You are wondering why I do not let this pelf
+take its chance without risking the lives of men to save it. It is
+because something in my heart pushes me to another path. It may be
+imagination, but I am a man standing on the edge of the grave, and to
+such I have known it given to see the future. I think that you will
+win through with the treasure, Foy, and that it will be the means of
+bringing some wicked ones to their doom. Yes, and more, much more, but
+what it is I cannot altogether see. Yet I am quite certain that
+thousands and tens of thousands of our folk will live to bless the
+gold of Hendrik Brant, and that is why I work so hard to save it from
+the Spaniards. Also that is why I ask you to risk your lives to-night;
+not for the wealth's sake, for wealth is dross, but for what the
+wealth will buy in days to come."
+
+He paused a while, then went on: "I think also, cousin, that being,
+they tell me, unaffianced, you will learn to love, and not in vain,
+that dear child of mine, whom I leave in your father's keeping and in
+yours. More, since time is short and we shall never meet again, I say
+to you plainly, that the thought is pleasing to me, young cousin Foy,
+for I have a good report of you and like your blood and looks.
+Remember always, however dark may be your sky, that before he passed
+to doom Hendrik Brant had this vision concerning you and the daughter
+whom he loves, and whom you will learn to love as do all who know her.
+Remember also that priceless things are not lightly won, and do not
+woo her for her fortune, since, I tell you, this belongs not to her
+but to our people and our cause, and when the hour comes, for them it
+must be used."
+
+Foy listened, wondering, but he made no answer, for he knew not what
+to say. Yet now, on the edge of his first great adventure, these words
+were comfortable to him who had found already that Elsa's eyes were
+bright. Brant next turned towards Martin, but that worthy shook his
+red head and stepped back a pace.
+
+"Thank you kindly, master," he said, "but I will do without the
+prophecies, which, good or ill, are things that fasten upon a man's
+mind. Once an astrologer cast my nativity, and foretold that I should
+be drowned before I was twenty-five. I wasn't, but, my faith! the
+miles which I have walked round to bridges on account of that
+astrologer."
+
+Brant smiled. "I have no foresight concerning you, good friend, except
+that I judge your arm will be always strong in battle; that you will
+love your masters well, and use your might to avenge the cause of
+God's slaughtered saints upon their murderers."
+
+Martin nodded his head vigorously, and fumbled at the handle of the
+sword Silence, while Brant went on:
+
+"Friend, you have entered on a dangerous quarrel on behalf of me and
+mine, and if you live through it you will have earned high pay."
+
+Then he went to the table, and, taking writing materials, he wrote as
+follows: "To the Heer Dirk van Goorl and his heirs, the executors of
+my will, and the holders of my fortune, which is to be used as God
+shall show them. This is to certify that in payment of this night's
+work Martin, called the Red, the servant of the said Dirk van Goorl,
+or those heirs whom he may appoint, is entitled to a sum of five
+thousand florins, and I constitute such sum a first charge upon my
+estate, to whatever purpose they may put it in their discretion." This
+document he dated, signed, and caused the pilot Hans to sign also as a
+witness. Then he gave it to Martin, who thanked him by touching his
+forehead, remarking at the same time--
+
+"After all, fighting is not a bad trade if you only stick to it long
+enough. Five thousand florins! I never thought to earn so much."
+
+"You haven't got it yet," interrupted Foy. "And now, what are you
+going to do with that paper?"
+
+Martin reflected. "Coat?" he said, "no, a man takes off his coat if it
+is hot, and it might be left behind. Boots?--no, that would wear it
+out, especially if they got wet. Jersey?--sewn next the skin, no, same
+reason. Ah! I have it," and, drawing out the great sword Silence, he
+took the point of his knife and began to turn a little silver screw in
+the hilt, one of many with which the handle of walrus ivory was
+fastened to its steel core. The screw came out, and he touched a
+spring, whereon one quarter of the ivory casing fell away, revealing a
+considerable hollow in the hilt, for, although Martin grasped it with
+one hand, the sword was made to be held by two.
+
+"What is that hole for?" asked Foy.
+
+"The executioner's drug," replied Martin, "which makes a man happy
+while he does his business with him, that is, if he can pay the fee.
+He offered his dose to me, I remember, before--" Here Martin stopped,
+and, having rolled up the parchment, hid it in the hollow.
+
+"You might lose your sword," suggested Foy.
+
+"Yes, master, when I lose my life and exchange the hope of florins for
+a golden crown," replied Martin with a grin. "Till then I do not
+intend to part with Silence."
+
+Meanwhile Hendrik Brant had been whispering to the quiet man at the
+table, who now rose and said:
+
+"Foster-brother, do not trouble about me; I take my chance and I do
+not wish to survive you. My wife is burnt, one of my girls out there
+is married to a man who knows how to protect them both, also the
+dowries you gave them are far away and safe. Do not trouble about me
+who have but one desire--to snatch the great treasure from the maw of
+the Spaniard that in a day to come it may bring doom upon the
+Spaniard." Then he relapsed into a silence, which spread over the
+whole company.
+
+"It is time to be stirring," said Brant presently. "Hans, you will
+lead the way. I must bide here a while before I go abroad and show
+myself."
+
+The pilot nodded. "Ready?" he asked, addressing Foy and Martin. Then
+he went to the door and whistled, whereon Red Bow with her pretended
+servant entered the vault. He spoke a word or two to them and kissed
+them each upon the brow. Next he went to Hendrik Brant, and throwing
+his arms about him, embraced him with far more passion than he had
+shown towards his own daughters.
+
+"Farewell, foster-brother," he said, "till we meet again here or
+hereafter--it matters little which. Have no fear, we will get the
+stuff through to England if may be, or send it to hell with some
+Spaniards to seek it there. Now, comrades, come on and stick close to
+me, and if any try to stop us cut them down. When we reach the boat do
+you take the oars and row while I steer her. The girls come with us to
+the canal, arm-in-arm with the two of you. If anything happens to me
+either of them can steer you to the skiff called /Swallow/, but if
+naught happens we will put them ashore at the next wharf. Come," and
+he led the way from the cellar.
+
+At the threshold Foy turned to look at Hendrik Brant. He was standing
+by the table, the light shining full upon his pale face and grizzled
+head, about which it seemed to cast a halo. Indeed, at that moment,
+wrapped in his long, dark cloak, his lips moving in prayer, and his
+arms uplifted to bless them as they went, he might well have been, not
+a man, but some vision of a saint come back to earth. The door closed
+and Foy never saw him again, for ere long the Inquisition seized him
+and a while afterwards he died beneath their cruel hands. One of the
+charges against him was, that more than twenty years before, he had
+been seen reading the Bible at Leyden by Black Meg, who appeared and
+gave the evidence. But they did not discover where his treasure was
+hidden away. To win an easier death, indeed, he made them a long
+confession that took them a still longer journey, but of the truth of
+the matter he knew nothing, and therefore could tell them nothing.
+
+Now this scene, so strange and pathetic, ended at last, the five of
+them were in the darkness of the street. Here once more Foy and Red
+Bow clung to each other, and once more the arm of Martin was about the
+neck of her who seemed to be the serving-maid, while ahead, as though
+he were paid to show the way, went the pilot. Soon footsteps were
+heard, for folk were after them. They turned once, they turned twice,
+they reached the bank of a canal, and Hans, followed by Red Bow and
+her sister, descended some steps and climbed into a boat which lay
+there ready. Next came Martin, and, last of all, Foy. As he set foot
+upon the first step, a figure shot out of the gloom towards him, a
+knife gleamed in the air and a blow took him between the shoulders
+that sent him stumbling headlong, for he was balanced upon the edge of
+the step.
+
+But Martin had heard and seen. He swung round and struck out with the
+sword Silence. The assassin was far from him, still the tip of the
+long steel reached the outstretched murderous hand, and from it fell a
+broken knife, while he who held it sped on with a screech of pain.
+Martin darted back and seized the knife, then he leapt into the boat
+and pushed off. At the bottom of it lay Foy, who had fallen straight
+into the arms of Red Bow, dragging her down with him.
+
+"Are you hurt, master?" asked Martin.
+
+"Not a bit," replied Foy, "but I am afraid the lady is. She went
+undermost."
+
+"Mother's gifts are good gifts!" muttered Martin as he pulled him and
+the girl, whose breath had been knocked out of her, up to a seat. "You
+ought to have an eight-inch hole through you, but that knife broke
+upon the shirt. Look here," and he threw the handle of the dagger on
+to his knees and snatched at the sculls.
+
+Foy examined it in the faint light, and there, still hooked above the
+guard, was a single severed finger, a long and skinny finger, to which
+the point of the sword Silence had played surgeon, and on it a gold
+ring. "This may be useful," thought Foy, as he slipped handle and
+finger into the pocket of his cloak.
+
+Then they all took oars and rowed till presently they drew near a
+wharf.
+
+"Now, daughters, make ready," said Hans, and the girls stood up. As
+they touched the wharf Red Bow bent down and kissed Foy.
+
+"The rest were in play, this is in earnest," she said, "and for luck.
+Good-night, companion, and think of me sometimes."
+
+"Good-night, companion," answered Foy, returning the kiss. Then she
+leapt ashore. They never met again.
+
+"You know what to do, girls," said Hans; "do it, and in three days you
+should be safe in England, where, perhaps, I may meet you, though do
+not count on that. Whatever happens, keep honest, and remember me till
+we come together again, here or hereafter, but, most of all, remember
+your mother and your benefactor Hendrik Brant. Farewell."
+
+"Farewell, father," they answered with a sob, and the boat drifted off
+down the dark canal, leaving the two of them alone upon the wharf.
+Afterwards Foy discovered that it was the short sister who walked with
+Martin that was married. Gallant little Red Bow married also, but
+later. Her husband was a cloth merchant in London, and her grandson
+became Lord Mayor of that city.
+
+And now, having played their part in it, these two brave girls are out
+of the story.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV
+
+                  SWORD SILENCE RECEIVES THE SECRET
+
+For half an hour or more they glided down the canal unmolested and in
+silence. Now it ran into a broader waterway along which they slid
+towards the sea, keeping as much as possible under the shadow of one
+bank, for although the night was moonless a faint grey light lay upon
+the surface of the stream. At length Foy became aware that they were
+bumping against the sides of a long line of barges and river boats
+laden with timber and other goods. To one of these--it was the fourth
+--the pilot Hans made fast, tying their row-boat to her stern. Then he
+climbed to the deck, whispering to them to follow.
+
+As they scrambled on board, two grey figures arose and Foy saw the
+flash of steel. Then Hans whistled like a plover, and, dropping their
+swords they came to him and fell into talk. Presently Hans left them,
+and, returning to Foy and Martin, said:
+
+"Listen: we must lie here a while, for the wind is against us, and it
+would be too dangerous for us to try to row or pole so big a boat down
+to the sea and across the bar in the darkness, for most likely we
+should set her fast upon a shoal. Before dawn it will turn, and, if I
+read the sky aright, blow hard off land."
+
+"What have the bargemen to say?" asked Foy.
+
+"Only that for these four days they have been lying here forbidden to
+move, and that their craft are to be searched to-morrow by a party of
+soldiers, and the cargo taken out of them piecemeal."
+
+"So," said Foy, "well, I hope that by then what they seek will be far
+away. Now show us this ship."
+
+Then Hans took them down the hatchway, for the little vessel was
+decked, being in shape and size not unlike a modern Norfolk herring
+boat, though somewhat more slightly built. Then having lit a lantern,
+he showed them the cargo. On the top were bags of salt. Dragging one
+or two of these aside, Hans uncovered the heads of five barrels, each
+of them marked with the initial /B/ in white paint.
+
+"That is what men will die for before to-morrow night," he said.
+
+"The treasure?" asked Foy.
+
+He nodded. "These five, none of the others." Then still lower down he
+pointed out other barrels, eight of them, filled with the best
+gunpowder, and showed them too where the slow matches ran to the
+little cabin, the cook's galley, the tiller and the prow, by means of
+any one of which it could be fired. After this and such inspection of
+the ropes and sails as the light would allow, they sat in the cabin
+waiting till the wind should change, while the two watching men
+unmoored the vessel and made her sails ready for hoisting. An hour
+passed, and still the breeze blew from the sea, but in uncertain
+chopping gusts. Then it fell altogether.
+
+"Pray God it comes soon," said Martin, "for the owner of that finger
+in your pocket will have laid the hounds on to our slot long ago, and,
+look! the east grows red."
+
+The silent, hard-faced Hans leant forward and stared up the darkling
+water, his hand behind his ear.
+
+"I hear them," he said presently.
+
+"Who?" asked Foy.
+
+"The Spaniards and the wind--both," he answered. "Come, up with the
+mainsail and pole her out to midstream."
+
+So the three of them took hold of the tackle and ran aft with it,
+while the rings and booms creaked and rattled as the great canvas
+climbed the mast. Presently it was set, and after it the jib. Then,
+assisted by the two watchmen thrusting from another of the boats, they
+pushed the /Swallow/ from her place in the line out into mid-stream.
+But all this made noise and took time, and now men appeared upon the
+bank, calling to know who dared to move the boats without leave. As no
+one gave them any answer, they fired a shot, and presently a beacon
+began to burn upon a neighbouring mound.
+
+"Bad business," said Hans, shrugging his shoulders. "They are warning
+the Government ship at the harbour mouth. Duck, masters, duck; here
+comes the wind," and he sprang to the tiller as the boom swung over
+and the little vessel began to gather way.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, "and here with it come the Spaniards."
+
+Foy looked. Through the grey mist that was growing lighter every
+moment, for the dawn was breaking, he caught sight of a long boat with
+her canvas spread which was sweeping round the bend of the stream
+towards them and not much more than a quarter of a mile away.
+
+"They had had to pole down stream in the dark, and that is why they
+have been so long in coming," said Hans over his shoulder.
+
+"Well, they are here now at any rate," answered Foy, "and plenty of
+them," he added, as a shout from a score of throats told them that
+they were discovered.
+
+But now the /Swallow/ had begun to fly, making the water hiss upon
+either side of her bows.
+
+"How far is it to the sea?" asked Foy.
+
+"About three miles," Hans called back from the tiller. "With this wind
+we should be there in fifteen minutes. Master," he added presently,
+"bid your man light the fire in the galley."
+
+"What for," asked Foy, "to cook breakfast?"
+
+The pilot shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "Yes, if we live to eat
+it." But Foy saw that he was glancing at the slow-match by his side,
+and understood.
+
+Ten minutes passed, and they had swept round the last bend and were in
+the stretch of open water which ran down to the sea. By now the light
+was strong, and in it they saw that the signal fire had not been lit
+in vain. At the mouth of the cutting, just where the bar began, the
+channel was narrowed in with earth to a width of not more than fifty
+paces, and on one bank of it stood a foot armed with culverins. Out of
+the little harbour of this fort a large open boat was being poled, and
+in it a dozen or fifteen soldiers were hastily arming themselves.
+
+"What now?" cried Martin. "They are going to stop the mouth of the
+channel."
+
+The hard-featured Hans set his teeth and made no answer. Only he
+looked backward at his pursuers and onward at those who barred the
+way. Presently he called aloud:
+
+"Under hatches, both of you. They are going to fire from the fort,"
+and he flung himself upon his back, steering with his uplifted arms.
+
+Foy and Martin tumbled down the hatchway, for they could do no good on
+deck. Only Foy kept one eye above its level.
+
+"Look out!" he said, and ducked.
+
+As he spoke there was a puff of white smoke from the fort, followed by
+the scream of a shot which passed ahead of them. Then came another
+puff of smoke, and a hole appeared in their brown sail. After this the
+fort did not fire again, for the gunners found no time to load their
+pieces, only some soldiers who were armed with arquebuses began to
+shoot as the boat swept past within a few yards of them. Heedless of
+their bullets, Hans the pilot rose to his feet again, for such work as
+was before him could not be done by a man lying on his back. By now
+the large open boat from the fort was within two hundred yards of
+them, and, driven by the gathering pale, the /Swallow/ rushed towards
+it with the speed of a dart. Foy and Martin crawled from the hatchway
+and lay down near the steersman under the shelter of the little
+bulwarks, watching the enemy's boat, which was in midstream just where
+the channel was narrowest, and on the hither side of the broken water
+of the bar.
+
+"See," said Foy, "they are throwing out anchors fore and aft. Is there
+room to go past them?"
+
+"No," answered Hans, "the water is too shallow under the bank, and
+they know it. Bring me a burning brand."
+
+Foy crept forward, and returned with the fire.
+
+"Now light the slow-match, master."
+
+Foy opened his blue eyes and a cold shiver went down his back. Then he
+set his teeth and obeyed. Martin looked at Hans, muttering,
+
+"Good for a young one!"
+
+Hans nodded and said, "Have no fear. Till that match burns to the
+level of the deck we are safe. Now, mates, hold fast. I can't go past
+that boat, so I am going through her. We may sink on the other side,
+though I am sure that the fire will reach the powder first. In that
+case you can swim for it if you like, but I shall go with the
+/Swallow/."
+
+"I will think about it when the time comes. Oh! that cursed
+astrologer," growled Martin, looking back at the pursuing ship, which
+was not more than seven or eight hundred yards away.
+
+Meanwhile the officer in command of the boat, who was armed with a
+musket, was shouting to them to pull down their sail and surrender;
+indeed, not until they were within fifty yards of him did he seem to
+understand their desperate purpose. Then some one in the boat called
+out: "The devils are going to sink us," and there was a rush to bow
+and stern to get up the anchors. Only the officer stood firm,
+screaming at them like a madman. It was too late; a strong gust of
+wind caught the /Swallow/, causing her to heel over and sweep down on
+the boat like a swooping falcon.
+
+Hans stood and shifted the tiller ever so little, calculating all
+things with his eye. Foy watched the boat towards which they sprang
+like a thing alive, and Martin, lying at his side, watched the burning
+match.
+
+Suddenly the Spanish officer, when their prow was not more than twenty
+paces from him, ceased to shout, and lifting his piece fired. Martin,
+looking upwards with his left eye, thought that he saw Hans flinch,
+but the pilot made no sound. Only he did something to the tiller,
+putting all his strength on to it, and it seemed to the pair of them
+as though the /Swallow/ was for an instant checked in her flight--
+certainly her prow appeared to lift itself from the water. Suddenly
+there was a sound of something snapping--a sound that could be heard
+even through the yell of terror from the soldiers in the boat. It was
+the bowsprit which had gone, leaving the jib flying loose like a great
+pennon.
+
+Then came the crash. Foy shut his eyes for a moment, hanging on with
+both hands till the scraping and the trembling were done with. Now he
+opened again, and the first thing he saw was the body of the Spanish
+officer hanging from the jagged stump of the bowsprit. He looked
+behind. The boat had vanished, but in the water were to be seen the
+heads of three or four men swimming. As for themselves they seemed to
+be clear and unhurt, except for the loss of their bowsprit; indeed,
+the little vessel was riding over the seas on the bar like any swan.
+Hans glanced at the slow-match which was smouldering away perilously
+near to the deck, whereon Martin stamped upon it, saying:
+
+"If we sink now it will be in deep water, so there is no need to fly
+up before we go down."
+
+"Go and see if she leaks," said Hans.
+
+They went and searched the forehold but could not find that the
+/Swallow/ had taken any harm worth noting. Indeed, her massive oaken
+prow, with the weight of the gale-driven ship behind it, had crashed
+through the frail sides of the open Spanish boat like a knife through
+an egg.
+
+"That was good steering," said Foy to Hans, when they returned, "and
+nothing seems to be amiss."
+
+Hans nodded. "I hit him neatly," he muttered. "Look. He's gone." As he
+spoke the /Swallow/ gave a sharp pitch, and the corpse of the Spaniard
+fell with a heavy splash into the sea.
+
+"I am glad it has sunk," said Foy; "and now let's have some breakfast,
+for I am starving. Shall I bring you some, friend Hans?"
+
+"No, master, I want to sleep."
+
+Something in the tone of the man's voice caused Foy to scrutinise his
+face. His lips were turning blue. He glanced at his hands. Although
+they still grasped the tiller tightly, these also were turning blue,
+as though with cold; moreover, blood was dropping on the deck.
+
+"You are hit," he said. "Martin, Martin, Hans is hit!"
+
+"Yes," replied the man, "he hit me and I hit him, and perhaps
+presently we shall be talking it over together. No, don't trouble, it
+is through the body and mortal. Well, I expected nothing less, so I
+can't complain. Now, listen, while my strength holds. Can you lay a
+course for Harwich in England?"
+
+Martin and Foy shook their heads. Like most Hollanders they were good
+sailormen, but they only knew their own coasts.
+
+"Then you had best not try it," said Hans, "for there is a gale
+brewing, and you will be driven on the Goodwin Sands, or somewhere
+down that shore, and drowned and the treasure lost. Run up to the
+Haarlem Mere, comrades. You can hug the land with this small boat,
+while that big devil after you," and he nodded towards the pursuing
+vessel, which by now was crossing the bar, "must stand further out
+beyond the shoals. Then slip up through the small gut--the ruined
+farmstead marks it--and so into the mere. You know Mother Martha, the
+mad woman who is nicknamed the Mare? She will be watching at the mouth
+of it; she always is. Moreover, I caused her to be warned that we
+might pass her way, and if you hoist the white flag with a red cross--
+it lies in the locker--or, after nightfall, hang out four lamps upon
+your starboard side, she will come aboard to pilot you, for she knows
+this boat well. To her also you can tell your business without fear,
+for she will help you, and be as secret as the dead. Then bury the
+treasure, or sink it, or blow it up, or do what you can, but, in the
+name of God, to whom I go, I charge you do not let it fall into the
+hands of Ramiro and his Spanish rats who are at your heels."
+
+As Hans spoke he sank down upon the deck. Foy ran to support him, but
+he pushed him aside with a feeble hand. "Let me be," he whispered. "I
+wish to pray. I have set you a course. Follow it to the end."
+
+Then Martin took the tiller while Foy watched Hans. In ten minutes he
+was dead.
+
+Now they were running northwards with a fierce wind abeam of them, and
+the larger Spanish ship behind, but standing further out to sea to
+avoid the banks. Half an hour later the wind, which was gathering to a
+gale, shifted several points to the north, so that they must beat up
+against it under reefed canvas. Still they held on without accident,
+Foy attending to the sail and Martin steering. The /Swallow/ was a
+good sea boat, and if their progress was slow so was that of their
+pursuer, which dogged them continually, sometimes a mile away and
+sometimes less. At length, towards evening, they caught sight of a
+ruined house that marked the channel of the little gut, one of the
+outlets of the Haarlem Mere.
+
+"The sea runs high upon the bar and it is ebb tide," said Foy.
+
+"Even so we must try it, master," answered Martin. "Perhaps she will
+scrape through," and he put the /Swallow/ about and ran for the mouth
+of the gut.
+
+Here the waves were mountainous and much water came aboard. Moreover,
+three times they bumped upon the bar, till at length, to their joy,
+they found themselves in the calm stream of the gut, and, by shifting
+the sail, were able to draw it up, though very slowly.
+
+"At least we have got a start of them," said Foy, "for they can never
+get across until the tide rises."
+
+"We shall need it all," answered Martin; "so now hoist the white flag
+and let us eat while we may."
+
+While they ate the sun sank, and the wind blew so that scarcely could
+they make a knot an hour, shift the sail as they might. Then, as there
+was no sign of Mother Martha, or any other pilot, they hung out the
+four lamps upon the starboard side, and, with a flapping sail, drifted
+on gradually, till at length they reached the mouth of the great mere,
+an infinite waste of waters--deep in some places, shallow in others,
+and spotted everywhere with islets. Now the wind turned against them
+altogether, and, the darkness closing in, they were forced to drop
+anchor, fearing lest otherwise they should go ashore. One comfort they
+had, however: as yet nothing could be seen of their pursuers.
+
+Then, for the first time, their spirits failed them a little, and they
+stood together near the stern wondering what they should do. It was
+while they rested thus that suddenly a figure appeared before them as
+though it had risen from the deck of the ship. No sound of oars or
+footsteps had reached their ears, yet there, outlined against the dim
+sky, was the figure.
+
+"I think that friend Hans has come to life again," said Martin with a
+slight quaver in his voice, for Martin was terribly afraid of ghosts.
+
+"And I think that a Spaniard has found us," said Foy, drawing his
+knife.
+
+Then a hoarse voice spoke, saying, "Who are you that signal for a
+pilot on my waters?"
+
+"The question is--who are you?" answered Foy, "and be so good as to
+tell us quickly."
+
+"I am the pilot," said the voice, "and this boat by the rig of her and
+her signals should be the /Swallow/ of The Hague, but why must I crawl
+aboard of her across the corpse of a dead man?"
+
+"Come into the cabin, pilot, and we will tell you," said Foy.
+
+"Very well, Mynheer." So Foy led the way to the cabin, but Martin
+stopped behind a while.
+
+"We have found our guide, so what is the use of the lamps?" he said to
+himself as he extinguished them all, except one which he brought with
+him into the cabin. Foy was waiting for him by the door and they
+entered the place together. At the end of it the light of the lamp
+showed them a strange figure clad in skins so shapeless and sack-like
+that it was impossible to say whether the form beneath were male or
+female. The figure was bareheaded, and about the brow locks of
+grizzled hair hung in tufts. The face, in which were set a pair of
+wandering grey eyes, was deep cut, tanned brown by exposure, scarred,
+and very ugly, with withered lips and projecting teeth.
+
+"Good even to you, Dirk van Goorl's son, and to you, Red Martin. I am
+Mother Martha, she whom the Spaniards call the Mare and the Lake-
+witch."
+
+"Little need to tell us that, mother," said Foy, "although it is true
+that many years have gone by since I set eyes on you."
+
+Martha smiled grimly as she answered, "Yes, many years. Well, what
+have you fat Leyden burghers to do with a poor old night-hag, except
+of course in times of trouble? Not that I blame you, for it is not
+well that you, or your parents either, should be known to traffic with
+such as I. Now, what is your business with me, for the signals show
+that you have business, and why does the corpse of Hendrik Brant's
+foster-brother lie there in the stern?"
+
+"Because, to be plain, we have Hendrik Brant's treasure on board,
+mother, and for the rest look yonder--" and he pointed to what his eye
+had just caught sight of two or three miles away, a faint light, too
+low and too red for a star, that could only come from a lantern hung
+at the masthead of a ship.
+
+Martha nodded. "Spaniards after you, poling through the gut against
+the wind. Come on, there is no time to lose. Bring your boat round,
+and we will tow the /Swallow/ to where she will lie safe to-night."
+
+Five minutes later they were all three of them rowing the oar boat in
+which they had escaped from The Hague towards some unknown point in
+the darkness, slowly dragging after them the little ship /Swallow/. As
+they went, Foy told Martha all the story of their mission and escape.
+
+"I have heard of this treasure before," she said, "all the Netherlands
+has heard of Brant's hoard. Also dead Hans there let me know that
+perhaps it might come this way, for in such matters he thought that I
+could be trusted," and she smiled grimly. "And now what would you do?"
+
+"Fulfil our orders," said Foy. "Hide it if we can; if not, destroy
+it."
+
+"Better the first than the last," interrupted Martin. "Hide the
+treasure, say I, and destroy the Spaniards, if Mother Martha here can
+think of a plan."
+
+"We might sink the ship," suggested Foy.
+
+"And leave her mast for a beacon," added Martin sarcastically.
+
+"Or put the stuff into the boat and sink that."
+
+"And never find it again in this great sea," objected Martin.
+
+All this while Martha steered the boat as calmly as though it were
+daylight. They had left the open water, and were passing slowly in and
+out among islets, yet she never seemed to be doubtful or to hesitate.
+At length they felt the /Swallow/ behind them take the mud gently,
+whereon Martha led the way aboard of her and threw out the anchor,
+saying that here was her berth for the night.
+
+"Now," she said, "bring up this gold and lay it in the boat, for if
+you would save it there is much to do before dawn."
+
+So Foy and Martin went down while Martha, hanging over the hatchway,
+held the lighted lamp above them, since they dared not take it near
+the powder. Moving the bags of salt, soon they came to the five
+barrels of treasure marked B, and, strong though they were, it was no
+easy task for the pair of them by the help of a pulley to sling them
+over the ship's side into the boat. At last it was done, and the place
+of the barrels having been filled with salt bags, they took two iron
+spades which were provided for such a task as this, and started,
+Martha steering as before. For an hour or more they rowed in and out
+among endless islands, at the dim shores of which Martha stared as
+they passed, till at length she motioned to them to ship their oars,
+and they touched ground.
+
+Leaping from the boat she made it fast and vanished among the reeds to
+reconnoitre. Presently she returned again, saying that this was the
+place. Then began the heavy labour of rolling the casks of treasure
+for thirty yards or more along otter paths that pierced the dense
+growth of reeds.
+
+Now, having first carefully cut out reed sods in a place chosen by
+Martha, Foy and Martin set to their task of digging a great hole by
+the light of the stars. Hard indeed they toiled at it, yet had it not
+been for the softness of the marshy soil, they could not have got done
+while the night lasted, for the grave that would contain those barrels
+must be both wide and deep. After three feet of earth had been
+removed, they came to the level of the lake, and for the rest of the
+time worked in water, throwing up shovelfuls of mud. Still at last it
+was done, and the five barrels standing side by side in the water were
+covered up with soil and roughly planted over with the reed turf.
+
+"Let us be going," said Martha. "There is no time to lose." So they
+straightened their backs and wiped the sweat from their brows.
+
+"There is earth lying about, which may tell its story," said Martin.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "if any see it within the next ten days, after
+which in this damp place the mosses will have hidden it."
+
+"Well, we have done our best," said Foy, as he washed his mud-stained
+boots in the water, "and now the stuff must take its chance."
+
+Then once more they entered the boat and rowed away somewhat wearily,
+Martha steering them.
+
+On they went and on, till Foy, tired out, nearly fell asleep at his
+oar. Suddenly Martha tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up and
+there, not two hundred yards away, its tapering mast showing dimly
+against the sky, was the vessel that had pursued them from The Hague,
+a single lantern burning on its stern. Martha looked and grunted; then
+she leant forward and whispered to them imperiously.
+
+"It is madness," gasped Martin.
+
+"Do as I bid you," she hissed, and they let the boat drift with the
+wind till it came to a little island within thirty yards of the
+anchored vessel, an island with a willow tree growing upon its shore.
+"Hold to the twigs of the tree," she muttered, "and wait till I come
+again." Not knowing what else to do, they obeyed.
+
+Then Martha rose and they saw that she had slipped off her garment of
+skins, and stood before them, a gaunt white figure armed with a
+gleaming knife. Next she put the knife to her mouth, and, nipping it
+between her teeth, slid into the water silently as a diving bird. A
+minute passed, not more, and they saw that something was climbing up
+the cable of the ship.
+
+"What is she going to do?" whispered Foy.
+
+"God in Heaven knows," answered Martin, "but if she does not come back
+good-bye to Heer Brant's treasure, for she alone can find it again."
+
+They waited, holding their breaths, till presently a curious choking
+sound floated to them, and the lantern on the ship vanished. Two
+minutes later a hand with a knife in it appeared over the gunwale of
+the boat, followed by a grey head. Martin put out his great arm and
+lifted, and, lo! the white form slid down between them like a big
+salmon turned out of a net.
+
+"Put about and row," it gasped, and they obeyed while the Mare clothed
+herself again in her skin garment.
+
+"What have you done?" asked Foy.
+
+"Something," she replied with a fierce chuckle. "I have stabbed the
+watchman--he thought I was a ghost, and was too frightened to call
+out. I have cut the cable, and I think that I have fired the ship. Ah!
+look! but row--row round the corner of the island."
+
+They gave way, and as they turned the bank of reeds glanced behind
+them, to see a tall tongue of fire shooting up the cordage of the
+ship, and to hear a babel of frightened and angry voices.
+
+Ten minutes later they were on board the /Swallow/, and from her deck
+watching the fierce flare of the burning Spanish vessel nearly a mile
+away. Here they ate and drank, for they needed food badly.
+
+"What shall we do now?" asked Foy when they had finished.
+
+"Nothing at present," answered Martha, "but give me pen and paper."
+
+They found them, and having shrouded the little window of the cabin,
+she sat at the table and very slowly but with much skill drew a plan,
+or rather a picture, of this portion of the Haarlem Mere. In that plan
+were marked many islands according to their natural shapes, twenty of
+them perhaps, and upon one of these she set a cross.
+
+"Take it and hide it," said Martha, when it was finished, "so that if
+I die you may know where to dig for Brant's gold. With this in your
+hand you cannot fail to find it, for I draw well. Remember that it
+lies thirty paces due south of the only spot where it is easy to land
+upon that island."
+
+"What shall I do with this picture which is worth so much?" said Foy
+helplessly, "for in truth I fear to keep the thing."
+
+"Give it to me, master," said Martin; "the secret of the treasure may
+as well lie with the legacy that is charged on it." Then once more he
+unscrewed the handle of the sword Silence, and having folded up the
+paper and wrapped it round with a piece of linen, he thrust it away
+into the hollow hilt.
+
+"Now that sword is worth more than some people might think," Martin
+said as he restored it to the scabbard, "but I hope that those who
+come to seek its secret may have to travel up its blade. Well, when
+shall we be moving?"
+
+"Listen," said Martha. "Would you two men dare a great deed upon those
+Spaniards? Their ship is burnt, but there are a score or over of them,
+and they have two large boats. Now at the dawn they will see the mast
+of this vessel and attack it in the boats thinking to find the
+treasure. Well, if as they win aboard we can manage to fire the
+matches----"
+
+"There may be fewer Spaniards left to plague us," suggested Foy.
+
+"And believing it to be blown up no one will trouble about that money
+further," added Martin. "Oh! the plan is good, but dangerous. Come,
+let us talk it over."
+
+
+
+The dawn broke in a flood of yellow light on the surface of the
+Haarlem Mere. Presently from the direction of the Spanish vessel,
+which was still burning sullenly, came a sound of beating oars. Now
+the three watchers in the /Swallow/ saw two boatloads of armed men,
+one of them with a small sail set, swooping down towards them. When
+they were within a hundred yards Martha muttered, "It is time," and
+Foy ran hither and thither with a candle firing the slow-matches; also
+to make sure he cast the candle among a few handfuls of oil-soaked
+shreds of canvas that lay ready at the bottom of the hatchway. Then
+with the others, without the Spaniards being able to see them, he
+slipped over the side of the little vessel into the shallow water that
+was clothed with tall reeds, and waded through it to the island.
+
+Once on firm land, they ran a hundred yards or so till they reached a
+clump of swamp willows, and took shelter behind them. Indeed, Foy did
+more, for he climbed the trunk of one of the willows high enough to
+see over the reeds to the ship /Swallow/ and the lake beyond. By this
+time the Spaniards were alongside the /Swallow/, for he could hear
+their captain hailing him who leant over the taffrail, and commanding
+all on board to surrender under pain of being put to death. But from
+the man in the stern came no answer, which was scarcely strange,
+seeing that it was the dead pilot, Hans, to whom they talked in the
+misty dawn, whose body Martin had lashed thus to deceive them. So they
+fired at the pilot, who took no notice, and then began to clamber on
+board the ship. Presently all the men were out of the first boat--that
+with the sail set on it--except two, the steersman and the captain,
+whom, from his dress and demeanour, Foy took to be the one-eyed
+Spaniard, Ramiro, although of this he was too far off to make sure. It
+was certain, however, that this man did not mean to board the
+/Swallow/, for of a sudden he put his boat about, and the wind
+catching the sail soon drew him clear of her.
+
+"That fellow is cunning," said Foy to Martin and Martha below, "and I
+was a fool to light the tarred canvas, for he has seen the smoke
+drawing up the hatchway."
+
+"And having had enough fire for one night, thinks that he will leave
+his mates to quench it," added Martin.
+
+"The second boat is coming alongside," went on Foy, "and surely the
+mine should spring."
+
+"Scarcely time yet," answered Martin, "the matches were set for six
+minutes."
+
+Then followed a silence in which the three of them watched and
+listened with beating hearts. In it they heard a voice call out that
+the steersman was dead, and the answering voice of the officer in the
+boat, whom Foy had been right in supposing to be Ramiro, warning them
+to beware of treachery. Now suddenly arose a shout of "A mine! a
+mine!" for they had found one of the lighted fuses.
+
+"They are running for their boat," said Foy, "and the captain is
+sailing farther off. Heavens! how they scream."
+
+As the words passed his lips a tongue of flame shot to the very skies.
+The island seemed to rock, a fierce rush of air struck Foy and shook
+him from the tree. Then came a dreadful, thunderous sound, and lo! the
+sky was darkened with fragments of wreck, limbs of men, a grey cloud
+of salt and torn shreds of sail and cargo, which fell here, there, and
+everywhere about and beyond them.
+
+In five seconds it was over, and the three of them, shaken but unhurt,
+were clinging to each other on the ground. Then as the dark pall of
+smoke drifted southward Foy scrambled up his tree again. But now there
+was little to be seen, for the /Swallow/ had vanished utterly, and for
+many yards round where she lay the wreckage-strewn water was black as
+ink with the stirred mud. The Spaniards had gone also, nothing of them
+was left, save the two men and the boat which rode unhurt at a
+distance. Foy stared at them. The steersman was seated and wringing
+his hands, while the captain, on whose armour the rays of the rising
+sun now shone brightly, held to the mast like one stunned, and gazed
+at the place where, a minute before, had been a ship and a troop of
+living men. Presently he seemed to recover himself, for he issued an
+order, whereon the boat's head went about, and she began to glide
+away.
+
+"Now we had best try to catch him," said Martha, who, by standing up,
+could see this also.
+
+"Nay, let him be," answered Foy, "we have sent enough men to their
+account," and he shuddered.
+
+"As you will, master," grumbled Martin, "but I tell you it is not
+wise. That man is too clever to be allowed to live, else he would have
+accompanied the others on board and perished with them."
+
+"Oh! I am sick," replied Foy. "The wind from that powder has shaken
+me. Settle it as you will with Mother Martha and leave me in peace."
+
+So Martin turned to speak with Martha, but she was not there.
+Chuckling to herself in the madness of her hate and the glory of this
+great revenge, she had slipped away, knife in hand, to discover
+whether perchance any of the powder-blasted Spaniards still lived.
+Fortunately for them they did not, the shock had killed them all, even
+those who at the first alarm had thrown themselves into the water. At
+length Martin found her clapping her hands and crooning above a dead
+body, so shattered that no one could tell to what manner of man it had
+belonged, and led her away.
+
+But although she was keen enough for the chase, by now it was too
+late, for, travelling before the strong wind, Ramiro and his boat had
+vanished.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV
+
+                             SENOR RAMIRO
+
+If Foy van Goorl, by some magic, could have seen what was passing in
+the mind of that fugitive in the boat as he sailed swiftly away from
+the scene of death and ruin, bitterly indeed would he have cursed his
+folly and inexperience which led him to disregard the advice of Red
+Martin.
+
+Let us look at this man as he goes gnawing his hand in rage and
+disappointment. There is something familiar about his face and
+bearing, still gallant enough in a fashion, yet the most observant
+would find it difficult to recognise in the Senor Ramiro the handsome
+and courtly Count Juan de Montalvo of over twenty years before. A long
+spell of the galleys changes the hardiest man, and by ill luck
+Montalvo, or Ramiro, to call him by his new name, had been forced to
+serve nearly his full time. He would have escaped earlier indeed, had
+he not been foolish enough to join in a mutiny, which was discovered
+and suppressed. It was in the course of this savage struggle for
+freedom that he lost his eye, knocked out with a belaying pin by an
+officer whom he had just stabbed. The innocent officer died and the
+rascal Ramiro died, but without his good looks.
+
+To a person of gentle birth, however great a scoundrel he might be,
+the galleys, which represented penal servitude in the sixteenth
+century, were a very rough school. Indeed for the most part the man
+who went into them blameless became bad, and the man who went into
+them bad became worse, for, as the proverb says, those who have dwelt
+in hell always smell of brimstone. Who can imagine the awfulness of it
+--the chains, the arduous and continual labour, the whip of the
+quarter-masters, the company of thieves and outcast ruffians, all
+dreadful in its squalid sameness?
+
+Well, his strength and constitution, coupled with a sort of grim
+philosophy, brought him through, and at length Ramiro found himself a
+free man, middle-aged indeed, but intelligent and still strong, the
+world once more before him. Yet what a world! His wife, believing him
+dead, or perhaps wishing to believe it, had remarried and gone with
+her husband to New Spain, taking his children with her, and his
+friends, such of them as lived, turned their backs upon him. But
+although he had been an unlucky man, for with him wickedness had not
+prospered, he still had resource and courage.
+
+The Count Montalvo was a penniless outlaw, a byword and a scorn, and
+so the Count Montalvo--died, and was buried publicly in the church of
+his native village. Strangely enough, however, about the same time the
+Senor Ramiro appeared in another part of Spain, where with success he
+practised as a notary and man of affairs. Some years went by thus,
+till at length, having realised a considerable sum of money by the
+help of an ingenious fraud, of which the details are superfluous, an
+inspiration took him and he sailed for the Netherlands.
+
+In those dreadful days, in order to further the ends of religious
+persecution and of legalised theft, informers were rewarded with a
+portion of the goods of heretics. Ramiro's idea--a great one in its
+way--was to organise this informing business, and, by interesting a
+number of confederates who practically were shareholders in the
+venture, to sweep into his net more fortunes, or shares of fortunes,
+than a single individual, however industrious, could hope to secure.
+As he had expected, soon he found plenty of worthy companions, and the
+company was floated. For a while, with the help of local agencies and
+spies, such as Black Meg and the Butcher, with whom, forgetting past
+injuries, he had secretly renewed his acquaintance, it did very well,
+the dividends being large and regular. In such times handsome sums
+were realised, without risk, out of the properties of unfortunates who
+were brought to the stake, and still more was secured by a splendid
+system of blackmail extracted from those who wished to avoid
+execution, and who, when they had been sucked dry, could either be
+burnt or let go, as might prove most convenient.
+
+Also there were other methods of making money--by an intelligent
+method of robbery, by contracts to collect fines and taxes and so
+forth. Thus things went well, and, at length, after many years of
+suffering and poverty, the Senor Ramiro, that experienced man of
+affairs, began to grow rich, until, indeed, driven forward by a
+natural but unwise ambition, a fault inherent to daring minds, he
+entered upon a dangerous path.
+
+The wealth of Hendrik Brant, the goldsmith, was a matter of common
+report, and glorious would be the fortune of him who could secure its
+reversion. This Ramiro wished to win; indeed, there was no ostensible
+reason why he should not do so, since Brant was undoubtedly a heretic,
+and, therefore, legitimate game for any honourable servant of the
+Church and King. Yet there were lions in the path, two large and
+formidable lions, or rather a lion and the ghost of a lion, for one
+was material and the other spiritual. The material lion was that the
+Government, or in other words, his august kingship Philip, desired the
+goldsmith's thousands for himself, and was therefore likely to be
+irritated by an interloper. The spiritual lion was that Brant was
+connected with Lysbeth van Goorl, once known as Lysbeth de Montalvo, a
+lady who had brought her reputed husband no luck. Often and often
+during dreary hours of reflection beneath tropic suns, for which the
+profession of galley-slave gave great leisure, the Senor Ramiro
+remembered that very energetic curse which his new affianced wife had
+bestowed upon him, a curse in which she prayed that through her he
+might live in heavy labour, that through her and hers he might be
+haunted by fears and misfortunes, and at the last die in misery.
+Looking back upon the past it would certainly seem that there had been
+virtue in this curse, for already through Lysbeth and his dealings
+with her, he had suffered the last degradation and the toil, which
+could not be called light, of nearly fourteen years of daily
+occupation in the galleys.
+
+Well, he was clear of them, and thenceforward, the curse having
+exhausted itself for the time being, he had prospered--at any rate to
+a moderate extent. But if once more he began to interfere with Lysbeth
+van Goorl and her relatives, might it not re-assert its power? That
+was one question. Was it worth while to take his risk on the chance of
+securing Brant's fortune? That was another. Brant, it was true, was
+only a cousin of Lysbeth's husband, but when once you meddled with a
+member of the family, it was impossible to know how soon other members
+would become mixed up in the affair.
+
+The end may be guessed. The treasure was at hand and enormous, whereas
+the wrath of a Heavenly or an earthly king was problematical and far
+away. So greed, outstripping caution and superstitious fear, won the
+race, and Ramiro threw himself into the adventure with a resource and
+energy which in their way were splendid.
+
+Now, as always, he was a man who hated violence for its own sake. It
+was no wish of his that the worthy Heer Brant should be unnecessarily
+burnt or tortured. Therefore through his intermediaries, as Brant had
+narrated in his letter, he approached him with a proposal which, under
+the circumstances, was liberal enough--that Brant should hand over
+two-thirds of his fortune to him and his confederates, on condition
+that he was assisted to escape with the remaining third. To his
+disgust, however, this obstinate Dutchman refused to buy his safety at
+the price of a single stiver. Indeed, he answered with rude energy
+that now as always he was in the hands of God, and if it pleased God
+that his life should be sacrificed and his great wealth divided
+amongst thieves, well, it must be so, but he, at least, would be no
+party to the arrangement.
+
+The details of the plots and counter-plots, the attack of the Ramiro
+company, the defences of Brant, the internecine struggles between the
+members of the company and the agents of the Government, if set out at
+length, would fill a considerable book. Of these we already know
+something, and the rest may be divined.
+
+In the course of the affair Ramiro had made but one mistake, and that
+sprang from what he was wont to consider the weakness of his nature.
+Needless to say, it was that he had winked at the escape of Brant's
+daughter, Elsa. It may have been superstition that prompted him, or it
+may have been pity, or perhaps it was a certain oath of mercy which he
+had taken in an hour of need; at any rate, he was content that the
+girl should not share the doom which overshadowed her father. He did
+not think it at all likely that she would take with her any documents
+of importance, and the treasure, of course, she could not take; still,
+to provide against accidents he arranged for her to be searched upon
+the road.
+
+As we know this search was a failure, and when on the morrow Black Meg
+arrived to make report and to warn him that Dirk van Goorl's son and
+his great serving-man, whose strength was known throughout the
+Netherlands, were on their road to The Hague, he was sure that after
+all the girl had carried with her some paper or message.
+
+By this time the whereabouts of Brant's treasure had been practically
+solved. It was believed to lie in the string of vessels, although it
+was not known that one of these was laden with powder as well as gold.
+The plan of the Government agents was to search the vessels as they
+passed out to sea and seize the treasure as contraband, which would
+save much legal trouble, since under the law or the edicts wealth
+might not be shipped abroad by heretics. The plan of Ramiro and his
+friends was to facilitate the escape of the treasure to the open sea,
+where they proposed to swoop down upon it and convey it to more
+peaceful shores.
+
+When Foy and his party started down the canal in the boat Ramiro knew
+that his opportunity had come, and at once unmoored the big ship and
+followed. The attempted stabbing of Foy was not done by his orders, as
+he wished the party to go unmolested and to be kept in sight. That was
+a piece of private malice on the part of Black Meg, for it was she who
+was dressed as a man. On various occasions in Leyden Foy had made
+remarks upon Meg's character which she resented, and about her
+personal appearance, which she resented much more, and this was an
+attempt to pay off old scores that in the issue cost her a finger, a
+good knife, and a gold ring which had associations connected with her
+youth.
+
+At first everything had gone well. By one of the most daring and
+masterly manoeuvres that Ramiro had ever seen in his long and varied
+experience upon the seas, the little /Swallow/, with her crew of three
+men, had run the gauntlet of the fort which was warned and waiting for
+her; had sunk and sailed through the big Government boat and her crew
+of lubberly soldiers, many of whom, he was glad to reflect, were
+drowned; had crushed the officer, against whom he had a personal
+grudge, like an egg-shell, and won through to the open sea. There he
+thought he was sure of her, for he took it for granted that she would
+run for the Norfolk coast, and knew that in the gale of wind which was
+blowing his larger and well-manned vessel could pull her down. But
+then the ill-luck--that ancient ill-luck which always dogged him when
+he began to interfere with the affairs of Lysbeth and her relatives--
+declared itself.
+
+Instead of attempting to cross the North Sea the little /Swallow/
+hugged the coast, where, for various nautical reasons connected with
+the wind, the water, and the build of their respective ships, she had
+the legs of him. Next he lost her in the gut, and after that we know
+what happened. There was no disguising it; it was a most dreadful
+fiasco. To have one's vessel boarded, the expensive vessel in which so
+large a proportion of the gains of his honourable company had been
+invested, not only boarded, but fired, and the watchman stabbed by a
+single naked devil of unknown sex or character was bad enough. And
+then the end of it!
+
+To have found the gold-laden ship, to have been gulled into attacking
+her, and--and--oh! he could scarcely bear to think of it! There was
+but one consolation. Although too late to save the others, even
+through the mist he had seen that wisp of smoke rising from the hold;
+yes, he, the experienced, had smelt a rat, and, warned by some half-
+divine intuition, had kept his distance with the result that he was
+still alive.
+
+But the others! Those gallant comrades in adventure, where were they?
+Well, to be frank, he did not greatly care. There was another question
+of more moment. Where was the treasure? Now that his brain had cleared
+after the shock and turmoil it was evident to him that Foy van Goorl,
+Red Martin, and the white devil who had boarded his ship, would not
+have destroyed so much wealth if they could help it, and still less
+would they have destroyed themselves. Therefore, to pursue the matter
+to a logical conclusion, it seemed probable that they had spent the
+night in sinking or burying the money, and preparing the pretty trap
+into which he had walked. So the secret was in their hands, and as
+they were still alive very possibly means could be found to induce
+them to reveal its hiding-place. There was still hope; indeed, now
+that he came to weigh things, they were not so bad.
+
+To begin with, almost all the shareholders in the affair had perished
+by the stern decree of Providence, and he was the natural heir of
+their interests. In other words, the treasure, if it was recovered,
+was henceforth his property. Further, when they came to hear the
+story, the Government would set down Brant's fortune as hopelessly
+lost, so that the galling competition from which he had suffered so
+much was at an end.
+
+Under these circumstances what was to be done? Very soon, as he sailed
+away over the lake in the sweet air of the morning, the Senor Ramiro
+found an answer to the question.
+
+The treasure had left The Hague, he must leave The Hague. The secret
+of its disposal was at Leyden, henceforth he must live at Leyden. Why
+not? He knew Leyden well. It was a pleasant place, but, of course, he
+might be recognised there; though, after so long, this was scarcely
+probable, for was not the Count de Montalvo notoriously dead and
+buried? Time and accident had changed him; moreover, he could bring
+art to the assistance of nature. In Leyden, too, he had confederates--
+Black Meg to wit, for one; also he had funds, for was he not the
+treasurer of the company that this very morning had achieved so
+remarkable and unsought-for an ascension?
+
+There was only one thing against the scheme. In Leyden lived Lysbeth
+van Goorl and her husband, and with them a certain young man whose
+parentage he could guess. More, her son Foy knew the hiding-place of
+Brant's hoard, and from him or his servant Martin that secret must be
+won. So once again he was destined to match himself against Lysbeth--
+the wronged, the dreaded, the victorious Lysbeth, whose voice of
+denunciation still rang in his ear, whose eyes of fire still scorched
+his soul, the woman whom he feared above everything on earth. He
+fought her once for money, and, although he won the money, it had done
+him little good, for in the end she worsted him. Now, if he went to
+Leyden, he must fight her again for money, and what would be the issue
+of that war? Was it worth while to take the risk? Would not history
+repeat itself? If he hurt her, would she not crush him? But the
+treasure, that mighty treasure, which could give him so much, and,
+above all, could restore to him the rank and station he had forfeited,
+and which he coveted more than anything in life. For, low as he had
+fallen, Montalvo could not forget that he had been born a gentleman.
+
+He would take his chance; he would go to Leyden. Had he weighed the
+matter in the gloom of night, or even in a dull and stormy hour,
+perhaps--nay probably--he would have decided otherwise. But this
+morning the sun shone brightly, the wind made a merry music in the
+reeds; on the rippling surface of the lake the marsh-birds sang, and
+from the shore came a cheerful lowing of kine. In such surroundings
+his fears and superstitions vanished. He was master of himself, and he
+knew that all depended upon himself, the rest was dream and nonsense.
+Behind him lay the buried gold; before him rose the towers of Leyden,
+where he could find its key. A God! that haunting legend of a God of
+vengeance, in which priests and others affected to believe? Now that
+he came to think of it, what rubbish was here, for as any agent of the
+Inquisition knew well, the vengeance always fell upon those who
+trusted in this same God; a hundred torture dens, a thousand smoking
+fires bore witness to the fact. And if there was a God, why,
+recognising his personal merits, only this morning He had selected him
+out of many to live on and be the inheritor of the wealth of Hendrik
+Brant. Yes, he would go to Leyden and fight the battle out.
+
+
+
+At the entry of the gut the Senor Ramiro landed from his boat. At
+first he had thought of killing his companion, so that he might remain
+the sole survivor of the catastrophe, but on reflection he abandoned
+this idea, as the man was a faithful creature of his own who might be
+useful. So he bade him return to The Hague to tell the story of the
+destruction of the ship /Swallow/ with the treasure, her attackers and
+her crew, whoever they might have been. He was to add, moreover, that
+so far as he knew the Captain Ramiro had perished also, as he, the
+steersman, was left alone in charge of the boat when the vessel blew
+up. Then he was to come to Leyden, bringing with him certain goods and
+papers belonging to him, Ramiro.
+
+This plan seemed to have advantages. No one would continue to hunt for
+the treasure. No one except himself and perhaps Black Meg would know
+that Foy van Goorl and Martin had been on board the /Swallow/ and
+escaped; indeed as yet he was not quite sure of it himself. For the
+rest he could either lie hidden, or if it proved desirable, announce
+that he still lived. Even if his messenger should prove faithless and
+tell the truth, it would not greatly matter, seeing that he knew
+nothing which could be of service to anybody.
+
+And so the steersman sailed away, while Ramiro, filled with memories,
+reflections, and hopes, walked quietly through the Morsch Poort into
+the good city of Leyden.
+
+
+
+That evening, but not until dark had fallen, two other travellers
+entered Leyden, namely, Foy and Martin. Passing unobserved through the
+quiet streets, they reached the side door of the house in the Bree
+Straat. It was opened by a serving-woman, who told Foy that his mother
+was in Adrian's room, also that Adrian was very much better. So
+thither, followed more slowly by Martin, went Foy, running upstairs
+three steps at a time, for had he not a great story to tell!
+
+The interior of the room as he entered it made an attractive picture
+which even in his hurry caught Foy's eye and fixed itself so firmly in
+his mind that he never forgot its details. To begin with, the place
+was beautifully furnished, for his brother had a really good taste in
+tapestry, pictures, and other such adornments. Adrian himself lay upon
+a richly carved oak bed, pale from loss of blood, but otherwise little
+the worse. Seated by the side of the bed, looking wonderfully sweet in
+the lamplight, which cast shadows from the curling hair about her
+brows on to the delicate face beneath, was Elsa Brant. She had been
+reading to Adrian from a book of Spanish chivalry such as his romantic
+soul loved, and he, resting on his elbow in the snowy bed, was
+contemplating her beauty with his languishing black eyes. Yet,
+although he only saw her for a moment before she heard his entry and
+looked up, it was obvious to Foy that Elsa remained quite unconscious
+of the handsome Adrian's admiration, indeed, that her mind wandered
+far away from the magnificent adventures and highly coloured love
+scenes of which she was reading in her sweet, low voice. Nor was he
+mistaken, for, in fact, the poor child was thinking of her father.
+
+At the further end of the room, talking together earnestly in the deep
+and curtained window-place, stood his mother and his father. Clearly
+they were as much preoccupied as the younger couple, and it was not
+difficult for Foy to guess that fears for his own safety upon his
+perilous errand were what concerned them most, and behind them other
+unnumbered fears. For the dwellers in the Netherlands in those days
+must walk from year to year through a valley of shadows so grim that
+our imagination can scarcely picture them.
+
+"Sixty hours and he is not back," Lysbeth was saying.
+
+"Martin said we were not to trouble ourselves before they had been
+gone for a hundred," answered Dirk consolingly.
+
+Just then Foy, surveying them from the shadowed doorway, stepped
+forward, saying in his jovial voice:
+
+"Sixty hours to the very minute."
+
+Lysbeth uttered a little scream of joy and ran forward. Elsa let the
+book fall on to the floor and rose to do the same, then remembered and
+stood still, while Dirk remained where he was till the women had done
+their greetings, betraying his delight only by a quick rubbing of his
+hands. Adrian alone did not look particularly pleased, not, however,
+because he retained any special grudge against his brother for his
+share in the fracas of a few nights before, since, when once his
+furious gusts of temper had passed, he was no malevolently minded man.
+Indeed he was glad that Foy had come back safe from his dangerous
+adventure, only he wished that he would not blunder into the bedroom
+and interrupt his delightful occupation of listening, while the
+beautiful Elsa read him romance and poetry.
+
+Since Foy was gone upon his mission, Adrian had been treated with the
+consideration which he felt to be his due. Even his stepfather had
+taken the opportunity to mumble some words of regret for what had
+happened, and to express a hope that nothing more would be said about
+the matter, while his mother was sympathetic and Elsa most charming
+and attentive. Now, as he knew well, all this would be changed. Foy,
+the exuberant, unrefined, plain-spoken, nerve-shaking Foy, would
+become the centre of attention, and overwhelm them with long stories
+of very dull exploits, while Martin, that brutal bull of a man who was
+only fit to draw a cart, would stand behind and play the part of
+chorus, saying "Ja" and "Neen" at proper intervals. Well, he supposed
+that he must put up with it, but oh! what a weariness it was.
+
+Another minute, and Foy was wringing him by the hand, saying in his
+loud voice, "How are you, old fellow? You look as well as possible,
+what are you lying in this bed for and being fed with pap by the
+women?"
+
+"For the love of Heaven, Foy," interrupted Adrian, "stop crushing my
+fingers and shaking me as though I were a rat. You mean it kindly, I
+know, but--" and Adrian dropped back upon the pillow, coughed and
+looked hectic and interesting.
+
+Then both the women fell upon Foy, upbraiding him for his roughness,
+begging him to remember that if he were not careful he might kill his
+brother, whose arteries were understood to be in a most precarious
+condition, till the poor man covered his ears with his hands and
+waited till he saw their lips stop moving.
+
+"I apologise," he said. "I won't touch him, I won't speak loud near
+him. Adrian, do you hear?"
+
+"Who could help it?" moaned the prostrate Adrian.
+
+"Cousin Foy," interrupted Elsa, clasping her hands and looking up into
+his face with her big brown eyes, "forgive me, but I can wait no
+longer. Tell me, did you see or hear anything of my father yonder at
+The Hague?"
+
+"Yes, cousin, I saw him," answered Foy presently.
+
+"And how was he--oh! and all the rest of them?"
+
+"He was well."
+
+"And free and in no danger?"
+
+"And free, but I cannot say in no danger. We are all of us in danger
+nowadays, cousin," replied Foy in the same quiet voice.
+
+"Oh! thank God for that," said Elsa.
+
+"Little enough to thank God for," muttered Martin, who had entered the
+room and was standing behind Foy looking like a giant at a show. Elsa
+had turned her face away, so Foy struck backwards with all his force,
+hitting Martin in the pit of the stomach with the point of his elbow.
+Martin doubled himself up, recoiled a step and took the hint.
+
+"Well, son, what news?" said Dirk, speaking for the first time.
+
+"News!" answered Foy, escaping joyfully from this treacherous ground.
+"Oh! lots of it. Look here," and plunging his hands into his pockets
+he produced first the half of the broken dagger and secondly a long
+skinny finger of unwholesome hue with a gold ring on it.
+
+"Bah!" said Adrian. "Take that horrid thing away."
+
+"Oh! I beg your pardon," answered Foy, shuffling the finger back into
+his pocket, "you don't mind the dagger, do you? No? Well, then,
+mother, that mail shirt of yours is the best that was ever made; this
+knife broke on it like a carrot, though, by the way, it's uncommonly
+sticky wear when you haven't changed it for three days, and I shall be
+glad enough to get it off."
+
+"Evidently Foy has a story to tell," said Adrian wearily, "and the
+sooner he rids his mind of it the sooner he will be able to wash. I
+suggest, Foy, that you should begin at the beginning."
+
+So Foy began at the beginning, and his tale proved sufficiently moving
+to interest even the soul-worn Adrian. Some portions of it he softened
+down, and some of it he suppressed for the sake of Elsa--not very
+successfully, indeed, for Foy was no diplomatist, and her quick
+imagination filled the gaps. Another part--that which concerned her
+future and his own--of necessity he omitted altogether. He told them
+very briefly, however, of the flight from The Hague, of the sinking of
+the Government boat, of the run through the gale to the Haarlem Mere
+with the dead pilot on board and the Spanish ship behind, and of the
+secret midnight burying of the treasure.
+
+"Where did you bury it?" asked Adrian.
+
+"I have not the slightest idea," said Foy. "I believe there are about
+three hundred islets in that part of the Mere, and all I know is that
+we dug a hole in one of them and stuck it in. However," he went on in
+a burst of confidence, "we made a map of the place, that is--" Here he
+broke off with a howl of pain, for an accident had happened.
+
+While this narrative was proceeding, Martin, who was standing by him
+saying "Ja" and "Neen" at intervals, as Adrian foresaw he would, had
+unbuckled the great sword Silence, and in an abstracted manner was
+amusing himself by throwing it towards the ceiling hilt downwards, and
+as it fell catching it in his hand. Now, most unaccountably, he looked
+the other way and missed his catch, with the result that the handle of
+the heavy weapon fell exactly upon Foy's left foot and then clattered
+to the ground.
+
+"You awkward beast!" roared Foy, "you have crushed my toes," and he
+hopped towards a chair upon one leg.
+
+"Your pardon, master," said Martin. "I know it was careless; my mother
+always told me that I was careless, but so was my father before me."
+
+Adrian, overcome by the fearful crash, closed his eyes and sighed.
+
+"Look," said Lysbeth in a fury, "he is fainting; I knew that would be
+the end of all your noise. If you are not careful we shall have him
+breaking another vessel. Go out of the room, all of you. You can
+finish telling the story downstairs," and she drove them before her as
+a farmer's wife drives fowls.
+
+"Martin," said Foy on the stairs, where they found themselves together
+for a minute, for at the first signs of the storm Dirk had preceded
+them, "why did you drop that accursed great sword of yours upon my
+foot?"
+
+"Master," counted Martin imperturbably, "why did you hit me in the pit
+of the stomach with your elbow?"
+
+"To keep your tongue quiet."
+
+"And what is the name of my sword?"
+
+"Silence."
+
+"Well, then, I dropped the sword 'Silence' for the same reason. I hope
+it hasn't hurt you much, but if it did I can't help it."
+
+Foy wheeled round. "What do you mean, Martin?"
+
+"I mean," answered the great man with energy, "that you have no right
+to tell what became of that paper which Mother Martha gave us."
+
+"Why not? I have faith in my brother."
+
+"Very likely, master, but that isn't the point. We carry a great
+secret, and this secret is a trust, a dangerous trust; it would be
+wrong to lay its burden upon the shoulders of other folk. What people
+don't know they can't tell, master."
+
+Foy still stared at him, half in question, half in anger, but Martin
+made no further reply in words. Only he went through certain curious
+motions, motions as of a man winding slowly and laboriously at
+something like a pump wheel. Foy's lips turned pale.
+
+"The rack?" he whispered. Martin nodded, and answered beneath his
+breath,
+
+"They may all of them be on it yet. You let the man in the boat
+escape, and that man was the Spanish spy, Ramiro; I am sure of it. If
+they don't know they can't tell, and though we know we shan't tell; we
+shall die first, master."
+
+Now Foy trembled and leaned against the wall. "What would betray us?"
+he asked.
+
+"Who knows, master? A woman's torment, a man's--" and he put a strange
+meaning into his voice, "a man's--jealousy, or pride, or vengeance.
+Oh! bridle your tongue and trust no one, no, not your father or
+mother, or sweetheart, or--" and again that strange meaning came into
+Martin's voice, "or brother."
+
+"Or you?" queried Foy, looking up.
+
+"I am not sure. Yes, I think you may trust me, though there is no
+knowing how the rack might change a man's mind."
+
+"If all this be so," said Foy, with a flush of sudden passion, "I have
+said too much already."
+
+"A great deal too much, master. If I could have managed it I should
+have dropped the sword Silence on your toe long before. But I
+couldn't, for the Heer Adrian was watching me, and I had to wait till
+he closed his eyes, which he did to hear the better without seeming to
+listen."
+
+"You are unjust to Adrian, Martin, as you always have been, and I am
+angry with you. Say, what is to be done now?"
+
+"Now, master," replied Martin cheerfully, "you must forget the
+teaching of the Pastor Arentz, and tell a lie. You must take up your
+tale where you left it off, and say that we made a map of the hiding-
+place, but that--I--being a fool--managed to drop it while we were
+lighting the fuses, so that it was blown away with the ship. I will
+tell the same story."
+
+"Am I to say this to my father and mother?"
+
+"Certainly, and they will quite understand why you say it. My mistress
+was getting uneasy already, and that was why she drove us from the
+room. You will tell them that the treasure is buried but that the
+secret of its hiding-place was lost."
+
+"Even so, Martin, it is not lost; Mother Martha knows it, and they all
+will guess that she does know it."
+
+"Why, master, as it happened you were in such a hurry to get on with
+your story that I think you forgot to mention that she was present at
+the burying of the barrels. Her name was coming when I dropped the
+sword upon your foot."
+
+"But she boarded and fired the Spanish ship--so the man Ramiro and his
+companion would probably have seen her."
+
+"I doubt, master, that the only person who saw her was he whose
+gizzard she split, and he will tell no tales. Probably they think it
+was you or I who did that deed. But if she was seen, or if they know
+that she has the secret, then let them get it from Mother Martha. Oh!
+mares can gallop and ducks can dive and snakes can hide in the grass.
+When they can catch the wind and make it give up its secrets, when
+they can charm from sword Silence the tale of the blood which it has
+drunk throughout the generations, when they can call back the dead
+saints from heaven and stretch them anew within the torture-pit, then
+and not before, they will win knowledge of the hoard's hiding-place
+from the lips of the witch of Haarlem Meer. Oh! master, fear not for
+her, the grave is not so safe."
+
+"Why did you not caution me before, Martin?"
+
+"Because, master," answered Martin stolidly, "I did not think that you
+would be such a fool. But I forgot that you are young--yes, I forget
+that you are young and good, too good for the days we live in. It is
+my fault. On my head be it."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI
+
+                              THE MASTER
+
+In the sitting-room, speaking more slowly and with greater caution,
+Foy continued the story of their adventures. When he came to the tale
+of how the ship /Swallow/ was blown up with all the Spanish boarders,
+Elsa clasped her hands, saying, "Horrible! Horrible! Think of the poor
+creatures hurled thus into eternity."
+
+"And think of the business they were on," broke in Dirk grimly,
+adding, "May God forgive me who cannot feel grieved to hear of the
+death of Spanish cut-throats. It was well managed, Foy, excellently
+well managed. But go on."
+
+"I think that is about all," said Foy shortly, "except that two of the
+Spaniards got away in a boat, one of whom is believed to be the head
+spy and captain, Ramiro."
+
+"But, son, up in Adrian's chamber just now you said something about
+having made a map of the hiding-place of the gold. Where is it, for it
+should be put in safety?"
+
+"Yes, I know I did," answered Foy, "but didn't I tell you?" he went on
+awkwardly. "Martin managed to drop the thing in the cabin of the
+/Swallow/ while we were lighting the fuses, so it was blown up with
+the ship, and there is now no record of where the stuff was buried."
+
+"Come, come, son," said Dirk. "Martha, who knows every island on the
+great lake, must remember the spot."
+
+"Oh! no, she doesn't," answered Foy. "The truth is that she didn't
+come with us when we buried the barrels. She stopped to watch the
+Spanish ship, and just told us to land on the first island we came to
+and dig a hole, which we did, making a map of the place before we
+left, the same that Martin dropped."
+
+All this clumsy falsehood Foy uttered with a wooden face and in a
+voice which would not have convinced a three-year-old infant, priding
+himself the while upon his extraordinary cleverness.
+
+"Martin," asked Dirk, suspiciously, "is this true?"
+
+"Absolutely true, master," replied Martin; "it is wonderful how well
+he remembers."
+
+"Son," said Dirk, turning white with suppressed anger, "you have
+always been a good lad, and now you have shown yourself a brave one,
+but I pray God that I may not be forced to add that you are false-
+tongued. Do you not see that this looks black? The treasure which you
+have hidden is the greatest in all the Netherlands. Will not folk say,
+it is not wonderful that you should have forgotten its secret until--
+it suits you to remember?"
+
+Foy took a step forward, his face crimson with indignation, but the
+heavy hand of Martin fell upon his shoulder and dragged him back as
+though he were but a little child.
+
+"I think, Master Foy," he said, fixing his eyes upon Lysbeth, "that
+your lady mother wishes to say something."
+
+"You are right, Martin; I do. Do you not think, husband, that in these
+days of ours a man might have other reasons for hiding the truth than
+a desire to enrich himself by theft?"
+
+"What do you mean, wife?" asked Dirk. "Foy here says that he has
+buried this great hoard with Martin, but that he and Martin do not
+know where they buried it, and have lost the map they made. Whatever
+may be the exact wording of the will, that hoard belongs to my cousin
+here, subject to certain trusts which have not yet arisen, and may
+never arise, and I am her guardian while Hendrik Brant lives and his
+executor when he dies. Therefore, legally, it belongs to me also. By
+what right, then, do my son and my servant hide the truth from me, if,
+indeed, they are hiding the truth? Say what you have to say straight
+out, for I am a plain man and cannot read riddles."
+
+"Then I will say it, husband, though it is but my guess, for I have
+had no words with Foy or Martin, and if I am wrong they can correct
+me. I know their faces, and I think with you that they are not
+speaking the truth. I think that they do not wish us to know it--not
+that they may keep the secret of this treasure for themselves, but
+because such a secret might well bring those who know of it to the
+torment and the stake. Is it not so, my son?"
+
+"Mother," answered Foy, almost in a whisper, "it is so. The paper is
+not lost, but do not seek to learn its hiding-place, for there are
+wolves who would tear your bodies limb from limb to get the knowledge
+out of you; yes, even Elsa's, even Elsa's. If the trial must come let
+it fall on me and Martin, who are fitter to bear it. Oh! father,
+surely you know that, whatever we may be, neither of us is a thief."
+
+Dirk advanced to his son, and kissed him on the forehead.
+
+"My son," he said, "pardon me, and you, Red Martin, pardon me also. I
+spoke in my haste. I spoke as a fool, who, at my age, should have
+known better. But, oh! I tell you that I wish that this cursed
+treasure, these cases of precious gems and these kegs of hoarded gold,
+had been shivered to the winds of heaven with the timbers of the ship
+/Swallow/. For, mark you, Ramiro has escaped, and with him another
+man, and they will know well that having the night to hide it, you did
+not destroy those jewels with the ship. They will track you down,
+these Spanish sleuthhounds, filled with the lust of blood and gold,
+and it will be well if the lives of every one of us do not pay the
+price of the secret of the burying-place of the wealth of Hendrik
+Brant."
+
+He ceased, pale and trembling, and a silence fell upon the room and
+all in it, a sad and heavy silence, for in his voice they caught the
+note of prophecy. Martin broke it.
+
+"It may be so, master," he said; "but, your pardon, you should have
+thought of that before you undertook this duty. There was no call upon
+you to send the Heer Foy and myself to The Hague to bring away this
+trash, but you did it as would any other honest man. Well, now it is
+done, and we must take our chance, but I say this--if you are wise, my
+masters, yes, and you ladies also, before you leave this room you will
+swear upon the Bible, every one of you, never to whisper the word
+treasure, never to think of it except to believe that it is gone--lost
+beneath the waters of the Haarlemer Meer. Never to whisper it, no,
+mistress, not even to the Heer Adrian, your son who lies sick abed
+upstairs."
+
+"You have learnt wisdom somewhere of late years, Martin, since you
+stopped drinking and fighting," said Dirk drily, "and for my part
+before God I swear it."
+
+"And so do I." "And I." "And I." "And I," echoed the others, Martin,
+who spoke last, adding, "Yes, I swear that I will never speak of it;
+no, /not even to my young master, Adrian, who lies sick abed
+upstairs./"
+
+
+
+Adrian made a good, though not a very quick recovery. He had lost a
+great deal of blood, but the vessel closed without further
+complications, so that it remained only to renew his strength by rest
+and ample food. For ten days or so after the return of Foy and Martin,
+he was kept in bed and nursed by the women of the house. Elsa's share
+in this treatment was to read to him from the Spanish romances which
+he admired. Very soon, however, he found that he admired Elsa herself
+even more than the romances, and would ask her to shut the book that
+he might talk to her. So long as his conversation was about himself,
+his dreams, plans and ambitions, she fell into it readily enough; but
+when he began to turn it upon /herself/, and to lard it with
+compliment and amorous innuendo, then she demurred, and fled to the
+romances for refuge.
+
+Handsome as he might be, Adrian had no attractions for Elsa. About him
+there was something too exaggerated for her taste; moreover he was
+Spanish, Spanish in his beauty, Spanish in the cast of his mind, and
+all Spaniards were hateful to her. Deep down in her heart also lay a
+second reason for this repugnance; the man reminded her of another man
+who for months had been a nightmare to her soul, the Hague spy,
+Ramiro. This Ramiro she had observed closely. Though she had not seen
+him very often his terrible reputation was familiar to her. She knew
+also, for her father had told her as much, that it was he who was
+drawing the nets about him at The Hague, and who plotted day and night
+to rob him of his wealth.
+
+At first sight there was no great resemblance between the pair. How
+could there be indeed between a man on the wrong side of middle age,
+one-eyed, grizzled, battered, and bearing about with him an atmosphere
+of iniquity, and a young gentleman, handsome, distinguished, and
+wayward, but assuredly no criminal? Yet the likeness existed. She had
+seen it first when Adrian was pointing out to her how, were he a
+general, he would dispose his forces for the capture of Leyden, and
+from that moment her nature rose in arms against him. Also it came out
+in other ways, in little tricks of voice and pomposities of manner
+which Elsa caught at unexpected moments, perhaps, as she told herself,
+because she had trained her mind to seek these similarities. Yet all
+the while she knew that the fancy was ridiculous, for what could these
+two men have in common with each other?
+
+In those days, however, Elsa did not think much of Adrian, or of
+anybody except her beloved father, whose only child she was, and whom
+she adored with all the passion of her heart. She knew the terrible
+danger in which he stood, and guessed that she had been sent away that
+she should not share his perils. Now she had but one desire and one
+prayer--that he might escape in safety, and that she might return to
+him again. Once only a message came from him, sent through a woman she
+had never seen, the wife of a fisherman, who delivered it by word of
+mouth. This was the message:
+
+"Give my love and blessing to my daughter Elsa, and tell her that so
+far I am unharmed. To Foy van Goorl say, I have heard the news. Well
+done, thou good and faithful servant! Let him remember what I told
+him, and be sure that he will not strive in vain, and that he shall
+not lack for his reward here or hereafter."
+
+That was all. Tidings reached them that the destruction of so many men
+by the blowing up of the /Swallow/, and by her sinking of the
+Government boat as she escaped, had caused much excitement and fury
+among the Spaniards. But, as those who had been blown up were free-
+lances, and as the boat was sunk while the /Swallow/ was flying from
+them, nothing had been done in the matter. Indeed, nothing could be
+done, for it was not known who manned the /Swallow/, and, as Ramiro
+had foreseen, her crew were supposed to have been destroyed with her
+in the Haarlemer Meer.
+
+Then, after a while, came other news that filled Elsa's heart with a
+wild hope, for it was reported that Hendrik Brant had disappeared, and
+was believed to have escaped from The Hague. Nothing more was heard of
+him, however, which is scarcely strange, for the doomed man had gone
+down the path of rich heretics into the silent vaults of the
+Inquisition. The net had closed at last, and through the net fell the
+sword.
+
+But if Elsa thought seldom of Adrian, except in gusts of spasmodic
+dislike, Adrian thought of Elsa, and little besides. So earnestly did
+he lash his romantic temperament, and so deeply did her beauty and
+charm appeal to him, that very soon he was truly in love with her. Nor
+did the fact that, as he believed, she was, potentially, the greatest
+heiress in the Netherlands, cool Adrian's amorous devotion. What could
+suit him better in his condition, than to marry this rich and lovely
+lady?
+
+So Adrian made up his mind that he would marry her, for, in his
+vanity, it never occurred to him that she might object. Indeed, the
+only thought that gave him trouble was the difficulty of reducing her
+wealth into possession. Foy and Martin had buried it somewhere in the
+Haarlemer Meer. But they said, for this he had ascertained by repeated
+inquiries, although the information was given grudgingly enough, that
+the map of the hiding-place had been destroyed in the explosion on the
+/Swallow/. Adrian did not believe this story for a moment. He was
+convinced that they were keeping the truth from him, and as the
+prospective master of that treasure he resented this reticence
+bitterly. Still, it had to be overcome, and so soon as he was engaged
+to Elsa he intended to speak very clearly upon this point. Meanwhile,
+the first thing was to find a suitable opportunity to make his
+declaration in due form, which done he would be prepared to deal with
+Foy and Martin.
+
+Towards evening it was Elsa's custom to walk abroad. As at that hour
+Foy left the foundry, naturally he accompanied her in these walks,
+Martin following at a little distance in case he should be wanted.
+Soon those excursions became delightful to both of them. To Elsa,
+especially, it was pleasant to escape from the hot house into the cool
+evening air, and still more pleasant to exchange the laboured
+tendernesses and highly coloured compliments of Adrian for the
+cheerful honesty of Foy's conversation.
+
+Foy admired his cousin as much as did his half-brother, but his
+attitude towards her was very different. He never said sweet things;
+he never gazed up into her eyes and sighed, although once or twice,
+perhaps by accident, he did squeeze her hand. His demeanour towards
+her was that of a friend and relative, and the subject of their talk
+for the most part was the possibility of her father's deliverance from
+the dangers which surrounded him, and other matters of the sort.
+
+The time came at last when Adrian was allowed to leave his room, and
+as it chanced it fell to Elsa's lot to attend him on this first
+journey downstairs. In a Dutch home of the period and of the class of
+the Van Goorl's, all the women-folk of whatever degree were expected
+to take a share in the household work. At present Elsa's share was to
+nurse to Adrian, who showed so much temper at every attempt which was
+made to replace her by any other woman, that, in face of the doctor's
+instructions, Lysbeth did not dare to cross his whim.
+
+It was with no small delight, therefore, that Elsa hailed the prospect
+of release, for the young man with his grandiose bearing and amorous
+sighs wearied her almost beyond endurance. Adrian was not equally
+pleased; indeed he had feigned symptoms which caused him to remain in
+bed an extra week, merely in order that he might keep her near him.
+But now the inevitable hour had come, and Adrian felt that it was
+incumbent upon him to lift the veil and let Elsa see some of the
+secret of his soul. He had prepared for the event; indeed the tedium
+of his confinement had been much relieved by the composition of lofty
+and heart-stirring addresses, in which he, the noble cavalier, laid
+his precious self and fortune at the feet of this undistinguished, but
+rich and attractive maid.
+
+Yet now when the moment was with him, and when Elsa gave him her hand
+to lead him from the room, behold! all these beautiful imaginings had
+vanished, and his knees shook with no fancied weakness. Somehow Elsa
+did not look as a girl ought to look who was about to be proposed to;
+she was too cold and dignified, too utterly unconscious of anything
+unusual. It was disconcerting--but--it must be done.
+
+By a superb effort Adrian recovered himself and opened with one of the
+fine speeches, not the best by any means, but the only specimen which
+he could remember.
+
+"Without," he began, "the free air waits to be pressed by my cramped
+wings, but although my heart bounds wild as that of any haggard hawk,
+I tell you, fairest Elsa, that in yonder gilded cage," and he pointed
+to the bed, "I----"
+
+"Heaven above us! Heer Adrian," broke in Elsa in alarm, "are you--are
+you--getting giddy?"
+
+"She does not understand. Poor child, how should she?" he murmured in
+a stage aside. Then he started again. "Yes, most adorable, best
+beloved, I am giddy, giddy with gratitude to those fair hands, giddy
+with worship of those lovely eyes----"
+
+Now Elsa, unable to contain her merriment any longer, burst out
+laughing, but seeing that her adorer's face was beginning to look as
+it did in the dining-room before he broke the blood vessel, she
+checked herself, and said:
+
+"Oh! Heer Adrian, don't waste all this fine poetry upon me. I am too
+stupid to understand it."
+
+"Poetry!" he exclaimed, becoming suddenly natural, "it isn't poetry."
+
+"Then what is it?" she asked, and next moment could have bitten her
+tongue out.
+
+"It is--it is--love!" and he sank upon his knees before her, where,
+she could not but notice, he looked very handsome in the subdued light
+of the room, with his upturned face blanched by sickness, and his
+southern glowing eyes. "Elsa, I love you and no other, and unless you
+return that love my heart will break and I shall die."
+
+Now, under ordinary circumstances, Elsa would have been quite
+competent to deal with the situation, but the fear of over-agitating
+Adrian complicated it greatly. About the reality of his feelings at
+the moment, at any rate, it seemed impossible to be mistaken, for the
+man was shaking like a leaf. Still, she must make an end of these
+advances.
+
+"Rise, Heer Adrian," she said gently, holding out her hand to help him
+to his feet.
+
+He obeyed, and glancing at her face, saw that it was very calm and
+cold as winter ice.
+
+"Listen, Heer Adrian," she said. "You mean this kindly, and doubtless
+many a maid would be flattered by your words, but I must tell you that
+I am in no mood for love-making."
+
+"Because of another man?" he queried, and suddenly becoming theatrical
+again, added, "Speak on, let me hear the worst; I will not quail."
+
+"There is no need to," replied Elsa in the same quiet voice, "because
+there is no other man. I have never yet thought of marriage, I have no
+wish that way, and if I had, I should forget it now when from hour to
+hour I do not know where my dear father may be, or what fate awaits
+him. He is my only lover, Heer Adrian," and as Elsa spoke her soft
+brown eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Ah!" said Adrian, "would that I might fly to save him from all
+dangers, as I rescued you, lady, from the bandits of the wood."
+
+"I would you might," she replied, smiling sadly at the double meaning
+of the words, "but, hark, your mother is calling us. I know, Heer
+Adrian," she added gently, "that you will understand and respect my
+dreadful anxiety, and will not trouble me again with poetry and love-
+talk, for if you do I shall be--angry."
+
+"Lady," he answered, "your wishes are my law, and until these clouds
+have rolled from the blue heaven of your life I will be as silent as
+the watching moon. And, by the way," he added rather nervously,
+"perhaps you will be silent also--about our talk, I mean, as we do not
+want that buffoon, Foy, thrusting his street-boy fun at us."
+
+Elsa bowed her head. She was inclined to resent the "we" and other
+things in this speech, but, above all, she did not wish to prolong
+this foolish and tiresome interview, so, without more words, she took
+her admirer by the hand and guided him down the stairs.
+
+
+
+It was but three days after this ridiculous scene, on a certain
+afternoon, when Adrian had been out for the second time, that the evil
+tidings came. Dirk had heard them in the town, and returned home well-
+nigh weeping. Elsa saw his face and knew at once.
+
+"Oh! is he dead?" she gasped.
+
+He nodded, for he dared not trust himself to speak.
+
+"How? Where?"
+
+"In the Poort prison at The Hague."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I have seen a man who helped to bury him."
+
+She looked up as though to ask for further details, but Dirk turned
+away muttering, "He is dead, he is dead, let be."
+
+Then she understood, nor did she ever seek to know any more. Whatever
+he had suffered, at least now he was with the God he worshipped, and
+with the wife he lost. Only the poor orphan, comforted by Lysbeth,
+crept from the chamber, and for a week was seen no more. When she
+appeared again she seemed to be herself in all things, only she never
+smiled and was very indifferent to what took place about her. Thus she
+remained for many days.
+
+Although this demeanour on Elsa's part was understood and received
+with sympathy and more by the rest of the household, Adrian soon began
+to find it irksome and even ridiculous. So colossal was this young
+man's vanity that he was unable quite to understand how a girl could
+be so wrapped up in the memories of a murdered father, that no place
+was left in her mind for the tendernesses of a present adorer. After
+all, this father, what was he? A middle-aged and, doubtless, quite
+uninteresting burgher, who could lay claim to but one distinction,
+that of great wealth, most of which had been amassed by his ancestors.
+
+Now a rich man alive has points of interest, but a rich man dead is
+only interesting to his heirs. Also, this Brant was one of these
+narrow-minded, fanatical, New Religion fellows who were so wearisome
+to men of intellect and refinement. True, he, Adrian, was himself of
+that community, for circumstances had driven him into the herd, but
+oh! he found them a dreary set. Their bald doctrines of individual
+effort, of personal striving to win a personal redemption, did not
+appeal to him; moreover, they generally ended at the stake. Now about
+the pomp and circumstance of the Mother Church there was something
+attractive. Of course, as a matter of prejudice he attended its
+ceremonials from time to time and found them comfortable and
+satisfying. Comfortable also were the dogmas of forgiveness to be
+obtained by an act of penitential confession, and the sense of a great
+supporting force whose whole weight was at the disposal of the
+humblest believer.
+
+In short, there was nothing picturesque about the excellent departed
+Hendrik, nothing that could justify the young woman in wrapping
+herself up in grief for him to the entire exclusion of a person who
+/was/ picturesque and ready, at the first opportunity, to wrap himself
+up in her.
+
+After long brooding, assisted by a close study of the romances of the
+period, Adrian convinced himself that in all this there was something
+unnatural, that the girl must be under a species of spell which in her
+own interest ought to be broken through. But how? That was the
+question. Try as he would he could do nothing. Therefore, like others
+in a difficulty, he determined to seek the assistance of an expert,
+namely, Black Meg, who, among her other occupations, for a certain fee
+payable in advance, was ready to give advice as a specialist in
+affairs of the heart.
+
+To Black Meg accordingly he went, disguised, secretly and by night,
+for he loved mystery, and in truth it was hardly safe that he should
+visit her by the light of day. Seated in a shadowed chamber he poured
+out his artless tale to the pythoness, of course concealing all names.
+He might have spared himself this trouble, as he was an old client of
+Meg's, a fact that no disguise could keep from her. Before he opened
+his lips she knew perfectly what was the name of his inamorata and
+indeed all the circumstances connected with the pair of them.
+
+The wise woman listened in patience, and when he had done, shook her
+head, saying that the case was too hard for her. She proposed,
+however, to consult a Master more learned than herself, who, by great
+good fortune, was at that moment in Leyden, frequenting her house in
+fact, and begged that Adrian would return at the same hour on the
+morrow.
+
+Now, as it chanced, oddly enough Black Meg had been commissioned by
+the said Master to bring about a meeting between himself and this very
+young man.
+
+Adrian returned accordingly, and was informed that the Master, after
+consulting the stars and other sources of divination, had become so
+deeply interested in the affair that, for pure love of the thing and
+not for any temporal purpose of gain, he was in attendance to advise
+in person. Adrian was overjoyed, and prayed that he might be
+introduced. Presently a noble-looking form entered the room, wrapped
+in a long cloak. Adrian bowed, and the form, after contemplating him
+earnestly--very earnestly, if he had known the truth--acknowledged the
+salute with dignity. Adrian cleared his throat and began to speak,
+whereon the sage stopped him.
+
+"Explanations are needless, young man," he said, in a measured and
+melodious voice, "for my studies of the matter have already informed
+me of more than you can tell. Let me see; your name is Adrian van
+Goorl--no, called Van Goorl; the lady you desire to win is Elsa Brant,
+the daughter of Hendrik Brant, a heretic and well-known goldsmith, who
+was recently executed at The Hague. She is a girl of much beauty, but
+one unnaturally insensible to the influence of love, and who does not
+at present recognise your worth. There are, also, unless I am
+mistaken, other important circumstances connected with the case.
+
+"This lady is a great heiress, but her fortune is at present missing;
+it is, I have reason to believe, hidden in the Haarlemer Meer. She is
+surrounded with influences that are inimical to you, all of which,
+however, can be overcome if you will place yourself unreservedly in my
+hands, for, young man, I accept no half-confidences, nor do I ask for
+any fee. When the fortune is recovered and the maiden is your happy
+wife, then we will talk of payment for services rendered, and not
+before."
+
+"Wonderful, wonderful!" gasped Adrian; "most learned senor, every word
+you say is true."
+
+"Yes, friend Adrian, and I have not told you all the truth. For
+instance--but, no, this is not the time to speak. The question is, do
+you accept my terms?"
+
+"What terms, senor?"
+
+"The old terms, without which no wonder can be worked--faith, absolute
+faith."
+
+Adrian hesitated a little. Absolute faith seemed a large present to
+give a complete stranger at a first interview.
+
+"I read your thought and I respect it," went on the sage, who, to tell
+truth, was afraid he had ventured a little too far. "There is no
+hurry; these affairs cannot be concluded in a day."
+
+Adrian admitted that they could not, but intimated that he would be
+glad of a little practical and immediate assistance. The sage buried
+his face in his hands and thought.
+
+"The first thing to do," he said presently, "is to induce a favourable
+disposition of the maiden's mind towards yourself, and this, I think,
+can best be brought about--though the method is one which I do not
+often use--by means of a love philtre carefully compounded to suit the
+circumstances of the case. If you will come here to-morrow at dusk,
+the lady of this house--a worthy woman, though rough of speech and no
+true adept--will hand it to you."
+
+"It isn't poisonous?" suggested Adrian doubtfully.
+
+"Fool, do I deal in poisons? It will poison the girl's heart in your
+favour, that is all."
+
+"And how is it to be administered?" asked Adrian.
+
+"In the water or the wine she drinks, and afterwards you must speak to
+her again as soon as possible. Now that is settled," he went on
+airily, "so, young friend, good-bye."
+
+"Are you sure that there is no fee?" hesitated Adrian.
+
+"No, indeed," answered the sage, "at any rate until all is
+accomplished. Ah!" and he sighed, "did you but know what a delight it
+is to a weary and world-worn traveller to help forward the bright
+ambitions of youth, to assist the pure and soaring soul to find the
+mate destined to it by heaven--ehem!--you wouldn't talk of fees.
+Besides, I will be frank; from the moment that I entered this room and
+saw you, I recognised in you a kindred nature, one which under my
+guidance is capable of great things, of things greater than I care to
+tell. Ah! what a vision do I see. You, the husband of the beautiful
+Elsa and master of her great wealth, and I at your side guiding you
+with my wisdom and experience--then what might not be achieved?
+Dreams, doubtless dreams, though how often have my dreams been
+prophetic! Still, forget them, and at least, young man, we will be
+friends," and he stretched out his hand.
+
+"With all my heart," answered Adrian, taking those cool, agile-looking
+fingers. "For years I have sought someone on whom I could rely,
+someone who would understand me as I feel you do."
+
+"Yes, yes," sighed the sage, "I do indeed understand you."
+
+"To think," he said to himself after the door had closed behind the
+delighted and flattered Adrian, "to think that I can be the father of
+such a fool as that. Well, it bears out my theories about cross-
+breeding, and, after all, in this case a good-looking, gullible fool
+will be much more useful to me than a young man of sense. Let me see;
+the price of the office is paid and I shall have my appointment duly
+sealed as the new Governor of the Gevangenhuis by next week at
+furthest, so I may as well begin to collect evidence against my worthy
+successor, Dirk van Goorl, his adventurous son Foy, and that red-
+headed ruffian, Martin. Once I have them in the Gevangenhuis it will
+go hard if I can't squeeze the secret of old Brant's money out of one
+of the three of them. The women wouldn't know, they wouldn't have told
+the women, besides I don't want to meddle with them, indeed nothing
+would persuade me to that"--and he shivered as though at some wretched
+recollection. "But there must be evidence; there is such noise about
+these executions and questionings that they won't allow any more of
+them in Leyden without decent evidence; even Alva and the Blood
+Council are getting a bit frightened. Well, who can furnish better
+testimony than that jackass, my worthy son, Adrian? Probably, however,
+he has a conscience somewhere, so it may be as well not to let him
+know that when he thinks himself engaged in conversation he is really
+in the witness box. Let me see, we must take the old fellow, Dirk, on
+the ground of heresy, and the youngster and the serving man on a
+charge of murdering the king's soldiers and assisting the escape of
+heretics with their goods. Murder sounds bad, and, especially in the
+case of a young man, excites less sympathy than common heresy."
+
+Then he went to the door, calling, "Meg, hostess mine, Meg."
+
+He might have saved himself the trouble, however, since, on opening it
+suddenly, that lady fell almost into his arms.
+
+"What!" he said, "listening, oh, fie! and all for nothing. But there,
+ladies will be curious and"--this to himself--"I must be more careful.
+Lucky I didn't talk aloud."
+
+Then he called her in, and having inspected the chamber narrowly,
+proceeded to make certain arrangements.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII
+
+                              BETROTHED
+
+At nightfall on the morrow Adrian returned as appointed, and was
+admitted into the same room, where he found Black Meg, who greeted him
+openly by name and handed to him a tiny phial containing a fluid clear
+as water. This, however, was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that
+it was water and nothing else.
+
+"Will it really work upon her heart?" asked Adrian, eyeing the stuff.
+
+"Ay," answered the hag, "that's a wondrous medicine, and those who
+drink it go crazed with love for the giver. It is compounded according
+to the Master's own receipt, from very costly tasteless herbs that
+grow only in the deserts of Arabia."
+
+Adrian understood, and fumbled in his pocket. Meg stretched out her
+hand to receive the honorarium. It was a long, skinny hand, with long,
+skinny fingers, but there was this peculiarity about it, that one of
+these fingers chanced to be missing. She saw his eyes fixed upon the
+gap, and rushed into an explanation.
+
+"I have met with an accident," Meg explained. "In cutting up a pig the
+chopper caught this finger and severed it."
+
+"Did you wear a ring on it?" asked Adrian.
+
+"Yes," she replied, with sombre fury.
+
+"How very strange!" ejaculated Adrian.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I have seen a finger, a woman's long finger with a gold ring
+on it, that might have come off your hand. I suppose the pork-butcher
+picked it up for a keepsake."
+
+"May be, Heer Adrian, but where is it now?"
+
+"Oh! it is, or was, in a bottle of spirits tied by a thread to the
+cork."
+
+Meg's evil face contorted itself. "Get me that bottle," she said
+hoarsely. "Look you, Heer Adrian, I am doing much for you, do this for
+me."
+
+"What do you want it for?"
+
+"To give it Christian burial," she replied sourly. "It is not fitting
+or lucky that a person's finger should stand about in a bottle like a
+caul or a lizard. Get it, I say get it--I ask no question where--or,
+young man, you will have little help in your love affairs from me."
+
+"Do you wish the dagger hilt also?" he asked mischievously.
+
+She looked at him out of the corners of her black eyes. This Adrian
+knew too much.
+
+"I want the finger and the ring on it which I lost in chopping up the
+pig."
+
+"Perhaps, mother, you would like the pig, too. Are you not making a
+mistake? Weren't you trying to cut his throat, and didn't he bite off
+the finger?"
+
+"If I want the pig, I'll search his stye. You bring that bottle,
+or----"
+
+She did not finish her sentence, for the door opened, and through it
+came the sage.
+
+"Quarrelling," he said in a tone of reproof. "What about? Let me
+guess," and he passed his hand over his shadowed brow. "Ah! I see,
+there is a finger in it, a finger of fate? No, not that," and, moved
+by a fresh inspiration, he grasped Meg's hand, and added, "Now I have
+it. Bring it back, friend Adrian, bring it back; a dead finger is most
+unlucky to all save its owner. As a favour to me."
+
+"Very well," said Adrian.
+
+"My gifts grow," mused the master. "I have a vision of this honest
+hand and of a great sword--but, there, it is not worth while, too
+small a matter. Leave us, mother. It shall be returned, my word on it.
+Yes, gold ring and all. And now, young friend, let us talk. You have
+the philtre? Well, I can promise you that it is a good one, it would
+almost bring Galatea from her marble. Pygmalion must have known that
+secret. But tell me something of your life, your daily thoughts and
+daily deeds, for when I give my friendship I love to live in the life
+of my friends."
+
+Thus encouraged, Adrian told him a great deal, so much, indeed, that
+the Senor Ramiro, nodding in the shadow of his hood, began to wonder
+whether the spy behind the cupboard door, expert as he was, could
+possibly make his pen keep pace with these outpourings. Oh! it was a
+dreary task, but he kept to it, and by putting in a sentence here and
+there artfully turned the conversation to matters of faith.
+
+"No need to fence with me," he said presently. "I know how you have
+been brought up, how through no fault of your own you have wandered
+out of the warm bosom of the true Church to sit at the clay feet of
+the conventicle. You doubt it? Well, let me look again, let me look.
+Yes, only last week you were seated in a whitewashed room overhanging
+the market-place. I see it all--an ugly little man with a harsh voice
+is preaching, preaching what I think blasphemy. Baskets--baskets? What
+have baskets to do with him?"
+
+"I believe he used to make them," interrupted Adrian, taking the bait.
+
+"That may be it, or perhaps he will be buried in one; at any rate he
+is strangely mixed up with baskets. Well, there are others with you, a
+middle-aged, heavy-faced man, is he not Dirk van Goorl, your
+stepfather? And--wait--a young fellow with rather a pleasant face,
+also a relation. I see his name, but I can't spell it. F--F--o--i,
+faith in the French tongue, odd name for a heretic."
+
+"F-o-y--Foy," interrupted Adrian again.
+
+"Indeed! Strange that I should have mistaken the last letter, but in
+the spirit sight and hearing these things chance: then there is a
+great man with a red beard."
+
+"No, Master, you're wrong," said Adrian with emphasis; "Martin was not
+there; he stopped behind to watch the house."
+
+"Are you sure?" asked the seer doubtfully. "I look and I seem to see
+him," and he stared blankly at the wall.
+
+"So you might see him often enough, but not at last week's meeting."
+
+It is needless to follow the conversation further. The seer, by aid of
+a ball of crystal that he produced from the folds of his cloak,
+described his spirit visions, and the pupil corrected them from his
+intimate knowledge of the facts, until the Senor Ramiro and his
+confederates in the cupboard had enough evidence, as evidence was
+understood in those days, to burn Dirk, Foy, and Martin three times
+over, and, if it should suit him, Adrian also. Then for that night
+they parted.
+
+Next evening Adrian was back again with the finger in the bottle,
+which Meg grabbed as a pike snatches at a frog, and further
+fascinating conversation ensued. Indeed, Adrian found this well of
+mystic lore tempered with shrewd advice upon love affairs and other
+worldly matters, and with flattery of his own person and gifts,
+singularly attractive.
+
+Several times did he return thus, for as it chanced Elsa had been
+unwell and kept her room, so that he discovered no opportunity of
+administering the magic philtre that was to cause her heart to burn
+with love for him.
+
+At length, when even the patient Ramiro was almost worn out by the
+young gentleman's lengthy visits, the luck changed. Elsa appeared one
+day at dinner, and with great adroitness Adrian, quite unseen of
+anyone, contrived to empty the phial into her goblet of water, which,
+as he rejoiced to see, she drank to the last drop.
+
+But no opportunity such as he sought ensued, for Elsa, overcome,
+doubtless, by an unwonted rush of emotion, retired to battle it in her
+own chamber. Since it was impossible to follow and propose to her
+there, Adrian, possessing his soul in such patience as he could
+command, sat in the sitting-room to await her return, for he knew that
+it was not her habit to go out until five o'clock. As it happened,
+however, Elsa had other arrangements for the afternoon, since she had
+promised to accompany Lysbeth upon several visits to the wives of
+neighbours, and then to meet her cousin Foy at the factory and walk
+with him in the meadows beyond the town.
+
+So while Adrian, lost in dreams, waited in the sitting-room Elsa and
+Lysbeth left the house by the side door.
+
+They had paid three of their visits when their path chanced to lead
+them past the old town prison which was called the Gevangenhuis. This
+place formed one of the gateways of the city, for it was built in the
+walls and opened on to the moat, water surrounding it on all sides. In
+front of its massive door, that was guarded by two soldiers, a small
+crowd had gathered on the drawbridge and in the street beyond,
+apparently in expectation of somebody or something. Lysbeth looked at
+the three-storied frowning building and shuddered, for it was here
+that heretics were put upon their trial, and here, too, many of them
+were done to death after the dreadful fashion of the day.
+
+"Hasten," she said to Elsa, as she pushed through the crowd, "for
+doubtless some horror passes here."
+
+"Have no fear," answered an elderly and good-natured woman who
+overheard her, "we are only waiting to hear the new governor of the
+prison read his deed of appointment."
+
+As she spoke the doors were thrown open and a man--he was a well-known
+executioner named Baptiste--came out carrying a sword in one hand and
+a bunch of keys on a salver in the other. After him followed the
+governor gallantly dressed and escorted by a company of soldiers and
+the officials of the prison. Drawing a scroll from beneath his cloak
+he began to read it rapidly and in an almost inaudible voice.
+
+It was his commission as governor of the prison signed by Alva
+himself, and set out in full his powers, which were considerable, his
+responsibilities which were small, and other matters, excepting only
+the sum of money that he had paid for the office, that, given certain
+conditions, was, as a matter of fact, sold to the highest bidder. As
+may be guessed, this post of governor of a gaol in one of the large
+Netherland cities was lucrative enough to those who did not object to
+such a fashion of growing rich. So lucrative was it, indeed, that the
+salary supposed to attach to the office was never paid; at least its
+occupant was expected to help himself to it out of heretical pockets.
+
+As he finished reading through the paper the new governor looked up,
+to see, perhaps, what impression he had produced upon his audience.
+Now Elsa saw his face for the first time and gripped Lysbeth's arm.
+
+"It is Ramiro," she whispered, "Ramiro the spy, the man who dogged my
+father at The Hague."
+
+As well might she have spoken to a statue. Indeed, of a sudden Lysbeth
+seemed to be smitten into stone, for there she stood staring with a
+blanched and meaningless face at the face of the man opposite to her.
+Well might she stare, for she also knew him. Across the gulf of years,
+one-eyed, bearded, withered, scarred as he was by suffering, passion
+and evil thoughts, she knew him, for there before her stood one whom
+she deemed dead, the wretch whom she had believed to be her husband,
+Juan de Montalvo. Some magnetism drew his gaze to her; out of all the
+faces of that crowd it was hers that leapt to his eye. He trembled and
+grew white; he turned away, and swiftly was gone back into the hell of
+the Gevangenhuis. Like a demon he had come out of it to survey the
+human world beyond, and search for victims there; like a demon he went
+back into his own place. So at least it seemed to Lysbeth.
+
+"Come, come," she muttered and, drawing the girl with her, passed out
+of the crowd.
+
+Elsa began to talk in a strained voice that from time to time broke
+into a sob.
+
+"That is the man," she said. "He hounded down my father; it was his
+wealth he wanted, but my father swore that he would die before he
+should win it, and he is dead--dead in the Inquisition, and that man
+is his murderer."
+
+Lysbeth made no answer, never a word she uttered, till presently they
+halted at a mean and humble door. Then she spoke for the first time in
+cold and constrained accents.
+
+"I am going in here to visit the Vrouw Jansen; you have heard of her,
+the wife of him whom they burned. She sent to me to say that she is
+sick, I know not of what, but there is smallpox about; I have heard of
+four cases of it in the city, so, cousin, it is wisest that you should
+not enter here. Give me the basket with the food and wine. Look,
+yonder is the factory, quite close at hand, and there you will find
+Foy. Oh! never mind Ramiro. What is done is done. Go and walk with
+Foy, and for a while forget--Ramiro."
+
+At the door of the factory Elsa found Foy awaiting her, and they
+walked together through one of the gates of the city into the pleasant
+meadows that lay beyond. At first they did not speak much, for each of
+them was occupied with thoughts which pressed their tongues to
+silence. When they were clear of the town, however, Elsa could contain
+herself no more; indeed, the anguish awakened in her mind by the sight
+of Ramiro working upon nerves already overstrung had made her half-
+hysterical. She began to speak; the words broke from her like water
+from a dam which it has breached. She told Foy that she had seen the
+man, and more--much more. All the misery which she had suffered, all
+the love for the father who was lost to her.
+
+At last Elsa ceased outworn, and, standing still there upon the river
+bank she wrung her hands and wept. Till now Foy had said nothing, for
+his good spirits and cheerful readiness seemed to have forsaken him.
+Even now he said nothing. All he did was to put his arms about this
+sweet maid's waist, and, drawing her to him, to kiss her upon brow and
+eyes and lips. She did not resist; it never seemed to occur to her to
+show resentment; indeed, she let her head sink upon his shoulder like
+the head of a little child, and there sobbed herself to silence. At
+last she lifted her face and asked very simply:
+
+"What do you want with me, Foy van Goorl?"
+
+"What?" he repeated; "why I want to be your husband."
+
+"Is this a time for marrying and giving in marriage?" she asked again,
+but almost as though she were speaking to herself.
+
+"I don't know that it is," he replied, "but it seems the only thing to
+do, and in such days two are better than one."
+
+She drew away and looked at him, shaking her head sadly. "My father,"
+she began----
+
+"Yes," he interrupted brightening, "thank you for mentioning him, that
+reminds me. He wished this, so I hope now that he is gone you will
+take the same view."
+
+"It is rather late to talk about that, isn't it, Foy?" she stammered,
+looking at his shoulder and smoothing her ruffled hair with her small
+white hand. "But what do you mean?"
+
+So word for word, as nearly as he could remember it, he told her all
+that Hendrik Brant had said to him in the cellar at The Hague before
+they had entered upon the desperate adventure of their flight to the
+Haarlemer Meer. "He wished it, you see," he ended.
+
+"My thought was always his thought, and--Foy--I wish it also."
+
+"Priceless things are not lightly won," said he, quoting Brant's words
+as though by some afterthought.
+
+"There he must have been talking of the treasure, Foy," she answered,
+her face lightening to a smile.
+
+"Ay, of the treasure, sweet, the treasure of your dear heart."
+
+"A poor thing, Foy, but I think that--it rings true."
+
+"It had need, Elsa, yet the best of coin may crack with rough usage."
+
+"Mine will wear till death, Foy."
+
+"I ask no more, Elsa. When I am dead, spend it elsewhere; I shall find
+it again above where there is no marrying or giving in marriage."
+
+"There would be but small change left to spend, Foy, so look to your
+own gold and--see that you do not alter its image and superscription,
+for metal will melt in the furnace, and each queen has her stamp."
+
+"Enough," he broke in impatiently. "Why do you talk of such things,
+and in these riddles which puzzle me?"
+
+"Because, because, we are not married yet, and--the words are not mine
+--precious things are dearly won. Perfect love and perfect peace
+cannot be bought with a few sweet words and kisses; they must be
+earned in trial and tribulation."
+
+"Of which I have no doubt we shall find plenty," Foy replied
+cheerfully. "Meanwhile, the kisses make a good road to travel on."
+
+After this Elsa did not argue any more.
+
+At length they turned and walked homeward through the quiet evening
+twilight, hand clasped in hand, and were happy in their way. It was
+not a very demonstrative way, for the Dutch have never been excitable,
+or at least they do not show their excitement. Moreover, the
+conditions of this betrothal were peculiar; it was as though their
+hands had been joined from a deathbed, the deathbed of Hendrik Brant,
+the martyr of The Hague, whose new-shed blood cried out to Heaven for
+vengeance. This sense pressing on both of them did not tend towards
+rapturous outbursts of youthful passion, and even if they could have
+shaken it off and let their young blood have rein, there remained
+another sense--that of dangers ahead of them.
+
+"Two are better than one," Foy had said, and for her own reasons she
+had not wished to argue the point, still Elsa felt that to it there
+was another side. If two could comfort each other, could help each
+other, could love each other, could they not also suffer for each
+other? In short, by doubling their lives, did they not also double
+their anxieties, or if children should come, treble and quadruple
+them? This is true of all marriage, but how much more was it true in
+such days and in such a case as that of Foy and Elsa, both of them
+heretics, both of them rich, and, therefore, both liable at a moment's
+notice to be haled to the torment and the stake? Knowing these things,
+and having but just seen the hated face of Ramiro, it is not wonderful
+that although she rejoiced as any woman must that the man to whom her
+soul turned had declared himself her lover, Elsa could only drink of
+this joyful cup with a chastened and a fearful spirit. Nor is it
+wonderful that even in the hour of his triumph Foy's buoyant and
+hopeful nature was chilled by the shadow of her fears and the
+forebodings of his own heart.
+
+
+
+When Lysbeth parted from Elsa that afternoon she went straight to the
+chamber of the Vrouw Jansen. It was a poor place, for after the
+execution of her husband his wretched widow had been robbed of all her
+property and now existed upon the charity of her co-religionists.
+Lysbeth found her in bed, an old woman nursing her, who said that she
+thought the patient was suffering from a fever. Lysbeth leant over the
+bed and kissed the sick woman, but started back when she saw that the
+glands of her neck were swollen into great lumps, while the face was
+flushed and the eyes so bloodshot as to be almost red. Still she knew
+her visitor, for she whispered:
+
+"What is the matter with me, Vrouw van Goorl? Is it the smallpox
+coming on? Tell me, friend, the doctor would not speak."
+
+"I fear that it is worse; it is the plague," said Lysbeth, startled
+into candour.
+
+The poor girl laughed hoarsely. "Oh! I hoped it," she said. "I am
+glad, I am glad, for now I shall die and go to join him. But I wish
+that I had caught it before," she rambled on to herself, "for then I
+would have taken it to him in prison and they couldn't have treated
+him as they did." Suddenly she seemed to come to herself, for she
+added, "Go away, Vrouw van Goorl, go quickly or you may catch my
+sickness."
+
+"If so, I am afraid that the mischief is done, for I have kissed you,"
+answered Lysbeth. "But I do not fear such things, though perhaps if I
+took it, this would save me many a trouble. Still, there are others to
+think of, and I will go." So, having knelt down to pray awhile by the
+patient, and given the old nurse the basket of soup and food, Lysbeth
+went.
+
+Next morning she heard that the Vrouw Jansen was dead, the pest that
+struck her being of the most fatal sort.
+
+Lysbeth knew that she had run great risk, for there is no disease more
+infectious than the plague. She determined, therefore, that so soon as
+she reached home she would burn her dress and other articles of
+clothing and purify herself with the fumes of herbs. Then she
+dismissed the matter from her mind, which was already filled with
+another thought, a dominant, soul-possessing thought.
+
+Oh God, Montalvo had returned to Leyden! Out of the blackness of the
+past, out of the gloom of the galleys, had arisen this evil genius of
+her life; yes, and, by a strange fatality, of the life of Elsa Brant
+also, since it was her, she swore, who had dragged down her father.
+Lysbeth was a brave woman, one who had passed through many dangers,
+but her whole heart turned sick with terror at the sight of this man,
+and sick it must remain till she, or he, were dead. She could well
+guess what he had come to seek. It was that cursed treasure of Hendrik
+Brant's which had drawn him. She knew from Elsa that for a year at
+least the man Ramiro had been plotting to steal this money at The
+Hague. He had failed there, failed with overwhelming and shameful loss
+through the bravery and resource of her son Foy and their henchman,
+Red Martin. Now he had discovered their identity; he was aware that
+they held the secret of the hiding-place of that accursed hoard, they
+and no others, and he had established himself in Leyden to wring it
+out of them. It was clear, clear as the setting orb of the red sun
+before her. She knew the man--had she not lived with him?--and there
+could be no doubt about it, and--he was the new governor of the
+Gevangenhuis. Doubtless he has purchased that post for his own dark
+purposes and--to be near them.
+
+Sick and half blind with the intensity of her dread, Lysbeth staggered
+home. She must tell Dirk, that was her one thought; but no, she had
+been in contact with the plague, first she must purify herself. So she
+went to her room, and although it was summer, lit a great fire on the
+hearth, and in it burned her garments. Then she bathed and fumigated
+her hair and body over a brazier of strong herbs, such as in those
+days of frequent and virulent sickness housewives kept at hand, after
+which she dressed herself afresh and went to seek her husband. She
+found him at a desk in his private room reading some paper, which at
+her approach he shuffled into a drawer.
+
+"What is that, Dirk?" she asked with sudden suspicion.
+
+He pretended not to hear, and she repeated the query.
+
+"Well, wife, if you wish to know," he answered in his blunt fashion,
+"it is my will."
+
+"Why are you reading your will?" she asked again, beginning to
+tremble, for her nerves were afire, and this simple accident struck
+her as something awful and ominous.
+
+"For no particular reason, wife," he replied quietly, "only that we
+all must die, early or late. There is no escape from that, and in
+these times it is more often early than late, so it is as well to be
+sure that everything is in order for those who come after us. Now,
+since we are on the subject, which I have never cared to speak about,
+listen to me."
+
+"What about, husband?"
+
+"Why, about my will. Look you, Hendrik Brant and his treasure have
+taught me a lesson. I am not a man of his substance, or a tenth of it,
+but in some countries I should be called rich, for I have worked hard
+and God has prospered me. Well, of late I have been realising where I
+could, also the bulk of my savings is in cash. But the cash is not
+here, not in this country at all. You know my correspondents, Munt and
+Brown, of Norwich, in England, to whom we ship our goods for the
+English market. They are honest folk, and Munt owes me everything,
+almost to his life. Well, they have the money, it has reached them
+safely, thanks be to God, and with it a counterpart of this my will
+duly attested, and here is their letter of acknowledgment stating that
+they have laid it out carefully at interest upon mortgage on great
+estates in Norfolk where it lies to my order, or that of my heirs, and
+that a duplicate acknowledgment has been filed in their English
+registries in case this should go astray. Little remains here except
+this house and the factory, and even on those I have raised money.
+Meanwhile the business is left to live on, and beyond it the rents
+which will come from England, so that whether I be living or dead you
+need fear no want. But what is the matter with you, Lysbeth? You look
+strange."
+
+"Oh! husband, husband," she gasped, "Juan de Montalvo is here again.
+He has appeared as the new governor of the gaol. I saw him this
+afternoon, I cannot be mistaken, although he has lost an eye and is
+much changed."
+
+Dirk's jaw dropped and his florid face whitened. "Juan de Montalvo!"
+he said. "I heard that he was dead long ago."
+
+"You are mistaken, husband, a devil never dies. He is seeking Brant's
+treasure, and he knows that we have its secret. You can guess the
+rest. More, now that I think of it, I have heard that a strange
+Spaniard is lodging with Hague Simon, he whom they call the Butcher,
+and Black Meg, of whom we have cause to know. Doubtless it is he, and
+--Dirk, death overshadows us."
+
+"Why should he know of Brant's treasure, wife?"
+
+"Because /he is Ramiro/, the man who dogged him down, the man who
+followed the ship /Swallow/ to the Haarlemer Meer. Elsa was with me
+this afternoon, she knew him again."
+
+Dirk thought a while, resting his head upon his hand. Then he lifted
+it and said:
+
+"I am very glad that I sent the money to Munt and Brown, Heaven gave
+me that thought. Well, wife, what is your counsel now?"
+
+"My counsel is that we should fly from Leyden--all of us, yes, this
+very night before worse happens."
+
+He smiled. "That cannot be; there are no means of flight, and under
+the new laws we could not pass the gates; that trick has been played
+too often. Still, in a day or two, when I have had time to arrange, we
+might escape if you still wish to go."
+
+"To-night, to-night," she urged, "or some of us stay for ever."
+
+"I tell you, wife, it is not possible. Am I a rat that I should be
+bolted from my hole thus by this ferret of a Montalvo? I am a man of
+peace and no longer young, but let him beware lest I stop here long
+enough to pass a sword through him."
+
+"So be it, husband," she replied, "but I think it is through my heart
+that the sword will pass," and she burst out weeping.
+
+
+
+Supper that night was a somewhat melancholy meal. Dirk and Lysbeth sat
+at the ends of the table in silence. On one side of fit were placed
+Foy and Elsa, who were also silent for a very different reason, while
+opposite to them was Adrian, who watched Elsa with an anxious and
+inquiring eye.
+
+That the love potion worked he was certain, for she looked confused
+and a little flushed; also, as would be natural under the
+circumstances, she avoided his glance and made pretence to be
+interested in Foy, who seemed rather more stupid than usual. Well, so
+soon as he could find his chance all this would be cleared up, but
+meanwhile the general gloom and silence were affecting his nerves.
+
+"What have you been doing this afternoon, mother?" Adrian asked
+presently.
+
+"I, son?" she replied with a start, "I have been visiting the unhappy
+Vrouw Jansen, whom I found very sick."
+
+"What is the matter with her, mother?"
+
+Lysbeth's mind, which had wandered away, again returned to the subject
+at hand with an effort.
+
+"The matter? Oh! she has the plague."
+
+"The plague!" exclaimed Adrian, springing to his feet, "do you mean to
+say you have been consorting with a woman who has the plague?"
+
+"I fear so," she answered with a smile, "but do not be frightened,
+Adrian, I have burnt my clothes and fumigated myself."
+
+Still Adrian was frightened. His recent experience of sickness had
+been ample, and although he was no coward he had a special dislike of
+infectious diseases, which at the time were many.
+
+"It is horrible," he said, "horrible. I only hope that we--I mean you
+--may escape. The house is unbearably close. I am going to walk in the
+courtyard," and away he went, for the moment, at any rate, forgetting
+all about Elsa and the love potion.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII
+
+                          FOY SEES A VISION
+
+Never since that day when, many years before, she had bought the
+safety of the man she loved by promising herself in marriage to his
+rival, had Lysbeth slept so ill as she did upon this night. Montalvo
+was alive. Montalvo was here, here to strike down and destroy those
+whom she loved, and triple armed with power, authority, and desire to
+do the deed. Well she knew that when there was plunder to be won, he
+would not step aside or soften until it was in his hands. Yet there
+was hope in this; he was not a cruel man, as she knew also, that is to
+say, he had no pleasure in inflicting suffering for its own sake; such
+methods he used only as a means to an end. If he could get the money,
+all of it, she was sure that he would leave them alone. Why should he
+not have it? Why should all their lives be menaced because of this
+trust which had been thrust upon them?
+
+Unable to endure the torments of her doubts and fears, Lysbeth woke
+her husband, who was sleeping peacefully at her side, and told him
+what was passing in her mind.
+
+"It is a true saying," answered Dirk with a smile, "that even the best
+of women are never quite honest when their interest pulls the other
+way. What, wife, would you have us buy our own peace with Brant's
+fortune, and thus break faith with a dead man and bring down his curse
+upon us?"
+
+"The lives of men are more than gold, and Elsa would consent," she
+answered sullenly; "already this pelf is stained with blood, the blood
+of Hendrik Brant himself, and of Hans the pilot."
+
+"Yes, wife, and since you mention it, with the blood of a good many
+Spaniards also, who tried to steal the stuff. Let's see; there must
+have been several drowned at the mouth of the river, and quite twenty
+went up with the /Swallow/, so the loss has not been all on our side.
+Listen, Lysbeth, listen. It was my cousin, Hendrik Brant's, belief
+that in the end this great fortune of his would do some service to our
+people or our country, for he wrote as much in his will and repeated
+it to Foy. I know not when or in what fashion this may come about; how
+can I know? But first will I die before I hand it over to the
+Spaniard. Moreover, I cannot, since its secret was never told to me."
+
+"Foy and Martin have it."
+
+"Lysbeth," said Dirk sternly, "I charge you as you love me not to work
+upon them to betray their trust; no, not even to save my life or your
+own--if we must die, let us die with honour. Do you promise?"
+
+"I promise," she answered with dry lips, "but on this condition only,
+that you fly from Leyden with us all, to-night if maybe."
+
+"Good," answered Dirk, "a halfpenny for a herring; you have made your
+promise, and I'll give you mine; that's fair, although I am old to
+seek a new home in England. But it can't be to-night, wife, for I must
+make arrangements. There is a ship sailing to-day, and we might catch
+her to-morrow at the river's mouth, after she has passed the officers,
+for her captain is a friend of mine. How will that do?"
+
+"I had rather it had been to-night," said Lysbeth. "While we are in
+Leyden with that man we are not safe from one hour to the next."
+
+"Wife, we are never safe. It is all in the hands of God, and,
+therefore, we should live like soldiers awaiting the hour to march,
+and rejoice exceedingly when it pleases our Captain to sound the
+call."
+
+"I know," she answered; "but, oh! Dirk, it would be hard--to part."
+
+He turned his head aside for a moment, then said in a steady voice,
+"Yes, wife, but it will be sweet to meet again and part no more."
+
+
+
+While it was still early that morning Dirk summoned Foy and Martin to
+his wife's chamber. Adrian for his own reasons he did not summon,
+making the excuse that he was still asleep, and it would be a pity to
+disturb him; nor Elsa, since as yet there was no necessity to trouble
+her. Then, briefly, for he was given to few words, he set out the gist
+of the matter, telling them that the man Ramiro whom they had beaten
+on the Haarlemer Meer was in Leyden, which Foy knew already, for Elsa
+had told him as much, and that he was no other than the Spaniard named
+the Count Juan de Montalvo, the villain who had deceived Lysbeth into
+a mock marriage by working on her fears, and who was the father of
+Adrian. All this time Lysbeth sat in a carved oak chair listening with
+a stony face to the tale of her own shame and betrayal. She made no
+sign at all beyond a little twitching of her fingers, till Foy,
+guessing what she suffered in her heart, suddenly went to his mother
+and kissed her. Then she wept a few silent tears, for an instant laid
+her hand upon his head as though in blessing, and, motioning him back
+to his place, became herself again--stern, unmoved, observant.
+
+Next Dirk, taking up his tale, spoke of his wife's fears, and of her
+belief that there was a plot to wring out of them the secret of
+Hendrik Brant's treasure.
+
+"Happily," he said, addressing Foy, "neither your mother nor I, nor
+Adrian, nor Elsa, know that secret; you and Martin know it alone, you
+and perhaps one other who is far away and cannot be caught. We do not
+know it, and we do not wish to know it, and whatever happens to any of
+us, it is our earnest hope that neither of you will betray it, even if
+our lives, or your lives, hang upon the words, for we hold it better
+that we should keep our trust with a dead man at all costs than that
+we should save ourselves by breaking faith. Is it not so, wife?"
+
+"It is so," answered Lysbeth hoarsely.
+
+"Have no fear," said Foy. "We will die before we betray."
+
+"We will try to die before we betray," grumbled Martin in his deep
+voice, "but flesh is frail and God knows."
+
+"Oh! I have no doubt of you, honest man," said Dirk with a smile, "for
+you have no mother and father to think of in this matter."
+
+"Then, master, you are foolish," replied Martin, "for I repeat it--
+flesh is frail, and I always hated the look of a rack. However, I have
+a handsome legacy charged upon this treasure, and perhaps the thought
+of that would support me. Alive or dead, I should not like to think of
+my money being spent by any Spaniard."
+
+While Martin spoke the strangeness of the thing came home to Foy. Here
+were four of them, two of whom knew a secret and two who did not,
+while those who did not implored those who did to impart to them
+nothing of the knowledge which, if they had it, might serve to save
+them from a fearful doom. Then for the first time in his young and
+inexperienced life he understood how great erring men and women can be
+and what patient majesty dwells in the human heart, that for the sake
+of a trust it does not seek can yet defy the most hideous terrors of
+the body and the soul. Indeed, that scene stamped itself upon his mind
+in such fashion that throughout his long existence he never quite
+forgot it for a single day. His mother, clad in her frilled white cap
+and grey gown, seated cold-faced and resolute in the oaken chair. His
+father, to whom, although he knew it not, he was now speaking for the
+last time, standing by her, his hand resting upon her shoulder and
+addressing them in his quiet, honest voice. Martin standing also but a
+little to one side and behind, the light of the morning playing upon
+his great red beard; his round, pale eyes glittering as was their
+fashion when wrathful, and himself, Foy, leaning forward to listen,
+every nerve in his body strung tight with excitement, love, and fear.
+
+Oh! he never forgot it, which is not strange, for so great was the
+strain upon him, so well did he know that this scene was but the
+prelude to terrible events, that for a moment, only for a moment, his
+steady reason was shaken and he saw a vision. Martin, the huge,
+patient, ox-like Martin, was changed into a red Vengeance; he saw him,
+great sword aloft, he heard the roar of his battle cry, and lo! before
+him men went down to death, and about him the floor seemed purple with
+their blood. His father and his mother, too; they were no longer
+human, they were saints--see the glory which shone over them, and
+look, too, the dead Hendrik Brant was whispering in their ears. And
+he, Foy, he was beside Martin playing his part in those red frays as
+best he might, and playing it not in vain.
+
+Then all passed, and a wave of peace rolled over him, a great sense of
+duty done, of honour satisfied, of reward attained. Lo! the play was
+finished, and its ultimate meaning clear, but before he could read and
+understand--it had gone.
+
+He gasped and shook himself, gripping his hands together.
+
+"What have you seen, son?" asked Lysbeth, watching his face.
+
+"Strange things, mother," Foy answered. "A vision of war for Martin
+and me, of glory for my father and you, and of eternal peace for us
+all."
+
+"It is a good omen, Foy," she said. "Fight your fight and leave us to
+fight ours. 'Through much tribulation we must enter into the Kingdom
+of God,' where at last there is a rest remaining for us all. It is a
+good omen. Your father was right and I was wrong. Now I have no more
+to fear; I am satisfied."
+
+None of them seemed to be amazed or to find these words wonderful and
+out of the common. For them the hand of approaching Doom had opened
+the gates of Distance, and they knew everyone that through these some
+light had broken on their souls, a faint flicker of dawn from beyond
+the clouds. They accepted it in thankfulness.
+
+"I think that is all I have to say," said Dirk in his usual voice.
+"No, it is not all," and he told them of his plan for flight. They
+listened and agreed to it, yet to them it seemed a thing far off and
+unreal. None of them believed that this escape would ever be carried
+out. All of them believed that here in Leyden they would endure the
+fiery trial of their faith and win each of them its separate crown.
+
+When everything was discussed, and each had learned the lesson of what
+he must do that day, Foy asked if Adrian was to be told of the scheme.
+To this his father answered hastily that the less it was spoken of the
+better, therefore he proposed to tell Adrian late that night only,
+when he could make up his mind whether he would accompany them or stay
+in Leyden.
+
+"Then he shan't go out to-night, and will come with us as far as the
+ship only if I can manage it," muttered Martin beneath his breath, but
+aloud he said nothing. Somehow it did not seem to him to be worth
+while to make trouble about it, for he knew that if he did his
+mistress and Foy, who believed so heartily in Adrian, would be angry.
+
+"Father and mother," said Foy again, "while we are gathered here there
+is something I wish to say to you."
+
+"What is it, son?" asked Dirk.
+
+"Yesterday I became affianced to Elsa Brant, and we wish to ask your
+consent and blessing."
+
+"That will be gladly given, son, for I think this very good news.
+Bring her here, Foy," answered Dirk.
+
+But although in his hurry Foy did not notice it, his mother said
+nothing. She liked Elsa well indeed--who would not?--but oh! this
+brought them a step nearer to that accursed treasure, the treasure
+which from generation to generation had been hoarded up that it might
+be a doom to men. If Foy were affianced to Elsa, it was his
+inheritance as well as hers, for those trusts of Hendrik Brant's will
+were to Lysbeth things unreal and visionary, and its curse would fall
+upon him as well as upon her. Moreover it might be said that he was
+marrying her to win the wealth.
+
+"This betrothal does not please you; you are sad, wife," said Dirk,
+looking at her quickly.
+
+"Yes, husband, for now I think that we shall never get out of Leyden.
+I pray that Adrian may not hear of it, that is all."
+
+"Why, what has he to do with the matter?"
+
+"Only that he is madly in love with the girl. Have you not seen it?
+And--you know his temper."
+
+"Adrian, Adrian, always Adrian," answered Dirk impatiently. "Well, it
+is a very fitting match, for if she has a great fortune hidden
+somewhere in a swamp, which in fact she has not, since the bulk of it
+is bequeathed to me to be used for certain purposes; he has, or will
+have, moneys also--safe at interest in England. Hark! here they come,
+so, wife, put on a pleasant face; they will think it unlucky if you do
+not smile."
+
+As he spoke Foy re-entered the room, leading Elsa by the hand, and she
+looked as sweet a maid as ever the sun shone on. So they told their
+story, and kneeling down before Dirk, received his blessing in the old
+fashion, and very glad were they in the after years to remember that
+it had been so received. Then they turned to Lysbeth, and she also
+lifted up her hand to bless them, but ere it touched their heads, do
+what she would to check it, a cry forced its way to her lips, and she
+said:
+
+"Oh! children, doubtless you love each other well, but is this a time
+for marrying and giving in marriage?"
+
+"My own words, my very words," exclaimed Elsa, springing to her feet
+and turning pale.
+
+Foy looked vexed. Then recovering himself and trying to smile, he
+said:
+
+"And I give them the same answer--that two are better than one;
+moreover, this is a betrothal, not a marriage."
+
+"Ay," muttered Martin behind, thinking aloud after his fashion,
+"betrothal is one thing and marriage another," but low as he spoke
+Elsa overheard him.
+
+"Your mother is upset," broke in Dirk, "and you can guess why, so do
+not disturb her more at present. Let us to our business, you and
+Martin to the factory to make arrangements there as I have told you,
+and I, after I have seen the captain, to whatever God shall call me to
+do. So, till we meet again, farewell, my son--and daughter," he added,
+smiling at Elsa.
+
+They left the room, but as Martin was following them Lysbeth called
+him back.
+
+"Go armed to the factory, Martin," she said, "and see that your young
+master wears that steel shirt beneath his jerkin."
+
+Martin nodded and went.
+
+
+
+Adrian woke up that morning in an ill mood. He had, it is true,
+administered his love potion with singular dexterity and success, but
+as yet he reaped no fruit from his labours, and was desperately afraid
+lest the effect of the magic draught might wear off. When he came
+downstairs it was to find that Foy and Martin were already departed to
+the factory, and that his stepfather had gone out, whither he knew
+not. This was so much to the good, for it left the coast clear. Still
+he was none the better off, since either his mother and Elsa had taken
+their breakfast upstairs, or they had dispensed with that meal. His
+mother he could spare, especially after her recent contact with a
+plague patient, but under the circumstances Elsa's absence was
+annoying. Moreover, suddenly the house had become uncomfortable, for
+every one in it seemed to be running about carrying articles hither
+and thither in a fashion so aimless that it struck him as little short
+of insane. Once or twice also he saw Elsa, but she, too, was carrying
+things, and had no time for conversation.
+
+At length Adrian wearied of it and departed to the factory with the
+view of making up his books, which, to tell the truth, had been
+somewhat neglected of late, to find that here, too, the same confusion
+reigned. Instead of attending to his ordinary work, Martin was
+marching to and fro bearing choice pieces of brassware, which were
+being packed into crates, and he noticed, for Adrian was an observant
+young man, that he was not wearing his usual artisan's dress. Why, he
+wondered to himself, should Martin walk about a factory upon a
+summer's day clad in his armour of quilted bull's hide, and wearing
+his great sword Silence strapped round his middle? Why, too, should
+Foy have removed the books and be engaged in going through them with a
+clerk? Was he auditing them? If so, he wished him joy of the job,
+since to bring them to a satisfactory balance had proved recently
+quite beyond his own powers. Not that there was anything wrong with
+the books, for he, Adrian, had kept them quite honestly according to
+his very imperfect lights, only things must have been left out, for
+balance they would not. Well, on the whole, he was glad, since a man
+filled with lover's hopes and fears was in no mood for arithmetical
+exercises, so, after hanging about for a while, he returned home to
+dinner.
+
+The meal was late, an unusual occurrence, which annoyed him; moreover,
+neither his mother nor his stepfather appeared at table. At length
+Elsa came in looking pale and worried, and they began to eat, or
+rather to go through the form of eating, since neither of them seemed
+to have any appetite. Nor, as the servant was continually in the room,
+and as Elsa took her place at one end of the long table while he was
+at the other, had their /tete-a-tete/ any of the usual advantages.
+
+At last the waiting-woman went away, and, after a few moment's pause,
+Elsa rose to follow. By this time Adrian was desperate. He would bear
+it no more; things must be brought to a head.
+
+"Elsa," he said, in an irritated voice, "everything seems to be very
+uncomfortable here to-day, there is so much disturbance in the house
+that one might imagine we were going to shut it up and leave Leyden."
+
+Elsa looked at him out of the corners of her eyes; probably by this
+time she had learnt the real cause of the disturbance.
+
+"I am sorry, Heer Adrian," she said, "but your mother is not very well
+this morning."
+
+"Indeed; I only hope she hasn't caught the plague from the Jansen
+woman; but that doesn't account for everybody running about with their
+hands full, like ants in a broken nest, especially as it is not the
+time of year when women turn all the furniture upside down and throw
+the curtains out of the windows in the pretence that they are cleaning
+them. However, we are quiet here for a while, so let us talk."
+
+Elsa became suspicious. "Your mother wants me, Heer Adrian," she said,
+turning towards the door.
+
+"Let her rest, Elsa, let her rest; there is no medicine like sleep for
+the sick."
+
+Elsa pretended not to hear him, so, as she still headed for the door,
+by a movement too active to be dignified, he placed himself in front
+of it, adding, "I have said that I want to speak with you."
+
+"And I have said that I am busy, Heer Adrian, so please let me pass."
+
+Adrian remained immovable. "Not until I have spoken to you," he said.
+
+Now as escape was impossible Elsa drew herself up and asked in a cold
+voice:
+
+"What is your pleasure? I pray you, be brief."
+
+Adrian cleared his throat, reflecting that she was keeping the
+workings of the love potion under wonderful control; indeed to look at
+her no one could have guessed that she had recently absorbed this
+magic Eastern medicine. However, something must be done; he had gone
+too far to draw back.
+
+"Elsa," he said boldly, though no hare could have been more
+frightened, "Elsa," and he clasped his hands and looked at the
+ceiling, "I love you and the time has come to say so."
+
+"If I remember right it came some time ago, Heer Adrian," she replied
+with sarcasm. "I thought that by now you had forgotten all about it."
+
+"Forgotten!" he sighed, "forgotten! With you ever before my eyes how
+can I forget?"
+
+"I am sure I cannot say," she answered, "but I know that I wish to
+forget this folly."
+
+"Folly! She calls it folly!" he mused aloud. "Oh, Heaven, folly is the
+name she gives to the life-long adoration of my bleeding heart!"
+
+"You have known me exactly five weeks, Heer Adrian----"
+
+"Which, sweet lady, makes me desire to know you for fifty years."
+
+Elsa sighed, for she found the prospect dreary.
+
+"Come," he went on with a gush, "forego this virgin coyness, you have
+done enough and more than enough for honour, now throw aside pretence,
+lay down your arms and yield. No hour, I swear, of this long fight
+will be so happy to you as that of your sweet surrender, for remember,
+dear one, that I, your conqueror, am in truth the conquered. I,
+abandoning----"
+
+He got no further, for at this point the sorely tried Elsa lost
+control of herself, but not in the fashion which he hoped for and
+expected.
+
+"Are you crazed, Heer Adrian," she asked, "that you should insist thus
+in pouring this high-flown nonsense into my ears when I have told you
+that it is unwelcome to me? I understand that you ask me for my love.
+Well, once for all I tell you that I have none to give."
+
+This was a blow, since it was impossible for Adrian to put a
+favourable construction upon language so painfully straightforward.
+His self-conceit was pierced at last and collapsed like a pricked
+bladder.
+
+"None to give!" he gasped, "none to give! You don't mean to tell me
+that you have given it to anybody else?"
+
+"Yes, I do," she answered, for by now Elsa was thoroughly angry.
+
+"Indeed," he replied loftily. "Let me see; last time it was your
+lamented father who occupied your heart. Perhaps now it is that
+excellent giant, Martin, or even--no, it is too absurd"--and he
+laughed in his jealous rage, "even the family buffoon, my worthy
+brother Foy."
+
+"Yes," she replied quietly, "it is Foy."
+
+"Foy! Foy! Hear her, ye gods! My successful rival, mine, is the
+yellow-headed, muddy-brained, unlettered Foy--and they say that women
+have souls! Of your courtesy answer me one question. Tell me when did
+this strange and monstrous thing happen? When did you declare yourself
+vanquished by the surpassing charms of Foy?"
+
+"Yesterday afternoon, if you want to know," she said in the same calm
+and ominous voice.
+
+Adrian heard, and an inspiration took him. He dashed his hand to his
+brow and thought a moment; then he laughed loud and shrilly.
+
+"I have it," he said. "It is the love charm which has worked
+perversely. Elsa, you are under a spell, poor woman; you do not know
+the truth. I gave you the philtre in your drinking water, and Foy, the
+traitor Foy, has reaped its fruits. Dear girl, shake yourself free
+from this delusion, it is I whom you really love, not that base thief
+of hearts, my brother Foy."
+
+"What do you say? You gave me a philtre? You dare to doctor my drink
+with your heathen nastiness? Out of the way, sir! Stand off, and never
+venture to speak to me again. Well will it be for you if I do not tell
+your brother of your infamy."
+
+What happened after this Adrian could never quite remember, but a
+vision remained of himself crouching to one side, and of a door flung
+back so violently that it threw him against the wall; a vision, too,
+of a lady sweeping past him with blazing eyes and lips set in scorn.
+That was all.
+
+For a while he was crushed, quite crushed; the blow had gone home.
+Adrian was not only a fool, he was also the vainest of fools. That any
+young woman on whom he chose to smile should actually reject his
+advances was bad and unexpected, but that the other man should be Foy
+--oh! this was infamous and inexplicable. He was handsomer than Foy,
+no one would dream of denying it. He was cleverer and better read, had
+he not mastered the contents of every known romance--high-souled works
+which Foy bluntly declared were rubbish and refused even to open? Was
+he not a poet? But remembering a certain sonnet he did not follow this
+comparison. In short, how was it conceivable that a woman looking upon
+himself, a very type of the chivalry of Spain, silver-tongued, a
+follower--nay, a companion of the Muses, one to whom in every previous
+adventure of the heart to love had been to conquer, could still prefer
+that broad-faced, painfully commonplace, if worthy, young
+representative of the Dutch middle classes, Foy van Goorl?
+
+It never occurred to Adrian to ask himself another question, namely,
+how it comes about that eight young women out of ten are endowed with
+an intelligence or instinct sufficiently keen to enable them to
+discriminate between an empty-headed popinjay of a man, intoxicated
+with the fumes of his own vanity, and an honest young fellow of stable
+character and sterling worth? Not that Adrian was altogether empty-
+headed, for in some ways he was clever; also beneath all this foam and
+froth the Dutch strain inherited from his mother had given a certain
+ballast and determination to his nature. Thus, when his heart was
+thoroughly set upon a thing, he could be very dogged and patient. Now
+it /was/ set upon Elsa Brant, he did truly desire to win her above any
+other woman, and that he had left a different impression upon her mind
+was owing largely to the affected air and grandiloquent style of
+language culled from his precious romances which he thought it right
+to assume when addressing a lady upon matters of the affections.
+
+For a little while he was prostrate, his heart seemed swept clean of
+all hope and feeling. Then his furious temper, the failing that, above
+every other, was his curse and bane, came to his aid and occupied it
+like the seven devils of Scripture, bringing in its train his re-
+awakened vanity, hatred, jealousy, and other maddening passions. It
+could not be true, there must be an explanation, and, of course, the
+explanation was that Foy had been so fortunate, or so cunning as to
+make advances to Elsa soon after she had swallowed the love philtre.
+Adrian, like most people in his day, was very superstitious and
+credulous. It never even occurred to him to doubt the almost
+universally accepted power and efficacy of this witch's medicine,
+though even now he understood what a fool he was when, in his first
+outburst of rage, he told Elsa that he had trusted to such means to
+win her affections, instead of letting his own virtues and graces do
+their natural work.
+
+Well, the mischief was done, the poison was swallowed, but--most
+poisons have their antidotes. Why was he lingering here? He must
+consult his friend, the Master, and at once.
+
+Ten minutes later Adrian was at Black Meg's house.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX
+
+                      THE FRAY IN THE SHOT TOWER
+
+The door was opened by Hague Simon, the bald-headed, great-paunched
+villain who lived with Black Meg. In answer to his visitor's anxious
+inquiries the Butcher said, searching Adrian's face with his pig-like
+eyes the while, that he could not tell for certain whether Meg was or
+was not at home. He rather thought that she was consulting the spirits
+with the Master, but they might have passed out without his knowing
+it, "for they had great gifts--great gifts," and he wagged his fat
+head as he showed Adrian into the accustomed room.
+
+It was an uncomfortable kind of chamber which, in some unexplained
+way, always gave Adrian the impression that people, or presences, were
+stirring in it whom he could not see. Also in this place there
+happened odd and unaccountable noises; creakings, and sighings which
+seemed to proceed from the walls and ceiling. Of course, such things
+were to be expected in a house where sojourned one of the great
+magicians of the day. Still he was not altogether sorry when the door
+opened and Black Meg entered, although some might have preferred the
+society of almost any ghost.
+
+"What is it, that you disturb me at such an hour?" she asked sharply.
+
+"What is it? What isn't it?" Adrian replied, his rage rising at the
+thought of his injuries. "That cursed philtre of yours has worked all
+wrong, that's what it is. Another man has got the benefit of it, don't
+you understand, you old hag? And, by Heaven! I believe he means to
+abduct her, yes, that's the meaning of all the packing and fuss, blind
+fool that I was not to guess it before. The Master--I will see the
+Master. He must give me an antidote, another medicine----"
+
+"You certainly look as though you want it," interrupted Black Meg
+drily. "Well, I doubt whether you can see him; it is not his hour for
+receiving visitors; moreover, I don't think he's here, so I shall have
+to signal for him."
+
+"I must see him. I will see him," shouted Adrian.
+
+"I daresay," replied Black Meg, squinting significantly at his pocket.
+
+Enraged as he was Adrian took the hint.
+
+"Woman, you seek gold," he said, quoting involuntarily from the last
+romance he had read, and presenting her with a handful of small
+silver, which was all he had.
+
+Meg took the silver with a sniff, on the principle that something is
+better than nothing, and departed gloomily. Then followed more
+mysterious noises; voices whispered, doors opened and shut, furniture
+creaked, after which came a period of exasperating and rather
+disagreeable silence. Adrian turned his face to the wall, for the only
+window in the room was so far above his head that he was unable to
+look out of it; indeed, it was more of a skylight than a window. Thus
+he remained a while gnawing at the ends of his moustache and cursing
+his fortune, till presently he felt a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Who the devil is that?" he exclaimed, wheeling round to find himself
+face to face with the draped and majestic form of the Master.
+
+"The devil! That is an ill word upon young lips, my friend," said the
+sage, shaking his head in reproof.
+
+"I daresay," replied Adrian, "but what the--I mean how did you get
+here? I never heard the door open."
+
+"How did I get here? Well, now you mention it, I wonder how I did. The
+door--what have I to do with doors?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know," answered Adrian shortly, "but most people
+find them useful."
+
+"Enough of such material talk," interrupted the sage with sternness.
+"Your spirit cried to mine, and I /am/ here, let that suffice."
+
+"I suppose that Black Meg fetched you," went on Adrian, sticking to
+his point, for the philtre fiasco had made him suspicious.
+
+"Verily, friend Adrian, you can suppose what you will; and now, as I
+have little time to spare, be so good as to set out the matter. Nay,
+what need, I know all, for have I not--is this the case? You
+administered the philtre to the maid and neglected my instructions to
+offer yourself to her at once. Another saw it and took advantage of
+the magic draught. While the spell was on her he proposed, he was
+accepted--yes, your brother Foy. Oh! fool, careless fool, what else
+did you expect?"
+
+"At any rate I didn't expect that," replied Adrian in a fury. "And
+now, if you have all the power you pretend, tell me what I am to do."
+
+Something glinted ominously beneath the hood, it was the sage's one
+eye.
+
+"Young friend," he said, "your manner is brusque, yes, even rude. But
+I understand and I forgive. Come, we will take counsel together. Tell
+me what has happened."
+
+Adrian told him with much emphasis, and the recital of his adventures
+seemed to move the Master deeply, at any rate he turned away, hiding
+his face in his hands, while his back trembled with the intensity of
+his feelings.
+
+"The matter is grave," he said solemnly, when at length the lovesick
+and angry swain had finished. "There is but one thing to be done. Your
+treacherous rival--oh! what fraud and deceit are hidden beneath that
+homely countenance--has been well advised, by whom I know not, though
+I suspect one, a certain practitioner of the Black Magic, named
+Arentz----"
+
+"Ah!" ejaculated Adrian.
+
+"I see you know the man. Beware of him. He is, indeed, a wolf in
+sheep's clothing, who wraps his devilish incantations in a cloak of
+seditious doctrine. Well, I have thwarted him before, for can Darkness
+stand before Light? and, by the help of those who aid me, I may thwart
+him again. Now, attend and answer my questions clearly, slowly and
+truthfully. If the girl is to be saved to you, mark this, young
+friend, your cunning rival must be removed from Leyden for a while
+until the charm works out its power."
+
+"You don't mean--" said Adrian, and stopped.
+
+"No, no. I mean the man no harm. I mean only that he must take a
+journey, which he will do fast enough, when he learns that his
+witchcrafts and other crimes are known. Now answer, or make an end,
+for I have more business to attend to than the love-makings of a foo--
+of a headstrong youth. First: What you have told me of the attendances
+of Dirk van Goorl, your stepfather, and others of his household,
+namely, Red Martin and your half-brother Foy, at the tabernacle of
+your enemy, the wizard Arentz, is true, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Adrian, "but I do not see what that has to do with the
+matter."
+
+"Silence!" thundered the Master. Then he paused a while, and Adrian
+seemed to hear certain strange squeakings proceeding from the walls.
+The sage remained lost in thought until the squeakings ceased. Again
+he spoke:
+
+"What you have told me of the part played by the said Foy and the said
+Martin as to their sailing away with the treasure of the dead heretic,
+Hendrik Brant, and of the murders committed by them in the course of
+its hiding in the Haarlemer Meer, is true, is it not?"
+
+"Of course it is," answered Adrian, "but----"
+
+"Silence!" again thundered the sage, "or by my Lord Zoroaster, I throw
+up the case."
+
+Adrian collapsed, and there was another pause.
+
+"You believe," he went on again, "that the said Foy and the said Dirk
+van Goorl, together with the said Martin, are making preparations to
+abduct that innocent and unhappy maid, the heiress, Elsa Brant, for
+evil purposes of their own?"
+
+"I never told you so," said Adrian, "but I think it is a fact; at
+least there is a lot of packing going on."
+
+"You never told me! Do you not understand that there is no need for
+you to tell me anything?"
+
+"Then, in the name of your Lord Zoroaster, why do you ask?" exclaimed
+the exasperated Adrian.
+
+"That you will know presently," he answered musing.
+
+Once more Adrian heard the strange squeaking as of young and hungry
+rats.
+
+"I think that I will not take up your time any more," he said, growing
+thoroughly alarmed, for really the proceedings were a little odd, and
+he rose to go.
+
+The Master made no answer, only, which was curious conduct for a sage,
+he began to whistle a tune.
+
+"By your leave," said Adrian, for the magician's back was against the
+door. "I have business----"
+
+"And so have I," replied the sage, and went on whistling.
+
+Then suddenly the side of one of the walls seemed to fall out, and
+through the opening emerged a man wrapped in a priest's robe, and
+after him, Hague Simon, Black Meg, and another particularly evil-
+looking fellow.
+
+"Got it all down?" asked the Master in an easy, everyday kind of
+voice.
+
+The monk bowed, and producing several folios of manuscript, laid them
+on the table together with an ink-horn and a pen.
+
+"Very well. And now, my young friend, be so good as to sign there, at
+the foot of the writing."
+
+"Sign what?" gasped Adrian.
+
+"Explain to him," said the Master. "He is quite right; a man should
+know what he puts his name to."
+
+Then a monk spoke in a low, business-like voice.
+
+"This is the information of Adrian, called Van Goorl, as taken down
+from his own lips, wherein, among other things, he deposes to certain
+crimes of heresy, murder of the king's subjects, an attempted escape
+from the king's dominions, committed by his stepfather, Dirk van
+Goorl, his half-brother, Foy van Goorl, and their servant, a Frisian
+known as Red Martin. Shall I read the papers? It will take some time."
+
+"If the witness so desires," said the Master.
+
+"What is that document for?" whispered Adrian in a hoarse voice.
+
+"To persuade your treacherous rival, Foy van Goorl, that it will be
+desirable in the interests of his health that he should retire from
+Leyden for a while," sneered his late mentor, while the Butcher and
+Black Meg sniggered audibly. Only the monk stood silent, like a black
+watching fate.
+
+"I'll not sign!" shouted Adrian. "I have been tricked! There is
+treachery!" and he bent forward to spring for the door.
+
+Ramiro made a sign, and in another instant the Butcher's fat hands
+were about Adrian's throat, and his thick thumbs were digging
+viciously at the victim's windpipe. Still Adrian kicked and struggled,
+whereon, at a second sign, the villainous-looking man drew a great
+knife, and, coming up to him, pricked him gently on the nose.
+
+Then Ramiro spoke to him very suavely and quietly.
+
+"Young friend," he said, "where is that faith in me which you
+promised, and why, when I wish you to sign this quite harmless
+writing, do you so violently refuse?"
+
+"Because I won't betray my stepfather and brother," gasped Adrian. "I
+know why you want my signature," and he looked at the man in a
+priest's robe.
+
+"You won't betray them," sneered Ramiro. "Why, you young fool, you
+have already betrayed them fifty times over, and what is more, which
+you don't seem to remember, you have betrayed yourself. Now look here.
+If you choose to sign that paper, or if you don't choose, makes little
+difference to me, for, dear pupil, I would almost as soon have your
+evidence by word of mouth."
+
+"I may be a fool," said Adrian, turning sullen; "yes, I see now that I
+have been a fool to trust in you and your sham arts, but I am not fool
+enough to give evidence against my own people in any of your courts.
+What I have said I said never thinking that it would do them harm."
+
+"Not caring whether it would do them harm or no," corrected Ramiro,
+"as you had your own object to gain--the young lady whom, by the way,
+you were quite ready to doctor with a love medicine."
+
+"Because love blinded me," said Adrian loftily.
+
+Ramiro put his hand upon his shoulder and shook him slightly as he
+answered:
+
+"And has it not struck you, you vain puppy, that other things may
+blind you also--hot irons, for instance?"
+
+"What do you mean?" gasped Adrian.
+
+"I mean that the rack is a wonderful persuader. Oh! it makes the most
+silent talk and the most solemn sing. Now take your choice. Will you
+sign or will you go to the torture chamber?"
+
+"What right have you to question me?" asked Adrian, striving to build
+up his tottering courage with bold words.
+
+"Just this right--that I to whom you speak am the Captain and Governor
+of the Gevangenhuis in this town, an official who has certain powers."
+
+Adrian turned pale but said nothing.
+
+"Our young friend has gone to sleep," remarked Ramiro, reflectively.
+"Here you, Simon, twist his arm a little. No, not the right arm; he
+may want that to sign with, which will be awkward if it is out of
+joint: the other."
+
+With an ugly grin the Butcher, taking his fingers from Adrian's
+throat, gripped his captive's left wrist, and very slowly and
+deliberately began to screw it round.
+
+Adrian groaned.
+
+"Painful, isn't it?" said Ramiro. "Well, I have no more time to waste,
+break his arm."
+
+Then Adrian gave in, for he was not fitted to bear torture; his
+imagination was too lively.
+
+"I will sign," he whispered, the perspiration pouring from his pale
+face.
+
+"Are you quite sure you do it willingly?" queried his tormentor,
+adding, "another little half-turn, please, Simon; and you, Mistress
+Meg, if he begins to faint, just prick him in the thigh with your
+knife."
+
+"Yes, yes," groaned Adrian.
+
+"Very good. Now here is the pen. Sign."
+
+So Adrian signed.
+
+"I congratulate you upon your discretion, pupil," remarked Ramiro, as
+he scattered sand on the writing and pocketed the paper. "To-day you
+have learned a very useful lesson which life teaches to most of us,
+namely, that the inevitable must rule our little fancies. Let us see;
+I think that by now the soldiers will have executed their task, so, as
+you have done what I wished, you can go, for I shall know where to
+find you if I want you. But, if you will take my advice, which I offer
+as that of one friend to another, you will hold your tongue about the
+events of this afternoon. Unless you speak of it, nobody need ever
+know that you have furnished certain useful information, for in the
+Gevangenhuis the names of witnesses are not mentioned to the accused.
+Otherwise you may possibly come into trouble with your heretical
+friends and relatives. Good afternoon. Brother, be so good as to open
+the door for this gentleman."
+
+A minute later Adrian found himself in the street, towards which he
+had been helped by the kick of a heavy boot. His first impulse was to
+run, and he ran for half a mile or more without stopping, till at
+length he paused breathless in a deserted street, and, leaning against
+the wheel of an unharnessed waggon, tried to think. Think! How could
+he think? His mind was one mad whirl; rage, shame, disappointed
+passion, all boiled in it like bones in a knacker's cauldron. He had
+been fooled, he had lost his love, and, oh! infamy, he had betrayed
+his kindred to the hell of the Inquisition. They would be tortured and
+burnt. Yes, even his mother and Elsa might be burned, since those
+devils respected neither age nor sex, and their blood would be upon
+his head. It was true that he had signed under compulsion, but who
+would believe that, for had they not taken down his talk word for
+word? For once Adrian saw himself as he was; the cloaks of vanity and
+self-love were stripped from his soul, and he knew what others would
+think when they came to learn the story. He thought of suicide; there
+was water, here was steel, the deed would not be difficult. No, he
+could not; it was too horrible. Moreover, how dared he enter the other
+world so unprepared, so steeped in every sort of evil? What, then,
+could he do to save his character and those whom his folly had
+betrayed? He looked round him; there, not three hundred yards away,
+rose the tall chimney of the factory. Perhaps there was yet time;
+perhaps he could still warn Foy and Martin of the fate which awaited
+them.
+
+Acting on the impulse of the moment, Adrian started forward, running
+like a hare. As he approached the building he saw that the workmen had
+left, for the big doors were shut. He raced round to the small
+entrance; it was open--he was through it, and figures were moving in
+the office. God be praised! They were Foy and Martin. To them he sped,
+a white-faced creature with gaping mouth and staring eyes, to look at
+more like a ghost than a human being.
+
+Martin and Foy saw him and shrank back. Could this be Adrian, they
+thought, or was it an evil vision?
+
+"Fly!" he gasped. "Hide yourselves! The officers of the Inquisition
+are after you!" Then another thought struck him, and he stammered, "My
+father and mother. I must warn them!" and before they could speak he
+had turned and was gone, as he went crying, "Fly! Fly!"
+
+Foy stood astonished till Martin struck him on the shoulder, and said
+roughly:
+
+"Come, let us get out of this. Either he is mad, or he knows
+something. Have you your sword and dagger? Quick, then."
+
+They passed through the door, which Martin paused to lock, and into
+the courtyard. Foy reached the gate first, and looked through its open
+bars. Then very deliberately he shot the bolts and turned the great
+key.
+
+"Are you brain-sick," asked Martin, "that you lock the gate on us?"
+
+"I think not," replied Foy, as he came back to him. "It is too late to
+escape. Soldiers are marching down the street."
+
+Martin ran and looked through the bars. It was true enough. There they
+came, fifty men or more, a whole company, headed straight for the
+factory, which it was thought might be garrisoned for defence.
+
+"Now I can see no help but to fight for it," Martin said cheerfully,
+as he hid the keys in the bucket of the well, which he let run down to
+the water.
+
+"What can two men do against fifty?" asked Foy, lifting his steel-
+lined cap to scratch his head.
+
+"Not much, still, with good luck, something. At least, as nothing but
+a cat can climb the walls, and the gateway is stopped, I think we may
+as well die fighting as in the torture-chamber of the Gevangenhuis,
+for that is where they mean to lodge us."
+
+"I think so too," answered Foy, taking courage. "Now how can we hurt
+them most before they quiet us?"
+
+Martin looked round reflectively. In the centre of the courtyard stood
+a building not unlike a pigeon-house, or the shelter that is sometimes
+set up in the middle of a market beneath which merchants gather. In
+fact it was a shot tower, where leaden bullets of different sizes were
+cast and dropped through an opening in the floor into a shallow tank
+below to cool, for this was part of the trade of the foundry.
+
+"That would be a good place to hold," he said; "and crossbows hang
+upon the walls."
+
+Foy nodded, and they ran to the tower, but not without being seen, for
+as they set foot upon its stair, the officer in command of the
+soldiers called upon them to surrender in the name of the King. They
+made no answer, and as they passed through the doorway, a bullet from
+an arquebus struck its woodwork.
+
+The shot tower stood upon oaken piles, and the chamber above, which
+was round, and about twenty feet in diameter, was reached by a broad
+ladder of fifteen steps, such as is often used in stables. This ladder
+ended in a little landing of about six feet square, and to the left of
+the landing opened the door of the chamber where the shot were cast.
+They went up into the place.
+
+"What shall we do now?" said Foy, "barricade the door?"
+
+"I can see no use in that," answered Martin, "for then they would
+batter it down, or perhaps burn a way through it. No; let us take it
+off its hinges and lay it on blocks about eight inches high, so that
+they may catch their shins against it when they try to rush us."
+
+"A good notion," said Foy, and they lifted off the narrow oaken door
+and propped it up on four moulds of metal across the threshold,
+weighting it with other moulds. Also they strewed the floor of the
+landing with three-pound shot, so that men in a hurry might step on
+them and fall. Another thing they did, and this was Foy's notion. At
+the end of the chamber were the iron baths in which the lead was
+melted, and beneath them furnaces ready laid for the next day's
+founding. These Foy set alight, pulling out the dampers to make them
+burn quickly, and so melt the leaden bars which lay in the troughs.
+
+"They may come underneath," he said, pointing to the trap through
+which the hot shot were dropped into the tank, "and then molten lead
+will be useful."
+
+Martin smiled and nodded. Then he took down a crossbow from the walls,
+for in those days, when every dwelling and warehouse might have to be
+used as a place of defence, it was common to keep a good store of
+weapons hung somewhere ready to hand, and went to the narrow window
+which overlooked the gate.
+
+"As I thought," he said. "They can't get in and don't like the look of
+the iron spikes, so they are fetching a smith to burst it open. We
+must wait."
+
+Very soon Foy began to fidget, for this waiting to be butchered by an
+overwhelming force told upon his nerves. He thought of Elsa and his
+parents, whom he would never see again; he thought of death and all
+the terrors and wonders that might lie beyond it; death whose depths
+he must so soon explore. He had looked to his crossbow, had tested the
+string and laid a good store of quarrels on the floor beside him; he
+had taken a pike from the walls and seen to its shaft and point; he
+had stirred the fires beneath the leaden bars till they roared in the
+sharp draught.
+
+"Is there nothing more to do?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," replied Martin, "we might say our prayers; they will be the
+last," and suiting his action to the word, the great man knelt down,
+an example which Foy followed.
+
+"Do you speak," said Foy, "I can't think of anything."
+
+So Martin began a prayer which is perhaps worthy of record:--
+
+"O Lord," he said, "forgive me all my sins, which are too many to
+count, or at least I haven't the time to try, and especially for
+cutting off the head of the executioner with his own sword, although I
+had no death quarrel with him, and for killing a Spaniard in a boxing
+match. O Lord, I thank you very much because you have arranged for us
+to die fighting instead of being tortured and burnt in the gaol, and I
+pray that we may be able to kill enough Spaniards first to make them
+remember us for years to come. O Lord, protect my dear master and
+mistress, and let the former learn that we have made an end of which
+he would approve, but if may be, hide it from the Paster Arentz, who
+might think that we ought to surrender. That is all I have to say.
+Amen."
+
+Then Foy did his own praying, and it was hearty enough, but we need
+scarcely stop to set down its substance.
+
+Meanwhile the Spaniards had found a blacksmith, who was getting to
+work upon the gate, for they could see him through the open upper
+bars.
+
+"Why don't you shoot?" asked Foy. "You might catch him with a bolt."
+
+"Because he is a poor Dutchman whom they have pressed for the job,
+while they stand upon one side. We must wait till they break down the
+gate. Also we must fight well when the time comes, Master Foy, for,
+see, folk are watching us, and they will expect it," and he pointed
+upwards.
+
+Foy looked. The foundry courtyard was surrounded by tall gabled
+houses, and of these the windows and balconies were already crowded
+with spectators. Word had gone round that the Inquisition had sent
+soldiers to seize one of the young Van Goorls and Red Martin--that
+they were battering at the gates of the factory. Therefore the
+citizens, some of them their own workmen, gathered there, for they did
+not think that Red Martin and Foy van Goorl would be taken easily.
+
+The hammering at the gate went on, but it was very stout and would not
+give.
+
+"Martin," said Foy presently, "I am frightened. I feel quite sick. I
+know that I shall be no good to you when the pinch comes."
+
+"Now I am sure that you are a brave man," answered Martin with a short
+laugh, "for otherwise you would never have owned that you feel afraid.
+Of course you feel afraid, and so do I. It is the waiting that does
+it; but when once the first blow has been struck, why, you will be as
+happy as a priest. Look you, master. So soon as they begin to rush the
+ladder, do you get behind me, close behind, for I shall want all the
+room to sweep with my sword, and if we stand side by side we shall
+only hinder each other, while with a pike you can thrust past me, and
+be ready to deal with any who win through."
+
+"You mean that you want to shelter me with your big carcase," answered
+Foy. "But you are captain here. At least I will do my best," and
+putting his arms about the great man's middle, he hugged him
+affectionately.
+
+"Look! look!" cried Martin. "The gate is down. Now, first shot to
+you," and he stepped to one side.
+
+As he spoke the oaken doors burst open and the Spanish soldiers began
+to stream through them. Suddenly Foy's nerve returned to him and he
+grew steady as a rock. Lifting his crossbow he aimed and pulled the
+trigger. The string twanged, the quarrel rushed forth with a whistling
+sound, and the first soldier, pierced through breastplate and through
+breast, sprang into the air and fell forward. Foy stepped to one side
+to string his bow.
+
+"Good shot," said Martin taking his place, while from the spectators
+in the windows went up a sudden shout. Martin fired and another man
+fell. Then Foy fired again and missed, but Martin's next bolt struck
+the last soldier through the arm and pinned him to the timber of the
+broken gate. After this they could shoot no more, for the Spaniards
+were beneath them.
+
+"To the doorway," said Martin, "and remember what I told you. Away
+with the bows, cold steel must do the rest."
+
+Now they stood by the open door, Martin, a helmet from the walls upon
+his head, tied beneath his chin with a piece of rope because it was
+too small for him, the great sword Silence lifted ready to strike, and
+Foy behind gripping the long pike with both hands. Below them from the
+gathered mob of soldiers came a confused clamour, then a voice called
+out an order and they heard footsteps on the stair.
+
+"Look out; they are coming," said Martin, turning his head so that Foy
+caught sight of his face. It was transfigured, it was terrible. The
+great red beard seemed to bristle, the pale blue unshaded eyes rolled
+and glittered, they glittered like the blue steel of the sword Silence
+that wavered above them. In that dread instant of expectancy Foy
+remembered his vision of the morning. Lo! it was fulfilled, for before
+him stood Martin, the peaceful, patient giant, transformed into a Red
+Vengeance.
+
+A man reached the head of the ladder, stepped upon one of the loose
+cannon-balls and fell with an oath and a crash. But behind him came
+others. Suddenly they turned the corner, suddenly they burst into
+view, three or four of them together. Gallantly they rushed on. The
+first of them caught his feet in the trap of the door and fell
+headlong across it. Of him Martin took no heed, but Foy did, for
+before ever the soldier could rise he had driven his pike down between
+the man's shoulders, so that he died there upon the door. At the next
+Martin struck, and Foy saw this one suddenly grow small and double up,
+which, if he had found leisure to examine the nature of that wound,
+would have surprised him very little. Another man followed so quickly
+that Martin could not lift the sword to meet him. But he pointed with
+it, and next instant was shaking his carcase off its blade.
+
+After this Foy could keep no count. Martin slashed with the sword, and
+when he found a chance Foy thrust with the pike, till at length there
+were none to thrust at, for this was more than the Spaniards had
+bargained. Two of them lay dead in the doorway, and others had been
+dragged or had tumbled down the ladder, while from the onlookers at
+the windows without, as they caught sight of them being brought forth
+slain or sorely wounded, went up shout upon shout of joy.
+
+"So far we have done very well," said Martin quietly, "but if they
+come up again, we must be cooler and not waste our strength so much.
+Had I not struck so hard, I might have killed another man."
+
+But the Spaniards showed no sign of coming up any more; they had seen
+enough of that narrow way and of the red swordsman who awaited them in
+the doorway round the corner. Indeed it was a bad place for attackers,
+since they could not shoot with arquebuses or arrows, but must pass in
+to be slaughtered like sheep at the shambles in the dim room beyond.
+So, being cautious men who loved their lives, they took a safer
+counsel.
+
+The tank beneath the shot-tower, when it was not in use, was closed
+with a stone cover, and around this they piled firewood and peats from
+a stack in the corner of the yard, and standing in the centre out of
+the reach of arrows, set light to it. Martin lay down watching them
+through a crack in the floor. Then he signed to Foy, and whispered,
+and going to the iron baths, Foy drew from them two large buckets of
+molten lead, each as much as a man could carry. Again Martin looked
+through the crack, waiting till several of the burners were gathered
+beneath. Then, with a swift motion he lifted up the trap-door, and as
+those below stared upwards wondering, full into their faces came the
+buckets of molten lead. Down went two of them never to speak more,
+while others ran out shrieking and aflame, tearing at their hair and
+garments.
+
+After this the Spaniards grew more wary, and built their fires round
+the oak piers till the flames eating up them fired the building, and
+the room above grew full of little curling wreaths of smoke.
+
+"Now we must choose," said Martin, "whether we will be roasted like
+fowls in an oven, or go down and have our throats cut like pigs in the
+open."
+
+"For my part, I prefer to die in the air," coughed Foy.
+
+"So say I, master. Listen. We can't get down the stair, for they are
+watching for us there, so we must drop from the trap-door and charge
+through the fire. Then, if we are lucky, back to back and fight it
+out."
+
+Half a minute later two men bearing naked swords in their hands might
+be seen bursting through the barrier of flaming wood. Out they came
+safely enough, and there in an open space not far from the gateway,
+halted back to back, rubbing the water from their smarting eyes. On
+them, a few seconds later, like hounds on a wounded boar, dashed the
+mob of soldiers, while from every throat of the hundreds who were
+watching went up shrill cries of encouragement, grief, and fear. Men
+fell before them, but others rushed in. They were down, they were up
+again, once more they were down, and this time only one of them rose,
+the great man Martin. He staggered to his feet, shaking off the
+soldiers who tried to hold him, as a dog in the game-pit shakes off
+rats. He was up, he stood across the body of his companion, and once
+more that fearful sword was sweeping round, bringing death to all it
+touched. They drew back, but a soldier, old in war, creeping behind
+him suddenly threw a cloak over his head. Then the end came, and
+slowly, very slowly, they overmatched his strength, and bore him down
+and bound him, while the watching mob groaned and wept with grief.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX
+
+                         IN THE GEVANGENHUIS
+
+When Adrian left the factory he ran on to the house in the Bree
+Straat.
+
+"Oh! what has happened?" said his mother as he burst into the room
+where she and Elsa were at work.
+
+"They are coming for him," he gasped. "The soldiers from the
+Gevangenhuis. Where is he? Let him escape quickly--my stepfather."
+
+Lysbeth staggered and fell back into her chair.
+
+"How do you know?" she asked.
+
+At the question Adrian's head swam and his heart stood still. Yet his
+lips found a lie.
+
+"I overheard it," he said; "the soldiers are attacking Foy and Martin
+in the factory, and I heard them say that they were coming here for
+him."
+
+Elsa moaned aloud, then she turned on him like a tiger, asking:
+
+"If so, why did you not stay to help them?"
+
+"Because," he answered with a touch of his old pomposity, "my first
+duty was towards my mother and you."
+
+"He is out of the house," broke in Lysbeth in a low voice that was
+dreadful to hear. "He is out of the house, I know not where. Go, son,
+and search for him. Swift! Be swift!"
+
+So Adrian went forth, not sorry to escape the presence of these
+tormented women. Here and there he wandered to one haunt of Dirk's
+after another, but without success, till at length a noise of tumult
+drew him, and he ran towards the sound. Presently he was round the
+corner, and this was what he saw.
+
+Advancing down the wide street leading to the Gevangenhuis came a body
+of Spanish soldiers, and in the centre of them were two figures whom
+it was easy for Adrian to recognise--Red Martin and his brother Foy.
+Martin, although his bull-hide jerkin was cut and slashed and his
+helmet had gone, seemed to be little hurt, for he was still upright
+and proud, walking along with his arms lashed behind him, while a
+Spanish officer held the point of a sword, his own sword Silence, near
+his throat ready to drive it home should he attempt to escape. With
+Foy the case was different. At first Adrian thought that he was dead,
+for they were carrying him upon a ladder. Blood fell from his head and
+legs, while his doublet seemed literally to be rent to pieces with
+sword-cuts and dagger-thrusts; and in truth had it not been for the
+shirt of mail which he wore beneath, he must have been slain several
+times over. But Foy was not dead, for as Adrian watched he saw his
+head turn upon the ladder and his hand rise up and fall again.
+
+But this was not all, for behind appeared a cart drawn by a grey
+horse, and in it were the bodies of Spanish soldiers--how many Adrian
+could not tell, but there they lay with their harness still on them.
+After these again, in a long and melancholy procession, marched other
+Spanish soldiers, some of them sorely wounded, and, like Foy, carried
+upon doors or ladders, and others limping forward with the help of
+their comrades. No wonder that Martin walked proudly to his doom,
+since behind him came the rich harvest of the sword Silence. Also,
+there were other signs to see and hear, since about the cavalcade
+surged and roared a great mob of the citizens of Leyden.
+
+"Bravo, Martin! Well fought, Foy van Goorl!" they shouted, "We are
+proud of you! We are proud of you!" Then from the back of the crowd
+someone cried, "Rescue them!" "Kill the Inquisition dogs!" "Tear the
+Spaniards to pieces!"
+
+A stone flew through the air, then another and another, but at a word
+of command the soldiers faced about and the mob drew back, for they
+had no leader. So it went on till they were within a hundred yards of
+the Gevangenhuis.
+
+"Don't let them be murdered," cried the voice. "A rescue! a rescue!"
+and with a roar the crowd fell upon the soldiers. It was too late, for
+the Spaniards, trained to arms, closed up and fought their way
+through, taking their prisoners with them. But they cost them dear,
+for the wounded men, and those who supported them, were cut off. They
+were cut off, they were struck down. In a minute they were dead, every
+one of them, and although they still held its fortresses and walls,
+from that hour the Spaniards lost their grip of Leyden, nor did they
+ever win it back again. From that hour to this Leyden has been free.
+Such were the first fruits of the fight of Foy and Martin against
+fearful odds.
+
+The great doors of oak and iron of the Gevangenhuis clashed to behind
+the prisoners, the locks were shot, and the bars fell home, while
+outside raved the furious crowd.
+
+The place was not large nor very strong, merely a drawbridge across
+the narrow arm of a moat, a gateway with a walled courtyard beyond,
+and over it a three-storied house built in the common Dutch fashion,
+but with straight barrel windows. To the right, under the shadow of
+the archway, which, space being limited, was used as an armoury, and
+hung with weapons, lay the court-room where prisoners were tried, and
+to the left a vaulted place with no window, not unlike a large cellar
+in appearance. This was the torture-chamber. Beyond was the courtyard,
+and at the back of it rose the prison. In this yard were waiting the
+new governor of the jail, Ramiro, and with him a little red-faced,
+pig-eyed man dressed in a rusty doublet. He was the Inquisitor of the
+district, especially empowered as delegate of the Blood Council and
+under various edicts and laws to try and to butcher heretics.
+
+The officer in command of the troops advanced to make his report.
+
+"What is all that noise?" asked the Inquisitor in a frightened,
+squeaky voice. "Is this city also in rebellion?"
+
+"And where are the rest of you?" said Ramiro, scanning the thin files.
+
+"Sir," answered the officer saluting, "the rest of us are dead. Some
+were killed by this red rogue and his companion, and the mob have the
+others."
+
+Then Ramiro began to curse and to swear, as well he might, for he knew
+that when this story reached headquarters, his credit with Alva and
+the Blood Council would be gone.
+
+"Coward!" he yelled, shaking his fist in the face of the officer.
+"Coward to lose a score or more of men in taking a brace of heretics."
+
+"Don't blame me, sir," answered the man sullenly, for the word stirred
+his bile, "blame the mob and this red devil's steel, which went
+through us as though we were wet clay," and he handed him the sword
+Silence.
+
+"It fits the man," muttered Montalvo, "for few else could wield such a
+blade. Go hang it in the doorway, it may be wanted in evidence," but
+to himself he thought, "Bad luck again, the luck that follows me
+whenever I pit myself against Lysbeth van Hout." Then he gave an
+order, and the two prisoners were taken away up some narrow stairs.
+
+At the top of the first flight was a solid door through which they
+passed, to find themselves in a large and darksome place. Down the
+centre of this place ran a passage. On either side of the passage,
+dimly lighted by high iron-barred windows, were cages built of massive
+oaken bars, and measuring each of them eight or ten feet square, very
+dens such as might have served for wild beasts, but filled with human
+beings charged with offences against the doctrines of the Church.
+Those who chance to have seen the prison of the Inquisition at The
+Hague as it still stands to-day, will know what they were like.
+
+Into one of these dreadful holes they were thrust, Foy, wounded as he
+was, being thrown roughly upon a heap of dirty straw in the corner.
+Then, having bolted and locked the door of their den, the soldiers
+left them.
+
+As soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the light, Martin stared about
+him. The conveniences of the dungeon were not many; indeed, being
+built above the level of the ground, it struck the imagination as even
+more terrible than any subterranean vault devoted to the same dreadful
+purpose. By good fortune, however, in one corner of it stood an
+earthenware basin and a large jug of water.
+
+"I will take the risk of its being poisoned," thought Martin to
+himself, as lifting the jug he drank deep of it, for what between
+fighting, fire and fury there seemed to be no moisture left in him.
+Then, his burning thirst satisfied at last, he went to where Foy lay
+unconscious and began to pour water, little by little, into his mouth,
+which, senseless as he was, he swallowed mechanically and presently
+groaned a little. Next, as well as he could, Martin examined his
+comrade's wounds, to find that what had made him insensible was a cut
+upon the right side of the head, which, had it not been for his steel-
+lined cap, must certainly have killed him, but as it was, beyond the
+shock and bruise, seemed in no way serious.
+
+His second hurt was a deep wound in the left thigh, but being on the
+outside of the limb, although he bled much it had severed no artery.
+Other injuries he had also upon the forearms and legs, also beneath
+the chain shirt his body was bruised with the blows of swords and
+daggers. But none of these were dangerous.
+
+Martin stripped him as tenderly as he might and washed his wounds.
+Then he paused, for both of them were wearing garments of flannel,
+which is unsuitable for the dressing of hurts.
+
+"You need linen," said a woman's voice, speaking from the next den.
+"Wait awhile and I will give you my smock."
+
+"How can I take your garment, lady, whoever you may be," answered
+Martin, "to bind about the limbs of a man even if he is wounded?"
+
+"Take it and welcome," said the unknown in sweet, low tones, "I want
+it no more; they are going to execute me to-night."
+
+"Execute you to-night?" muttered Martin.
+
+"Yes," replied the voice, "in the court-room or one of the cellars, I
+believe, as they dare not do it outside because of the people. By
+beheading--am I not fortunate? Only by beheading."
+
+"Oh! God, where art Thou?" groaned Martin.
+
+"Don't be sorry for me," answered the voice, "I am very glad. There
+were three of us, my father, my sister, and I, and--you can guess--
+well, I wish to join them. Also it is better to die than to go through
+what I have suffered again. But here is the garment. I fear that it is
+stained about the neck, but it will serve if you tear it into strips,"
+and a trembling, delicate hand, which held the linen, was thrust
+between the oaken bars.
+
+Even in that light, however, Martin saw that the wrist was cut and
+swollen. He saw it, and because of that tender, merciful hand he
+registered an oath about priests and Spaniards, which, as it chanced,
+he lived to keep very thoroughly. Also, he paused awhile wondering
+whether if all this was of any good, wondering if it would not be best
+to let Foy die at once, or even to kill him.
+
+"What are you thinking about, sir?" asked the lady on the other side
+of the bars.
+
+"I am thinking," answered Martin, "that perhaps my young master here
+would be better dead, and that I am a fool to stop the bleeding."
+
+"No, no," said the sweet voice, "do your utmost and leave the rest to
+God. It pleases God that I should die, which matters little as I am
+but a weak girl; it may please Him that this young man shall live to
+be of service to his country and his faith. I say, bind up his wounds,
+good sir."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," answered Martin. "Who knows, there's a key to
+every lock, if only it can be found." Then he set to work upon Foy's
+wounds, binding them round with strips of the girl's garment dipped in
+water, and when he had done the best he could he clothed him again,
+even to the chain shirt.
+
+"Are you not hurt yourself?" asked the voice presently.
+
+"A little, nothing to speak of; a few cuts and bruises, that's all;
+this bull's hide turned their swords."
+
+"Tell me whom you have been fighting," she said.
+
+So, to while away the time while Foy still lay senseless, Martin told
+her the story of the attack upon the shot tower, of how they had
+driven the Spaniards down the ladder, of how they had drenched them
+with molten lead, and of their last stand in the courtyard when they
+were forced from the burning building.
+
+"Oh! what a fearful fight--two against so many," said the voice with a
+ring of admiration in it.
+
+"Yes," answered Martin, "it was a good fight--the hottest that ever I
+was in. For myself I don't much care, for they've paid a price for my
+carcase. I didn't tell you, did I, that the mob set on them as they
+haled us here and pulled four wounded men and those who carried them
+to bits? Oh! yes, they have paid a price, a very good price for a
+Frisian boor and a Leyden burgher."
+
+"God pardon their souls," murmured the unknown.
+
+"That's as He likes," said Martin, "and no affair of mine; I had only
+to do with their bodies and--" At this moment Foy groaned, sat up and
+asked for something to drink.
+
+Martin gave him water from the pitcher.
+
+"Where am I?" he asked, and he told him.
+
+"Martin, old fellow," said Foy in an uncertain voice, "we are in a
+very bad way, but as we have lived through this"--here his
+characteristic hopefulness asserted itself--"I believe, I believe that
+we shall live through the rest."
+
+"Yes, young sir," echoed the thin, faint notes out of the darkness
+beyond the bars, "I believe, too, that you will live through the rest,
+and I am praying that it may be so."
+
+"Who is that?" asked Foy drowsily.
+
+"Another prisoner," answered Martin.
+
+"A prisoner who will soon be free," murmured the voice again through
+the blackness, for by now night had fallen, and no light came from the
+hole above.
+
+Then Foy fell into sleep or stupor, and there was silence for a long
+while, until they heard the bolts and bars of the door of the dungeon
+creaking, and the glint of a lantern appeared floating on the gloom.
+Several men tramped down the narrow gangway, and one of them,
+unlocking their cage, entered, filled the jug of water from a leathern
+jack, and threw down some loaves of black bread and pieces of
+stockfish, as food is thrown to dogs. Having examined the pair of them
+he grunted and went away, little knowing how near he had been to
+death, for the heart of Martin was mad. But he let him go. Then the
+door of the next cell was opened, and a man said, "Come out. It is
+time."
+
+"It is time and I am ready," answered the thin voice. "Good-bye,
+friends, God be with you."
+
+"Good-bye, lady," answered Martin; "may you soon be with God." Then he
+added, by an afterthought, "What is your name? I should like to know."
+
+"Mary," she replied, and began to sing a hymn, and so, still singing
+the hymn, she passed away to her death. They never saw her face, they
+never learned who she might be, this poor girl who was but an item
+among the countless victims of perhaps the most hideous tyranny that
+the world has ever known--one of Alva's slaughtered sixty thousand.
+But many years afterwards, when Foy was a rich man in a freer land, he
+built a church and named it Mary's kirk.
+
+The long night wore away in silence, broken only by the groans and
+prayers of prisoners in dens upon the same floor, or with the solemn
+rhythm of hymns sung by those above, till at length the light,
+creeping through the dungeon lattices, told them that it was morning.
+At its first ray Martin awoke much refreshed, for even there his
+health and weariness had brought sleep to him. Foy also awoke, stiff
+and sore, but in his right mind and very hungry. Then Martin found the
+loaves and the stockfish, and they filled themselves, washing down the
+meal with water, after which he dressed Foy's wounds, making a
+poultice for them out of the crumb of the bread, and doctored his own
+bruises as best he could.
+
+It must have been ten o'clock or later when again the doors were
+opened, and men appeared who commanded that they should follow them.
+
+"One of us can't walk," said Martin; "still, perhaps I can manage,"
+and, lifting Foy in his arms as though he had been a baby, he passed
+with the jailers out of the den, down the stair, and into the court-
+room. Here, seated behind a table, they found Ramiro and the little,
+squeaky-voiced, red-faced Inquisitor.
+
+"Heaven above us!" said the Inquisitor, "what a great hairy ruffian;
+it makes me feel nervous to be in the same place with him. I beg you,
+Governor Ramiro, instruct your soldiers to be watching and to stab him
+at the first movement."
+
+"Have no fear, noble sir," answered Ramiro, "the villain is quite
+unarmed."
+
+"I daresay, I daresay, but let us get on. Now what is the charge
+against these people? Ah! I see, heresy like the last upon the
+evidence of--oh! well, never mind. Well, we will take that as proved,
+and, of course, it is enough. But what more? Ah! here it is. Escaped
+from The Hague with the goods of a heretic, killed sundry of his
+Majesty's lieges, blew up others on the Haarlemer Meer, and yesterday,
+as we know for ourselves, committed a whole series of murders in
+resisting lawful arrest. Prisoners, have you anything to say?"
+
+"Plenty," answered Foy.
+
+"Then save your trouble and my time, since nothing can excuse your
+godless, rebellious, and damnable behaviour. Friend Governor, into
+your hands I deliver them, and may God have mercy on their souls. See,
+by the way, that you have a priest at hand to shrive them at last, if
+they will be shriven, just for the sake of charity, but all the other
+details I leave to you. Torment? Oh! of course if you think there is
+anything to be gained by it, or that it will purify their souls. And
+now I will be going on to Haarlem, for I tell you frankly, friend
+Governor, that I don't think this town of Leyden safe for an honest
+officer of the law; there are too many bad characters here,
+schismatics and resisters of authority. What? The warrant not ready?
+Well, I will sign it in blank. You can fill it in. There. God forgive
+you, heretics; may your souls find peace, which is more, I fear, than
+your bodies will for the next few hours. Bah! friend Governor, I wish
+that you had not made me assist at the execution of that girl last
+night, especially as I understand she leaves no property worth having;
+her white face haunts my mind, I can't be rid of the look of those
+great eyes. Oh! these heretics, to what sorrow do they put us orthodox
+people! Farewell, friend Governor; yes, I think I will go out by the
+back way, some of those turbulent citizens might be waiting in front.
+Farewell, and temper justice with mercy if you can," and he was gone.
+
+Presently Ramiro, who had accompanied him to the gate, returned.
+Seating himself on the further side of the table, he drew his rapier
+and laid it before him. Then, having first commanded them to bring a
+chair in which Foy might sit, since he could not stand because of his
+wounded leg, he told the guard to fall back out of hearing, but to be
+ready should he need them.
+
+"Not much dignity about that fellow," he said, addressing Martin and
+Foy in a cheerful voice; "quite different from the kind of thing you
+expected, I daresay. No hooded Dominican priests, no clerks taking
+notes, no solemnities, nothing but a little red-faced wretch,
+perspiring with terror lest the mob outside should catch him, as for
+my part I hope they may. Well, gentlemen, what can you expect, seeing
+that, to my knowledge, the man is a bankrupt tailor of Antwerp?
+However, it is the substance we have to deal with, not the shadow, and
+that's real enough, for his signature on a death warrant is as good as
+that of the Pope, or his gracious Majesty King Philip, or, for the
+matter of that, of Alva himself. Therefore, you are--dead men."
+
+"As you would have been had I not been fool enough to neglect Martin's
+advice out in the Haarlemer Meer and let you escape," answered Foy.
+
+"Precisely, my young friend, but you see my guardian angel was too
+many for you, and you did neglect that excellent counsel. But, as it
+happens, it is just about the Haarlemer Meer that I want to have a
+word with you."
+
+Foy and Martin looked at each other, for now they understood exactly
+why they were there, and Ramiro, watching them out of the corners of
+his eyes, went on in a low voice:
+
+"Let us drop this and come to business. You hid it, and you know where
+it is, and I am in need of a competence for my old age. Now, I am not
+a cruel man; I wish to put no one to pain or death; moreover, I tell
+you frankly, I admire both of you very much. The escape with the
+treasure on board of your boat /Swallow/, and the blowing up, were
+both exceedingly well managed, with but one mistake which you, young
+sir, have pointed out," and he bowed and smiled. "The fight that you
+made yesterday, too, was splendid, and I have entered the details of
+it in my own private diary, because they ought not to be forgotten."
+
+Now it was Foy's turn to bow, while even on Martin's grim and
+impassive countenance flickered a faint smile.
+
+"Naturally," went on Ramiro, "I wish to save such men, I wish you to
+go hence quite free and unharmed," and he paused.
+
+"How can we after we have been condemned to death?" asked Foy.
+
+"Well, it does not seem so difficult. My friend, the tailor--I mean
+the Inquisitor--who, for all his soft words, /is/ a cruel man indeed,
+was in a hurry to be gone, and--he signed a blank warrant, always an
+incautious thing to do. Well, a judge can acquit as well as condemn,
+and this one--is no exception. What is there to prevent me filling
+this paper in with an order for your release?"
+
+"And what is there to show us that you would release us after all?"
+asked Foy.
+
+"Upon the honour of a gentleman," answered Ramiro laying his hand on
+his heart. "Tell me what I want to know, give me a week to make
+certain necessary arrangements, and so soon as I am back you shall
+both of you be freed."
+
+"Doubtless," said Foy, angrily, "upon such honour as gentlemen learn
+in the galleys, Senor Ramiro--I beg your pardon, Count Juan de
+Montalvo."
+
+Ramiro's face grew crimson to the hair.
+
+"Sir," he said, "were I a different sort of man, for those words you
+should die in a fashion from which even the boldest might shrink. But
+you are young and inexperienced, so I will overlook them. Now this
+bargaining must come to a head. Which will you have, life and safety,
+or the chance--which under the circumstances is no chance at all--that
+one day, not you, of course, but somebody interested in it, may
+recover a hoard of money and jewels?"
+
+Then Martin spoke for the first time, very slowly and respectfully.
+
+"Worshipful sir," he said, "we cannot tell you where the money is
+because we do not know. To be frank with you, nobody ever knew except
+myself. I took the stuff and sank it in the water in a narrow channel
+between two islands, and I made a little drawing of them on a piece of
+paper."
+
+"Exactly, my good friend, and where is that piece of paper?"
+
+"Alas! sir, when I was lighting the fuses on board the /Swallow/, I
+let it fall in my haste, and it is--in exactly the same place as are
+all your worship's worthy comrades who were on board that ship. I
+believe, however, that if you will put yourself under my guidance I
+could show your Excellency the spot, and this, as I do not want to be
+killed, I should be most happy to do."
+
+"Good, simple man," said Ramiro with a little laugh, "how charming is
+the prospect that you paint of a midnight row with you upon those
+lonely waters; the tarantula and the butterfly arm in arm! Mynheer van
+Goorl, what have you to say?"
+
+"Only that the story told by Martin here is true. I do not know where
+the money is, as I was not present at its sinking, and the paper has
+been lost."
+
+"Indeed? I am afraid, then, that it will be necessary for me to
+refresh your memory, but, first, I have one more argument, or rather
+two. Has it struck you that another life may hang upon your answer? As
+a rule men are loth to send their fathers to death."
+
+Foy heard, and terrible as was the hint, yet it came to him as a
+relief, for he had feared lest he was about to say "your mother" or
+"Elsa Brant."
+
+"That is my first argument, a good one, I think, but I have--another
+which may appeal even more forcibly to a young man and prospective
+heir. The day before yesterday you became engaged to Elsa Brant--don't
+look surprised; people in my position have long ears, and you needn't
+be frightened, the young lady will not be brought here; she is too
+valuable."
+
+"Be so good as to speak plainly," said Foy.
+
+"With pleasure. You see this girl is the heiress, is she not? and
+whether or no I find out the facts from you, sooner or later, in this
+way or that, she will doubtless discover where her heritage is hidden.
+Well, that fortune a husband would have the advantage of sharing. I
+myself labour at present under no matrimonial engagements, and am in a
+position to obtain an introduction--ah! my friend, are you beginning
+to see that there are more ways of killing a dog than by hanging him?"
+
+Weak and wounded as he was, Foy's heart sank in him at the words of
+this man, this devil who had betrayed his mother with a mock marriage,
+and who was the father of Adrian. The idea of making the heiress his
+wife was one worthy of his evil ingenuity, and why should he not put
+it into practice? Elsa, of course, would rebel, but Alva's officials
+in such days had means of overcoming any maidenly reluctance, or at
+least of forcing women to choose between death and degradation. Was it
+not common for them even to dissolve marriages in order to give
+heretics to new husbands who desired their wealth? There was no
+justice left in the land; human beings were the chattels and slaves of
+their oppressors. Oh God! what was there to do, except to trust in
+God? Why should they be tortured, murdered, married against their
+wills, for the sake of a miserable pile of pelf? Why not tell the
+truth and let the fellow take the money? He had measured up his man,
+and believed that he could drive a bargain with him. Ramiro wanted
+money, not lives. He was no fanatic; horrors gave him no pleasure; he
+cared nothing about his victims' souls. As he had betrayed his mother,
+Lysbeth, for cash, so he would be willing to let them all go for cash.
+Why not make the exchange?
+
+Then distinct, formidable, overwhelming, the answer rose up in Foy's
+mind. Because he had sworn to his father that nothing which could be
+imagined should induce him to reveal this secret and betray this
+trust. And not only to his father, to Hendrik Brant also, who already
+had given his own life to keep his treasure out of the hands of the
+Spaniards, believing that in some unforeseen way it would advantage
+his own land and countrymen. No, great as was the temptation, he must
+keep the letter of his bond and pay its dreadful price. So again Foy
+answered,
+
+"It is useless to try to bribe me, for I do not know where the money
+is."
+
+"Very well, Heer Foy van Goorl, now we have a plain issue before us,
+but I will still try to protect you against yourself--the warrant
+shall remain blank for a little while."
+
+Then he called aloud, "Sergeant, ask the Professor Baptiste to be so
+good as to step this way."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI
+
+                       HOW MARTIN TURNED COWARD
+
+The sergeant left the room and presently returned, followed by the
+Professor, a tall hang-dog looking rogue, clad in rusty black, with
+broad, horny hands, and nails bitten down to the quick.
+
+"Good morning to you, Professor," said Ramiro. "Here are two subjects
+for your gentle art. You will begin upon the big one, and from time to
+time report progress, and be sure, if he becomes willing to reveal
+what I want to know--never mind what it is, that is my affair--come to
+summon me at once."
+
+"What methods does your Excellency wish employed?"
+
+"Man, I leave that to you. Am I a master of your filthy trade? Any
+method, provided it is effective."
+
+"I don't like the look of him," grumbled the Professor, gnawing at his
+short nails. "I have heard about this mad brute; he is capable of
+anything."
+
+"Then take the whole guard with you; one naked wretch can't do much
+against eight armed men. And, listen; take the young gentleman also,
+and let him see what goes on; the experience may modify his views, but
+don't touch him without telling me. I have reports to write, and shall
+stop here."
+
+"I don't like the look of him," repeated the Professor. "I say that he
+makes me feel cold down the back--he has the evil eye; I'd rather
+begin with the young one."
+
+"Begone and do what I tell you," said Ramiro, glaring at him fiercely.
+"Guard, attend upon the executioner Baptiste."
+
+"Bring them along," grumbled the Professor.
+
+"No need for violence, worthy sir," muttered Martin; "show the way and
+we follow," and stooping down he lifted Foy from his chair.
+
+Then the procession started. First went Baptiste and four soldiers,
+next came Martin bearing Foy, and after them four more soldiers. They
+passed out of the courtroom into the passage beneath the archway.
+Martin, shuffling along slowly, glanced down it and saw that on the
+wall, among some other weapons, hung his own sword, Silence. The big
+doors were locked and barred, but at the wicket by the side of them
+stood a sentry, whose office it was to let people in and out upon
+their lawful business. Making pretence to shift Foy in his arms,
+Martin scanned this wicket as narrowly as time would allow, and
+observed that it seemed to be secured by means of iron bolts at the
+top and the bottom, but that it was not locked, since the socket into
+which the tongue went was empty. Doubtless, while he was on guard
+there, the porter did not think it necessary to go to the pains of
+using the great key that hung at his girdle.
+
+The sergeant in charge of the victims opened a low and massive door,
+which was almost exactly opposite to that of the court-room, by
+shooting back a bolt and pushing it ajar. Evidently the place beyond
+at some time or other had been used as a prison, which accounted for
+the bolt on the outside. A few seconds later and they were locked into
+the torture-chamber of the Gevangenhuis, which was nothing more than a
+good-sized vault like that of a cellar, lit with lamps, for no light
+of day was suffered to enter here, and by a horrid little fire that
+flickered on the floor. The furnitures of the place may be guessed at;
+those that are curious about such things can satisfy themselves by
+examining the mediaeval prisons at The Hague and elsewhere. Let us
+pass them over as unfit even for description, although these terrors,
+of which we scarcely like to speak to-day, were very familiar to the
+sight of our ancestors of but three centuries ago.
+
+Martin sat Foy down upon some terrible engine that roughly resembled a
+chair, and once more let his blue eyes wander about him. Amongst the
+various implements was one leaning against the wall, not very far from
+the door, which excited his especial interest. It was made for a
+dreadful purpose, but Martin reflected only that it seemed to be a
+stout bar of iron exactly suited to the breaking of anybody's head.
+
+"Come," sneered the Professor, "undress that big gentleman while I
+make ready his little bed."
+
+So the soldiers stripped Martin, nor did they assault him with sneers
+and insults, for they remembered the man's deeds of yesterday, and
+admired his strength and endurance, and the huge, muscular frame
+beneath their hands.
+
+"Now he is ready if you are," said the sergeant.
+
+The Professor rubbed his hands.
+
+"Come on, my little man," he said.
+
+Then Martin's nerve gave way, and he began to shiver and to shake.
+
+"Oho!" laughed the Professor, "even in this stuffy place he is cold
+without his clothes; well we must warm him--we must warm him."
+
+"Who would have thought that a big fellow, who can fight well, too,
+was such a coward at heart," said the sergeant of the guard to his
+companions. "After all, he will give no more play than a Rhine
+salmon."
+
+Martin heard the words, and was seized with such an intense access of
+fear that he burst into a sweat all over his body.
+
+"I can't bear it," he said, covering his eyes--which, however, he did
+not shut--with his fingers. "The rack was always my nightmare, and now
+I see why. I'll tell all I know."
+
+"Oh! Martin, Martin," broke out Foy in a kind of wail, "I was doing my
+best to keep my own courage; I never dreamt that you would turn
+coward."
+
+"Every well has a bottom, master," whined Martin, "and mine is the
+rack. Forgive me, but I can't abide the sight of it."
+
+Foy stared at him open-mouthed. Could he believe his ears? And if
+Martin was so horribly scared, why did his eye glint in that peculiar
+way between his fingers? He had seen this light in it before, no later
+indeed than the last afternoon just as the soldiers tried to rush the
+stair. He gave up the problem as insoluble, but from that moment he
+watched very narrowly.
+
+"Do you hear what this young lady says, Professor Baptiste?" said the
+sergeant. "She says" (imitating Martin's whine) "that she'll tell all
+she knows."
+
+"Then the great cur might have saved me this trouble. Stop here with
+him. I must go and inform the Governor; those are my orders. No, no,
+you needn't give him clothes yet--that cloth is enough--one can never
+be sure."
+
+Then he walked to the door and began to unlock it, as he went striking
+Martin in the face with the back of his hand, and saying,
+
+"Take that, cur." Whereat, as Foy observed, the cowed prisoner
+perspired more profusely than before, and shrank away towards the
+wall.
+
+God in Heaven! What had happened? The door of the torture den was
+opened, and suddenly, uttering the words, "/To me, Foy!/" Martin made
+a movement more quick than he could follow. Something flew up and fell
+with a fearful thud upon the executioner in the doorway. The guard
+sprang forward, and a great bar of iron, hurled with awful force into
+their faces, swept two of them broken to the ground. Another instant,
+and one arm was about his middle, the next they were outside the door,
+Martin standing straddle-legged over the body of the dead Professor
+Baptiste.
+
+They were outside the door, but it was not shut, for now, on the other
+side of it six men were pushing with all their might and main. Martin
+dropped Foy. "Take his dagger and look out for the porter," he gasped
+as he hurled himself against the door.
+
+In a second Foy had drawn the weapon out of the belt of the dead man,
+and wheeled round. The porter from the wicket was running on them
+sword in hand. Foy forgot that he was wounded--for the moment his leg
+seemed sound again. He doubled himself up and sprang at the man like a
+wild-cat, as one springs who has the rack behind him. There was no
+fight, yet in that thrust the skill which Martin had taught him so
+patiently served him well, for the sword of the Spaniard passed over
+his head, whereas Foy's long dagger went through the porter's throat.
+A glance showed Foy that from him there was nothing more to fear, so
+he turned.
+
+"Help if you can," groaned Martin, as well he might, for with his
+naked shoulder wedged against one of the cross pieces of the door he
+was striving to press it to so that the bolt could be shot into its
+socket.
+
+Heavens! what a struggle was that. Martin's blue eyes seemed to be
+starting from his head, his tongue lolled out and the muscles of his
+body rose in great knots. Foy hopped to him and pushed as well as he
+was able. It was little that he could do standing upon one leg only,
+for now the sinews of the other had given way again; still that little
+made the difference, for let the soldiers on the further side strive
+as they might, slowly, very slowly, the thick door quivered to its
+frame. Martin glanced at the bolt, for he could not speak, and with
+his left hand Foy slowly worked it forward. It was stiff with disuse,
+it caught upon the edge of the socket.
+
+"Closer," he gasped.
+
+Martin made an effort so fierce that it was hideous to behold, for
+beneath the pressure the blood trickled from his nostrils, but the
+door went in the sixteenth of an inch and the rusty bolt creaked home
+into its stone notch.
+
+Martin stepped back, and for a moment stood swaying like a man about
+to fall. Then, recovering himself, he leapt at the sword Silence which
+hung upon the wall and passed its thong over his right wrist. Next he
+turned towards the door of the court-room.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Foy.
+
+"To bid /him/ farewell," hissed Martin.
+
+"You're mad," said Foy; "let's fly while we can. That door may give--
+they are shouting."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," answered Martin doubtfully. "Come. On to my
+back with you."
+
+A few seconds later the two soldiers on guard outside the Gevangenhuis
+were amazed to see a huge, red-bearded man, naked save for a loin-
+cloth, and waving a great bare sword, who carried upon his back
+another man, rush straight at them with a roar. They never waited his
+onset; they were terrified and thought that he was a devil. This way
+and that they sprang, and the man with his burden passed between them
+over the little drawbridge down the street of the city, heading for
+the Morsch poort.
+
+Finding their wits again the guards started in pursuit, but a voice
+from among the passers-by cried out:
+
+"It is Martin, Red Martin, and Foy van Goorl, who escape from the
+Gevangenhuis," and instantly a stone flew towards the soldiers.
+
+Then, bearing in mind the fate of their comrades on the yesterday,
+those men scuttled back to the friendly shelter of the prison gate.
+When at length Ramiro, growing weary of waiting, came out from an
+inner chamber beyond the court-room, where he had been writing, to
+find the Professor and the porter dead in the passage, and the yelling
+guard locked in his own torture-chamber, why, then those sentries
+declared that they had seen nothing at all of prisoners clothed or
+naked.
+
+For a while he believed them, and mighty was the hunt from the clock-
+tower of the Gevangenhuis down to the lowest stone of its cellars,
+yes, and even in the waters of the moat. But when the Governor found
+out the truth it went very ill with those soldiers, and still worse
+with the guard from whom Martin had escaped in the torture-room like
+an eel out of the hand of a fish-wife. For by this time Ramiro's
+temper was roused, and he began to think that he had done ill to
+return to Leyden.
+
+But he had still a card to play. In a certain room in the Gevangenhuis
+sat another victim. Compared to the dreadful dens where Foy and Martin
+had been confined this was quite a pleasant chamber upon the first
+floor, being reserved, indeed, for political prisoners of rank, or
+officers captured upon the field who were held to ransom. Thus it had
+a real window, secured, however, by a double set of iron bars, which
+overlooked the little inner courtyard and the gaol kitchen. Also it
+was furnished after a fashion, and was more or less clean. This
+prisoner was none other than Dirk van Goorl, who had been neatly
+captured as he returned towards his house after making certain
+arrangements for the flight of his family, and hurried away to the
+gaol. On that morning Dirk also had been put upon his trial before the
+squeaky-voiced and agitated ex-tailor. He also had been condemned to
+death, the method of his end, as in the case of Foy and Martin, being
+left in the hands of the Governor. Then they led him back to his room,
+and shot the bolts upon him there.
+
+Some hours later a man entered his cell, to the door of which he was
+escorted by soldiers, bringing him food and drink. He was one of the
+cooks and, as it chanced, a talkative fellow.
+
+"What passes in this prison, friend?" asked Dirk looking up, "that I
+see people running to and fro across the courtyard, and hear trampling
+and shouts in the passages? Is the Prince of Orange coming, perchance,
+to set all of us poor prisoners free?" and he smiled sadly.
+
+"Umph!" grunted the man, "we have prisoners here who set themselves
+free without waiting for any Prince of Orange. Magicians they must be
+--magicians and nothing less."
+
+Dirk's interest was excited. Putting his hand into his pocket he drew
+out a gold piece, which he gave to the man.
+
+"Friend," he said, "you cook my food, do you not, and look after me?
+Well, I have a few of these about me, and if you prove kind they may
+as well find their way into your pocket as into those of your betters.
+Do you understand?"
+
+The man nodded, took the money, and thanked him.
+
+"Now," went on Dirk, "while you clean the room, tell me about this
+escape, for small things amuse those who hear no tidings."
+
+"Well, Mynheer," answered the man, "this is the tale of it so far as I
+can gather. Yesterday they captured two fellows, heretics I suppose,
+who made a good fight and did them much damage in a warehouse. I don't
+know their names, for I am a stranger to this town, but I saw them
+brought in; a young fellow, who seemed to be wounded in the leg and
+neck, and a great red-bearded giant of a man. They were put upon their
+trial this morning, and afterwards sent across, the two of them
+together, with eight men to guard them, to call upon the Professor--
+you understand?"
+
+Dirk nodded, for this Professor was well known in Leyden. "And then?"
+he asked.
+
+"And then? Why, Mother in Heaven! they came out, that's all--the big
+man stripped and carrying the other on his back. Yes, they killed the
+Professor with the branding iron, and out they came--like ripe peas
+from a pod."
+
+"Impossible!" said Dirk.
+
+"Very well, perhaps you know better than I do; perhaps it is
+impossible also that they should have pushed the door to, let all
+those Spanish cocks inside do what they might, and bolted them in;
+perhaps it is impossible that they should have spitted the porter and
+got clean away through the outside guards, the big one still carrying
+the other upon his back. Perhaps all these things are impossible, but
+they're true nevertheless, and if you don't believe me, after they get
+away from the whipping-post, just ask the bridge guard why they ran so
+fast when they saw that great, naked, blue-eyed fellow come at them
+roaring like a lion, with his big sword flashing above his head. Oh!
+there's a pretty to-do, I can tell you, a pretty to-do, and in meal or
+malt we shall all pay the price of it, from the Governor down. Indeed,
+some backs are paying it now."
+
+"But, friend, were they not taken outside the gaol?"
+
+"Taken? Who was to take them when the rascally mob made them an escort
+five hundred strong as they went down the street? No, they are far
+away from Leyden now, you may swear to that. I must be going, but if
+there is anything you'd like while you're here just tell me, and as
+you are so liberal I'll try and see that you get what you want."
+
+As the bolts were shot home behind the man Dirk clasped his hands and
+almost laughed aloud with joy. So Martin was free and Foy was free,
+and until they could be taken again the secret of the treasure
+remained safe. Montalvo would never have it, of that he was sure. And
+as for his own fate? Well, he cared little about it, especially as the
+Inquisitor had decreed that, being a man of so much importance, he was
+not to be put to the "question." This order, however, was prompted,
+not by mercy, but by discretion, since the fellow knew that, like
+other of the Holland towns, Leyden was on the verge of open revolt,
+and feared lest, should it leak out that one of the wealthiest and
+most respected of its burghers was actually being tormented for his
+faith's sake, the populace might step over the boundary line.
+
+
+
+When Adrian had seen the wounded Spanish soldiers and their bearers
+torn to pieces by the rabble, and had heard the great door of the
+Gevangenhuis close upon Foy and Martin, he turned to go home with his
+evil news. But for a long while the mob would not go home, and had it
+not been that the drawbridge over the moat in front of the prison was
+up, and that they had no means of crossing it, probably they would
+have attacked the building then and there. Presently, however, rain
+began to fall and they melted away, wondering, not too happily,
+whether, in that time of daily slaughter, the Duke of Alva would think
+a few common soldiers worth while making a stir about.
+
+Adrian entered the upper room to tell his tidings, since they must be
+told, and found it occupied by his mother alone. She was sitting
+straight upright in her chair, her hands resting upon her knees,
+staring out of the window with a face like marble.
+
+"I cannot find him," he began, "but Foy and Martin are taken after a
+great fight in which Foy was wounded. They are in the Gevangenhuis."
+
+"I know all," interrupted Lysbeth in a cold, heavy voice. "My husband
+is taken also. Someone must have betrayed them. May God reward him!
+Leave me, Adrian."
+
+Then Adrian turned and crept away to his own chamber, his heart so
+full of remorse and shame that at times he thought that it must burst.
+Weak as he was, wicked as he was, he had never intended this, but now,
+oh Heaven! his brother Foy and the man who had been his benefactor,
+whom his mother loved more than her life, were through him given over
+to a death worse than the mind could conceive. Somehow that night wore
+away, and of this we may be sure, that it did not go half as heavily
+with the victims in their dungeon as with the betrayer in his free
+comfort. Thrice during its dark hours, indeed, Adrian was on the point
+of destroying himself; once even he set the hilt of his sword upon the
+floor and its edge against his breast, and then at the prick of steel
+shrank back.
+
+Better would it have been for him, perhaps, could he have kept his
+courage; at least he would have been spared much added shame and
+misery.
+
+
+
+So soon as Adrian had left her Lysbeth rose, robed herself, and took
+her way to the house of her cousin, van de Werff, now a successful
+citizen of middle age and the burgomaster-elect of Leyden.
+
+"You have heard the news?" she said.
+
+"Alas! cousin, I have," he answered, "and it is very terrible. Is it
+true that this treasure of Hendrik Brant's is at the bottom of it
+all?"
+
+She nodded, and answered, "I believe so."
+
+"Then could they not bargain for their lives by surrendering its
+secret?"
+
+"Perhaps. That is, Foy and Martin might--Dirk does not know its
+whereabouts--he refused to know, but they have sworn that they will
+die first."
+
+"Why, cousin?"
+
+"Because they promised as much to Hendrik Brant, who believed that if
+his gold could be kept from the Spaniards it would do some mighty
+service to his country in time to come, and who has persuaded them all
+that is so."
+
+"Then God grant it may be true," said van de Werff with a sigh, "for
+otherwise it is sad to think that more lives should be sacrificed for
+the sake of a heap of pelf."
+
+"I know it, cousin, but I come to you to save those lives."
+
+"How?"
+
+"How?" she answered fiercely. "Why, by raising the town; by attacking
+the Gevangenhuis and rescuing them, by driving the Spaniards out of
+Leyden----"
+
+"And thereby bringing upon ourselves the fate of Mons. Would you see
+this place also given over to sack by the soldiers of Noircarmes and
+Don Frederic?"
+
+"I care not what I see so long as I save my son and my husband," she
+answered desperately.
+
+"There speaks the woman, not the patriot. It is better that three men
+should die than a whole city full."
+
+"That is a strange argument to find in your mouth, cousin, the
+argument of Caiaphas the Jew."
+
+"Nay, Lysbeth, be not wroth with me, for what can I say? The Spanish
+troops in Leyden are not many, it is true, but more have been sent for
+from Haarlem and elsewhere after the troubles of yesterday arising out
+of the capture of Foy and Martin, and in forty-eight hours at the
+longest they will be here. This town is not provisioned for a siege,
+its citizens are not trained to arms, and we have little powder
+stored. Moreover, the city council is divided. For the killing of the
+Spanish soldiers we may compound, but if we attack the Gevangenhuis,
+that is open rebellion, and we shall bring the army of Don Frederic
+down upon us."
+
+"What matter, cousin? It will come sooner or later."
+
+"Then let it come later, when we are more prepared to beat it off. Oh!
+do not reproach me, for I can bear it ill, I who am working day and
+night to make ready for the hour of trial. I love your husband and
+your son, my heart bleeds for your sorrow and their doom, but at
+present I can do nothing, nothing. You must bear your burden, they
+must bear theirs, I must bear mine; we must all wander through the
+night not knowing where we wander till God causes the dawn to break,
+the dawn of freedom and retribution."
+
+Lysbeth made no answer, only she rose and stumbled from the house,
+while van de Werff sat down groaning bitterly and praying for help and
+light.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXII
+
+                       A MEETING AND A PARTING
+
+Lysbeth did not sleep that night, for even if her misery would have
+let her sleep, she could not because of the physical fire that burnt
+in her veins, and the strange pangs of agony which pierced her head.
+At first she thought little of them, but when at last the cold light
+of the autumn morning dawned she went to a mirror and examined
+herself, and there upon her neck she found a hard red swelling of the
+size of a nut. Then Lysbeth knew that she had caught the plague from
+the Vrouw Jansen, and laughed aloud, a dreary little laugh, since if
+all she loved were to die, it seemed to her good that she should die
+also. Elsa was abed prostrated with grief, and, shutting herself in
+her room, Lysbeth suffered none to come near her except one woman who
+she knew had recovered from the plague in past years, but even to her
+she said nothing of her sickness.
+
+About eleven o'clock in the morning this woman rushed into her chamber
+crying, "They have escaped! They have escaped!"
+
+"Who?" gasped Lysbeth, springing from her chair.
+
+"Your son Foy and Red Martin," and she told the tale of how the naked
+man with the naked sword, carrying the wounded Foy upon his back,
+burst his way roaring from the Gevangenhuis, and, protected by the
+people, had run through the town and out of the Morsch poort, heading
+for the Haarlemer Meer.
+
+As she listened Lysbeth's eyes flamed up with a fire of pride.
+
+"Oh! good and faithful servant," she murmured, "you have saved my son,
+but alas! your master you could not save."
+
+Another hour passed, and the woman appeared again bearing a letter.
+
+"Who brought this?" she asked.
+
+"A Spanish soldier, mistress."
+
+Then she cut the silk and read it. It was unsigned, and ran:--
+
+
+ "One in authority sends greetings to the Vrouw van Goorl. If the
+  Vrouw van Goorl would save the life of the man who is dearest to
+  her, she is prayed to veil herself and follow the bearer of this
+  letter. For her own safety she need have no fear; it is assured
+  hereby."
+
+
+Lysbeth thought awhile. This might be a trick; very probably it was a
+trick to take her. Well, if so, what did it matter since she would
+rather die with her husband than live on without him; moreover, why
+should she turn aside from death, she in whose veins the plague was
+burning? But there was another thing worse than that. She could guess
+who had penned this letter; it even seemed to her, after all these
+many years, that she recognised the writing, disguised though it was.
+Could she face him! Well, why not--for Dirk's sake?
+
+And if she refused and Dirk was done to death, would she not reproach
+herself, if she lived to remember it, because she had left a stone
+unturned?
+
+"Give me my cloak and veil," she said to the woman, "and now go tell
+the man that I am coming."
+
+At the door she found the soldier, who saluted her, and said
+respectfully, "Follow me, lady, but at a little distance."
+
+So they started, and through side streets Lysbeth was led to a back
+entrance of the Gevangenhuis, which opened and closed behind her
+mysteriously, leaving her wondering whether she would ever pass that
+gate again. Within a man was waiting--she did not even notice what
+kind of man--who also said, "Follow me, lady," and led her through
+gloomy passages and various doors into a little empty chamber
+furnished with a table and two chairs. Presently the door opened and
+shut; then her whole being shrank and sickened as though beneath the
+breath of poison, for there before her, still the same, still
+handsome, although so marred by time and scars and evil, stood the man
+who had been her husband, Juan de Montalvo. But whatever she felt
+Lysbeth showed nothing of it in her face, which remained white and
+stern; moreover, even before she looked at him she was aware that he
+feared her more than she feared him.
+
+It was true, for from this woman's eyes went out a sword of terror
+that seemed to pierce Montalvo's heart. Back flew his mind to the
+scene of their betrothal, and the awful words that she had spoken then
+re-echoed in his ears. How strangely things had come round, for on
+that day, as on this, the stake at issue was the life of Dirk van
+Goorl. In the old times she had bought it, paying as its price
+herself, her fortune, and, worst of all, to a woman, her lover's scorn
+and wonder. What would she be prepared to pay now? Well, fortunately,
+he need ask but little of her. And yet his soul mistrusted him of
+these bargainings with Lysbeth van Hout for the life of Dirk van
+Goorl. The first had ended ill with a sentence of fourteen years in
+the galleys, most of which he had served. How would the second end?
+
+By way of answer there seemed to rise before the eye of Montalvo's
+mind a measureless black gulf, and, falling, falling, falling through
+its infinite depths one miserable figure, a mere tiny point that
+served to show the vastness it explored. The point turned over, and he
+saw its face as in a crystal--it was his own.
+
+This unpleasant nightmare of the imagination came in an instant, and
+in an instant passed. The next Montalvo, courteous and composed, was
+bowing before his visitor and praying her to be seated.
+
+"It is most good of you, Vrouw van Goorl," he began, "to have
+responded so promptly to my invitation."
+
+"Perhaps, Count de Montalvo," she replied, "you will do me the favour
+to set out your business in as few words as possible."
+
+"Most certainly; that is my desire. Let me free your mind of
+apprehension. The past has mingled memories for both of us, some of
+them bitter, some, let me hope, sweet," and he laid his hand upon his
+heart and sighed. "But it is a dead past, so, dear lady, let us agree
+to bury it in a fitting silence."
+
+Lysbeth made no answer, only her mouth grew a trifle more stern.
+
+"Now, one word more, and I will come to the point. Let me congratulate
+you upon the gallant deeds of a gallant son. Of course his courage and
+dexterity, with that of the red giant, Martin, have told against
+myself, have, in short, lost me a trick in the game. But I am an old
+soldier, and I can assure you that the details of their fight
+yesterday at the factory, and of their marvellous escape from--from--
+well, painful surroundings this morning, have stirred my blood and
+made my heart beat fast."
+
+"I have heard the tale; do not trouble to repeat it," said Lysbeth.
+"It is only what I expected of them, but I thank God that it has
+pleased Him to let them live on so that in due course they may
+fearfully avenge a beloved father and master."
+
+Montalvo coughed and turned his head with the idea of avoiding that
+ghastly nightmare of a pitiful little man falling down a fathomless
+gulf which had sprung up suddenly in his mind again.
+
+"Well," he went on, "a truce to compliments. They escaped, and I am
+glad of it, whatever murders they may contemplate in the future. Yes,
+notwithstanding their great crimes and manslayings in the past I am
+glad that they escaped, although it was my duty to keep them while I
+could--and if I should catch them it will be my duty--but I needn't
+talk of that to you. Of course, however, you know, there is one
+gentleman who was not quite so fortunate."
+
+"My husband?"
+
+"Yes, your worthy husband, who, happily for my reputation as captain
+of one of His Majesty's prisons, occupies an upstairs room."
+
+"What of him?" asked Lysbeth.
+
+"Dear lady, don't be over anxious; there is nothing so wearing as
+anxiety. I was coming to the matter." Then, with a sudden change of
+manner, he added, "It is needful, Lysbeth, that I should set out the
+situation."
+
+"What situation do you mean?"
+
+"Well, principally that of the treasure."
+
+"What treasure?"
+
+"Oh! woman, do not waste time in trying to fool me. The treasure, the
+vast, the incalculable treasure of Hendrik Brant which Foy van Goorl
+and Martin, who have escaped"--and he ground his teeth together at the
+anguish of the thought--"disposed of somewhere in the Haarlemer Meer."
+
+"Well, what about this treasure?"
+
+"I want it, that is all."
+
+"Then you had best go to seek it."
+
+"That is my intention, and I shall begin the search--in the heart of
+Dirk van Goorl," he added, slowly crushing the handkerchief he held
+with his long fingers as though it were a living thing that could be
+choked to death.
+
+Lysbeth never stirred, she had expected this.
+
+"You will find it a poor mine to dig in," she said, "for he knows
+nothing of the whereabouts of this money. Nobody knows anything of it
+now. Martin hid it, as I understand, and lost the paper, so it will
+lie there till the Haarlemer Meer is drained."
+
+"Dear me! Do you know I have heard that story before; yes, from the
+excellent Martin himself--and, do you know, I don't quite believe it."
+
+"I cannot help what you believe or do not believe. You may remember
+that it was always my habit to speak the truth."
+
+"Quite so, but others may be less conscientious. See here," and
+drawing a paper from his doublet, he held it before her. It was
+nothing less than the death-warrant of Dirk van Goorl, signed by the
+Inquisitor, duly authorised thereto.
+
+Mechanically she read it and understood.
+
+"You will observe," he went on, "that the method of the criminal's
+execution is left to the good wisdom of our well-beloved--etc., in
+plain language, to me. Now might I trouble you so far as to look out
+of this little window? What do you see in front of you? A kitchen?
+Quite so; always a homely and pleasant sight in the eyes of an
+excellent housewife like yourself. And--do you mind bending forward a
+little? What do you see up there? A small barred window? Well, let us
+suppose, for the sake of argument, that a hungry man, a man who grows
+hungrier and hungrier, sat behind that window watching the cooks at
+their work and seeing the meat carried into this kitchen, to come out
+an hour or two later as hot, steaming, savoury joints, while he
+wasted, wasted, wasted and starved, starved, starved. Don't you think,
+my dear lady, that this would be a very unpleasant experience for that
+man?"
+
+"Are you a devil?" gasped Lysbeth, springing back.
+
+"I have never regarded myself as such, but if you seek a definition, I
+should say that I am a hard-working, necessitous, and somewhat
+unfortunate gentleman who has been driven to rough methods in order to
+secure a comfortable old age. I can assure you that /I/ do not wish to
+starve anybody; I wish only to find Hendrik Brant's treasure, and if
+your worthy husband won't tell me where it is, why I must make him,
+that is all. In six or eight days under my treatment I am convinced
+that he will become quite fluent on the subject, for there is nothing
+that should cause a fat burgher, accustomed to good living, to open
+his heart more than a total lack of the victuals which he can see and
+smell. Did you ever hear the story of an ancient gentleman called
+Tantalus? These old fables have a wonderful way of adapting themselves
+to the needs and circumstances of us moderns, haven't they?"
+
+Then Lysbeth's pride broke down, and, in the abandonment of her
+despair, flinging herself upon her knees before this monster, she
+begged for her husband's life, begged, in the name of God, yes, and
+even in the name of Montalvo's son, Adrian. So low had her misery
+brought her that she pleaded with the man by the son of shame whom she
+had borne to him.
+
+He prayed her to rise. "I want to save your husband's life," he said.
+"I give you my word that if only he will tell me what I desire to
+know, I will save it; yes, although the risk is great, I will even
+manage his escape, and I shall ask you to go upstairs presently and
+explain my amiable intentions to him." Then he thought a moment and
+added, "But you mentioned one Adrian. Pray do you mean the gentleman
+whose signature appears here?" and he handed her another document,
+saying, "Read it quietly, there is no hurry. The good Dirk is not
+starving yet; I am informed, indeed, that he has just made an
+excellent breakfast--not his last by many thousands, let us hope."
+
+Lysbeth took the sheets and glanced at them. Then her intelligence
+awoke, and she read on fiercely until her eye came to the well-known
+signature at the foot of the last page. She cast the roll down with a
+cry as though a serpent had sprung from its pages and bitten her.
+
+"I fear that you are pained," said Montalvo sympathetically, "and no
+wonder, for myself I have gone through such disillusionments, and know
+how they wound a generous nature. That's why I showed you this
+document, because I also am generous and wish to warn you against this
+young gentleman, who, I understand, you allege is my son. You see the
+person who would betray his brother might even go a step further and
+betray his mother, so, if you take my advice, you will keep an eye
+upon the young man. Also I am bound to remind you that it is more or
+less your own fault. It is a most unlucky thing to curse a child
+before it is born--you remember the incident? That curse has come home
+to roost with a vengeance. What a warning against giving way to the
+passion of the moment!"
+
+Lysbeth heeded him no longer; she was thinking as she had never
+thought before. At that moment, as though by an inspiration, there
+floated into her mind the words of the dead Vrouw Jansen: "The plague,
+I wish that I had caught it before, for then I would have taken it to
+him in prison, and they couldn't have treated him as they did." Dirk
+was in prison, and Dirk was to be starved to death, for, whatever
+Montalvo might think, he did not know the secret, and, therefore,
+could not tell it. And she--she had the plague on her; she knew its
+symptoms well, and its poison was burning in her every vein, although
+she still could think and speak and walk.
+
+Well, why not? It would be no crime. Indeed, if it was a crime, she
+cared little; it would be better that he should die of the plague in
+five days, or perhaps in two, if it worked quickly, as it often did
+with the full-blooded, than that he should linger on starving for
+twelve or more, and perhaps be tormented besides.
+
+Swiftly, very swiftly, Lysbeth came to her dreadful decision. Then she
+spoke in a hoarse voice.
+
+"What do you wish me to do?"
+
+"I wish you to reason with your husband, and to persuade him to cease
+from his obstinacy, and to surrender to me the secret of the hiding-
+place of Brant's hoard. In that event, so soon as I have proved the
+truth of what he tells me, I undertake that he shall be set at liberty
+unharmed, and that, meanwhile, he shall be well treated."
+
+"And if I will not, or he will not, or cannot?"
+
+"Then I have told you the alternative, and to show you that I am not
+joking, I will now write and sign the order. Then, if you decline this
+mission, or if it is fruitless, I will hand it to the officer before
+your eyes--and within the next ten days or so let you know the
+results, or witness them if you wish."
+
+"I will go," she said, "but I must see him alone."
+
+"It is unusual," he answered, "but provided you satisfy me that you
+carry no weapon, I do not know that I need object."
+
+So, when Montalvo had written his order and scattered dust on it from
+the pounce-box, for he was a man of neat and methodical habits, he
+himself with every possible courtesy conducted Lysbeth to her
+husband's prison. Having ushered her into it, with a cheerful "Friend
+van Goorl, I bring you a visitor," he locked the door upon them, and
+patiently waited outside.
+
+It matters not what passed within. Whether Lysbeth told her husband of
+her dread yet sacred purpose, or did not tell him; whether he ever
+learned of the perfidy of Adrian, or did not learn it; what were their
+parting words--their parting prayers, all these things matter not;
+indeed, the last are too holy to be written. Let us bow our heads and
+pass them by in silence, and let the reader imagine them as he will.
+
+
+
+Growing impatient at length, Montalvo unlocked the prison door and
+opened it, to discover Lysbeth and her husband kneeling side by side
+in the centre of the room like the figures on some ancient marble
+monument. They heard him and rose. Then Dirk folded his wife in his
+arms in a long, last embrace, and, loosing her, held one hand above
+her head in blessing, as with the other he pointed to the door.
+
+So infinitely pathetic was this dumb show of farewell, for no word
+passed between them while he was present, that not only his barbed
+gibes, but the questions that he meant to ask, died upon the lips of
+Montalvo. Try as he might he could not speak them here.
+
+"Come," he said, and Lysbeth passed out.
+
+At the door she turned to look, and there, in the centre of the room,
+still stood her husband, tears streaming from his eyes, down a face
+radiant with an unearthly smile, and his right hand lifted towards the
+heavens. And so she left him.
+
+
+
+Presently Montalvo and Lysbeth were together again in the little room.
+
+"I fear," he said, "from what I saw just now, that your mission has
+failed."
+
+"It has failed," she answered in such a voice as might be dragged by
+an evil magic from the lips of a corpse. "He does not know the secret
+you seek, and, therefore, he cannot tell it."
+
+"I am sorry that I cannot believe you," said Montalvo, "so"--and he
+stretched out his hand towards a bell upon the table.
+
+"Stop," she said; "for your own sake stop. Man, will you really commit
+this awful, this useless crime? Think of the reckoning that must be
+paid here and hereafter; think of me, the woman you dishonoured,
+standing before the Judgment Seat of God, and bearing witness against
+your naked, shivering soul. Think of him, the good and harmless man
+whom you are about cruelly to butcher, crying in the ear of Christ,
+'Look upon Juan de Montalvo, my pitiless murderer----'"
+
+"Silence," shouted Montalvo, yet shrinking back against the wall as
+though to avoid a sword-thrust. "Silence, you ill-omened witch, with
+your talk of God and judgment. It is too late, I tell you, it is too
+late; my hands are too red with blood, my heart is too black with sin,
+upon the tablets of my mind is written too long a record. What more
+can this one crime matter, and--do you understand?--I must have money,
+money to buy my pleasures, money to make my last years happy, and my
+deathbed soft. I have suffered enough, I have toiled enough, and I
+will win wealth and peace who am now once more a beggar. Yes, had you
+twenty husbands, I would crush the life out of all of them inch by
+inch to win the gold that I desire."
+
+As he spoke and the passions in him broke through their crust of
+cunning and reserve, his face changed. Now Lysbeth, watching for some
+sign of pity, knew that hope was dead, for his countenance was as it
+had been on that day six-and-twenty years ago, when she sat at his
+side while the great race was run. There was the same starting
+eyeball, the same shining fangs appeared between the curled lips, and
+above them the moustachios, now grown grey, touched the high
+cheekbones. It was as in the fable of the weremen, who, at a magic
+sign or word, put off their human aspect and become beasts. So it had
+chanced to the spirit of Montalvo, shining through his flesh like some
+baleful marsh-light through the mist. It was a thing which God had
+forgotten, a thing that had burst the kindly mould of its humanity,
+and wrapt itself in the robe and mask of such a wolf as might raven
+about the cliffs of hell. Only there was fear on the face of the wolf,
+that inhuman face which, this side of the grave, she was yet destined
+to see once more.
+
+The fit passed, and Montalvo sank down gasping, while even in her woe
+and agony Lysbeth shuddered at this naked vision of a Satan-haunted
+soul.
+
+"I have one more thing to ask," she said. "Since my husband must die,
+suffer that I die with him. Will you refuse this also, and cause the
+cup of your crimes to flow over, and the last angel of God's mercy to
+flee away?"
+
+"Yes," he answered. "You, woman with the evil eye, do you suppose that
+I wish you here to bring all the ills you prate of upon my head? I say
+that I am afraid of you. Why, for your sake, once, years ago, I made a
+vow to the Blessed Virgin that, whatever I worked on men, I would
+never again lift a hand against a woman. To that oath I look to help
+me at the last, for I have kept it sacredly, and am keeping it now,
+else by this time both you and the girl, Elsa, might have been
+stretched upon the rack. No, Lysbeth, get you gone, and take your
+curses with you," and he snatched and rang the bell.
+
+A soldier entered the room, saluted, and asked his commands.
+
+"Take this order," he said, "to the officer in charge of the heretic,
+Dirk van Goorl; it details the method of his execution. Let it be
+strictly adhered to, and report made to me each morning of the
+condition of the prisoner. Stay, show this lady from the prison."
+
+The man saluted again and went out of the door. After him followed
+Lysbeth. She spoke no more, but as she passed she looked at Montalvo,
+and he knew well that though she might be gone, yet her curse remained
+behind.
+
+The plague was on her, the plague was on her, her head and bones were
+racked with pain, and the swords of sorrow pierced her poor heart. But
+Lysbeth's mind was still clear, and her limbs still supported her. She
+reached her home and walked upstairs to the sitting room, commanding
+the servant to find the Heer Adrian and bid him join her there.
+
+In the room was Elsa, who ran to her crying,
+
+"Is it true? Is it true?"
+
+"It is true, daughter, that Foy and Martin have escaped----"
+
+"Oh! God is good!" wept the girl.
+
+"And that my husband is a prisoner and condemned to death."
+
+"Ah!" gasped Elsa, "I am selfish."
+
+"It is natural that a woman should think first of the man she loves.
+No, do not come near me; I fear that I am stricken with the pest."
+
+"I am not afraid of that," answered Elsa. "Did I never tell you? As a
+child I had it in The Hague."
+
+"That, at least, is good news among much that is very ill; but be
+silent, here comes Adrian, to whom I wish to speak. Nay, you need not
+leave us; it is best that you should learn the truth."
+
+Presently Adrian entered, and Elsa, watching everything, noticed that
+he looked sadly changed and ill.
+
+"You sent for me, mother," he began, with some attempt at his old
+pompous air. Then he caught sight of her face and was silent.
+
+"I have been to the Gevangenhuis, Adrian," she said, "and I have news
+to tell you. As you may have heard, your brother Foy and our servant
+Martin have escaped, I know not whither. They escaped out of the very
+jaws of worse than death, out of the torture-chamber, indeed, by
+killing that wretch who was known as the Professor, and the warden of
+the gate, Martin carrying Foy, who is wounded, upon his back."
+
+"I am indeed rejoiced," cried Adrian excitedly.
+
+"Hypocrite, be silent," hissed his mother, and he knew that the worst
+had overtaken him.
+
+"My husband, your stepfather, has not escaped; he is in the prison
+still, for there I have just bidden him farewell, and the sentence
+upon him is that he shall be starved to death in a cell overlooking
+the kitchen."
+
+"Oh! oh!" cried Elsa, and Adrian groaned.
+
+"It was my good, or my evil, fortune," went on Lysbeth, in a voice of
+ice, "to see the written evidence upon which my husband, your brother
+Foy, and Martin were condemned to death, on the grounds of heresy,
+rebellion, and the killing of the king's servants. At the foot of it,
+duly witnessed, stands the signature of--Adrian van Goorl."
+
+Elsa's jaw fell. She stared at the traitor like one paralysed, while
+Adrian, seizing the back of a chair, rested upon it, and rocked his
+body to and fro.
+
+"Have you anything to say?" asked Lysbeth.
+
+There was still one chance for the wretched man--had he been more
+dishonest than he was. He might have denied all knowledge of the
+signature. But to do this never occurred to him. Instead, he plunged
+into a wandering, scarcely intelligible, explanation, for even in his
+dreadful plight his vanity would not permit him to tell all the truth
+before Elsa. Moreover, in that fearful silence, soon he became utterly
+bewildered, till at length he hardly knew what he was saying, and in
+the end came to a full stop.
+
+"I understand you to admit that you signed this paper in the house of
+Hague Simon, and in the presence of a man called Ramiro, who is
+Governor of the prison, and who showed it to me," said Lysbeth,
+lifting her head which had sunk upon her breast.
+
+"Yes, mother, I signed something, but----"
+
+"I wish to hear no more," interrupted Lysbeth. "Whether your motive
+was jealousy, or greed, or wickedness of heart, or fear, you signed
+that which, had you been a man, you would not have yourself to be torn
+to pieces with redhot pincers you put a pen to it. Moreover, you gave
+your evidence fully and freely, for I have read it, and supported it
+with the severed finger of the woman Meg which you stole from Foy's
+room. You are the murderer of your benefactor and of your mother's
+heart, and the would-be murderer of your brother and of Martin Roos.
+When you were born, the mad wife, Martha, who nursed me, counselled
+that you should be put to death, lest you should live to bring evil
+upon me and mine. I refused, and you have brought the evil upon us
+all, but most, I think, upon your own soul. I do not curse you, I call
+down no ill upon you; Adrian, I give you over into the hands of God to
+deal with as He sees fit. Here is money"--and, going to her desk, she
+took from it a heavy purse of gold which had been prepared for their
+flight, and thrust it into the pocket of his doublet, wiping her
+fingers upon her kerchief after she had touched him. "Go hence and
+never let me see your face again. You were born of my body, you are my
+flesh and blood, but for this world and the next I renounce you,
+Adrian. Bastard, I know you not. Murderer, get you gone."
+
+Adrian fell upon the ground; he grovelled before his mother trying to
+kiss the hem of her dress, while Elsa sobbed aloud hysterically. But
+Lysbeth spurned him in the face with her foot, saying,
+
+"Get you gone before I call up such servants as are left to me to
+thrust you to the street."
+
+Then Adrian rose and with great gasps of agony, like some sore-wounded
+thing, crept from that awful and majestic presence of outraged
+motherhood, crept down the stairs and away into the city.
+
+When he had gone Lysbeth took pen and paper and wrote in large letters
+these words:--
+
+
+ "Notice to all the good citizens of Leyden. Adrian, called van
+  Goorl, upon whose written evidence his stepfather, Dirk van Goorl,
+  his half-brother, Foy van Goorl, and the serving-man, Martin Roos,
+  have been condemned to death in the Gevangenhuis by torment,
+  starvation, water, fire, and sword, is known here no longer.
+  Lysbeth van Goorl."
+
+
+Then she called a servant and gave orders that this paper should be
+nailed upon the front door of the house where every passer-by might
+read it.
+
+"It is done," she said. "Cease weeping, Elsa, and lead me to my bed,
+whence I pray God that I may never rise again."
+
+
+
+Two days went by, and a fugitive rode into the city, a worn and
+wounded man of Leyden, with horror stamped upon his face.
+
+"What news?" cried the people in the market-place, recognising him.
+
+"Mechlin! Mechlin!" he gasped. "I come from Mechlin."
+
+"What of Mechlin and its citizens?" asked Pieter van de Werff,
+stepping forward.
+
+"Don Frederic has taken it; the Spaniards have butchered them;
+everyone, old and young, men, women, and children, they are all
+butchered. I escaped, but for two leagues and more I heard the sound
+of the death-wail of Mechlin. Give me wine."
+
+They gave him wine, and by slow degrees, in broken sentences, he told
+the tale of one of the most awful crimes ever committed in the name of
+Christ by cruel man against God and his own fellows. It was written
+large in history: we need not repeat it here.
+
+Then, when they knew the truth, up from that multitude of the men of
+Leyden went a roar of wrath, and a cry to vengeance for their
+slaughtered kin. They took arms, each what he had, the burgher his
+sword, the fisherman his fish-spear, the boor his ox-goad or his pick;
+leaders sprang up to command them, and there arose a shout of "To the
+gates! To the Gevangenhuis! Free the prisoners!"
+
+They surged round the hateful place, thousands of them. The drawbridge
+was up, but they bridged the moat. Some shots were fired at them, then
+the defence ceased. They battered in the massive doors, and, when
+these fell, rushed to the dens and loosed those who remained alive
+within them.
+
+But they found no Spaniards, for by now Ramiro and his garrison had
+vanished away, whither they knew not. A voice cried, "Dirk van Goorl,
+seek for Dirk van Goorl," and they came to the chamber overlooking the
+courtyard, shouting, "Van Goorl, we are here!"
+
+They broke in the door, and there they found him, lying upon his
+pallet, his hands clasped, his face upturned, smitten suddenly dead,
+not by man, but by the poison of the plague.
+
+Unfed and untended, the end had overtaken him very swiftly.
+
+
+
+
+                            BOOK THE THIRD
+
+                            THE HARVESTING
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII
+
+                            FATHER AND SON
+
+When Adrian left his mother's house in the Bree Straat he wandered
+away at hazard, for so utterly miserable was he that he could form no
+plans as to what he was to do or whither he should go. Presently he
+found himself at the foot of that great mound which in Leyden is still
+known as the Burg, a strange place with a circular wall upon the top
+of it, said to have been constructed by the Romans. Up this mound he
+climbed, and throwing himself upon the grass under an oak which grew
+in one of the little recesses of those ancient walls, he buried his
+face in his hands and tried to think.
+
+Think! How could he think? Whenever he shut his eyes there arose
+before them a vision of his mother's face, a face so fearful in its
+awesome and unnatural calm that vaguely he wondered how he, the
+outcast son, upon whom it had been turned like the stare of the
+Medusa's head, withering his very soul, could have seen it and still
+live. Why did he live? Why was he not dead, he who had a sword at his
+side? Was it because of his innocence? He was not guilty of this
+dreadful crime. He had never intended to hand over Dirk van Goorl and
+Foy and Martin to the Inquisition. He had only talked about them to a
+man whom he believed to be a professor of judicial astrology, and who
+said that he could compound draughts which would bend the wills of
+women. Could he help it if this fellow was really an officer of the
+Blood Council? Of course not. But, oh! why had he talked so much? Oh!
+why had he signed that paper, why did he not let them kill him first?
+He had signed, and explain as he would, he could never look an honest
+man in the face again, and less still a woman, if she knew the truth.
+So he was not still alive because he was innocent, since for all the
+good that this very doubtful innocence of his was likely to be even to
+his own conscience, he might almost as well have been guilty. Nor was
+he alive because he feared to die. He did fear to die horribly, but to
+the young and impressionable, at any rate, there are situations in
+which death seems the lesser of two evils. That situation had been
+well-nigh reached by him last night when he set the hilt of his sword
+against the floor and shrank back at the prick of its point. To-day it
+was overpast.
+
+No, he lived on because before he died he had a hate to satisfy, a
+revenge to work. He would kill this dog, Ramiro, who had tricked him
+with his crystal gazing and his talk of friendship, who had frightened
+him with the threat of death until he became like some poor girl and
+for fear signed away his honour--oh, Heaven! for very fear, he who
+prided himself upon his noble Spanish blood, the blood of warriors--
+this treacherous dog, who, having used him, had not hesitated to
+betray his shame to her from whom most of all it should have been
+hidden, and, for aught he knew, to the others also. Yes if ever he met
+him--his own brother--Foy would spit upon him in the street; Foy, who
+was so hatefully open and honest, who could not understand into what
+degradation a man's nerves may drag him. And Martin, who had always
+mistrusted and despised him, why, if he found the chance, he would
+tear him limb from limb as a kite tears a partridge. And, worse still,
+Dirk van Goorl, the man who had befriended him, who had bred him up
+although he was no son of his, but the child of some rival, he would
+sit there in his prison cell, and while his face fell in and his bones
+grew daily plainer, till at length his portly presence was as that of
+a living skeleton, he would sit there by the window, watching the
+dishes of savoury food pass in and out beneath him, and between the
+pangs of his long-drawn, hideous agony, put up his prayer to God to
+pay back to him, Adrian, all the woe that he had caused.
+
+Oh! it was too much. Under the crushing weight of his suffering, his
+senses left him, and he found such peace as to-day is won by those who
+are about to pass beneath the surgeon's knife; the peace that but too
+often wakes to a livelier agony.
+
+When Adrian came to himself again, he felt cold, for already the
+autumn evening had begun to fall, and there was a feel in the clear,
+still air as of approaching frost. Also he was hungry (Dirk van Goorl,
+too, must be growing hungry now, he remembered), for he had eaten
+nothing since the yesterday. He would go into the town, get food, and
+then make up his mind what he should do.
+
+Accordingly, descending from the Burg, Adrian went to the best inn in
+Leyden, and, seating himself at a table under the trees that grew
+outside of it, bade the waiting-man bring him food and beer.
+Unconsciously, for he was thinking of other things, in speaking to
+him, Adrian had assumed the haughty, Spanish hidalgo manner that was
+customary with him when addressing his inferiors. Even then he
+noticed, with the indignation of one who dwells upon his dignity, that
+this server made him no bow, but merely called his order to someone in
+the house, and, turning his back upon him, began to speak to a man who
+was loitering near. Soon Adrian became aware that he was the subject
+of that conversation, for the two of them looked at him out of the
+corners of their eyes, and jerked their thumbs towards him. Moreover,
+first one, then two, then quite a number of passers-by stopped and
+joined in the conversation, which appeared to interest them very much.
+Boys came also, a dozen or more of them, and women of the fish-wife
+stamp, and all of these looked at him out of the corner of /their/
+eyes, and from time to time jerked /their/ thumbs towards him. Adrian
+began to feel uneasy and angered, but, drawing down his bonnet, and
+folding his arms upon his breast, he took no notice. Presently the
+server thrust his meal and flagon of beer before him with such
+clattering clumsiness that some of the liquor splashed over upon the
+table.
+
+"Be more careful and wipe that up," said Adrian.
+
+"Wipe it yourself," answered the man, rudely turning upon his heel.
+
+Now Adrian was minded to be gone, but he was hungry and thirsty, so
+first, thought he, he would satisfy himself. Accordingly he lifted the
+tankard and took a long pull at it, when suddenly something struck the
+bottom of the vessel, jerking liquor over his face and doublet. He set
+it down with an oath, and laying his hand upon his sword hilt asked
+who had done this. But the mob, which by now numbered fifty or sixty,
+and was gathered about him in a triple circle, made no answer. They
+stood there staring sullenly, and in the fading light their faces
+seemed dangerous and hostile.
+
+He was frightened. What could they mean? Yes, he was frightened, but
+he determined to brave it out, and lifted the cover from his meat,
+when something passed over his shoulder and fell into the dish,
+something stinking and abominable--to be particular, a dead cat. This
+was too much. Adrian sprang to his feet, and asked who dared thus to
+foul his food. The crowd did not jeer, did not even mock; it seemed
+too much in earnest for gibes, but a voice at the back called out:
+
+"Take it to Dirk van Goorl. He'll be glad of it soon."
+
+Now Adrian understood. All these people knew of his infamy; the whole
+of Leyden knew that tale. His lips turned dry, and the sweat broke out
+upon his body. What should he do? Brave it out? He sat down, and the
+fierce ring of silent faces drew a pace or two nearer. He tried to bid
+the man to bring more meat, but the words stuck in his throat. Now the
+mob saw his fear, and of a sudden seemed to augur his guilt from it,
+and to pass sentence on him in their hearts. At least, they who had
+been so dumb broke out into yells and hoots.
+
+"Traitor!" "Spanish spy!" "Murderer!" they screamed. "Who gave
+evidence against our Dirk? Who sold his brother to the rack?"
+
+Then came another shriller note. "Kill him." "Hang him up by the heels
+and stone him." "Twist off his tongue," and so forth. Out shot a hand,
+a long, skinny, female hand, and a harsh voice cried, "Give us a
+keepsake, my pretty boy!" Then there was a sharp wrench at his head,
+and he knew that from it a lock of hair was missing. This was too
+much. He ought to have stopped there and let them kill him if they
+would, but a terror of these human wolves entered his soul and
+mastered him. To be trodden beneath those mire-stained feet, to be
+rent by those filthy hands, to be swung up living by the ankles to
+some pole and then carved piecemeal--he could not bear it. He drew his
+sword and turned to fly.
+
+"Stop him," yelled the mob, whereon he lunged at them wildly, running
+a small boy through the arm.
+
+The sight of blood and the screech of the wounded lad settled the
+question, and those who were foremost came at him with a spring. But
+Adrian was swifter than they, and before a hand could be laid upon
+him, amidst a shower of stones and filth, he was speeding down the
+street. After him came the mob, and then began one of the finest man-
+hunts ever known in Leyden.
+
+From one street to another, round this turn and round that, sped the
+quarry, and after him, a swiftly growing pack, came the hounds. Some
+women drew a washing-line across the street to trip him. Adrian jumped
+it like a deer. Four men got ahead and tried to cut him off. He dodged
+them. Down the Bree Straat he went, and on his mother's door he saw a
+paper and guessed what was written there. They were gaining, they were
+gaining, for always fresh ones took the place of those who grew weary.
+There was but one chance for him now. Near by ran the Rhine, and here
+it was wide and unbridged. Perhaps they would not follow him through
+the water. In he went, having no choice, and swam for his life. They
+threw stones and bits of wood at him, and called for bows but, luckily
+for him, by now the night was falling fast, so that soon he vanished
+from their sight, and heard them crying to each other that he was
+drowned.
+
+But Adrian was not drowned, for at that moment he was dragging himself
+painfully through the deep, greasy mud of the opposing bank and hiding
+among the old boats and lumber which were piled there, till his breath
+came to him again. But he could not stay long, for even if he had not
+been afraid that they would come and find him, it was too cold. So he
+crept away into the darkness.
+
+
+
+Half an hour later, as, resting from their daily labours, Hague Simon
+and his consort Meg were seated at their evening meal, a knock came at
+the door, causing them to drop their knives and to look at each other
+suspiciously.
+
+"Who can it be?" marvelled Meg.
+
+Simon shook his fat head. "I have no appointment," he murmured, "and I
+don't like strange visitors. There's a nasty spirit abroad in the
+town, a very nasty spirit."
+
+"Go and see," said Meg.
+
+"Go and see yourself, you----" and he added an epithet calculated to
+anger the meekest woman.
+
+She answered it with an oath and a metal plate, which struck him in
+the face, but before the quarrel could go farther, again came the
+sound of raps, this time louder and more hurried. Then Black Meg went
+to open the door, while Simon took a knife and hid himself behind a
+curtain. After some whispering, Meg bade the visitor enter, and
+ushered him into the room, that same fateful room where the evidence
+was signed. Now he was in the light, and she saw him.
+
+"Oh! come here," she gasped. "Simon, come and look at our little
+grandee." So Simon came, whereon the pair of them, clapping their
+hands to their ribs, burst into screams of laughter.
+
+"It's the Don! Mother of Heaven! it is the Don," gurgled Simon.
+
+Well might they laugh, they who had known Adrian in his pride and rich
+attire, for before them, crouching against the wall, was a miserable,
+bareheaded object, his hair stained with mud and rotten eggs, blood
+running from his temple where a stone had caught him, his garments a
+mass of filth and dripping water, one boot gone and his hose burst to
+tatters. For a while the fugitive bore it, then suddenly, without a
+word, he drew the sword that still remained to him and rushed at the
+bestial looking Simon, who skipped away round the table.
+
+"Stop laughing," he said, "or I will put this through you. I am a
+desperate man."
+
+"You look it," said Simon, but he laughed no more, for the joke had
+become risky. "What do you want, Heer Adrian?"
+
+"I want food and lodging for so long as I please to stop here. Don't
+be afraid, I have money to pay you."
+
+"I am thinking that you are a dangerous guest," broke in Meg.
+
+"I am," replied Adrian; "but I tell you that I shall be more dangerous
+outside. I was not the only one concerned in that matter of the
+evidence, and if they get me they will have you too. You understand?"
+
+Meg nodded. She understood perfectly; for those of her trade Leyden
+was growing a risky habitation.
+
+"We will accommodate you with our best, Mynheer," she said. "Come
+upstairs to the Master's room and put on some of his clothes. They
+will fit you well; you are much of the same figure."
+
+Adrian's breath caught in his throat.
+
+"Is he here?" he asked.
+
+"No, but he keeps his room."
+
+"Is he coming back?"
+
+"I suppose so, sometime, as he keeps his room. Do you want to see
+him?"
+
+"Very much, but you needn't mention it; my business can wait till we
+meet. Get my clothes washed and dried as quickly as you can, will you?
+I don't care about wearing other men's garments."
+
+A quarter of an hour later Adrian, cleaned and clothed, different
+indeed to look on from the torn and hunted fugitive, re-entered the
+sitting-room. As he came, clad in Ramiro's suit, Meg nudged her
+husband and whispered, "Like, ain't they?"
+
+"Like as two devils in hell," Simon answered critically, then added,
+"Your food is ready; come, Mynheer, and eat."
+
+So Adrian ate and drank heartily enough, for the meat and wine were
+good, and he needed them. Also it rejoiced him in a dull way to find
+that there was something left in which he could take pleasure, even if
+it were but eating and drinking. When he had finished he told his
+story, or so much of it as he wished to tell, and afterwards went to
+bed wondering whether his hosts would murder him in his sleep for the
+purse of gold he carried, half hoping that they might indeed, and
+slept for twelve hours without stirring.
+
+All that day and until the evening of the next Adrian sat in the home
+of his spy hosts recovering his strength and brooding over his fearful
+fall. Black Meg brought in news of what passed without; thus he
+learned that his mother had sickened with the plague, and that the
+sentence of starvation was being carried out upon the body of her
+husband, Dirk van Goorl. He learned also the details of the escape of
+Foy and Martin, which were the talk of all the city. In the eyes of
+the common people they had become heroes, and some local poet had made
+a song about them which men were singing in the streets. Two verses of
+that song were devoted to him, Adrian; indeed, Black Meg repeated them
+to him word by word with a suppressed but malignant joy. Yes, this was
+what had happened; his brother had become a popular hero and he,
+Adrian, who in every way was so infinitely that brother's superior, an
+object of popular execration. And of all this the man, Ramiro, was the
+cause.
+
+Well, he was waiting for Ramiro. That was why he risked his life by
+staying in Leyden. Sooner or later Ramiro would be bound to visit this
+haunt of his, and then--here Adrian drew his rapier and lunged and
+parried, and finally with hissing breath drove it down into the wood
+of the flooring, picturing, in a kind of luxury of the imagination,
+that the throat of Ramiro was between its point and the ground. Of
+course in the struggle that must come, the said Ramiro, who doubtless
+was a skilful swordsman, might get the upper hand; it might be his,
+Adrian's throat, which was between the point and the ground. Well, if
+so, it scarcely mattered; he did not care. At any rate, for this once
+he would play the man and then let the devil take his own; himself, or
+Ramiro, or both of them.
+
+On the afternoon of the second day Adrian heard shouting in the
+streets, and Hague Simon came in and told him that a man had arrived
+with bad news from Mechlin; what it was he could not say, he was going
+to find out. A couple of hours went by and there was more shouting,
+this time of a determined and ordered nature. Then Black Meg appeared
+and informed him that the news from Mechlin was that everyone in that
+unhappy town had been slain by the Spaniards; that further the people
+of Leyden had risen and were marching to attack the Gevangenhuis. Out
+she hurried again, for when the waters were stormy then Black Meg must
+go afishing.
+
+Another hour went by, and once more the street door was opened with a
+key, to be carefully shut when the visitor had entered.
+
+Simon or Meg, thought Adrian, but as he could not be sure he took the
+precaution of hiding himself behind the curtain. The door of the room
+opened, and not Meg or Simon, but Ramiro entered. So his opportunity
+had come!
+
+The Master seemed disturbed. He sat down upon a chair and wiped his
+brow with a silk handkerchief. Then aloud, and shaking his fist in the
+air, he uttered a most comprehensive curse upon everybody and
+everything, but especially upon the citizens of Leyden. After this
+once more he lapsed into silence, sitting, his one eye fixed upon
+vacancy, and twisting his waxed moustaches with his hand.
+
+Now was Adrian's chance; he had only to step out from behind the
+curtain and run him through before he could rise from his seat. The
+plan had great charms, and doubtless he might have put it into
+execution had not Adrian's histrionic instincts stayed his hand. If he
+killed Ramiro thus, he would never know why he had been killed, and
+above all things Adrian desired that he should know. He wanted not
+only to wreak his wrongs, but to let his adversary learn why they were
+wreaked. Also, to do him justice, he preferred a fair fight to a
+secret stab delivered from behind, for gentlemen fought, but assassins
+stabbed.
+
+Still, as there were no witnesses, he might have been willing to waive
+this point, if only he could make sure that Ramiro should learn the
+truth before he died. He thought of springing out and wounding him,
+and then, after he had explained matters, finishing him off at his
+leisure. But how could he be sure of his sword-thrust, which might do
+too much or too little? No, come what would, the matter must be
+concluded in the proper fashion.
+
+Choosing his opportunity, Adrian stepped from behind the hanging and
+placed himself between Ramiro and the door, the bolt of which he shot
+adroitly that no one might interrupt their interview. At the sound
+Ramiro started and looked up. In an instant he grasped the situation,
+and though his bronzed face paled, for he knew that his danger was
+great, rose to it, as might have been expected from a gentleman of his
+long and varied experience.
+
+"The Heer Adrian called van Goorl, as I live!" he said. "My friend and
+pupil, I am glad to see you; but, if I might ask, although the times
+are rough, why in this narrow room do you wave about a naked rapier in
+that dangerous fashion?"
+
+"Villain," answered Adrian, "you know why; you have betrayed me and
+mine, and I am dishonoured, and now I am going to kill you in
+payment."
+
+"I see," said Ramiro, "the van Goorl affair again. I can never be
+clear of it for half an hour even. Well, before you begin, it may
+interest you to know that your worthy stepfather, after a couple of
+days' fasting, is by now, I suppose, free, for the rabble have stormed
+the Gevangenhuis. Truth, however, compels me to add that he is
+suffering badly from the plague, which your excellent mother, with a
+resource that does her credit, managed to communicate to him, thinking
+this end less disagreeable on the whole than that which the law had
+appointed."
+
+Thus spoke Ramiro, slowly and with purpose, for all the while he was
+so manoeuvring that the light from the lattice fell full upon his
+antagonist, leaving himself in the shadow, a position which experience
+taught him would prove of advantage in emergency.
+
+Adrian made no answer, but lifted his sword.
+
+"One moment, young gentleman," went on Ramiro, drawing his own weapon
+and putting himself on guard; "are you in earnest? Do you really wish
+to fight?"
+
+"Yes," answered Adrian.
+
+"What a fool you must be," mused Ramiro. "Why at your age should you
+seek to be rid of life, seeing that you have no more chance against me
+than a rat in a corner against a terrier dog? Look!" and suddenly he
+lunged most viciously straight at his heart. But Adrian was watching
+and parried the thrust.
+
+"Ah!" continued Ramiro, "I knew you would do that, otherwise I should
+not have let fly, for all the angels know I do not wish to hurt you."
+But to himself he added, "The lad is more dangerous than I thought--my
+life hangs on it. The old fault, friend, too high, too high!"
+
+Then Adrian came at him like a tiger, and for the next thirty seconds
+nothing was heard in the room but the raspings of steel and the hard
+breathing of the two men.
+
+At first Adrian had somewhat the better of it, for his assault was
+fierce, and he forced the older and cooler man to be satisfied with
+guarding himself. He did more indeed, for presently thrusting over
+Ramiro's guard, he wounded him slightly in the left arm. The sting of
+his hurt seemed to stir Ramiro's blood; at any rate he changed his
+tactics and began to attack in turn. Now, moreover, his skill and
+seasoned strength came to his aid; slowly but surely Adrian was driven
+back before him till his retreat in the narrow confines of the room
+became continuous. Suddenly, half from exhaustion and half because of
+a stumble, he reeled right across it, to the further wall indeed. With
+a guttural sound of triumph Ramiro sprang after him to make an end of
+him while his guard was down, caught his foot on a joined stool which
+had been overset in the struggle, and fell prone to the ground.
+
+This was Adrian's chance. In an instant he was on him and had the
+point of his rapier at his throat. But he did not stab at once, not
+from any compunction, but because he wished his enemy to feel a little
+before he died, for, like all his race, Adrian could be vindictive and
+bloodthirsty enough when his hate was roused. Rapidly Ramiro
+considered the position. In a physical sense he was helpless, for
+Adrian had one foot upon his breast, the other upon his sword-arm, and
+the steel at his throat. Therefore if time were given him he must
+trust to his wit.
+
+"Make ready, you are about to die," said Adrian.
+
+"I think not," replied the prostrate Ramiro.
+
+"Why not?" asked Adrian, astonished.
+
+"If you will be so kind as to move that sword-point a little--it is
+pricking me--thank you. Now I will tell you why. Because it is not
+usual for a son to stick his father as though he were a farmyard pig."
+
+"Son? Father?" said Adrian. "Do you mean----?"
+
+"Yes, I do mean that we have the happiness of filling those sacred
+relationships to each other."
+
+"You lie," said Adrian.
+
+"Let me stand up and give me my sword, young sir, and you shall pay
+for that. Never yet did a man tell the Count Juan de Montalvo that he
+lied, and live."
+
+"Prove it," said Adrian.
+
+"In this position, to which misfortune, not skill, has reduced me, I
+can prove nothing. But if you doubt it, ask your mother, or your
+hosts, or consult the registers of the Groote Kerke, and see whether
+on a date, which I will give you, Juan de Montalvo was, or was not,
+married to Lysbeth van Hout, of which marriage was born one Adrian.
+Man, I will prove it to you. Had I not been your father, would you
+have been saved from the Inquisition with others, and should I not
+within the last five minutes had run you through twice over, for
+though you fought well, your swordsmanship is no match for mine?"
+
+"Even if you are my father, why should I not kill you, who have forced
+me to your will by threats of death, you who wronged and shamed me,
+you because of whom I have been hunted through the streets like a mad
+dog, and made an outcast?" And Adrian looked so fierce, and brought
+down his sword so close, that hope sank very low in Ramiro's heart.
+
+"There are reasons which might occur to the religious," he said, "but
+I will give you one that will appeal to your own self-interest. If you
+kill me, the curse which follows the parricide will follow you to your
+last hour--of the beyond I say nothing."
+
+"It would need to be a heavy one," answered Adrian, "if it was worse
+than that of which I know." But there was hesitation in his voice, for
+Ramiro, the skilful player upon human hearts, had struck the right
+string, and Adrian's superstitious nature answered to the note.
+
+"Son," went on Ramiro, "be wise and hold your hand before you do that
+for which all hell itself would cry shame upon you. You think that I
+have been your enemy, but it is not so; all this while I have striven
+to work you good, but how can I talk lying thus like a calf before its
+butcher? Take the swords, both of them, and let me sit up, and I will
+tell you all my plans for the advantage of us both. Or if you wish it,
+thrust on and make an end. I will not plead for my life with you; it
+is not worthy of an hidalgo of Spain. Moreover, what is life to me who
+have known so many sorrows that I should seek to cling to it? Oh! God,
+who seest all, receive my soul, and I pray Thee pardon this youth his
+horrible crime, for he is mad and foolish, and will live to sorrow for
+the deed."
+
+Since it was no further use to him, Ramiro had let the sword fall from
+his hand. Drawing it towards him with the point of his own weapon,
+Adrian stooped and picked it up.
+
+"Rise," he said, lifting his foot, "I can kill you afterwards if I
+wish."
+
+Could he have looked into the heart of his new-found parent as stiff
+and aching he staggered to his feet, the execution would not have been
+long delayed.
+
+"Oh! my young friend, you have given me a nasty fright," thought
+Ramiro to himself, "but it is over now, and if I don't pay you out
+before I have done with you, my sweet boy, your name is not Adrian."
+
+Ramiro rose, dusted his garments, seated himself deliberately, and
+began to talk with great earnestness. It will be sufficient to
+summarise his arguments. First of all, with the most convincing
+sincerity, he explained that when he had made use of him, Adrian, he
+had no idea that he was his son. Of course this was a statement that
+will not bear a moment's examination, but Ramiro's object was to gain
+time, and Adrian let it pass. Then he explained that it was only after
+his mother had, not by his wish, but accidentally, seen the written
+evidence upon which her husband was convicted, that he found out that
+Adrian van Goorl was her child and his own. However, as he hurried to
+point out, all these things were now ancient history that had no
+bearing on the present. Owing to the turbulent violence of the mob,
+which had driven him from his post and fortress, he, Ramiro, was in
+temporary difficulties, and owing to other circumstances, he, Adrian,
+was, so far as his own party and people were concerned, an absolutely
+dishonoured person. In this state of affairs he had a suggestion to
+make. Let them join forces; let the natural relationship that existed
+between them, and which had been so nearly severed by a sword thrust
+that both must have regretted, become real and tender. He, the father,
+had rank, although it suited him to sink it; he had wide experience,
+friends, intelligence, and the prospect of enormous wealth, which, of
+course, he could not expect to enjoy for ever. On the other side, he,
+the son, had youth, great beauty of person, agreeable and
+distinguished manners, a high heart, the education of a young man of
+the world, ambition and powers of mind that would carry him far, and
+for the immediate future an object to gain, the affection of a lady
+whom all acknowledged to be as good as she was charming, and as
+charming as she was personally attractive.
+
+"She hates me," broke in Adrian.
+
+"Ah!" laughed Ramiro, "there speaks the voice of small experience. Oh!
+youth, so easily exalted and so easily depressed! Joyous, chequered
+youth! How many happy marriages have I not known begin with such hate
+as this? Well, there it is, you must take my word for it. If you want
+to marry Elsa Brant, I can manage it for you, and if not, why, you can
+leave it alone."
+
+Adrian reflected, then as his mind had a practical side, he put a
+question.
+
+"You spoke of the prospect of enormous wealth; what is it?"
+
+"I will tell you, I will tell you," whispered his parent, looking
+about him cautiously; "it is the vast hoard of Hendrik Brant which I
+intend to recover; indeed, my search for it has been at the root of
+all this trouble. And now, son, you can see how open I have been with
+you, for if you marry Elsa that money will legally be your property,
+and I can only claim whatever it may please you to give me. Well, as
+to that question, in the spirit of the glorious motto of our race,
+'Trust to God and me,' I shall leave it to your sense of honour,
+which, whatever its troubles, has never yet failed the house of
+Montalvo. What does it matter to me who is the legal owner of the
+stuff, so long as it remains in the family?"
+
+"Of course not," replied Adrian, loftily, "especially as I am not
+mercenary."
+
+"Ah! well," went on Ramiro, "we have talked for a long while, and if I
+continue to live there are affairs to which I ought to attend. You
+have heard all I have to say, and you have the swords in your hand,
+and, of course, I am--only your prisoner on parole. So now, my son, be
+so good as to settle this matter without further delay. Only, if you
+make up your mind to use the steel, allow me to show you where to
+thrust, as I do not wish to undergo any unnecessary discomfort"--and
+he stood before him and bowed in a very courtly and dignified fashion.
+
+Adrian looked at him and hesitated. "I don't trust you," he said; "you
+have tricked me once and I daresay that you will trick me again. Also
+I don't think much of people who masquerade under false names and lay
+such traps as you laid to get my evidence against the rest of them.
+But I am in a bad place and without friends. I want to marry Elsa and
+recover my position in the world; also, as you know well, I can't cut
+the throat of my own father in cold blood," and he threw down one of
+the swords.
+
+"Your decision is just such as I would have expected from my knowledge
+of your noble nature, son Adrian," remarked Ramiro as he picked up his
+weapon and restored it to the scabbard. "But now, before we enter upon
+this perfect accord, I have two little stipulations to make on my
+side."
+
+"What are they?" asked Adrian.
+
+"First, that our friendship should be complete, such as ought to exist
+between a loving father and son, a friendship without reservations.
+Secondly--this is a condition that I fear you may find harder--but,
+although fortune has led me into stony paths, and I fear some doubtful
+expedients, there was always one thing which I have striven to cherish
+and keep pure, and that in turn has rewarded me for my devotion in
+many a dangerous hour, my religious belief. Now I am Catholic, and I
+could wish that my son should be Catholic also; these horrible errors,
+believe me, are as dangerous to the soul as just now they happen to be
+fatal to the body. May I hope that you, who were brought up but not
+born in heresy, will consent to receive instruction in the right
+faith?"
+
+"Certainly you may," answered Adrian, almost with enthusiasm. "I have
+had enough of conventicles, psalm-singing, and the daily chance of
+being burned; indeed, from the time when I could think for myself I
+always wished to be a Catholic."
+
+"Your words make me a happy man," answered Ramiro. "Allow me to unbolt
+the door, I hear our hosts. Worthy Simon and Vrouw, I make you parties
+to a solemn and joyful celebration. This young man is my son, and in
+token of my fatherly love, which he has been pleased to desire, I now
+take him in my arms and embrace him before you," and he suited the
+action to the word.
+
+But Black Meg, watching his face in astonishment from over Adrian's
+shoulder, saw its one bright eye suddenly become eclipsed. Could it be
+that the noble Master had winked?
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV
+
+             MARTHA PREACHES A SERMON AND TELLS A SECRET
+
+Two days after his reconciliation with his father, Adrian was admitted
+as a member of the Catholic Church. His preparation had been short;
+indeed, it consisted of three interviews with a priest who was brought
+to the house at night. The good man found in his pupil so excellent a
+disposition and a mind so open to his teaching that, acting on a hint
+given him by Ramiro, who, for reasons of his own not altogether
+connected with religion, was really anxious to see his son a member of
+the true and Catholic Church, he declared it unnecessary to prolong
+the period of probation. Therefore, on the third day, as the dusk of
+evening was closing, for in the present state of public feeling they
+dared not go out while it was light, Adrian was taken to the baptistry
+of the Groote Kerke. Here he made confession of his sins to a certain
+Abbe known as Father Dominic, a simple ceremony, for although the list
+of them which he had prepared was long, its hearing proved short. Thus
+all his offences against his family, such as his betrayal of his
+stepfather, were waived aside by the priest as matters of no account;
+indeed, crimes of this nature, he discovered, to the sacerdotal eye
+wore the face of virtue. Other misdoings also, such as a young man
+might have upon his mind, were not thought weighty. What really was
+considered important proved to be the earnestness of his recantation
+of heretical errors, and when once his confessor was satisfied upon
+that point, the penitent soul was relieved by absolution full and
+free.
+
+After this came the service of his baptism, which, because Ramiro
+wished it, for a certain secret reason, was carried out with as much
+formal publicity as the circumstances would allow. Indeed, several
+priests officiated at the rite, Adrian's sponsors being his father and
+the estimable Hague Simon, who was paid a gold piece for his pains.
+While the sacrament was still in progress, an untoward incident
+occurred. From its commencement the trampling and voices of a mob had
+been heard in the open space in front of the church, and now they
+began to hammer on the great doors and to cast stones at the painted
+windows, breaking the beautiful and ancient glass. Presently a beadle
+hurried into the baptistery, and whispered something in the ear of the
+Abbe which caused that ecclesiastic to turn pale and to conclude the
+service in a somewhat hasty fashion.
+
+"What is it?" asked Ramiro.
+
+"Alas! my son," said the priest, "these heretic dogs saw you, or our
+new-found brother, I know not which--enter this holy place, and a
+great mob of them have surrounded it, ravening for our blood."
+
+"Then we had best begone," said Ramiro.
+
+"Senor, it is impossible," broke in the sacristan; "they watch every
+door. Hark! hark! hark!" and as he spoke there came the sound of
+battering on the oaken portals.
+
+"Can your reverences make any suggestions?" asked Ramiro, "for if
+not--" and he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Let us pray," said one of them in a trembling voice.
+
+"By all means, but I should prefer to do so as I go. Fool, is there
+any hiding place in this church, or must we stop here to have our
+throats cut?"
+
+Then the sacristan, with white lips and knocking knees, whispered:
+
+"Follow me, all of you. Stay, blow out the lights."
+
+So the candles were extinguished, and in the darkness they grasped
+each other's hands and were led by the verger whither they knew not.
+Across the wide spaces of the empty church they crawled, its echoing
+silence contrasting strangely with the muffled roar of angry voices
+without and the dull sound of battering on the doors. One of their
+number, the fat Abbe Dominic, became separated from them in the gloom,
+and wandered away down an arm of the vast transept, whence they could
+hear him calling to them. The sacristan called back, but Ramiro
+fiercely bade him to be silent, adding:
+
+"Are we all to be snared for the sake of one priest?"
+
+So they went on, till presently in that great place his shouts grew
+fainter, and were lost in the roar of the multitude without.
+
+"Here is the spot," muttered the sacristan, after feeling the floor
+with his hands, and by a dim ray of moonlight which just then pierced
+the windows of the choir, Adrian saw that there was a hole in the
+pavement before him.
+
+"Descend, there are steps," said their guide. "I will shut the stone,"
+and one by one they passed down six or seven narrow steps into some
+darksome place.
+
+"Where are we?" asked a priest of the verger, when he had pulled the
+stone close and joined them.
+
+"In the family vault of the noble Count van Valkenburg, whom your
+reverence buried three days ago. Fortunately the masons have not yet
+come to cement down the stone. If your Excellencies find it close, you
+can get air by standing upon the coffin of the noble Count."
+
+Adrian did find it close, and took the hint, to discover that in a
+line with his head was some filigree stonework, pierced with small
+apertures, the front doubtless of the marble tomb in the church above,
+for through them he could see the pale moon rays wavering on the
+pavement of the choir. As he looked the priest at his side muttered:
+
+"Hark! The doors are down. Aid us, St. Pancras!" and falling upon his
+knees he began to pray very earnestly.
+
+Yielding at last to the blows of the battering-beam, the great
+portals had flown open with a crash, and now through them poured the
+mob. On they came with a rush and a roar, like that of the sea
+breaking through a dyke, carrying in their hands torches, lanterns
+hung on poles, axes, swords and staves, till at length they reached
+the screen of wonderful carved oak, on the top of which, rising to a
+height of sixty feet above the floor of the church, stood the great
+Rood, with the images of the Virgin and St. John on either side. Here,
+of a sudden, the vastness and the silence of the holy place which they
+had known, every one, from childhood, with its echoing aisles, the
+moonlit, pictured windows, its consecrated lamps twinkling here and
+there like fisher lights upon the darkling waters, seemed to take hold
+of them. As at the sound of the Voice Divine sweeping down the wild
+waves at night, the winds ceased their raving and the seas were still,
+so now, beneath the silent reproach of the effigy of the White Christ
+standing with uplifted hand above the altar, hanging thorn-crowned
+upon the Rood, kneeling agonised within the Garden, seated at the Holy
+Supper, on His lips the New Commandment, "As I have loved you, so ye
+also love one another," their passions flickered down and their wrath
+slept.
+
+"They are not here, let us be going," said a voice.
+
+"They are here," answered another voice, a woman's voice with a note
+of vengeance in it. "I tracked them to the doors, the Spanish murderer
+Ramiro, the spy Hague Simon, the traitor Adrian, called van Goorl, and
+the priests, the priests, the priests who butcher us."
+
+"Let God deal with them," said the first voice, which to Adrian
+sounded familiar. "We have done enough. Go home in peace."
+
+Now muttering, "The pastor is right. Obey the Pastor Arentz," the more
+orderly of the multitude turned to depart, when suddenly, from the far
+end of the transept, arose a cry.
+
+"Here's one of them. Catch him! catch him!" A minute more and into the
+circle of the torchlight rushed the Abbe Dominic, his eyes starting
+from his head with terror, his rent robe flapping on the ground.
+Exhausted and bewildered he cast himself down, and grasping the
+pedestal of an image began to cry for mercy, till a dozen fierce hands
+dragged him to his feet again.
+
+"Let him go," said the voice of the Pastor Arentz. "We fight the
+Church, not its ministers."
+
+"Hear me first," she answered who had spoken before, and men turned to
+see standing above them in the great pulpit of the church, a
+fierce-eyed, yellow-toothed hag, grey-haired, skinny-armed, long-faced
+like a horse, and behind her two other women, each of whom held a
+torch in her right hand.
+
+"It is the Mare," roared the multitude. "It is Martha of the Mere.
+Preach on, Martha. What's your text?"
+
+"Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed," she
+answered in a ringing, solemn voice, and instantly a deep silence fell
+upon the place.
+
+"You call me the Mare," she went on. "Do you know how I got that name?
+They gave it me after they had shrivelled up my lips and marred the
+beauty of my face with irons. And do you know what they made me do?
+They made me carry my husband to the stake upon my back because they
+said that a horse must be ridden. And do you know who said this? /That
+priest who stands before you./"
+
+As the words left her lips a yell of rage beat against the roof.
+Martha held up her thin hand, and again there was silence.
+
+"He said it--the holy Father Dominic; let him deny it if he can. What?
+He does not know me? Perchance not, for time and grief and madness and
+hot pincers have changed the face of Vrouw Martha van Muyden, who was
+called the Lily of Brussels. Ah! look at him now. He remembers the
+Lily of Brussels. He remembers her husband and her son also, for he
+burned them. O God, judge between us. O people, deal with that devil
+as God shall teach you.
+
+"Who are the others? He who is called Ramiro, the Governor of the
+Gevangenhuis, the man who years ago would have thrust me beneath the
+ice to drown had not the Vrouw van Goorl bought my life; he who set
+her husband, Dirk van Goorl, the man you loved, to starve to death
+sniffing the steam of kitchens. O people, deal with that devil as God
+shall teach you.
+
+"And the third, the half-Spaniard, the traitor Adrian called van
+Goorl, he who has come here to-night to be baptised anew into the
+bosom of the Holy Church; he who signed the evidence upon which Dirk
+was murdered"--here, again, the roar of hate and rage went up and beat
+along the roof--"upon which too his brother Foy was taken to the
+torture, whence Red Martin saved him. O people, do with that devil
+also as God shall teach you.
+
+"And the fourth, Hague Simon the spy, the man whose hands for years
+have smoked with innocent blood; Simon the Butcher--Simon the false
+witness----"
+
+"Enough, enough!" roared the crowd. "A rope, a rope; up with him to
+the arm of the Rood."
+
+"My friends," cried Arentz, "let the man go. Vengeance is mine, saith
+the Lord, and I will repay."
+
+"Yes, but we will give him something on account," shouted a voice in
+bitter blasphemy. "Well climbed, Jan, well climbed," and they looked
+up to see, sixty feet above their heads, seated upon the arm of the
+lofty Rood, a man with a candle bound upon his brow and a coil of rope
+upon his back.
+
+"He'll fall," said one.
+
+"Pish!" answered another, "it is steeplejack Jan, who can hang on a
+wall like a fly."
+
+"Look out for the ends of the rope," cried the thin voice above, and
+down they came.
+
+"Spare me," screamed the wretched priest, as his executioners caught
+hold of him.
+
+"Yes, yes, as you spared the Heer Jansen a few months ago."
+
+"It was to save his soul," groaned Dominic.
+
+"Quite so, and now we are going to save yours; your own medicine,
+father, your own medicine."
+
+"Spare me, and I will tell you where the others are."
+
+"Well, where are they?" asked the ringleader, pushing his companions
+away.
+
+"Hidden in the church, hidden in the church."
+
+"We knew that, you traitorous dog. Now then for the soul-saving. Catch
+hold there and run away with it. A horse should be ridden, father--
+your own saying--and an angel must learn to fly."
+
+Thus ended the life of the Abbe Dominic at the hands of avenging men.
+Without a doubt they were fierce and bloody-minded, for the reader
+must not suppose that all the wickedness of those days lies on the
+heads of the Inquisition and the Spaniards. The adherents of the New
+Religion did evil things also, things that sound dreadful in our ears.
+In excuse of them, however, this can be urged, that, compared to those
+of their oppressors, they were as single trees to a forest full; also
+that they who worked them had been maddened by their sufferings. If
+our fathers, husbands and brothers had been burned at the stake, or
+done to death under the name of Jesus in the dens of the Inquisition,
+or slaughtered by thousands in the sack of towns; if our wives and
+daughters had been shamed, if our houses had been burned, our goods
+taken, our liberties trampled upon, and our homes made a desolation,
+then, my reader, is it not possible that even in these different days
+you and I might have been cruel when our hour came? God knows alone,
+and God be thanked that so far as we can foresee, except under the
+pressure, perhaps, of invasion by semi-barbarian hordes, or of
+dreadful and sudden social revolutions, civilized human nature will
+never be put to such a test again.
+
+Far aloft in the gloom there, swinging from the arm of the Cross,
+whose teachings his life had mocked, like some mutinous sailor at the
+yard of the vessel he had striven to betray, the priest hung dead, but
+his life did not appease the fury of the triumphant mob.
+
+"The others," they cried, "find the others," and with torches and
+lanterns they hunted round the great church. They ascended the belfry,
+they rummaged the chapels, they explored the crypt; then, baffled,
+drew together in a countless crowd in the nave, shouting,
+gesticulating, suggesting.
+
+"Get dogs," cried a voice; "dogs will smell them out;" and dogs were
+brought, which yapped and ran to and fro, but, confused by the
+multitude, and not knowing what to seek, found nothing. Then some one
+threw an image from a niche, and next minute, with a cry of "Down with
+the idols," the work of destruction began.
+
+Fanatics sprang at the screens and the altars, "all the carved work
+thereof they break down with hatchet and hammer," they tore the
+hangings from the shrines, they found the sacred cups, and filling
+them with sacramental wine, drank with gusts of ribald laughter. In
+the centre of the choir they built a bonfire, and fed it with
+pictures, carvings, and oaken benches, so that it blazed and roared
+furiously. On to it--for this mob did not come to steal but to work
+vengeance--they threw utensils of gold and silver, the priceless
+jewelled offerings of generations, and danced around its flames in
+triumph, while from every side came the crash of falling statues and
+the tinkling of shattered glass.
+
+The light of that furnace shone through the lattice stonework of the
+tomb, and in its lurid and ominous glare Adrian beheld the faces of
+those who refuged with him. What a picture it was; the niches filled
+with mouldering boxes, the white gleam of human bones that here and
+there had fallen from them, the bright furnishings and velvet pall of
+the coffin of the newcomer on which he stood--and then those faces.
+The priests, still crouched in corners, rolling on the ground, their
+white lips muttering who knows what; the sacristan in a swoon, Hague
+Simon hugging a coffin in a niche, as a drowning man hugs a plank,
+and, standing in the midst of them, calm, sardonic and watchful, a
+drawn rapier in his hand, his father Ramiro.
+
+"We are lost," moaned a priest, losing control of himself. "We are
+lost. They will kill us as they have killed the holy Abbe."
+
+"We are not lost," hissed Ramiro, "we are quite safe, but, friend, if
+you open that cursed mouth of yours again it shall be for the last
+time," and he lifted his sword, adding, "Silence; he who speaks,
+dies."
+
+How long did it last? Was it one hour, or two or three? None of them
+knew, but at length the image-breaking was done, and it came to an
+end. The interior of the church, with all its wealth and adornments,
+was utterly destroyed, but happily the flames did not reach the roof,
+and the walls could not catch fire.
+
+By degrees the iconoclasts wearied; there seemed to be nothing more to
+break, and the smoke choked them. Two or three at a time they left the
+ravaged place, and once more it became solemn and empty; a symbol of
+Eternity mocking Time, of Peace conquering Tumult, of the Patience and
+Purpose of God triumphant over the passions and ravings of Man. Little
+curls of smoke went up from the smouldering fire; now and again a
+fragment of shattered stonework fell with an echoing crash, and the
+cold wind of the coming winter sighed through the gaping windows. The
+deed was done, the revenge of a tortured multitude had set its seal
+upon the ancient fane in which their forefathers worshipped for a
+score of generations, and once more quiet brooded upon the place, and
+the shafts of the sweet moonlight pierced its desecrated solitudes.
+
+One by one, like ghosts arising at a summons of the Spirit, the
+fugitives crept from the shelter of the tomb, crept across the
+transepts to the little door of the baptistery, and with infinite
+peeping and precaution, out into the night, to vanish this way and
+that, hugging their hearts as though to feel whether they still beat
+safely in their bosoms.
+
+As he passed the Rood Adrian looked up, and there, above the broken
+carvings and the shattered statue of the Virgin, hung the calm face of
+the Saviour crowned with thorns. There, too, not far from it, looking
+small and infinitely piteous at that great height, and revolving
+slowly in the sharp draught from the broken windows, hung another dead
+face, the horrid face of the Abbe Dominic, lately the envied,
+prosperous dignitary and pluralist, who not four hours since had
+baptised him into the bosom of the Church, and who now himself had
+been born again into the bosom of whatever world awaited him beyond
+the Gates. It terrified Adrian; no ghost could have frightened him
+more, but he set his teeth and staggered on, guided by the light
+gleaming faintly on the sword of Ramiro--to whatever haven that sword
+should lead him.
+
+Before dawn broke it had led him out of Leyden.
+
+
+
+It was after ten o'clock that night when a woman, wrapped in a rough
+frieze coat, knocked at the door of the house in the Bree Straat and
+asked for the Vrouw van Goorl.
+
+"My mistress lies between life and death with the plague," answered
+the servant. "Get you gone from this pest-house, whoever you are."
+
+"I do not fear the plague," said the visitor. "Is the Jufvrouw Elsa
+Brant still up? Then tell her that Martha, called the Mare, would
+speak with her."
+
+"She can see none at such an hour," answered the servant.
+
+"Tell her I come from Foy van Goorl."
+
+"Enter," said the servant wondering, and shut the door behind her.
+
+A minute later Elsa, pale-faced, worn, but still beautiful, rushed
+into the room, gasping, "What news? Does he live? Is he well?"
+
+"He lives, lady, but he is not well, for the wound in his thigh has
+festered and he cannot walk, or even stand. Nay, have no fear, time
+and clean dressing will heal him, and he lies in a safe place."
+
+In the rapture of her relief Elsa seized the woman's hand, and would
+have kissed it.
+
+"Touch it not, it is bloodstained," said Martha, drawing her hand
+away.
+
+"Blood? Whose blood is on it?" asked Elsa, shrinking back.
+
+"Whose blood?" answered Martha with a hollow laugh; "why that of many
+a Spanish man. Where, think you, lady, that the Mare gallops of
+nights? Ask it of the Spaniards who travel by the Haarlemer Meer. Aye,
+and now Red Martin is with me and we run together, taking our tithe
+where we can gather it."
+
+"Oh! tell me no more," said Elsa. "From day to day it is ever the same
+tale, a tale of death. Nay, I know your wrongs have driven you mad,
+but that a woman should slay----"
+
+"A woman! I am no woman; my womanhood died with my husband and my son.
+Girl, I tell you that I am no woman; I am a Sword of God myself
+appointed to the sword. And so to the end I kill, and kill and kill
+till the hour when I am killed. Go, look in the church yonder, and see
+who hangs to the high arm of the Rood--the fat Abbe Dominic. Well, I
+sent him there to-night; to-morrow you will hear how I turned parson
+and preached a sermon--aye, and Ramiro and Adrian called van Goorl,
+and Simon the spy, should have joined him there, only I could not find
+them because their hour has not come. But the idols are down and the
+paintings burnt, and the gold and silver and jewels are cast upon the
+dung-heap. Swept and garnished is the temple, made clean and fit for
+the Lord to dwell in."
+
+"Made clean with the blood of murdered priests, and fit by the smoke
+of sacrilege?" broke in Elsa. "Oh! woman, how can you do such wicked
+things and not be afraid?"
+
+"Afraid?" she answered. "Those who have passed through hell have no
+more fear; death I seek, and when judgment comes I will say to the
+Lord: What have I done that the Voice which speaks to me at night did
+not tell me to do? Look down, the blood of my husband and my son still
+smokes upon the ground. Hearken, Lord God, it cries to Thee for
+vengeance!" and as she spoke she lifted her blackened hands and shook
+them. Then she went on.
+
+"They murdered your father, why do you not kill them also? You are
+small and weak and timid, and could not run by night and use the knife
+as I do, but there is poison. I can brew it and bring it to you, made
+from marsh herbs, white as water and deadly as Death itself. What! You
+shrink from such things? Well, girl, once I was beautiful as you and
+as loving and beloved, and I can do them for my love's sake--for my
+love's sake. Nay, /I/ do not do them, they are done through me. The
+Sword am I, the Sword! And you too are a sword, though you know it
+not, though you see it not, you, maiden, so soft and white and sweet,
+are a Sword of Vengeance working the death of men; I, in my way, you
+in yours, paying back, back, back, full measure pressed down and
+running over to those appointed to die. The treasure of Hendrik Brant,
+your treasure, it is red with blood, every piece of it. I tell you
+that the deaths that I have done are but as a grain of sand to a
+bowlful compared to those which your treasure shall do. There, maid, I
+fright you. Have no fear, it is but Mad Martha, who, when she sees,
+must speak, and through the flames in the kirk to-night I saw visions
+such as I have not seen for years."
+
+"Tell me more of Foy and Martin," said Elsa, who was frightened and
+bewildered.
+
+At her words a change seemed to come over this woman, at once an
+object of pity and of terror, for the scream went out of her voice and
+she answered quietly,
+
+"They reached me safe enough five days ago, Red Martin carrying Foy
+upon his back. From afar I saw him, a naked man with a named sword,
+and knew him by his size and beard. And oh! when I heard his tale I
+laughed as I have not laughed since I was young."
+
+"Tell it me," said Elsa.
+
+And she told it while the girl listened with clasped hands.
+
+"Oh! it was brave, brave," she murmured. "Red Martin forcing to the
+door and Foy, weak and wounded, slaying the warder. Was there ever
+such a story?"
+
+"Men are brave and desperate with the torture pit behind them,"
+answered Martha grimly; "but they did well, and now they are safe with
+me where no Spaniard can find them unless they hunt in great companies
+after the ice forms and the reeds are dead."
+
+"Would that I could be there also," said Elsa, "but I tend his mother
+who is very sick, so sick that I do not know whether she will live or
+die."
+
+"Nay, you are best here among your people," answered Martha. "And now
+that the Spaniards are driven out, here Foy shall return also so soon
+as it is safe for him to travel; but as yet he cannot stir, and Red
+Martin stays to watch him. Before long, however, he must move, for I
+have tidings that the Spaniards are about to besiege Haarlem with a
+great army, and then the Mere will be no longer safe for us, and I
+shall leave it to fight with the Haarlem folk."
+
+"And Foy and Martin will return?"
+
+"I think so, if they are not stopped."
+
+"Stopped?"--and she put her hand upon her heart.
+
+"The times are rough, Jufvrouw Elsa. Who that breathes the air one
+morning can know what breath will pass his nostrils at the nightfall?
+The times are rough, and Death is king of them. The hoard of Hendrik
+Brant is not forgotten, nor those who have its key. Ramiro slipped
+through my hands to-night, and doubtless by now is far away from
+Leyden seeking the treasure."
+
+"The treasure! Oh! that thrice accursed treasure!" broke in Elsa,
+shivering as though beneath an icy wind; "would that we were rid of
+it."
+
+"That you cannot be until it is appointed, for is this not the
+heritage which your father died to save? Listen. Do you know, lady,
+where it lies hid?" and she dropped her voice to a whisper.
+
+Elsa shook her head, saying:
+
+"I neither know nor wish to know."
+
+"Still it is best that you should be told, for we three who have the
+secret may be killed, every one of us--no, not the place, but where to
+seek a clue to the place."
+
+Elsa looked at her questioningly, and Martha, leaning forward,
+whispered in her ear:
+
+"/It lies in the hilt of the Sword Silence/. If Red Martin should be
+taken or killed, seek out his sword and open the hilt. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Elsa nodded and answered, "But if aught happens to Martin the sword
+may be lost."
+
+Martha shrugged her shoulders. "Then the treasure will be lost also,
+that is if I am gone. It is as God wills; but at least in name you are
+the heiress, and you should know where to find its secret, which may
+serve you or your country in good stead in time to come. I give you no
+paper, I tell you only where to seek a paper, and now I must be gone
+to reach the borders of the Mere by daybreak. Have you any message for
+your love, lady?"
+
+"I would write a word, if you can wait. They will bring you food."
+
+"Good; write on and I will eat. Love for the young and meat for the
+old, and for both let God be thanked."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV
+
+                             THE RED MILL
+
+After a week's experience of that delectable dwelling and its
+neighbourhood, Adrian began to grow weary of the Red Mill. Nine or ten
+Dutch miles to the nor'west of Haarlem is a place called Velsen,
+situated on the borders of the sand-dunes, to the south of what is
+known to-day as the North Sea Canal. In the times of which this page
+of history tells, however, the canal was represented by a great
+drainage dyke, and Velsen was but a deserted village. Indeed,
+hereabouts all the country was deserted, for some years before a
+Spanish force had passed through it, burning, slaying, laying waste,
+so that few were left to tend the windmills and repair the dyke.
+Holland is a country won from swamps and seas, and if the water is not
+pumped out of it, and the ditches are not cleaned, very quickly it
+relapses into primeval marsh; indeed, it is fortunate if the ocean,
+bursting through the feeble barriers reared by the industry of man,
+does not turn it into vast lagoons of salt water.
+
+Once the Red Mill had been a pumping station, which, when the huge
+sails worked, delivered the water from the fertile meadows into the
+great dyke, whence it ran through sluice gates to the North Sea. Now,
+although the embankment of this dyke still held, the meadows had gone
+back into swamps. Rising out of these--for it was situated upon a low
+mound of earth, raised, doubtless, as a point of refuge by
+marsh-dwellers who lived and died before history began, towered the
+wreck of a narrow-waisted windmill, built of brick below and wood
+above, of very lonesome and commanding appearance in its gaunt
+solitude. There were no houses near it, no cattle grazed about its
+foot; it was a dead thing in a dead landscape. To the left, but
+separated from it by a wide and slimy dyke, whence in times of flood
+the thick, brackish water trickled to the plain, stretched an arid
+area of sand-dunes, clothed with sparse grass, that grew like bristles
+upon the back of a wild hog. Beyond these dunes the ocean roared and
+moaned and whispered hungrily as the wind and weather stirred its
+depths. In front, not fifty paces away, ran the big dyke like a raised
+road, secured by embankments, and discharging day by day its millions
+of gallons of water into the sea. But these embankments were weakening
+now, and here and there could be seen a spot which looked as though a
+giant ploughshare had been drawn up them, for a groove of brown earth
+scarred the face of green, where in some winter flood the water had
+poured over to find its level, cutting them like cheese, but when its
+volume sank, leaving them still standing, and as yet sufficient for
+their purpose.
+
+To the right again and behind, were more marshes, broken only in the
+distance by the towers of Haarlem and the spires of village churches,
+marshes where the snipe and bittern boomed, the herons fed, and in
+summer the frogs croaked all night long.
+
+Such was the refuge to which Ramiro and his son, Adrian, had been led
+by Hague Simon and Black Meg, after they had escaped with their lives
+from Leyden upon the night of the image-breaking in the church, that
+ominous night when the Abbe Dominic gave up the ghost on the arm of
+the lofty Rood, and Adrian had received absolution and baptism from
+his consecrated hand.
+
+On the journey hither Adrian asked no questions as to their
+destination; he was too broken in heart and too shaken in body to be
+curious; life in those days was for him too much of a hideous
+phantasmagoria of waste and blackness out of which appeared vengeful,
+red-handed figures, out of which echoed dismal, despairing voices
+calling him to doom.
+
+They came to the place and found its great basement and the floors
+above, or some of them, furnished after a fashion. The mill had been
+inhabited, and recently, as Adrian gathered, by smugglers, or thieves,
+with whom Meg and Simon were in alliance, or some such outcast evil-
+doers who knew that here the arm of the law could not reach them.
+Though, indeed, while Alva ruled in the Netherlands there was little
+law to be feared by those who were rich or who dared to worship God
+after their own manner.
+
+"Why have we come here--father," Adrian was about to add, but the word
+stuck in his throat.
+
+Ramiro shrugged his shoulders and looked round him with his one
+criticising eye.
+
+"Because our guides and friends, the worthy Simon and his wife, assure
+me that in this spot alone our throats are for the present safe, and
+by St. Pancras, after what we saw in the church yonder I am inclined
+to agree with them. He looked a poor thing up under the roof there,
+the holy Father Dominic, didn't he, hanging up like a black spider
+from the end of his cord? Bah! my backbone aches when I think of him."
+
+"And how long are we to stop here?"
+
+"Till--till Don Frederic has taken Haarlem and these fat Hollanders,
+or those who are left of them, lick our boots for mercy," and he
+ground his teeth, then added: "Son, do you play cards? Good, well let
+us have a game. Here are dice; it will serve to turn our thoughts.
+Now then, a hundred guilders on it."
+
+So they played and Adrian won, whereon, to his amazement, his father
+paid him the money.
+
+"What is the use of that?" asked Adrian.
+
+"Gentlemen should always pay their debts at cards."
+
+"And if they cannot?"
+
+"Then they must keep score of the amount and discharge it when they
+are able. Look you, young man, everything else you may forget, but
+what you lose over the dice is a debt of honour. There lives no man
+who can say that I cheated him of a guilder at cards, though I fear
+some others have my name standing in their books."
+
+When they rose from their game that night Adrian had won between three
+and four hundred florins. Next day his winnings amounted to a thousand
+florins, for which his father gave him a carefully-executed note of
+hand; but at the third sitting the luck changed or perhaps skill began
+to tell, and he lost two thousand florins. These he paid up by
+returning his father's note, his own winnings, and all the balance of
+the purse of gold which his mother had given to him when he was driven
+from the house, so that now he was practically penniless.
+
+The rest of the history may be guessed. At every game the stakes were
+increased, for since Adrian could not pay, it was a matter of
+indifference to him how much he wagered. Moreover, he found a kind of
+mild excitement in playing at the handling of such great sums of
+money. By the end of a week he had lost a queen's dowry. As they rose
+from the table that night his father filled in the usual form,
+requested him to be so good as to sign it, and a sour-faced woman who
+had arrived at the mill, Adrian knew not whence, to do the household
+work, to put her name as witness.
+
+"What is the use of this farce?" asked Adrian. "Brant's treasure would
+scarcely pay that bill."
+
+His father pricked his ears.
+
+"Indeed? I lay it at as much again. What is the use? Who knows--one
+day you might become rich, for, as the great Emperor said, 'Fortune is
+a woman who reserves her favours for the young,' and then, doubtless,
+being the man of honour that you are, you would wish to pay your old
+gambling debts."
+
+"Oh! yes, I should pay if I could," answered Adrian with a yawn. "But
+it seems hardly worthy while talking about, does it?" and he sauntered
+out of the place into the open air.
+
+His father rose, and, standing by the great peat fire, watched him
+depart thoughtfully.
+
+"Let me take stock of the position," he said to himself. "The dear
+child hasn't a farthing left; therefore, although he is getting bored,
+he can't run away. Moreover, he owes me more money than I ever saw;
+therefore, if he should chance to become the husband of the Jufvrouw
+Brant, and the legal owner of her parent's wealth, whatever
+disagreements may ensue between him and me I shall have earned my
+share of it in a clean and gentlemanly fashion. If, on the other hand,
+it should become necessary for me to marry the young lady, which God
+forbid, at least no harm is done, and he will have had the advantage
+of some valuable lessons from the most accomplished card-player in
+Spain.
+
+"And now what we need to enliven this detestable place is the presence
+of Beauty herself. Our worthy friends should be back soon--bringing
+their sheaves with them, let us hope, for otherwise matters will be
+complicated. Let me see: have I thought of everything, for in such
+affairs one oversight--He is a Catholic, therefore can contract a
+legal marriage under the Proclamations--it was lucky I remembered that
+point of law, though it nearly cost us all our lives--and the priest,
+I can lay my hands on him, a discreet man, who won't hear if the lady
+says No, but filled beyond a question with the power and virtue of his
+holy office. No, I have nothing to reproach myself with in the way of
+precaution, nothing at all. I have sown the seed well and truly, it
+remains only for Providence to give the increase, or shall I say--no,
+I think not, for between the general and the private familiarity is
+always odious. Well, it is time that you met with a little success and
+settled down, for you have worked hard, Juan, my friend, and you are
+getting old--yes, Juan, you are getting old. Bah! what a hole and what
+weather!" and Montalvo established himself by the fireside to doze
+away his /ennui/.
+
+When Adrian shut the door behind him the late November day was drawing
+to its close, and between the rifts in the sullen snow clouds now and
+again an arrow from the westering sun struck upon the tall, skeleton-
+like sails of the mill, through which the wind rushed with a screaming
+noise. Adrian had intended to walk on the marsh, but finding it too
+sodden, he crossed the western dyke by means of a board laid from bank
+to bank, and struck into the sand-dunes beyond. Even in the summer,
+when the air was still and flowers bloomed and larks sang, these dunes
+were fantastic and almost unnatural in appearance, with their deep,
+wind-scooped hollows of pallid sand, their sharp angles, miniature
+cliffs, and their crests crowned with coarse grasses. But now, beneath
+the dull pall of the winter sky, no spot in the world could have been
+more lonesome or more desolate, for never a sign of man was to be seen
+upon them and save for a solitary curlew, whose sad note reached
+Adrian's ears as it beat up wind from the sea, even the beasts and
+birds that dwelt there had hidden themselves away. Only the voices of
+Nature remained in all their majesty, the drear screams and moan of
+the rushing wind, and above it, now low and now voluminous as the gale
+veered, the deep and constant roar of the ocean.
+
+Adrian reached the highest crest of the ridge, whence the sea, hidden
+hitherto, became suddenly visible, a vast, slate-coloured expanse,
+twisted here and there into heaps, hollowed here and there into
+valleys, and broken everywhere with angry lines and areas of white. In
+such trouble, for, after its own fashion, his heart was troubled, some
+temperaments might have found a kind of consolation in this sight, for
+while we witness them, at any rate, the throes and moods of Nature in
+their greatness declare a mastery of our senses, and stun or hush to
+silence the petty turmoil of our souls. This, at least, is so with
+those who have eyes to read the lesson written on Nature's face, and
+ears to hear the message which day by day she delivers with her lips;
+gifts given only to such as hold the cypher-key of imagination, and
+pray for grace to use it.
+
+In Adrian's case, however, the weirdness of the sand-hills and the
+grandeur of the seascape with the bitter wind that blew between and
+the solitude which brooded over all, served only to exasperate nerves
+that already were strained well nigh to breaking.
+
+Why had his father brought him to this hideous swamp bordered by a
+sailless sea? To save their lives from the fury of the mob? This he
+understood, but there was more in it than that, some plot which he did
+not understand, and which the ruffian, Hague Simon, and that she-
+fiend, his companion, had gone away to execute. Meanwhile he must sit
+here day after day playing cards with the wretch Ramiro, whom, for no
+fault of his own, God had chosen out to be his parent. By the way, why
+was the man so fond of playing cards? And what was the meaning of all
+that nonsense about notes of hand? Yes, here he must sit, and for
+company he had the sense of his unalterable shame, the memory of his
+mother's face as she spurned and rejected him, the vision of the woman
+whom he loved and had lost, and--the ghost of Dirk van Goorl.
+
+He shivered as he thought of it; yes, his hair lifted and his lip
+twitched involuntarily, for to Adrian's racked nerves and distorted
+vision this ghost of the good man whom he had betrayed was no child of
+phantasy. He had woken in the night and seen it standing at his
+bedside, plague-defiled and hunger-wasted, and because of it he
+dreaded to sleep alone, especially in that creaking, rat-haunted mill,
+whose very board seemed charged with some tale of death and blood.
+Heavens! At this very moment he thought he could hear that dead voice
+calling down the gale. No, it must be the curlew, but at least he
+would be going home. Home--that place home--with not even a priest
+near to confess to and be comforted!
+
+Thanks be to the Saints! the wind had dropped a little, but now in
+place of it came the snow, dense, whirling, white; so dense indeed
+that he could scarcely see his path. What an end that would be, to be
+frozen to death in the snow on these sand-hills while the spirit of
+Dirk van Goorl sat near and watched him die with those hollow, hungry
+eyes. The sweat came upon Adrian's forehead at the thought, and he
+broke into a run, heading for the bank of the great dyke that pierced
+the dunes half a mile or so away, which bank must, he knew, lead him
+to the mill. He reached it and trudged along what had been the
+towpath, though now it was overgrown with weeds and rushes. It was not
+a pleasant journey, for the twilight had closed in with speed and the
+thick flakes, that seemed to heap into his face and sting him, turned
+it into a darkness mottled with faint white. Still he stumbled forward
+with bent head and close-wrapped cloak till he judged that he must be
+near to the mill, and halted staring through the gloom.
+
+Just then the snow ceased for a while and light crept back to the cold
+face of the earth, showing Adrian that he had done well to halt. In
+front of where he stood, within a few paces of his feet indeed, for a
+distance of quite twenty yards the lower part of the bank had slipped
+away, washed from the stone core with which it was faced at this
+point, by a slow and neglected percolation of water. Had he walked on
+therefore, he would have fallen his own height or more into a slough
+of mud, whence he might, or might not have been able to extricate
+himself. As it was, however, by such light as remained he could crawl
+upon the coping of the stonework which was still held in place with
+old struts of timber that, until they had been denuded by the slow and
+constant leakage, were buried and supported in the vanished earthwork.
+It was not a pleasant bridge, for to the right lay the mud-bottomed
+gulf, and to the left, almost level with his feet, were the black and
+peaty waters of the rain-fed dyke pouring onwards to the sea.
+
+"Next flood this will go," thought Adrian to himself, "and then the
+marsh must become a mere which will be bad for whomever happens to be
+living in the Red Mill." He was on firm ground again now, and there,
+looming tall and spectral against the gloom, not five hundred yards
+away, rose the gaunt sails of the mill. To reach it he walked on six
+score paces or more to the little landing-quay, where a raised path
+ran to the building. As he drew near to it he was astonished to hear
+the rattle of oars working in rollocks and a man's voice say:
+
+"Steady, here is the place, praise the Saints! Now, then, out
+passengers and let us be gone."
+
+Adrian, whom events had made timid, drew beneath the shadow of the
+bank and watched, while from the dim outline of the boat arose three
+figures, or rather two figures arose, dragging the third between them.
+
+"Hold her," said a voice that seemed familiar, "while I give these men
+their hire," and there followed a noise of clinking coin, mingled with
+some oaths and grumbling about the weather and the distance, which
+were abated with more coin. Then again the oars rattled and the boat
+was pushed off, whereon a sweet voice cried in agonised tones:
+
+"Sirs, you who have wives and daughters, will you leave me in the
+hands of these wretches? In the name of God take pity upon my
+helplessness."
+
+"It is a shame, and she so fair a maid," grumbled another thick and
+raucous voice, but the steersman cried, "Mind your business, Marsh
+Jan. We have done our job and got our pay, so leave the gentry to
+settle their own love affairs. Good night to you, passengers; give
+way, give way," and the boat swung round and vanished into the gloom.
+
+For a moment Adrian's heart stood still; then he sprang forward to see
+before him Hague Simon, the Butcher, Black Meg his wife, and between
+them a bundle wrapped in shawls.
+
+"What is this?" he asked.
+
+"You ought to know, Heer Adrian," answered Black Meg with a chuckle,
+"seeing that this charming piece of goods has been brought all the way
+from Leyden, regardless of expense, for your especial benefit."
+
+The bundle lifted its head, and the faint light shone upon the white
+and terrified face of--Elsa Brant.
+
+"May God reward you for this evil deed, Adrian, called van Goorl,"
+said the pitiful voice.
+
+"This deed! What deed?" he stammered in answer. "I know nothing of it,
+Elsa Brant."
+
+"You know nothing of it? Yet it was done in your name, and you are
+here to receive me, who was kidnapped as I walked outside Leyden to be
+dragged hither with force by these monsters. Oh! have you no heart and
+no fear of judgment that you can speak thus?"
+
+"Free her," roared Adrian, rushing at the Butcher to see a knife
+gleaming in his hand and another in that of Black Meg.
+
+"Stop your nonsense, Master Adrian, and stand back. If you have
+anything to say, say it to your father, the Count. Come, let us pass,
+for we are cold and weary," and taking Elsa by the elbows they brushed
+past him, nor, indeed, even had he not been too bewildered to
+interfere, could Adrian have stayed them, for he was unarmed. Besides,
+where would be the use, seeing that the boat had gone and that they
+were alone on a winter's night in the wind-swept wilderness, with no
+refuge for miles save such as the mill house could afford. So Adrian
+bent his head, for the snow had begun to fall again, and, sick at
+heart, followed them along the path. Now he understood at length why
+they had come to the Red Mill.
+
+Simon opened the door and entered, but Elsa hung back at its ill-
+omened threshold. She even tried to struggle a little, poor girl,
+whereon the ruffian in front jerked her towards him with an oath, so
+that she caught her foot and fell upon her face. This was too much for
+Adrian. Springing forward he struck the Butcher full in the mouth with
+his fist, and next moment they were rolling over and over each other
+upon the floor, struggling fiercely for the knife which Simon held.
+
+During all her life Elsa never forgot that scene. Behind her the
+howling blackness of the night and the open door, through which flake
+by flake the snow leapt into the light. In front the large round room,
+fashioned from the basement of the mill, lit only by the great fire of
+turfs and a single horn lantern, hung from the ceiling that was ribbed
+with beams of black and massive oak. And there, in this forbidding,
+naked-looking place, that rocked and quivered as the gale caught the
+tall arms of the mill above, seated by the hearth in a rude chair of
+wood and sleeping, one man, Ramiro, the Spanish sleuth-hound, who had
+hunted down her father, he whom above every other she held in horror
+and in hate; and two, Adrian and the spy, at death-grips on the floor,
+between them the sheen of a naked knife.
+
+Such was the picture.
+
+Ramiro awoke at the noise, and there was fear on his face as though
+some ill dream lingered in his brain. Next instant he saw and
+understood.
+
+"I will run the man through who strikes another blow," he said, in a
+cold clear voice as he drew his sword. "Stand up, you fools, and tell
+me what this means."
+
+"It means that this brute beast but now threw Elsa Brant upon her
+face," gasped Adrian as he rose, "and I punished him."
+
+"It is a lie," hissed the other; "I pulled the minx on, that is all,
+and so would you have done, if you had been cursed with such a wild-
+cat for four-and-twenty hours. Why, when we took her she was more
+trouble to hold than any man."
+
+"Oh! I understand," interrupted Ramiro, who had recovered his
+composure; "a little maidenly reluctance, that is all, my worthy
+Simon, and as for this young gentleman, a little lover-like anxiety--
+doubtless in bygone years you have felt the same," and he glanced
+mockingly at Black Meg. "So do not be too ready to take offence, good
+Simon. Youth will be youth."
+
+"And Youth will get a knife between its ribs if it is not careful,"
+grumbled Hague Simon, as he spat out a piece of broken tooth.
+
+"Why am I brought here, Senor," broke in Elsa, "in defiance of laws
+and justice?"
+
+"Laws! Mejufvrouw, I did not know that there were any left in the
+Netherlands; justice! well, all is fair in love and war, as any lady
+will admit. And the reason why--I think you must ask Adrian, he knows
+more about it than I do."
+
+"He says that he knows nothing, Senor."
+
+"Does he, the rogue? Does he indeed? Well, it would be rude to
+contradict him, wouldn't it, so I for one unreservedly accept his
+statement that he knows nothing, and I advise you to do the same. No,
+no, my boy, do not trouble to explain, we all quite understand. Now,
+my good dame," he went on addressing the serving-woman who had entered
+the place, "take this young lady to the best room you have above. And,
+listen, both of you, she is to be treated with all kindness, do you
+hear, for if any harm comes to her, either at your hands or her own,
+by Heaven! you shall pay for it to the last drop of your blood. Now,
+no excuses and--no mistakes."
+
+The two women, Meg and the other, nodded and motioned to Elsa to
+accompany them. She considered a moment, looking first at Ramiro and
+next at Adrian. Then her head dropped upon her breast, and turning
+without a word she followed them up the creaking oaken stair that rose
+from a niche near the wall of the ingle-nook.
+
+"Father," said Adrian when the massive door had closed behind her and
+they were left alone--"father--for I suppose that I must call you so."
+
+"There is not the slightest necessity," broke in Ramiro; "facts, my
+dear son, need not always be paraded in the cold light of day--
+fortunately. But, proceed."
+
+"What does all this mean?"
+
+"I wish I could tell you. It appears to mean, however, that without
+any effort upon your part, for you seem to me a young man singularly
+devoid of resource, your love affairs are prospering beyond
+expectation."
+
+"I have had nothing to do with the business; I wash my hands of it."
+
+"That is as well. Some sensitive people might think they need a deal
+of washing. You young fool," he went on, dropping his mocking manner,
+"listen to me. You are in love with this pink and white piece of
+goods, and I have brought her here for you to marry."
+
+"And I refuse to marry her against her will."
+
+"As to that you can please yourself. But somebody has got to marry her
+--you, or I."
+
+"You--/you!/" gasped Adrian.
+
+"Quite so. The adventure is not one, to be frank, that attracts me. At
+my age memories are sufficient. But material interests must be
+attended to, so if you decline--well, I am still eligible and hearty.
+Do you see the point?"
+
+"No, what is it?"
+
+"It is a sound title to the inheritance of the departed Hendrik Brant.
+That wealth we might, it is true, obtain by artifice or by arms; but
+how much better that it should come into the family in a regular
+fashion, thereby ousting the claim of the Crown. Things in this
+country are disturbed at present, but they will not always be
+disturbed, for in the end somebody must give way and order will
+prevail. Then questions might be asked, for persons in possession of
+great riches are always the mark of envy. But if the heiress is
+married to a good Catholic and loyal subject of the king, who can
+cavil at rights sanctified by the laws of God and man? Think it over,
+my dear Adrian, think it over. Step-mother or wife--you can take your
+choice."
+
+With impotent rage, with turmoil of heart and torment of conscience,
+Adrian did think it over. All that night he thought, tossing on his
+rat-haunted pallet, while without the snow whirled and the wind beat.
+If he did not marry Elsa, his father would, and there could be no
+doubt as to which of these alternatives would be best and happiest for
+her. Elsa married to that wicked, cynical, devil-possessed, battered,
+fortune-hunting adventurer with a nameless past! This must be
+prevented at any cost. With his father her lot /must/ be a hell; with
+himself--after a period of storm and doubt perhaps--it could scarcely
+be other than happy, for was he not young, handsome, sympathetic, and
+--devoted? Ah! there was the real point. He loved this lady with all
+the earnestness of which his nature was capable, and the thought of
+her passing into the possession of another man gave him the acutest
+anguish. That the man should be Foy, his half-brother, was bad enough;
+that it should be Ramiro, his father, was insupportable.
+
+At breakfast the following morning, when Elsa did not appear, the pair
+met.
+
+"You look pale, Adrian," said his father presently. "I fear that this
+wild weather kept you awake last night, as it did me, although at your
+age I have slept through the roar of a battle. Well, have you thought
+over our conversation? I do not wish to trouble you with these
+incessant family matters, but times presses, and it is necessary to
+decide."
+
+Adrian looked out of the lattice at the snow, which fell and fell
+without pause. Then he turned and said:
+
+"Yes. Of the two it is best that she should marry me, though I think
+that such a crime will bring its own reward."
+
+"Wise young man," answered his father. "Under all your cloakings of
+vagary I observe that you have a foundation of common-sense, just as
+the giddiest weathercock is bedded on a stone. As for the reward,
+considered properly it seems to be one upon which I can heartily
+congratulate you."
+
+"Peace to that talk," said Adrian, angrily; "you forget that there are
+two parties to such a contract; her consent must be gained, and I will
+not ask it."
+
+"No? Then I will; a few arguments occur to me. Now look here, friend,
+we have struck a bargain, and you will be so good as to keep it or to
+take the consequences--oh! never mind what they are. I will bring this
+lady to the altar--or, rather, to that table, and you will marry her,
+after which you can settle matters just exactly as you please; live
+with her as your wife, or make your bow and walk away, which, I care
+nothing so long as you are married. Now I am weary of all this talk,
+so be so good as to leave me in peace on the subject."
+
+Adrian looked at him, opened his lips to speak, then changed his mind
+and marched out of the house into the blinding snow.
+
+"Thank Heaven he is gone at last!" reflected his father, and called
+for Hague Simon, with whom he held a long and careful interview.
+
+"You understand?" he ended.
+
+"I understand," answered Simon, sulkily. "I am to find this priest,
+who should be waiting at the place you name, and to bring him here by
+nightfall to-morrow, which is a rough job for a Christian man in such
+weather as this."
+
+"The pay, friend Simon, remember the pay."
+
+"Oh! yes, it all sounds well enough, but I should like something on
+account."
+
+"You shall have it--is not such a labourer worthy of his hire?"
+replied his employer with enthusiasm, and producing from his pocket
+the purse which Lysbeth had given Adrian, with a smile of peculiar
+satisfaction, for really the thing had a comic side, he counted a
+handsome sum into the hand of this emissary of Venus.
+
+Simon looked at the money, concluded, after some reflection, that it
+would scarcely do to stand out for more at present, pouched it, and
+having wrapped himself in a thick frieze coat, opened the door and
+vanished into the falling snow.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI
+
+                     THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE BRIDE
+
+The day passed, and through every hour of it the snow fell
+incessantly. Night came, and it was still falling in large, soft
+flakes that floated to the earth gently as thistledown, for now there
+was no wind. Adrian met his father at meals only; the rest of the day
+he preferred to spend out of doors in the snow, or hanging about the
+old sheds at the back of the mill, rather than endure the society of
+this terrible man; this man of mocking words and iron purpose, who was
+forcing him into the commission of a great crime.
+
+It was at breakfast on the following morning that Ramiro inquired of
+Black Mag whether the Jufvrouw Brant had sufficiently recovered from
+the fatigues of her journey to honour them with her presence. The
+woman replied that she absolutely refused to leave her room, or even
+to speak more than was necessary.
+
+"Then," said Ramiro, "as it is important that I should have a few
+words with her, be so good as to tell the young lady, with my homage,
+that I will do myself the honour of waiting on her in the course of
+the forenoon."
+
+Meg departed on her errand, and Adrian looked up suspiciously.
+
+"Calm yourself, young friend," said his father, "although the
+interview will be private, you have really no cause for jealousy. At
+present, remember, I am but the second string in the bow-case, the
+understudy who has learnt the part, a humble position, but one which
+may prove useful."
+
+At all of which gibes Adrian winced. But he did not reply, for by now
+he had learned that he was no match for his father's bitter wit.
+
+Elsa received the message as she received everything else, in silence.
+
+Three days before, as after a fearful illness during which on several
+occasions she was at the very doors of death, Lysbeth van Goorl had
+been declared out of danger, Elsa, her nurse, ventured to leave her
+for a few hours. That evening the town seemed to stifle her and,
+feeling that she needed the air of the country, she passed the Morsch
+poort and walked a little way along the banks of the canal, never
+noticing, poor girl, that her footsteps were dogged. When it began to
+grow dusk, she halted and stood a while gazing towards the Haarlemer
+Meer, letting her heart go out to the lover who, as she thought and
+hoped, within a day or two would be at her side.
+
+Then it was that something was thrown over her head, and for a while
+all was black. She awoke to find herself lying in a boat, and watching
+her, two wretches, whom she recognised as those who had assailed her
+when first she came to Leyden from The Hague.
+
+"Why have you kidnapped me, and where am I going?" she asked.
+
+"Because we are paid to do it, and you are going to Adrian van Goorl,"
+was the answer.
+
+Then she understood, and was silent.
+
+Thus they brought her to this lonesome, murderous-looking place, where
+sure enough Adrian was waiting for her, waiting with a lie upon his
+lips. Now, doubtless, the end was at hand. She, who loved his brother
+with all her heart and soul, was to be given forcibly in marriage to a
+man whom she despised and loathed, the vain, furious-tempered traitor,
+who, for revenge, jealousy, or greed, she knew not which, had not
+hesitated to send his benefactor, and mother's husband, to perish in
+the fires of the Inquisition.
+
+What was she to do? Escape seemed out of the question, imprisoned as
+she was on the third story of a lofty mill standing in a lonely, snow-
+shrouded wilderness, cut off from the sight of every friendly face,
+and spied on hour after hour by two fierce-eyed women. No, there was
+only one escape for her--through the gate of death. Even this would be
+difficult, for she had no weapon, and day and night the women kept
+guard over her, one standing sentinel, while the other slept.
+Moreover, she had no mind to die, being young and healthy, with a love
+to live for, and from her childhood up she had been taught that self-
+slaughter is a sin. No, she would trust in God, and overwhelming
+though it was, fight her way through this trouble as best she might.
+The helpless find friends sometimes. Therefore, that her strength
+might be preserved, Elsa rested and ate of her food, and drank the
+wine which they brought to her, refusing to leave the room, or to
+speak more than she was obliged, but watching everything that passed.
+
+On the second morning of her imprisonment Ramiro's message reached
+her, to which, as usual, she made no answer. In due course also Ramiro
+himself arrived, and stood bowing in the doorway.
+
+"Have I your permission to enter, Jufvrouw?" he asked. Then Elsa,
+knowing that the moment of trial had come, steeled herself for the
+encounter.
+
+"You are master here," she answered, in a voice cold as the falling
+snow without, "why then do you mock me?"
+
+He motioned to the women to leave the room, and when they had gone,
+replied:
+
+"I have little thought of such a thing, lady; the matter in hand is
+too serious for smart sayings," and with another bow he sat himself
+down on a chair near the hearth, where a fire was burning. Whereon
+Elsa rose and stood over against him, for upon her feet she seemed to
+feel stronger.
+
+"Will you be so good as to set out this matter, Senor Ramiro? Am I
+brought here to be tried for heresy?"
+
+"Even so, for heresy against the god of love, and the sentence of the
+Court is that you must expiate your sin, not at the stake, but at the
+altar."
+
+"I do not understand."
+
+"Then I will explain. My son Adrian, a worthy young man on the whole--
+you know that he /is/ my son, do you not?--has had the misfortune, or
+I should say the good fortune, to fall earnestly in love with you,
+whereas you have the bad taste--or, perhaps, the good taste--to give
+your affections elsewhere. Under the circumstances, Adrian, being a
+youth of spirit and resource, has fallen back upon primitive methods
+in order to bring his suit to a successful conclusion. He is here, you
+are here, and this evening I understand that the priest will be here.
+I need not dwell upon the obvious issue; indeed, it is a private
+matter upon which I have no right to intrude, except, of course, as a
+relative and a well-wisher."
+
+Elsa made an impatient movement with her hand, as though to brush
+aside all this web of words.
+
+"Why do you take so much trouble to force an unhappy girl into a
+hateful marriage?" she asked. "How can such a thing advantage you?"
+
+"Ah!" answered Ramiro briskly, "I perceive I have to do with a woman
+of business, one who has that rarest of gifts--common sense. I will be
+frank. Your esteemed father died possessed of a very large fortune,
+which to-day is your property as his sole issue and heiress. Under the
+marriage laws, which I myself think unjust, that fortune will pass
+into the power of any husband whom you choose to take. Therefore, so
+soon as you are made his wife it will pass to Adrian. I am Adrian's
+father, and, as it happens, he is pecuniarily indebted to me to a
+considerable amount, so that, in the upshot, as he himself has pointed
+out more than once, this alliance will provide for both of us. But
+business details are wearisome, so I need not enlarge."
+
+"The fortune you speak of, Senor Ramiro, is lost."
+
+"It is lost, but I have reason to hope that it will be found."
+
+"You mean that this is purely a matter of money?"
+
+"So far as I am concerned, purely. For Adrian's feelings I cannot
+speak, since who knows the mystery of another's heart?"
+
+"Then, if the money were forthcoming--or a clue to it--there need be
+no marriage?"
+
+"So far as I am concerned, none at all."
+
+"And if the money is not forthcoming, and I refuse to marry the Heer
+Adrian, or he to marry me--what then?"
+
+"That is a riddle, but I think I see an answer at any rate to half of
+it. Then the marriage would still take place, but with another
+bridegroom."
+
+"Another bridegroom! Who?"
+
+"Your humble and devoted adorer."
+
+Elsa shuddered and recoiled a step.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "I should not have bowed, you saw my white hairs--to
+the young a hateful sight."
+
+Elsa's indignation rose, and she answered:
+
+"It is not your white hair that I shrink from, Senor, which in some
+would be a crown of honour, but----"
+
+"In my case suggests to you other reflections. Be gentle and spare me
+them. In a world of rough actions, what need to emphasise them with
+rough words?"
+
+For a few minutes there was silence, which Ramiro, glancing out of the
+lattice, broke by remarking that "The snowfall was extraordinarily
+heavy for the time of year." Then followed another silence.
+
+"I understood you just now, dear lady, to make some sort of suggestion
+which might lead to an arrangement satisfactory to both of us. The
+exact locality of this wealth is at present obscure--you mentioned
+some clue. Are you in a position to furnish such a clue?"
+
+"If I am in a position, what then?"
+
+"Then, perhaps, after a few days visit to an interesting, but little
+explored part of Holland, you might return to your friends as you left
+them--in short as a single woman."
+
+A struggle shook Elsa, and do what she would some trace of it appeared
+in her face.
+
+"Do you swear that?" she whispered.
+
+"Most certainly."
+
+"Do you swear before God that if you have this clue you will not force
+me into a marriage with the Heer Adrian, or with yourself--that you
+will let me go, unharmed?"
+
+"I swear it--before God."
+
+"Knowing that God will be revenged upon you if you break the oath, you
+still swear?"
+
+"I still swear. Why these needless repetitions?"
+
+"Then--then," and she leant towards him, speaking in a hoarse whisper,
+"believing that you, even you, will not dare to be false to such an
+oath, for you, even you, must fear death, a miserable death, and
+vengeance, eternal vengeance, I give you the clue: It lies in the hilt
+of the sword Silence."
+
+"The sword Silence? What sword is that?"
+
+"The great sword of Red Martin."
+
+Stirred out of his self-control, Ramiro struck his hand upon his knee.
+
+"And to think," he said, "that for over twelve hours I had it hanging
+on the wall of the Gevangenhuis! Well, I fear that I must ask you to
+be more explicit. Where is this sword?"
+
+"Wherever Red Martin is, that is all I know. I can tell you no more;
+the plan of the hiding-place is there."
+
+"Or was there. Well, I believe you, but to win a secret from the hilt
+of the sword of the man who broke his way out of the torture-chamber
+of the Gevangenhuis, is a labour that would have been not unworthy of
+Hercules. First, Red Martin must be found, then his sword must be
+taken, which, I think, will cost men their lives. Dear lady, I am
+obliged for your information, but I fear that the marriage must still
+go through."
+
+"You swore, you swore," she gasped, "you swore before God!"
+
+"Quite so, and I shall leave--the Power you refer to--to manage the
+matter. Doubtless He can attend to His own affairs--I must attend to
+mine. I hope that about seven o'clock this evening will suit you, by
+which time the priest and--a bridegroom will be ready."
+
+Then Elsa broke down.
+
+"Devil!" she cried in the torment of her despair. "To save my honour I
+have betrayed my father's trust; I have betrayed the secret for which
+Martin was ready to die by torment, and given him over to be hunted
+like a wild beast. Oh! God forgive me, and God help me!"
+
+"Doubtless, dear young lady, He will do the first, for your
+temptations were really considerable; I, who have more experience,
+outwitted you, that was all. Possibly, also, He may do the second,
+though many have uttered that cry unheard. For my own sake, I trust
+that He was sleeping when you uttered yours. But it is your affair and
+His; I leave it to be arranged between you. Till this evening,
+Jufvrouw," and he bowed himself from the room.
+
+But Elsa, shamed and broken-hearted, threw herself upon the bed and
+wept.
+
+At mid-day she arose, hearing upon the stair the step of the woman who
+brought her food, and to hide her tear-stained face went to the barred
+lattice and looked out. The scene was dismal indeed, for the wind had
+veered suddenly, the snow had ceased, and in place of it rain was
+falling with a steady persistence. When the woman had gone, Elsa
+washed her face, and although her appetite turned from it, ate of the
+food, knowing how necessary it was that she should keep her strength.
+
+Another hour passed, and there came a knock on the door. Elsa
+shuddered, for she thought that Ramiro had returned to torment her.
+Indeed it was almost a relief when, instead of him, appeared his son.
+Once glance at Adrian's nervous, shaken face, yes, and even the sound
+of his uncertain step brought hope to her heart. Her woman's instinct
+told her that now she had no longer to do with the merciless and
+terrible Ramiro, to whose eyes she was but a pretty pawn in a game
+that he must win, but with a young man who loved her, and whom she
+held, therefore, at a disadvantage--with one, moreover, who was
+harassed and ashamed, and upon whose conscience, therefore, she might
+work. She turned upon him, drawing herself up, and although she was
+short and Adrian was tall, of a sudden he felt as though she towered
+over him.
+
+"Your pleasure?" asked Elsa.
+
+In the old days Adrian would have answered with some magnificent
+compliment, or far-fetched simile lifted from the pages of romancers.
+In truth he had thought of several such while, like a half-starved dog
+seeking a home, he wandered round and round the mill-house in the
+snow. But he was now far beyond all rhetoric or gallantries.
+
+"My father wished," he began humbly--"I mean that I have come to speak
+to you about--our marriage."
+
+Of a sudden Elsa's delicate features seemed to turn to ice, while, to
+his fancy at any rate, her brown eyes became fire.
+
+"Marriage," she said in a strange voice. "Oh! what an unutterable
+coward you must be to speak that word. Call what is proposed by any
+foul title which you will, but at least leave the holy name of
+marriage undefiled."
+
+"It is not my fault," he answered sullenly, but shrinking beneath her
+words. "You know, Elsa, that I wished to wed you honourably enough."
+
+"Yes," she broke in, "and because I would not listen, because you do
+not please me, and you could not win me as a man wins a maid, you--you
+laid a trap and kidnapped me, thinking to get by brute force that
+which my heart withheld. Oh! in all the Netherlands lives there
+another such an abject as Adrian called van Goorl, the base-born son
+of Ramiro the galley slave?"
+
+"I have told you that it is false," he replied furiously. "I had
+nothing to do with your capture. I knew nothing of it till I saw you
+here."
+
+Elsa laughed a very bitter laugh. "Spare your breath," she said, "for
+if you swore it before the face of the recording Angel I would not
+believe you. Remember that you are the man who betrayed your brother
+and your benefactor, and then guess, if you can, what worth I put upon
+your words."
+
+In the bitterness of his heart Adrian groaned aloud, and from that
+groan Elsa, listening eagerly, gathered some kind of hope.
+
+"Surely," she went on, with a changed and softened manner, "surely you
+will not do this wickedness. The blood of Dirk van Goorl lies on your
+head; will you add mine to his? For be sure of this, I swear it by my
+Maker, that before I am indeed a wife to you I shall be dead--or
+mayhap you will be dead, or both of us. Do you understand?"
+
+"I understand, but----"
+
+"But what? Where is the use of this wickedness? For your soul's sake,
+refuse to have aught to do with such a sin."
+
+"But if so, my father will marry you."
+
+It was a chance arrow, but it went home, for of a sudden Elsa's
+strength and eloquence seemed to leave her. She ran to him with her
+hands clasped, she flung herself upon her knees.
+
+"Oh! help me to escape," she moaned, "and I will bless you all my
+life."
+
+"It is impossible," he answered. "Escape from this guarded place,
+through those leagues of melting snow? I tell you that it is
+impossible."
+
+"Then," and her eyes grew wild, "then kill him and free me. He is a
+devil, he is your evil genius; it would be a righteous deed. Kill him
+and free me."
+
+"I should like to," answered Adrian; "I nearly did once, but, for my
+soul's sake, I can't put a sword through my own father; it is the most
+horrible of crimes. When I confessed----"
+
+"Then," she broke in, "if this farce, this infamy must be gone
+through, swear at least that you will treat it as such, that you will
+respect me."
+
+"It is a hard thing to ask of a husband who loves you more than any
+woman in the world," he answered turning aside his head.
+
+"Remember," she went on, with another flash of defiant spirit, "that
+if you do not, you will soon love me better than any woman out of the
+world, or perhaps we shall both settle what lies between us before the
+Judgment Seat of God. Will you swear?"
+
+He hesitated.
+
+Oh! she reflected, what if he should answer--"Rather than this I hand
+you over to Ramiro"? What if he should think of that argument? Happily
+for her, at the moment he did not.
+
+"Swear," she implored, "swear," clinging with her hands to the lappet
+of his coat and lifting to him her white and piteous face.
+
+"I make it an offering in expiation of my sins," he groaned, "you
+shall go free of me."
+
+Elsa uttered a sigh of relief. She put no faith whatever in Adrian's
+promises, but at the worst it would give her time.
+
+"I thought that I should not appeal in vain----"
+
+"To so amusing and egregious a donkey," said Ramiro's mocking voice
+speaking from the gloom of the doorway, which now Elsa observed for
+the first time had swung open mysteriously.
+
+"My dear son and daughter-in-law, how can I thank you sufficiently for
+the entertainment with which you have enlivened one of the most dreary
+afternoons I remember. Don't look dangerous, my boy; recall what you
+have just told this young lady, that the crime of removing a parent is
+one which, though agreeable, is not lightly to be indulged. Then, as
+to your future arrangements, how touching! The soul of a Diana, I
+declare, and the self-sacrifice of a--no, I fear that the heroes of
+antiquity can furnish no suitable example. And now, adieu, I go to
+welcome the gentleman you both of you so eagerly expect."
+
+He went, and a minute later without speaking, for the situation seemed
+beyond words, Adrian crept down the stairs after him, more miserable
+and crushed even than he had crept up them half an hour before.
+
+
+
+Another two hours went by. Elsa was in her apartment with Black Meg
+for company, who watched her as a cat watches a mouse in a trap.
+Adrian had taken refuge in the place where he slept above. It was a
+dreary, vacuous chamber, that once had held stones and other machinery
+of the mill now removed, the home of spiders and half-starved rats,
+that a lean black cat hunted continually. Across its ceiling ran great
+beams, whereof the interlacing ends, among which sharp draughts
+whistled, lost themselves in gloom, while, with an endless and
+exasperating sound, as of a knuckle upon a board, the water dripped
+from the leaky roof.
+
+In the round living-chamber below Ramiro was alone. No lamp had been
+lit, but the glow from the great turf fire played upon his face as he
+sat there, watching, waiting, and scheming in the chair of black oak.
+Presently a noise from without caught his quick ear, and calling to
+the serving woman to light the lamp, he went to the door, opened it,
+and saw a lantern floating towards him through the thick steam of
+falling rain. Another minute and the bearer of the lantern, Hague
+Simon, arrived, followed by two other men.
+
+"Here he is," said Simon, nodding at the figure behind him, a short
+round figure wrapped in a thick frieze cloak, from which water ran.
+"The other is the head boatman."
+
+"Good," said Ramiro. "Tell him and his companions to wait in the shed
+without, where liquor will be sent to them; they may be wanted later
+on."
+
+Then followed talk and oaths, and at length the man retreated
+grumbling.
+
+"Enter, Father Thomas," said Ramiro; "you have had a wet journey, I
+fear. Enter and give us your blessing."
+
+Before he answered the priest threw off his dripping, hooded cape of
+Frisian cloth, revealing a coarse, wicked face, red and blear-eyed
+from intemperance.
+
+"My blessing?" he said in a raucous voice. "Here it is, Senor Ramiro,
+or whatever you call yourself now. Curse you all for bringing out a
+holy priest upon one of your devil's errands in weather which is only
+fit for a bald-headed coot to travel through. There is going to be a
+flood; already the water is running over the banks of the dam, and it
+gathers every moment as the snow melts. I tell you there is going to
+be such a flood as we have not seen for years."
+
+"The more reason, Father, for getting through this little business
+quickly; but first you will wish for something to drink."
+
+Father Thomas nodded, and Ramiro filling a small mug with brandy, gave
+it to him. He gulped it off.
+
+"Another," he said. "Don't be afraid. A chosen vessel should also be a
+seasoned vessel; at any rate this one is. Ah! that's better. Now then,
+what's the exact job?"
+
+Ramiro took him apart and they talked together for a while.
+
+"Very good," said the priest at length, "I will take the risk and do
+it, for where heretics are concerned such things are not too closely
+inquired into nowadays. But first down with the money; no paper or
+promises, if you please."
+
+"Ah! you churchmen," said Ramiro, with a faint smile, "in things
+spiritual or temporal how much have we poor laity to learn of you!"
+With a sigh he produced the required sum, then paused and added, "No;
+with your leave we will see the papers first. You have them with you?"
+
+"Here they are," answered the priest, drawing some documents from his
+pocket. "But they haven't been married yet; the rule is, marry first,
+then certify. Until the ceremony is actually performed, anything might
+happen, you know."
+
+"Quite so, Father. Anything might happen either before or after; but
+still, with your leave, I think that in this case we may as well
+certify first; you might want to be getting away, and it will save so
+much trouble later. Will you be so kind as to write your certificate?"
+
+Father Thomas hesitated, while Ramiro gently clinked the gold coins in
+his hand and murmured,
+
+"I should be sorry to think, Father, that you had taken such a rough
+journey for nothing."
+
+"What trick are you at now?" growled the priest. "Well, after all it
+is a mere form. Give me the names."
+
+Ramiro gave them; Father Thomas scrawled them down, adding some words
+and his own signature, then said, "There you are, that will hold good
+against anyone except the Pope."
+
+"A mere form," repeated Ramiro, "of course. But the world attaches so
+much importance to forms, so I think that we will have this one
+witnessed--No, not by myself, who am an interested party--by someone
+independent," and calling Hague Simon and the waiting-woman he bade
+them set their names at the foot of the documents.
+
+"Papers signed in advance--fees paid in advance!" he went on, handing
+over the money, "and now, just one more glass to drink the health of
+the bride and bridegroom, also in advance. You will not refuse, nor
+you, worthy Simon, nor you, most excellent Abigail. Ah! I thought not,
+the night is cold."
+
+"And the brandy strong," muttered the priest thickly, as this third
+dose of raw spirit took effect upon him. "Now get on with the
+business, for I want to be out of this hole before the flood comes."
+
+"Quite so. Friends, will you be so good as to summon my son and the
+lady? The lady first, I think--and all three of you might go to escort
+her. Brides sometimes consider it right to fain a slight reluctance--
+you understand? On second thoughts, you need not trouble the Senor
+Adrian. I have a new words of ante-nuptial advice to offer, so I will
+go to him."
+
+A minute later father and son stood face to face. Adrian leaped up; he
+shook his fist, he raved and stormed at the cold, impassive man before
+him.
+
+"You fool, you contemptible fool!" said Ramiro when he had done.
+"Heavens! to think that such a creature should have sprung from me, a
+human jackass only fit to bear the blows and burdens of others, to
+fill the field with empty brayings, and wear himself out by kicking at
+the air. Oh! don't twist up your face at me, for I am your master as
+well as your father, however much you may hate me. You are mine, body
+and soul, don't you understand; a bond-slave, nothing more. You lost
+the only chance you ever had in the game when you got me down at
+Leyden. You daren't draw a sword on me again for your soul's sake,
+dear Adrian, for your soul's sake; and if you dared, I would run you
+through. Now, are you coming?"
+
+"No," answered Adrian.
+
+"Think a minute. If you don't marry her I shall, and before she is
+half an hour older; also--" and he leant forward and whispered into
+his son's ear.
+
+"Oh! you devil, you devil!" Adrian gasped; then he moved towards the
+door.
+
+"What? Changed your mind, have you, Mr. Weathercock? Well, it is the
+prerogative of all feminine natures--but, your doublet is awry, and
+allow me to suggest that you should brush your hair. There, that's
+better; now, come on. No, you go first, if you please, I'd rather have
+you in front of me."
+
+When they reached the room below the bride was already there. Gripped
+on either side by Black Meg and the other woman, white as death and
+trembling, but still defiant, stood Elsa.
+
+"Let's get through with this," growled the half-drunken, ruffian
+priest. "I take the willingness of the parties for granted."
+
+"I am not willing," cried Elsa. "I have been brought here by force. I
+call everyone present to witness that whatever is done is against my
+will. I appeal to God to help me."
+
+The priest turned upon Ramiro.
+
+"How am I to marry them in the face of this?" he asked. "If only she
+were silent it might be done----"
+
+"The difficulty has occurred to me," answered Ramiro. He made a sign,
+whereon Simon seized Elsa's wrists, and Black Meg, slipping behind
+her, deftly fastened a handkerchief over her mouth in such fashion
+that she was gagged, but could still breathe through the nostrils.
+
+Elsa struggled a little, then was quiet, and turned her piteous eyes
+on Adrian, who stepped forward and opened his lips.
+
+"You remember the alternative," said his father in a low voice, and he
+stopped.
+
+"I suppose," broke in Father Thomas, "that we may at any rate reckon
+upon the consent, or at least upon the silence of the Heer
+bridegroom."
+
+"You may reckon on his silence, Father Thomas," replied Ramiro.
+
+Then the ceremony began. They dragged Elsa to the table. Thrice she
+flung herself to the ground, and thrice they lifted her to her feet,
+but at length, weary of the weight of her body, suffered her to rest
+upon her knees, where she remained as though in prayer, gagged like
+some victim on the scaffold. It was a strange and brutal scene, and
+every detail of it burned itself into Adrian's mind. The round, rude
+room, with its glowing fire of turfs and its rough, oaken furniture,
+half in light and half in dense shadow, as the lamp-rays chanced to
+fall; the death-like, kneeling bride, with a white cloth across her
+tortured face; the red-chopped, hanging-lipped hedge priest gabbling
+from a book, his back almost turned that he might not see her attitude
+and struggles; the horrible, unsexed women; the flat-faced villain,
+Simon, grinning by the hearth; Ramiro, cynical, mocking, triumphant,
+and yet somewhat anxious, his one bright eye fixed in mingled contempt
+and amusement upon him, Adrian--those were its outlines. There was
+something else also that caught and oppressed his sense, a sound which
+at the time Adrian thought he heard in his head alone, a soft, heavy
+sound with a moan in it, not unlike that of the wind, which grew
+gradually to a dull roar.
+
+It was over. A ring had been forced on to Elsa's unwilling hand, and,
+until the thing was undone by some competent and authorised Court, she
+was in name the wife of Adrian. The handkerchief was unbound, her
+hands were loosed, physically, Elsa was free again, but, in that day
+and land of outrage, tied, as the poor girl knew well, by a chain more
+terrible than any that hemp or steel could fashion.
+
+"Congratulations! Senora," muttered Father Thomas, eyeing her
+nervously. "I fear you felt a little faint during the service, but a
+sacrament----"
+
+"Cease your mockings, you false priest," cried Elsa. "Oh! let the
+swift vengeance of God fall upon every one of you, and first of all
+upon you, false priest."
+
+Drawing the ring from her finger, as she spoke she cast it down upon
+the oaken table, whence it sprang up to drop again and rattle itself
+to silence. Then with one tragic motion of despair, Elsa turned and
+fled back to her chamber.
+
+The red face of Father Thomas went white, and his yellow teeth
+chattered. "A virgin's curse," he muttered, crossing himself.
+"Misfortune always follows, and it is sometimes death--yes, by St.
+Thomas, death. And you, you brought me here to do this wickedness, you
+dog, you galley slave!"
+
+"Father," broke in Ramiro, "you know I have warned you against it
+before at The Hague; sooner or later it always breaks up the nerves,"
+and he nodded towards the flagon of spirits. "Bread and water, Father,
+bread and water for forty days, that is what I prescribe, and----"
+
+As he spoke the door was burst open, and two men rushed in, their eyes
+starting, their very beards bristling with terror.
+
+"Come forth!" they cried.
+
+"What has chanced?" screamed the priest.
+
+"The great dyke has burst--hark, hark, hark! The floods are upon you,
+the mill will be swept away."
+
+God in Heaven--it was true! Now through the open doorway they heard
+the roar of waters, whose note Adrian had caught before, yes, and in
+the gloom appeared their foaming crest as they rushed through the
+great and ever-widening breach in the lofty dyke down upon the flooded
+lowland.
+
+Father Thomas bounded through the door yelling, "The boat, the boat!"
+For a moment Ramiro thought, considering the situation, then he said:
+
+"Fetch the Jufvrouw. No, not you, Adrian; she would die rather than
+come with you. You, Simon, and you, Meg. Swift, obey."
+
+They departed on their errand.
+
+"Men," went on Ramiro, "take this gentleman and lead him to the boat.
+Hold him if he tries to escape. I will follow with the lady. Go, you
+fool, go, there is not a second to be lost," and Adrian, hanging back
+and protesting, was dragged away by the boatmen.
+
+Now Ramiro was alone, and though, as he had said, there was little
+time to spare, again for a few moments he thought deeply. His face
+flushed and went pale; then entered into it a great resolve. "I don't
+like doing it, for it is against my vow, but the chance is good. She
+is safely married, and at best she would be very troublesome
+hereafter, and might bring us to justice or to the galleys since
+others seek her wealth," he muttered with a shiver, adding, "as for
+the spies, we are well rid of them and their evidence." Then, with
+swift resolution, stepping to the door at the foot of the stairs,
+Ramiro shut it and shot the great iron bolt!
+
+He ran from the mill; the raised path was already three feet deep in
+water; he could scarcely make his way along it. Ah! there lay the
+boat. Now he was in it, and now they were flying before the crest of a
+huge wave. The dam of the cutting had given altogether, and fed from
+sea and land at once, by snow, by rain, and by the inrush of the high
+tide, its waters were pouring in a measureless volume over the doomed
+marshes.
+
+"Where is Elsa?" screamed Adrian.
+
+"I don't know. I couldn't find her," answered Ramiro. "Row, row for
+your lives! We can take her off in the morning, and the priest too, if
+he won back."
+
+
+
+At length the cold winter sun rose over the watery waste, calm enough
+now, for the floods were out, in places ten and fifteen feet deep.
+Through the mists that brooded on the face of them Ramiro and his crew
+groped their way back to where the Red Mill should be. It was gone!
+
+There stood the brick walls of the bottom story rising above the flood
+level, but the wooden upper part had snapped before the first great
+wave when the bank went bodily, and afterwards been swept away by the
+rushing current, swept away with those within.
+
+"What is that?" said one of the boatmen, pointing to a dark object
+which floated among the tangled /debris/ of sere weeds and woodwork
+collected against the base of the mill.
+
+They rowed to the thing. It was the body of Father Thomas, who must
+have missed his footing as he ran along the pathway, and fallen into
+deep water.
+
+"Um!" said Ramiro, "'a virgin's curse.' Observe, friends, how the
+merest coincidences may give rise to superstition. Allow me," and,
+holding the dead man by one hand, he felt in his pockets with the
+other, till, with a smile of satisfaction, he found the purse
+containing the gold which he had paid him on the previous evening.
+
+"Oh! Elsa, Elsa," moaned Adrian.
+
+"Comfort yourself, my son," said Ramiro as the boat put about, leaving
+the dead Father Thomas bobbing up and down in the ripple; "you have
+indeed lost a wife whose temper gave you little prospect of happiness,
+but at least I have your marriage papers duly signed and witnessed,
+and--you are her heir."
+
+He did not add that he in turn was Adrian's. But Adrian thought of it,
+and even in the midst of his shame and misery wondered with a shiver
+how long he who was Ramiro's next of kin was likely to adorn this
+world.
+
+Till he had something that was worth inheriting, perhaps.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII
+
+                    WHAT ELSA SAW IN THE MOONLIGHT
+
+It will be remembered that some weeks before Elsa's forced marriage in
+the Red Mill, Foy, on their escape from the Gevangenhuis, had been
+carried upon the naked back of Martin to the shelter of Mother
+Martha's lair in the Haarlemer Meer. Here he lay sick many days, for
+the sword cut in his thigh festered so badly that at one time his life
+was threatened by gangrene, but, in the end, his own strength and
+healthy constitution, helped with Martha's simples, cured him. So soon
+as he was strong again, accompanied by Martin, he travelled into
+Leyden, which now it was safe enough for him to visit, since the
+Spaniards were driven from the town.
+
+How his young heart swelled as, still limping a little and somewhat
+pale from recent illness, he approached the well-known house in the
+Bree Straat, the home that sheltered his mother and his love.
+Presently he would see them again, for the news had been brought to
+him that Lysbeth was out of danger and Elsa must still be nursing her.
+
+Lysbeth he found indeed, turned into an old woman by grief and sore
+sickness, but Elsa he did not find. She had vanished. On the previous
+night she had gone out to take the air, and returned no more. What had
+become of her none could say. All the town talked of it, and his
+mother was half-crazed with anxiety and fear, fear of the worst.
+
+Hither and thither they went inquiring, seeking, tracking, but no
+trace of Elsa could they discover. She had been seen to pass the
+Morsch poort; then she disappeared. For a while Foy was mad. At length
+he grew calmer and began to think. Drawing from his pocket the letter
+which Martha had brought to him on the night of the church-burning, he
+re-read it in the hope of finding a clue, since it was just possible
+that for private reasons Elsa might have set out on some journey of
+her own. It was a very sweet letter, telling him of her deep joy and
+gratitude at his escape; of the events that had happened in the town;
+of the death of his father in the Gevangenhuis, and ending thus:
+
+
+ "Dear Foy, my betrothed, I cannot come to you because of your
+  mother's sickness, for I am sure that it would be your wish, as it
+  is my desire and duty, that I should stay to nurse her. Soon,
+  however, I hope that you will be able to come to her and me. Yet,
+  in these dreadful times who can tell what may happen? Therefore,
+  Foy, whatever chances, I am sure you will remember that in life or
+  in death I am yours only--yes, to you, dead or living, you dead
+  and I living, or you living and I dead, while or wherever I have
+  sense or memory, I will be true; through life, through death,
+  through whatever may lie beyond our deaths, I will be true as
+  woman may be to man. So, dear Foy, for this present fare you well
+  until we meet again in the days to come, or after all earthly days
+  are done with for you and me. My love be with you, the blessing of
+  God be with you, and when you lie down at night and when you wake
+  at morn, think of me and put up a prayer for me as your true lover
+  Elsa does for you. Martha waits. Most loved, most dear, most
+  desired, fare you well."
+
+
+Here was no hint of any journey, so if such had been taken it must be
+without Elsa's own consent.
+
+"Martin, what do you make of it?" asked Foy, staring at him with
+anxious, hollow eyes.
+
+"Ramiro--Adrian--stolen away--" answered Martin.
+
+"Why do you say that?"
+
+"Hague Simon was seen hanging about outside the town yesterday, and
+there was a strange boat upon the river. Last night the Jufvrouw went
+through the Morsch poort. The rest you can guess."
+
+"Why would they take her?" asked Foy hoarsely.
+
+"Who can tell?" said Martin shrugging his great shoulders. "Yet I see
+two reasons. Hendrik Brant's wealth is supposed to be hers when it can
+be found; therefore, being a thief, Ramiro would want her. Adrian is
+in love with her; therefore, being a man, of course he would want her.
+These seem enough, the pair being what they are."
+
+"When I find them I will kill them both," said Foy, grinding his
+teeth.
+
+"Of course, so will I, but first we have got to find them--and her,
+which is the same thing."
+
+"How, Martin, how?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Can't you think, man?"
+
+"I am trying to, master; it's you who don't think. You talk too much.
+Be silent a while."
+
+"Well," asked Foy thirty seconds later, "have you finished thinking?"
+
+"No, master, it's no use, there is nothing to think about. We must
+leave this and go back to Martha. If anyone can track her out she can.
+Here we can learn no more."
+
+So they returned to the Haarlemer Meer and told Martha their sad tale.
+
+"Bide here a day or two and be patient," she said; "I will go out and
+search."
+
+"Never," answered Foy, "we will come with you."
+
+"If you choose, but it will make matters more difficult. Martin, get
+ready the big boat."
+
+
+
+Two nights had gone by, and it was an hour or more past noon on the
+third day, the day of Elsa's forced marriage. The snow had ceased
+falling and the rain had come instead, rain, pitiless, bitter and
+continual. Hidden in a nook at the north end of the Haarlemer Meer and
+almost buried beneath bundles of reeds, partly as a protection from
+the weather and partly to escape the eyes of Spaniards, of whom
+companies were gathering from every direction to besiege Haarlem, lay
+the big boat. In it were Red Martin and Foy van Goorl. Mother Martha
+was not there for she had gone alone to an inn at a distance, to
+gather information if she could. To hundreds of the boers in these
+parts she was a known and trusted friend, although many of them might
+not choose to recognise her openly, and from among them, unless,
+indeed, she had been taken right away to Flanders, or even to Spain,
+she hoped to gather tidings of Elsa's whereabouts.
+
+For two weary nights and days the Mare had been employed thus, but as
+yet without a shadow of success. Foy and Martin sat in the boat
+staring at each other gloomily; indeed Foy's face was piteous to see.
+
+"What are you thinking of, master?" asked Martin presently.
+
+"I am thinking," he answered, "that even if we find her now it will be
+too late; whatever was to be done, murder or marriage, will be done."
+
+"Time to trouble about that when we have found her," said Martin, for
+he knew not what else to say, and added, "listen, I hear footsteps."
+
+Foy drew apart two of the bundles of reeds and looked out into the
+driving rain.
+
+"All right," he said, "it is Martha and a man."
+
+Martin let his hand fall from the hilt of the sword Silence, for in
+those days hand and sword must be near together. Another minute and
+Martha and her companion were in the boat.
+
+"Who is this man?" asked Foy.
+
+"He is a friend of mine named Marsh Jan."
+
+"Have you news?"
+
+"Yes, at least Marsh Jan has."
+
+"Speak, and be swift," said Foy, turning on the man fiercely.
+
+"Am I safe from vengeance?" asked Marsh Jan, who was a good fellow
+enough although he had drifted into evil company, looking doubtfully
+at Foy and Martin.
+
+"Have I not said so," answered Martha, "and does the Mare break her
+word?"
+
+Then Marsh Jan told his tale: How he was one of the party that two
+nights before had rowed Elsa, or at least a young woman who answered
+to her description, to the Red Mill, not far from Velzen, and how she
+was in the immediate charge of a man and a woman who could be no other
+than Hague Simon and Black Meg. Also he told of her piteous appeal to
+the boatmen in the names of their wives and daughters, and at the
+telling of it Foy wept with fear and rage, and even Martha gnashed her
+teeth. Only Martin cast off the boat and began to punt her out into
+deep water.
+
+"Is that all?" asked Foy.
+
+"That is all, Mynheer, I know nothing more, but I can explain to you
+where the place is."
+
+"You can show us, you mean," said Foy.
+
+The man expostulated. The weather was bad, there would be a flood, his
+wife was ill and expected him, and so forth. Then he tried to get out
+of the boat, whereon, catching hold of him suddenly, Martin threw him
+into the stern-sheets, saying:
+
+"You could travel to this mill once taking with you a girl whom you
+knew to be kidnapped, now you can travel there again to get her out.
+Sit still and steer straight, or I will make you food for fishes."
+
+Then Marsh Jan professed himself quite willing to sail to the Red
+Mill, which he said they ought to reach by nightfall.
+
+All that afternoon they sailed and rowed, till, with the darkness,
+before ever the mill was in sight, the great flood came down upon them
+and drove them hither and thither, such a flood as had not been seen
+in those districts for a dozen years. But Marsh Jan knew his bearings
+well; he had the instinct of locality that is bred in those whose
+forefathers for generations have won a living from the fens, and
+through it all he held upon a straight course.
+
+Once Foy thought that he heard a voice calling for help in the
+darkness, but it was not repeated and they went forward. At last the
+sky cleared and the moon shone out upon such a waste of waters as Noah
+might have beheld from the ark. Only there were things floating in
+them that Noah would scarcely have seen; hayricks, dead and drowning
+cattle, household furniture, and once even a coffin washed from some
+graveyard, while beyond stretched the dreary outline of the sand
+dunes.
+
+"The mill should be near," said Marsh Jan, "let us put about." So they
+turned, rowing with weary arms, for the wind had fallen.
+
+
+
+Let us go back a little. Elsa, on escaping from the scene of her mock
+marriage, fled to her room and bolted its door. A few seconds later
+she heard hands hammering at it, and the voices of Hague Simon and
+Black Meg calling to her to open. She took no note, the hammering
+ceased, and then it was that for the first time she became aware of a
+dreadful, roaring noise, a noise of many waters. Time passed as it
+passes in a nightmare, till suddenly, above the dull roar, came sharp
+sounds as of wood cracking and splitting, and Elsa felt that the whole
+fabric of the mill had tilted. Beneath the pressure of the flood it
+had given where it was weakest, at its narrow waist, and now its red
+cap hung over like a wind-laid tree.
+
+Terror took hold of Elsa, and running to the door she opened it hoping
+to escape down the stairs. Behold! water was creeping up them, she
+could see it by the lantern in her hand--her retreat was cut off. But
+there were other stairs leading to the top storey of the mill that now
+lay at a steep angle, and along these she climbed, since the water was
+pouring through her doorway and there was nowhere else to go. In the
+very roof of the place was a manhole with a rotten hatch. She passed
+through this, to find herself upon the top of the mill just where one
+of the great naked arms of the sails projected from it. Her lantern
+was blown out by now, but she clung to the arm, and became aware that
+the wooden cap of the structure, still anchored to its brick
+foundation, lay upon its side rocking to and fro like a boat upon an
+angry sea. The water was near her; that she knew by its seethe and
+rush, although she could not see it, but as yet it did not even wet
+her feet.
+
+The hours went by, how many, she never learned, till at length the
+clouds cleared; the moon became visible, and by its light she saw an
+awful scene. Everywhere around was water; it lapped within a yard, and
+it was rising still. Now Elsa saw that in the great beam she clasped
+were placed short spokes for the use of those who set the sails above.
+Up these she climbed as best she might, till she was able to pass her
+body between two of the vanes and support her breast upon the flat
+surface of one of them, as a person does who leans out of a window.
+From her window there was something to see. Quite near to her, but
+separated by fifteen or twenty feet of yellow frothing water, a little
+portion of the swelling shape of the mill stood clear of the flood. To
+this foam-lapped island clung two human beings--Hague Simon and Black
+Meg. They saw her also and screamed for help, but she had none to
+give. Surely it was a dream--nothing so awful could happen outside a
+dream.
+
+The fabric of the mill tilted more and more; the space to which the
+two vile creatures hung grew less and less. There was no longer room
+for both of them. They began to quarrel, to curse and jibber at each
+other, their fierce, bestial faces not an inch apart as they crouched
+there on hands and knees. The water rose a little, they were kneeling
+in it now, and the man, putting down his bald head, butted at the
+woman, almost thrusting her from her perch. But she was strong and
+active, she struggled back again; she did more, with an eel-like
+wriggle she climbed upon his back, weighing him down. He strove to
+shake her off but could not, for on that heaving, rolling surface he
+dared not loose his hand-grip, so he turned his flat and florid face,
+and, seizing her leg between his teeth, bit and worried at it. In her
+pain and rage Meg screeched aloud--that was the cry which Foy had
+heard. Then suddenly she drew a knife from her bosom--Elsa saw it
+flash in the moonlight--and stabbed downwards once, twice, thrice.
+
+Elsa shut her eyes. When she opened them again the woman was alone
+upon the little patch of red boarding, her body splayed out over it
+like that of a dead frog. So she lay a while till suddenly the cap of
+the Red Mill dipped slowly like a lady who makes a Court curtsey, and
+she vanished. It rose again and Meg was still there, moaning in her
+terror and water running from her dress. Then again it dipped, this
+time more deeply, and when the patch of rusty boarding slowly
+reappeared, it was empty. No, not quite, for clinging to it, yowling
+and spitting, was the half-wild black cat which Elsa had seen
+wandering about the mill. But of Black Meg there was no trace.
+
+It was dreadfully cold up there hanging to the sail-bar, for now that
+the rain had finished, it began to freeze. Indeed, had it not chanced
+that Elsa was dressed in her warm winter gown with fur upon it, and
+dry from her head to her feet, it is probable that she would have
+fallen off and perished in the water. As it was gradually her body
+became numb and her senses faded. She seemed to know that all this
+matter of her forced marriage, of the flood, and of the end of Simon
+and Meg, was nothing but a dream, a very evil nightmare from which she
+would awake presently to find herself snug and warm in her own bed in
+the Bree Straat. Of course it must be a nightmare, for look, there, on
+the bare patch of boarding beneath, the hideous struggle repeated
+itself. There lay Hague Simon gnawing at his wife's foot, only his
+fat, white face was gone, and in place of it he wore the head of a
+cat, for she, the watcher, could see its glowing eyes fixed upon her.
+And Meg--look how her lean limbs gripped him round the body. Listen to
+the thudding noise as the great knife fell between his shoulders. And
+now, see--she was growing tall, she had become a giantess, her face
+shot across the gulf of water and swam upwards through the shadows
+till it was within a foot of her. Oh! she must fall, but first she
+would scream for help--surely the dead themselves could hear that cry.
+Better not have uttered it, it might bring Ramiro back; better go to
+join the dead. What did the voice say, Meg's voice, but how changed?
+That she was not to be afraid? That the thudding was the sound of oars
+not of knife thrusts? This would be Ramiro's boat coming to seize her.
+Of him and Adrian she could bear no more; she would throw herself into
+the water and trust to God. One, two, three--then utter darkness.
+
+Elsa became aware that light was shining about her, also that somebody
+was kissing her upon the face and lips. A horrible doubt struck her
+that it might be Adrian, and she opened her eyes ever so little to
+look. No, no, how very strange, it was not Adrian, it was Foy! Well,
+doubtless this must be all part of her vision, and as in dream or out
+of it Foy had a perfect right to kiss her if he chose, she saw no
+reason to interfere. Now she seemed to hear a familiar voice, that of
+Red Martin, asking someone how long it would take them to make Haarlem
+with this wind, to which another voice answered, "About three-quarters
+of an hour."
+
+It was very odd, and why did he say Haarlem and not Leyden? Next the
+second voice, which also seemed familiar, said:
+
+"Look out, Foy, she's coming to herself." Then someone poured wine
+down her throat, whereupon, unable to bear this bewilderment any
+longer, Elsa sat up and opened her eyes wide, to see before her Foy,
+and none other than Foy in the flesh.
+
+She gasped, and began to sink back again with joy and weakness,
+whereon he cast his arms about her and drew her to his breast. Then
+she remembered everything.
+
+"Oh! Foy, Foy," she cried, "you must not kiss me."
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"Because--because I am married."
+
+Of a sudden his happy face became ghastly. "Married!" he stammered.
+"Who to?"
+
+"To--your brother, Adrian."
+
+He stared at her in amazement, then asked slowly:
+
+"Did you run away from Leyden to marry him?"
+
+"How dare you ask such a question?" replied Elsa with a flash of
+spirit.
+
+"Perhaps, then, you would explain?"
+
+"What is there to explain? I thought that you knew. They dragged me
+away, and last night, just before the flood burst, I was gagged and
+married by force."
+
+"Oh! Adrian, my friend," groaned Foy, "wait till I catch you, my
+friend Adrian."
+
+"To be just," explained Elsa, "I don't think Adrian wanted to marry me
+much, but he had to choose between marrying me himself or seeing his
+father Ramiro marry me."
+
+"So he sacrificed himself--the good, kind-hearted man," interrupted
+Foy, grinding his teeth.
+
+"Yes," said Elsa.
+
+"And where is your self-denying--oh! I can't say the word."
+
+"I don't know. I suppose that he and Ramiro escaped in the boat, or
+perhaps he was drowned."
+
+"In which case you are a widow sooner than you could have expected,"
+said Foy more cheerfully, edging himself towards her.
+
+But Elsa moved a little away and Foy saw with a sinking of the heart
+that, however distasteful it might be to her, clearly she attached
+some weight to this marriage.
+
+"I do not know," she answered, "how can I tell? I suppose that we
+shall hear sometime, and then, if he is still alive, I must set to
+work to get free of him. But, till then, Foy," she added, warningly,
+"I suppose that I am his wife in law, although I will never speak to
+him again. Where are we going?"
+
+"To Haarlem. The Spaniards are closing in upon the city, and we dare
+not try to break through their lines. Those are Spanish boats behind
+us. But eat and drink a little, Elsa, then tell us your story."
+
+"One question first, Foy. How did you find me?"
+
+"We heard a woman scream twice, once far away and once near at hand,
+and rowing to the sound, saw someone hanging to the arm of an
+overturned windmill only three or four feet above the water. Of course
+we knew that you had been taken to the mill; that man there told us.
+Do you remember him? But at first we could not find it in the darkness
+and the flood."
+
+Then, after she had swallowed something, Elsa told her story, while
+the three of them clustered round her forward of the sail, and Marsh
+Jan managed the helm. When she had finished it, Martin whispered to
+Foy, and as though by a common impulse all four of them kneeled down
+upon the boards in the bottom of the boat, and returned thanks to the
+Almighty that this maiden, quite unharmed, had been delivered out of
+such manifold and terrible dangers, and this by the hands of her own
+friends and of the man to whom she was affianced. When they had
+finished their service of thanksgiving, which was as simple as it was
+solemn and heartfelt, they rose, and now Elsa did not forbid that Foy
+should hold her hand.
+
+"Say, sweetheart," he asked, "is it true that you think anything of
+this forced marriage?"
+
+"Hear me before you answer," broke in Martha. "It is no marriage at
+all, for none can be wed without the consent of their own will, and
+you gave no such consent."
+
+"It is no marriage," echoed Martin, "and if it be, and I live, then
+the sword shall cut its knot."
+
+"It is no marriage," said Foy, "for although we have not stood
+together before the altar, yet our hearts are wed, so how can you be
+made the wife of another man?"
+
+"Dearest," replied Elsa, when they had all spoken, "I too am sure that
+it is no marriage, yet a priest spoke the marriage words over me, and
+a ring was thrust upon my hand, so, to the law, if there be any law
+left in the Netherlands, I am perhaps in some sort a wife. Therefore,
+before I can become wife to you these facts must be made public, and I
+must appeal to the law to free me, lest in days to come others should
+be troubled."
+
+"And if the law cannot, or will not, Elsa, what then?"
+
+"Then, dear, our consciences being clean, we will be a law to
+ourselves. But first we must wait a while. Are you satisfied now,
+Foy?"
+
+"No," answered Foy sulkily, "for it is monstrous that such devil's
+work should keep us apart even for an hour. Yet in this, as in all, I
+will obey you, dear."
+
+"Marrying and giving in marriage!" broke in Martha in a shrill voice.
+"Talk no more of such things, for there is other work before us. Look
+yonder, girl, what do you see?" and she pointed to the dry land. "The
+hosts of the Amalekites marching in their thousands to slaughter us
+and our brethren, the children of the Lord. Look behind you, what do
+you see? The ships of the tyrant sailing up to encompass the city of
+the children of the Lord. It is the day of death and desolation, the
+day of Armageddon, and ere the sun sets red upon it many a thousand
+must pass through the gates of doom, we, mayhap, among them. Then up
+with the flag of freedom; out with the steel of truth, gird on the
+buckler of righteousness, and snatch the shield of hope. Fight, fight
+for the liberty of the land that bore you, for the memory of Christ,
+the King who died for you, for the faith to which you are born; fight,
+fight, and when the fray is done, then, and not before, think of peace
+and love.
+
+"Nay, children, look not so fearful, for I, the mad mere-wife, tell
+you, by the Grace of God, that you have naught to fear. Who preserved
+you in the torture den, Foy van Goorl? What hand was it that held your
+life and honour safe when you sojourned among devils in the Red Mill
+yonder and kept your head above the waters of the flood, Elsa Brant?
+You know well, and I, Martha, tell you that this same hand shall hold
+you safe until the end. Yes, I know it, I know it; thousands shall
+fall upon your right hand and tens of thousands upon your left, but
+you shall live through the hunger; the arrows of pestilence shall pass
+you by, the sword of the wicked shall not harm you. For me it is
+otherwise, at length my doom draws near and I am well content; but for
+you twain, Foy and Elsa, I foretell many years of earthly joy."
+
+Thus spoke Martha, and it seemed to those who watched her that her
+wild, disfigured face shone with a light of inspiration, nor did they
+who knew her story, and still believed that the spirit of prophecy
+could open the eyes of chosen seers, deem it strange that vision of
+the things to be should visit her. At the least they took comfort from
+her words, and for a while were no more afraid.
+
+Yet they had much to fear. By a fateful accident they had been
+delivered from great dangers only to fall into dangers greater still,
+for as it chanced, on this tenth of December, 1572, they sailed
+straight into the grasp of the thousands of the Spanish armies which
+had been drawn like a net round the doomed city of Haarlem. There was
+no escape for them; nothing that had not wings could pass those lines
+of ships and soldiers. Their only refuge was the city, and in that
+city they must bide till the struggle, one of the most fearful of all
+that hideous war, was ended. But at least they had this comfort, they
+would face the foe together, and with them were two who loved them,
+Martha, the "Spanish Scourge," and Red Martin, the free Frisian, the
+mighty man of war whom God had appointed to them as a shield of
+defence.
+
+So they smiled on each other, these two lovers of long ago, and sailed
+bravely on to the closing gates of Haarlem.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+                              ATONEMENT
+
+Seven months had gone by, seven of the most dreadful months ever lived
+through by human beings. For all this space of time, through the
+frosts and snows and fogs of winter, through the icy winds of spring,
+and now deep into the heart of summer, the city of Haarlem had been
+closely beleaguered by an army of thirty thousand Spaniards, most of
+them veteran troops under the command of Don Frederic, the son of
+Alva, and other generals. Against this disciplined host were opposed
+the little garrison of four thousand Hollanders and Germans aided by a
+few Scotch and English soldiers, together with a population of about
+twenty thousand old men, women and children. From day to day, from
+week to week, from month to month, the struggle was waged between
+these unequal forces, marked on either side by the most heroic efforts
+and by cruelties that would strike our age as monstrous. For in those
+times the captive prisoner of war could expect no mercy; indeed, he
+was fortunate if he was not hung from a gibbet by the leg to die
+slowly within eyeshot of his friends.
+
+There were battles without number, men perished in hecatombs; among
+the besieging armies alone over twelve thousand lost their lives, so
+that the neighbourhood of Haarlem became one vast graveyard, and the
+fish in the lake were poisoned by the dead. Assault, sortie,
+ambuscade, artifice of war; combats to the death upon the ice between
+skate-shod soldiers; desperate sea fights, attempts to storm; the
+explosion of mines and counter-mines that brought death to hundreds--
+all these became the familiar incidents of daily life.
+
+Then there were other horrors; cold from insufficient fuel,
+pestilences of various sorts such as always attend a siege, and, worse
+of all for the beleaguered, hunger. Week by week as the summer aged,
+the food grew less and less, till at length there was nothing. The
+weeds that grew in the street, the refuse of tanneries, the last ounce
+of offal, the mice and the cats, all had been devoured. On the lofty
+steeple of St. Bavon for days and days had floated a black flag to
+tell the Prince of Orange in Leyden that below it was despair as
+black. The last attempt at succour had been made. Batenburg had been
+defeated and slain, together with the Seigneurs of Clotingen and
+Carloo, and five or six hundred men. Now there was no more hope.
+
+Desperate expedients were suggested: That the women, children, aged
+and sick should be left in the city, while the able-bodied men cut a
+way through the battalions of their besiegers. On these non-combatants
+it was hoped that the Spaniard would have mercy--as though the
+Spaniard could have mercy, he who afterwards dragged the wounded and
+the ailing to the door of the hospital and there slaughtered them in
+cold blood; aye, and here and elsewhere, did other things too dreadful
+to write down. Says the old chronicler, "But this being understood by
+the women, they assembled all together, making the most pitiful cries
+and lamentations that could be heard, the which would have moved a
+heart of flint, so as it was not possible to abandon them."
+
+Next another plan was formed: that all the females and helpless should
+be set in the centre of a square of the fighting men, to march out and
+give battle to the foe till everyone was slain. Then the Spaniards
+hearing this and growing afraid of what these desperate men might do,
+fell back on guile. If they would surrender, the citizens of Haarlem
+were told, and pay two hundred and forty thousand florins, no
+punishment should be inflicted. So, having neither food nor hope, they
+listened to the voice of the tempter and surrendered, they who had
+fought until their garrison of four thousand was reduced to eighteen
+hundred men.
+
+
+
+It was noon and past on the fatal twelfth of July. The gates were
+open, the Spaniards, those who were left alive of them, Don Frederic
+at their head, with drums beating, banners flying, and swords
+sharpened for murder, were marching into the city of Haarlem. In a
+deep niche between two great brick piers of the cathedral were
+gathered four people whom we know. War and famine had left them all
+alive, yet they had borne their share of both. In every enterprise,
+however desperate, Foy and Martin had marched, or stood, or watched
+side by side, and well did the Spaniards know the weight of the great
+sword Silence and the red-headed giant who wielded it. Mother Martha,
+too, had not been idle. Throughout the siege she had served as the
+lieutenant of the widow Hasselaer, who with a band of three hundred
+women fought day and night alongside of their husbands and brothers.
+Even Elsa, who although she was too delicate and by nature timid and
+unfitted to go out to battle, had done her part, for she laboured at
+the digging of mines and the building of walls till her soft hands
+were rough and scarred.
+
+How changed they were. Foy, whose face had been so youthful, looked
+now like a man on the wrong side of middle age. The huge Martin might
+have been a great skeleton on which hung clothes, or rather rags and a
+rent bull's hide, with his blue eyes shining in deep pits beneath the
+massive, projecting skull. Elsa too had become quite small, like a
+child. Her sweet face was no longer pretty, only pitiful, and all the
+roundness of her figure had vanished--she might have been an emaciated
+boy. Of the four of them Martha the Mare, who was dressed like a man,
+showed the least change. Indeed, except that now her hair was snowy,
+that her features were rather more horse-like, that the yellow,
+lipless teeth projected even further, and the thin nervous hands had
+become almost like those of an Egyptian mummy, she was much as she
+always had been.
+
+Martin leaned upon the great sword and groaned. "Curses on them, the
+cowards," he muttered; "why did they not let us go out and die
+fighting? Fools, mad fools, who would trust to the mercy of the
+Spaniard."
+
+"Oh! Foy," said Elsa, throwing her thin arms about his neck, "you will
+not let them take me, will you? If it comes to the worst, you will
+kill me, won't you? Otherwise I must kill myself, and Foy, I am a
+coward, I am afraid--to do that."
+
+"I suppose so," he answered in a harsh, unnatural voice, "but oh! God,
+if Thou art, have pity upon her. Oh! God have pity."
+
+"Blaspheme not, doubt not!" broke in the shrill voice of Martha. "Has
+it not been as I told you last winter in the boat? Have you not been
+protected, and shall you not be protected to the end? Only blaspheme
+not, doubt not!"
+
+The niche in which they were standing was out of sight of the great
+square and those who thronged it, but as Martha spoke a band of
+victorious Spaniards, seven or eight of them, came round the corner
+and caught sight of the party in the nook.
+
+"There's a girl," said the sergeant in command of them, "who isn't bad
+looking. Pull her out, men."
+
+Some fellows stepped forward to do his bidding. Now Foy went mad. He
+did not kill Elsa as she had prayed him, he flew straight at the
+throat of the brute who had spoken, and next instant his sword was
+standing out a foot behind his neck. Then after him, with a kind of
+low cry, came Martin, plying the great blade Silence, and Martha after
+him with her long knife. It was all over in a minute, but before it
+was done there were five men down, three dead and two sore wounded.
+
+"A tithe and an offering!" muttered Martha as, bounding forward, she
+bent over the wounded men, and their comrades fled round the corner of
+the cathedral.
+
+There was a minute's pause. The bright summer sunlight shone upon the
+faces and armour of the dead Spaniards, upon the naked sword of Foy,
+who stood over Elsa crouched to the ground in a corner of the niche,
+her face hidden in her hands, upon the terrible blue eyes of Martin
+alight with a dreadful fire of rage. Then there came the sound of
+marching men, and a company of Spaniards appeared before them, and at
+their head--Ramiro and Adrian called van Goorl.
+
+"There they are, captain," said a soldier, one of those who had fled;
+"shall we shoot them?"
+
+Ramiro looked, carelessly enough at first, then again a long,
+scrutinising look. So he had caught them at last! Months ago he had
+learned that Elsa had been rescued from the Red Mill by Foy and
+Martin, and now, after much seeking, the birds were in his net.
+
+"No," he said, "I think not. Such desperate characters must be
+reserved for separate trial."
+
+"Where can they be kept, captain?" asked the sergeant sulkily.
+
+"I observed, friend, that the house which my son and I have taken as
+our quarters has excellent cellars; they can be imprisoned there for
+the present--that is, except the young lady, whom the Senor Adrian
+will look after. As it chances, she is his wife."
+
+At this the soldiers laughed openly.
+
+"I repeat--his wife, for whom he has been searching these many
+months," said Ramiro, "and, therefore, to be respected. Do you
+understand, men?"
+
+Apparently they did understand, at least no one made any answer. Their
+captain, as they had found, was not a man who loved argument.
+
+"Now, then, you fellows," went on Ramiro, "give up your arms."
+
+Martin thought a while. Evidently he was wondering whether it would
+not be best to rush at them and die fighting. At that moment, as he
+said afterwards indeed, the old saying came into his mind, "A game is
+not lost until it is won," and remembering that dead men can never
+have another chance of winning games, he gave up the sword.
+
+"Hand that to me," said Ramiro. "It is a curious weapon to which I
+have taken a fancy."
+
+So sword Silence was handed to him, and he slung it over his shoulder.
+Foy looked at the kneeling Elsa, and he looked at his sword. Then an
+idea struck him, and he looked at the face of Adrian, his brother,
+whom he had last seen when the said Adrian ran to warn him and Martin
+at the factory, for though he knew that he was fighting with his
+father among the Spaniards, during the siege they had never met. Even
+then, in that dire extremity, with a sudden flash of thought he
+wondered how it happened that Adrian, being the villain that he was,
+had taken the trouble to come and warn them yonder in Leyden, thereby
+giving them time to make a very good defence in the shot tower.
+
+Foy looked up at his brother. Adrian was dressed in the uniform of a
+Spanish officer, with a breast-plate over his quilted doublet, and a
+steel cap, from the front of which rose a frayed and weather-worn
+plume of feathers. The face had changed; there was none of the old
+pomposity about those handsome features; it looked worn and cowed,
+like that of an animal which has been trained to do tricks by hunger
+and the use of the whip. Yet, through all the shame and degradation,
+Foy seemed to catch the glint of some kind of light, a light of good
+desire shining behind that piteous mask, as the sun sometimes shines
+through a sullen cloud. Could it be that Adrian was not quite so bad
+after all? That he was, in fact, the Adrian that he, Foy, had always
+believed him to be, vain, silly, passionate, exaggerated, born to be a
+tool and think himself the master, but beneath everything, well-
+meaning? Who could say? At the worst, too, was it not better that Elsa
+should become the wife of Adrian than that her life should cease there
+and then, and by her lover's hand?
+
+These things passed through his brain as the lightning passes through
+the sky. In an instant his mind was made up and Foy flung down his
+sword at the feet of a soldier. As he did so his eyes met the eyes of
+Adrian, and to his imagination they seemed to be full of thanks and
+promise.
+
+They took them all; with gibes and blows the soldiers haled them away
+through the tumult and the agony of the fallen town and its doomed
+defenders. Out of the rich sunlight they led them into a house that
+still stood not greatly harmed by the cannon-shot, but a little way
+from the shattered Ravelin and the gate which had been the scene of
+such fearful conflict--a house that was the home of one of the
+wealthiest merchants in Haarlem. Here Foy and Elsa were parted. She
+struggled to his arms, whence they tore her and dragged her away up
+the stairs, but Martin, Martha and Foy were thrust into a dark cellar,
+locked in and left.
+
+A while later the door of the cellar was unbarred and some hand, they
+could not see whose, passed through it water and food, good food such
+as they had not tasted for months; meat and bread and dried herrings,
+more than they could eat of them.
+
+"Perhaps it is poisoned," said Foy, smelling at it hungrily.
+
+"What need to take the trouble to poison us?" answered Martin. "Let us
+eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
+
+So like starving animals they devoured the food with thankfulness and
+then they slept, yes, in the midst of all their misery and doubts they
+slept.
+
+It seemed but a few minutes later--in fact it was eight hours--when
+the door opened again and there entered Adrian carrying a lantern in
+his hand.
+
+"Foy, Martin," he said, "get up and follow me if you would save your
+lives."
+
+Instantly they were wide awake.
+
+"Follow you--/you?/" stammered Foy in a choked voice.
+
+"Yes," Adrian answered quietly. "Of course you may not escape, but if
+you stop here what chance have you? Ramiro, my father, will be back
+presently and then----"
+
+"It is madness to trust ourselves to you," interrupted Martin, and
+Adrian seemed to wince at the contempt in his voice.
+
+"I knew that you would think that," he answered humbly, "but what else
+is to be done? I can pass you out of the city, I have made a boat
+ready for you to escape in, all at the risk of my own life; what more
+can I do? Why do you hesitate?"
+
+"Because we do not believe you," said Foy; "besides, there is Elsa. I
+will not go without Elsa."
+
+"I have thought of that," answered Adrian. "Elsa is here. Come, Elsa,
+show yourself."
+
+Then from the stairs Elsa crept into the cellar, a new Elsa, for she,
+too, had been fed, and in her eyes there shone a light of hope. A wild
+jealousy filled Foy's heart. Why did she look thus? But she, she ran
+to him, she flung her arms about his neck and kissed him, and Adrian
+did nothing, he only turned his head aside.
+
+"Foy," she gasped, "he is honest after all; he has only been
+unfortunate. Come quickly, there is a chance for us; come before that
+devil returns. Now he is at a council of the officers settling with
+Don Frederic who are to be killed, but soon he will be back, and
+then----"
+
+So they hesitated no more, but went.
+
+They passed out of the house, none stopping them--the guard had gone
+to the sack. At the gate by the ruined Ravelin there stood a sentry,
+but the man was careless, or drunken, or bribed, who knows? At least,
+Adrian gave him a pass-word, and, nodding his head, he let them by. A
+few minutes later they were at the Mere side, and there among some
+reeds lay the boat.
+
+"Enter and be gone," said Adrian.
+
+They scrambled into the boat and took the oars, while Martha began to
+push off.
+
+"Adrian," said Elsa, "what is to become of you?"
+
+"Why do you trouble about that?" he asked with a bitter laugh. "I go
+back to my death, my blood is the price of your freedom. Well, I owe
+it to you."
+
+"Oh! no," she cried, "come with us."
+
+"Yes," echoed Foy, although again that bitter pang of jealousy gripped
+his heart, "come with us--brother."
+
+"Do you really mean it?" Adrian asked, hesitating. "Think, I might
+betray you."
+
+"If so, young man, why did you not do it before?" growled Martin, and
+stretching out his great, bony arm he gripped him by the collar and
+dragged him into the boat.
+
+Then they rowed away.
+
+"Where are we going?" asked Martin.
+
+"To Leyden, I suppose," said Foy, "if we can get there, which, without
+a sail or weapons, seems unlikely."
+
+"I have put some arms in the boat," interrupted Adrian, "the best I
+could get," and from a locker he drew out a common heavy axe, a couple
+of Spanish swords, a knife, a smaller axe, a cross-bow and some bolts.
+
+"Not so bad," said Martin, rowing with his left hand as he handled the
+big axe with his right, "but I wish that I had my sword Silence, which
+that accursed Ramiro took from me and hung about his neck. I wonder
+why he troubled himself with the thing? It is too long for a man of
+his inches."
+
+"I don't know," said Adrian, "but when last I saw him he was working
+at its hilt with a chisel, which seemed strange. He always wanted that
+sword. During the siege he offered a large reward to any soldier who
+could kill you and bring it to him."
+
+"Working at the hilt with a chisel?" gasped Martin. "By Heaven, I had
+forgotten! The map, the map! Some wicked villain must have told him
+that the map of the treasure was there--that is why he wanted the
+sword."
+
+"Who could have told him?" asked Foy. "It was only known to you and me
+and Martha, and we are not of the sort to tell. What? Give away the
+secret of Hendrik Brant's treasure which he could die for and we were
+sworn to keep, to save our miserable lives? Shame upon the thought!"
+
+Martha heard, and looked at Elsa, a questioning look beneath which the
+poor girl turned a fiery red, though by good fortune in that light
+none could see her blushes. Still, she must speak lest the suspicion
+should lie on others.
+
+"I ought to have told you before," she said in a low voice, "but I
+forgot--I mean that I have always been so dreadfully ashamed. It was I
+who betrayed the secret of the sword Silence."
+
+"You? How did you know it?" asked Foy.
+
+"Mother Martha told me on the night of the church burning after you
+escaped from Leyden."
+
+Martin grunted. "One woman to trust another, and at her age too; what
+a fool!"
+
+"Fool yourself, you thick-brained Frisian," broke in Martha angrily,
+"where did you learn to teach your betters wisdom? I told the Jufvrouw
+because I knew that we might all of us be swept away, and I thought it
+well that then she should know where to look for a key to the
+treasure."
+
+"A woman's kind of reason," answered Martin imperturbably, "and a bad
+one at that, for if we had been finished off she must have found it
+difficult to get hold of the sword. But all this is done with. The
+point is, why did the Jufvrouw tell Ramiro?"
+
+"Because I am a coward," answered Elsa with a sob. "You know, Foy, I
+always was a coward, and I never shall be anything else. I told him to
+save myself."
+
+"From what?"
+
+"From being married."
+
+Adrian winced palpably, and Foy, noting it, could not resist pushing
+the point.
+
+"From being married? But I understand--doubtless Adrian will explain
+the thing," he added grimly--"that you were forced through some
+ceremony."
+
+"Yes," answered Elsa feebly, "I--I--was. I tried to buy myself off by
+telling Ramiro the secret, which will show you all how mad I was with
+terror at the thought of this hateful marriage"--here a groan burst
+from the lips of Adrian, and something like a chuckle from those of
+Red Martin. "Oh! I am so sorry," went on Elsa in confusion; "I am sure
+that I did not wish to hurt Adrian's feelings, especially after he has
+been so good to us."
+
+"Never mind Adrian's feelings and his goodness, but go on with the
+story," interrupted Foy.
+
+"There isn't much more to tell. Ramiro swore before God that if I gave
+him the clue he would let me go, and then--then, well, then, after I
+had fallen into the pit and disgraced myself, he said that it was not
+sufficient, and that the marriage must take place."
+
+At this point Foy and Martin laughed outright. Yes, even there they
+laughed.
+
+"Why, you silly child," said Foy, "what else did you expect him to
+say?"
+
+"Oh! Martin, do you forgive me?" said Elsa. "Immediately after I had
+done it I knew how shameful it was, and that he would try to hunt you
+down, and that is why I have been afraid to tell you ever since. But I
+pray you believe me; I only spoke because, between shame and fear, I
+did not know right from wrong. Do you forgive me?"
+
+"Lady," answered the Frisian, smiling in his slow fashion, "if I had
+been there unknown to Ramiro, and you had offered him this head of
+mine on a dish as a bribe, not only would I have forgiven you but I
+would have said that you did right. You are a maid, and you had to
+protect yourself from a very dreadful thing; therefore who can blame
+you?"
+
+"I can," said Martha. "Ramiro might have torn me to pieces with red-
+hot pincers before I told him."
+
+"Yes," said Martin, who felt that he had a debt to pay, "Ramiro might,
+but I doubt whether he would have gone to that trouble to persuade you
+to take a husband. No, don't be angry. 'Frisian thick of head, Frisian
+free of speech,' goes the saying."
+
+Not being able to think of any appropriate rejoinder, Martha turned
+again upon Elsa.
+
+"Your father died for that treasure," she said, "and Dirk van Goorl
+died for it, and your lover and his serving-man there went to the
+torture-den for it, and I--well, I have done a thing or two. But you,
+girl, why, at the first pinch, you betray the secret. But, as Martin
+says, I was fool enough to tell you."
+
+"Oh! you are hard," said Elsa, beginning to weep under Martha's bitter
+reproaches; "but you forget that at least none of you were asked to
+marry--oh! I mustn't say that. I mean to become the wife of one man;"
+then her eyes fell upon Foy and an inspiration seized her; here, at
+least, was one of whom she could make a friend--"when you happen to be
+very much in love with another."
+
+"Of course not," said Foy, "there is no need for you to explain."
+
+"I think there is a great deal to explain," went on Martha, "for you
+cannot fool me with pretty words. But now, hark you, Foy van Goorl,
+what is to be done? We have striven hard to save that treasure, all of
+us; is it to be lost at the last?"
+
+"Aye," echoed Martin, growing very serious, "is it to be lost at the
+last? Remember what the worshipful Hendrik Brant said to us yonder on
+that night at The Hague--that he believed that in a day to come
+thousands and tens of thousands of our people would bless the gold he
+entrusted to us."
+
+"I remember it all," answered Foy, "and other things too; his will,
+for instance," and he thought of his father and of those hours which
+Martin and he had spent in the Gevangenhuis. Then he looked up at
+Martha and said briefly: "Mother, though they call you mad, you are
+the wisest among us; what is your counsel?"
+
+She pondered awhile and answered: "This is certain, that so soon as
+Ramiro finds that we have escaped, having the key to it, he will take
+boat and sail to the place where the barrels are buried, knowing well
+that otherwise we shall be off with them. Yes, I tell you that by
+dawn, or within an hour of it, he will be there," and she stopped.
+
+"You mean," said Foy, "that we ought to be there before him."
+
+Martha nodded and answered, "If we can, but I think that at best there
+must be a fight for it."
+
+"Yes," said Martin, "a fight. Well, I should like another fight with
+Ramiro. That fork-tongued adder has got my sword, and I want to get it
+back again."
+
+"Oh!" broke in Elsa, "is there to be more fighting? I hoped that at
+last we were safe, and going straight to Leyden, where the Prince is.
+I hate this bloodshed; I tell you, Foy, it frightens me to death; I
+believe that I shall die of it."
+
+"You hear what she says?" asked Foy.
+
+"We hear," answered Martha. "Take no heed of her, the child has
+suffered much, she is weak and squeamish. Now I, although I believe
+that my death lies before me, I say, go on and fear not."
+
+"But I do take heed," said Foy. "Not for all the treasures in the
+world shall Elsa be put in danger again if she does not wish it; she
+shall decide, and she alone."
+
+"How good you are to me," she murmured, then she mused a moment.
+"Foy," she said, "will you promise something to me?"
+
+"After your experience of Ramiro's oaths I wonder that you ask," he
+answered, trying to be cheerful.
+
+"Will you promise," she went on, taking no note, "that if I say yes
+and we go, not to Leyden, but to seek the treasure, and live through
+it, that you will take me away from this land of bloodshed and murder
+and torments, to some country where folk may live at peace, and see no
+one killed, except it be now and again an evil-doer? It is much to
+ask, but oh! Foy, will you promise?"
+
+"Yes, I promise," said Foy, for he, too, was weary of this daily
+terror. Who would not have been that had passed through the siege of
+Haarlem?
+
+Foy was steering, but now Martha slipped aft and took the tiller from
+his hand. For a moment she studied the stars that grew clearer in the
+light of the sinking moon, then shifted the helm a point or two to
+port and sat still.
+
+"I am hungry again," said Martin presently; "I feel as though I could
+eat for a week without stopping."
+
+Adrian looked up from over his oar, at which he was labouring
+dejectedly, and said:
+
+"There are food and wine in the locker. I hid them there. Perhaps Elsa
+could serve them to those who wish to eat."
+
+So Elsa, who was doing nothing, found the drink and victuals, and
+handed them round to the rowers, who ate and drank as best they might
+with a thankful heart, but without ceasing from their task. To men who
+have starved for months the taste of wholesome provender and sound
+wine is a delight that cannot be written in words.
+
+When at length they had filled themselves, Adrian spoke.
+
+"If it is your good will, brother," he said, addressing Foy, "as we do
+not know what lies in front, nor how long any of us have to live, I,
+who am an outcast and a scorn among you, wish to tell you a story."
+
+"Speak on," said Foy.
+
+So Adrian began from the beginning, and told them all his tale. He
+told them how at the first he had been led astray by superstitions,
+vanity, and love; how his foolish confidences had been written down by
+spies; how he had been startled and terrified into signing them with
+results of which they knew. Then he told them how he was hunted like a
+mad dog through the streets of Leyden after his mother had turned him
+from her door; how he took refuge in the den of Hague Simon, and there
+had fought with Ramiro and been conquered by the man's address and his
+own horror of shedding a father's blood. He told them of his admission
+into the Roman faith, of the dreadful scene in the church when Martha
+had denounced him, of their flight to the Red Mill. He told them of
+the kidnapping of Elsa, and how he had been quite innocent of it
+although he loved her dearly; of how at last he was driven into
+marrying her, meaning her no harm, to save her from the grip of
+Ramiro, and knowing at heart that it was no marriage; of how, when the
+flood burst upon them, he had been hustled from the mill where, since
+she could no longer be of service to him and might work him injury, as
+he discovered afterwards, Ramiro had left Elsa to her fate. Lastly, in
+a broken voice, he told them of his life during the long siege which,
+so he said, was as the life of a damned spirit, and of how, when death
+thinned the ranks of the Spaniards, he had been made an officer among
+them, and by the special malice of Ramiro forced to conduct the
+executions and murders of such Hollanders as they took.
+
+Then at last his chance had come. Ramiro, thinking that now he could
+never turn against him, had given him Elsa, and left him with her
+while he went about his duties and to secure a share of the plunder,
+meaning to deal with his prisoners on the morrow. So he, Adrian, a man
+in authority, had provided the boat and freed them. That was all he
+had to say, except to renounce any claim upon her who was called his
+wife, and to beg their forgiveness.
+
+Foy listened to the end. Then, dropping his oar for a moment, he put
+his arm about Adrian's waist and hugged him, saying in his old cheery
+voice:
+
+"I was right after all. You know, Adrian, I always stood up for you,
+notwithstanding your temper and queer ways. No, I never would believe
+that you were a villain, but neither could I ever have believed that
+you were quite such an ass."
+
+To this outspoken estimate of his character, so fallen and crushed was
+he, his brother had not the spirit to reply. He could merely tug at
+his oar and groan, while the tears of shame and repentance ran down
+his pale and handsome face.
+
+"Never mind, old fellow," said Foy consolingly. "It all went wrong,
+thanks to you, and thanks to you I believe that it will all come right
+again. So we will cry quits and forget the rest."
+
+Poor Adrian glanced up at Foy and at Elsa sitting on the thwart of the
+boat by his side.
+
+"Yes, brother," he answered, "for you and Elsa it may come right, but
+not for me in this world, for I--I have sold myself to the devil and--
+got no pay."
+
+After that for a while no one spoke; all felt that the situation was
+too tragic for speech; even the follies, and indeed the wickedness, of
+Adrian were covered up, were blotted out in the tragedy of his utter
+failure, yes, and redeemed by the depth of his atonement.
+
+
+
+The grey light of the summer morning began to grow on the surface of
+the great inland sea. Far behind them they beheld the sun's rays
+breaking upon the gilt crown that is set above the tower of St.
+Bavon's Church, soaring over the lost city of Haarlem and the doomed
+patriots who lay there presently to meet their death at the murderer's
+sword. They looked and shuddered. Had it not been for Adrian they
+would be prisoners now, and what that meant they knew. If they had
+been in any doubt, what they saw around must have enlightened them,
+for here and there upon the misty surface of the lake, or stranded in
+its shallows, were the half-burnt out hulls of ships, the remains of
+the conquered fleet of William the Silent; a poor record of the last
+desperate effort to relieve the starving city. Now and again, too,
+something limp and soft would cumber their oars, the corpse of a
+drowned or slaughtered man still clad perchance in its armour.
+
+At length they passed out of these dismal remains of lost men, and
+Elsa could look about her without shuddering. Now they were in fleet
+water, and in among the islands whereon the lush summer growth of
+weeds and the beautiful marsh flowers grew as greenly and bloomed as
+bright as though no Spaniard had trampled their roots under foot
+during all those winter months of siege and death. These islets,
+scores and hundreds of them, appeared on every side, but between them
+all Martha steered an unerring path. As the sun rose she stood up in
+the boat, and shading her eyes with her hand to shut out its level
+rays, looked before her.
+
+"There is the place," she said, pointing to a little bulrush-clad
+isle, from which a kind of natural causeway, not more than six feet
+wide, projected like a tongue among muddy shallows peopled by coots
+and water-hens with their red-beaked young.
+
+Martin rose too. Then he looked back behind him and said;
+
+"I see the cap of a sail upon the skyline. It is Ramiro."
+
+"Without doubt," answered Martha calmly. "Well, we have the half of an
+hour to work in. Pull, bow oar, pull, we will go round the island and
+beach her in the mud on the further side. They will be less likely to
+see us there, and I know a place whence we can push off in a hurry."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIX
+
+                       ADRIAN COMES HOME AGAIN
+
+They landed on the island, wading to it through the mud, which at this
+spot had a gravelly bottom; all of them except Elsa, who remained on
+the boat to keep watch. Following otter-paths through the thick rushes
+they came to the centre of the islet, some thirty yards away. Here, at
+a spot which Martha ascertained by a few hurried pacings, grew a dense
+tuft of reeds. In the midst of these reeds was a duck's nest with the
+young just hatching out, off which the old bird flew with terrified
+quackings.
+
+Beneath this nest lay the treasure, if it were still there.
+
+"At any rate the place has not been disturbed lately," said Foy. Then,
+even in his frantic haste, lifting the little fledglings--for he loved
+all things that had life, and did not wish to see them hurt--he
+deposited them where they might be found again by the mother.
+
+"Nothing to dig with," muttered Martin, "not even a stone." Thereon
+Martha pushed her way to a willow bush that grew near, and with the
+smaller of the two axes, which she held in her hand, cut down the
+thickest of its stems and ran back with them. By the help of these
+sharpened stakes, and with their axes, they began to dig furiously,
+till at length the point of Foy's implement struck upon the head of a
+barrel.
+
+"The stuff is still here, keep to it, friends," he said, and they
+worked on with a will till three of the five barrels were almost free
+from the mud.
+
+"Best make sure of these," said Martin. "Help me, master," and between
+them one by one they rolled them to the water's edge, and with great
+efforts, Elsa aiding them, lifted them into the boat. As they
+approached with the third cask they found her staring white-faced over
+the tops of the feathery reeds.
+
+"What is it, sweet?" asked Foy.
+
+"The sail, the following sail," she answered.
+
+They rested the barrel of gold upon the gunwale and looked back across
+the little island. Yes, there it came, sure enough, a tall, white sail
+not eight hundred yards away and bearing down straight upon the place.
+Martin rolled the barrel into position.
+
+"I hoped that they would not find it," he said, "but Martha draws maps
+well, too well. Once, before she married, she painted pictures, and
+that is why."
+
+"What is to be done?" asked Elsa.
+
+"I don't know," he answered, and as he spoke Martha ran up, for she
+also had seen the boat. "You see," he went on, "if we try to escape
+they will catch us, for oars can't race a sail."
+
+"Oh!" said Elsa, "must we be taken after all?"
+
+"I hope not, girl," said Martha, "but it is as God wills. Listen,
+Martin," and she whispered in his ear.
+
+"Good," he said, "if it can be done, but you must watch your chance.
+Come, now, there is no time to lose. And you, lady, come also, for you
+can help to roll the last two barrels."
+
+Then they ran back to the hole, whence Foy and Adrian, with great
+toil, had just dragged the last of the tubs. For they, too, had seen
+the sail, and knew that time was short.
+
+"Heer, Adrian," said Martin, "you have the cross-bow and the bolts,
+and you used to be the best shot of all three of us; will you help me
+to hold the causeway?"
+
+Now Adrian knew that Martin said this, not because he was a good shot
+with the cross-bow, but because he did not trust him, and wished to
+have him close to his hand, but he answered:
+
+"With all my heart, as well as I am able."
+
+"Very good," said Martin. "Now let the rest of you get those two casks
+into the boat, leaving the Jufvrouw hidden in the reeds to watch by
+it, while you, Foy and Martha, come back to help us. Lady, if they
+sail round the island, call and let us know."
+
+So Martin and Adrian went down to the end of the little gravelly
+tongue and crouched among the tall meadow-sweet and grasses, while the
+others, working furiously, rolled the two barrels to the water-edge
+and shipped them, throwing rushes over them that they might not catch
+the eye of the Spaniards.
+
+The sailing boat drew on. In the stern-sheets of it sat Ramiro, an
+open paper, which he was studying, upon his knee, and still slung
+about his body the great sword Silence.
+
+"Before I am half an hour older," reflected Martin, for even now he
+did not like to trust his thoughts to Adrian, "either I will have that
+sword back again, or I shall be a dead man. But the odds are great,
+eleven of them, all tough fellows, and we but three and two women."
+
+Just then Ramiro's voice reached them across the stillness of the
+water.
+
+"Down with the sail," he cried cheerily, "for without a doubt that is
+the place--there are the six islets in a line, there in front the
+other island shaped like a herring, and there the little promontory
+marked 'landing place.' How well this artist draws to be sure!"
+
+The rest of his remarks were lost in the creaking of the blocks as the
+sail came down.
+
+"Shallow water ahead, Senor," said a man in the bows sounding with a
+boat hook.
+
+"Good," answered Ramiro, throwing out the little anchor, "we will wade
+ashore."
+
+As he spoke the Spanish soldier with the boat-hook suddenly pitched
+head first into the water, a quarrel from Adrian's crossbow through
+his heart.
+
+"Ah!" said Ramiro, "so they are here before us. Well, there can't be
+many of them. Now then, prepare to land."
+
+Another quarrel whistled through the air and stuck in the mast, doing
+no hurt. After this no more bolts came, for in his eagerness Adrian
+had broken the mechanism of the bow by over-winding it, so that it
+became useless. They leaped into the water, Ramiro with them, and
+charged for the land, when of a sudden, almost at the tip of the
+little promontory, from among the reeds rose the gigantic shape of Red
+Martin, clad in his tattered jerkin and bearing in his hand a heavy
+axe, while behind him appeared Foy and Adrian.
+
+"Why, by the Saints!" cried Ramiro, "there's my weather-cock son
+again, fighting against us this time. Well, Weather-cock, this is your
+last veer," then he began to wade towards the promontory. "Charge," he
+cried, but not a man would advance within reach of that axe. They
+stood here and there in the water looking at it doubtfully, for
+although they were brave enough, there was none of them but knew of
+the strength and deeds of the red Frisian giant, and half-starved as
+he was, feared to meet him face to face. Moreover, he had a position
+of advantage, of that there could be no doubt.
+
+"Can I help you to land, friends?" said Martin, mocking them. "No, it
+is no use looking right or left, the mud there is very deep."
+
+"An arquebus, shoot him with an arquebus!" shouted the men in front;
+but there was no such weapon in the boat, for the Spaniards, who had
+left in a hurry, and without expecting to meet Red Martin, had nothing
+but their swords and knives.
+
+Ramiro considered a moment, for he saw that to attempt to storm this
+little landing-place would cost many lives, even if it were possible.
+Then he gave an order, "Back aboard." The men obeyed with alacrity.
+"Out oars and up anchor!" he cried.
+
+"He is clever," said Foy; "he knows that our boat must be somewhere,
+and he is going to seek for it."
+
+Martin nodded, and for the first time looked afraid. Then, as soon as
+Ramiro had begun to row round the islet, leaving Martha to watch that
+he did not return and rush the landing-stage, they crossed through the
+reeds to the other side and climbed into their boat. Scarcely were
+they there, when Ramiro and his men appeared, and a shout announced
+that they were discovered.
+
+On crept the Spaniards as near as they dared, that is to within a
+dozen fathoms of them, and anchored, for they were afraid to run their
+own heavy sailing cutter upon the mud lest they might be unable to get
+her off again. Also, for evident reasons, being without firearms and
+knowing the character of the defenders, they feared to make a direct
+attack. The position was curious and threatened to be prolonged. At
+last Ramiro rose and addressed them across the water.
+
+"Gentlemen and lady of the enemy," he said, "for I think that I see my
+little captive of the Red Mill among you, let us take counsel
+together. We have both of us made this expedition for a purpose, have
+we not--namely, to secure certain filthy lucre which, after all, would
+be of slight value to dead men? Now, as you, or some of you, know, I
+am a man opposed to violence; I wish to hurry the end of none, nor
+even to inflict suffering, if it can be avoided. But there is money in
+the question, to secure which I have already gone through a great deal
+of inconvenience and anxiety, and, to be brief, that money I must
+have, while you, on the other hand are doubtless anxious to escape
+hence with your lives. So I make you an offer. Let one of our party
+come under safe conduct on board your boat and search it, just to see
+if anything lies beneath those rushes for instance. Then, if it is
+found empty, we will withdraw to a distance and let you go, or the
+same if full, that is, upon its contents being unladen into the mud."
+
+"Are those all your terms?" asked Foy.
+
+"Not quite all, worthy Heer van Goorl. Among you I observe a young
+gentleman whom doubtless you have managed to carry off against his
+will, to wit, my beloved son, Adrian. In his own interests, for he
+will scarcely be a welcome guest in Leyden, I ask that, before you
+depart, you should place this noble cavalier ashore in a position
+where we can see him. Now, what is your answer?"
+
+"That you may go back to hell to look for it," replied Martin rudely,
+while Foy added:
+
+"What other answer do you expect from folk who have escaped out of
+your clutches in Haarlem?"
+
+As he said the words, at a nod from Martin, Martha, who by now had
+crept up to them, under cover of his great form and of surrounding
+reeds, let go the stern of the boat and vanished.
+
+"Plain words from plain, uncultivated people, not unnaturally
+irritated by the course of political events with which, although
+Fortune has mixed me up in them, I have nothing whatever to do,"
+answered Ramiro. "But once more I beg of you to consider. It is
+probable that you have no food upon your boat, whereas we have plenty.
+Also, in due course, darkness will fall, which must give us a certain
+advantage; moreover, I have reason to hope for assistance. Therefore,
+in a waiting game like this the cards are with me, and as I think your
+poor prisoner, Adrian, will tell you, I know how to play a hand at
+cards."
+
+About eight yards from the cutter, in a thick patch of water-lilies,
+just at this moment an otter rose to take air--an old dog-otter, for
+it was grey-headed. One of the Spaniards in the boat caught sight of
+the ring it made, and picking up a stone from the ballast threw it at
+it idly. The otter vanished.
+
+"We have been seeking each other a long while, but have never come to
+blows yet, although, being a brave man, I know you would wish it,"
+said Red Martin modestly. "Senor Ramiro, will you do me the honour to
+overlook my humble birth and come ashore with me for a few minutes,
+man against man. The odds would be in your favour, for you have armour
+and I have nothing but a worn bull's hide, also you have my good sword
+Silence and I only a wood-man's axe. Still I will risk it, and, what
+is more, trusting to your good faith, we are willing to wager the
+treasure of Hendrik Brant upon the issue."
+
+So soon as they understood this challenge a roar of laughter went up
+from the Spaniards in the boat, in which Ramiro himself joined
+heartily. The idea of anyone voluntarily entering upon a single combat
+with the terrible Frisian giant, who for months had been a name of
+fear among the thousands that beleaguered Haarlem, struck them as
+really ludicrous.
+
+But of a sudden they ceased laughing, and one and all stared with a
+strange anxiety at the bottom of their boat, much as terrier dogs
+stare at the earth beneath which they hear invisible vermin on the
+move. Then a great shouting arose among them, and they looked eagerly
+over the gunwales; yes, and began to stab at the water with their
+swords. But all the while through the tumult and voices came a steady,
+regular sound as of a person knocking heavily on the further side of a
+thick door.
+
+"Mother of Heaven!" screamed someone in the cutter, "we are scuttled,"
+and they began to tear at the false bottom of their boat, while others
+stabbed still more furiously at the surface of the Mere.
+
+Now, rising one by one to the face of that quiet water, could be seen
+bubbles, and the line of them ran from the cutter towards the rowing
+boat. Presently, within six feet of it, axe in hand, rose the strange
+and dreadful figure of a naked, skeleton-like woman covered with mud
+and green weeds, and bleeding from great wounds in the back and sides.
+
+There it stood, shaking an axe at the terror-stricken Spaniards, and
+screaming in short gasps,
+
+"Paid back! paid back, Ramiro! Now sink and drown, you dog, or come,
+visit Red Martin on the shore."
+
+"Well done, Martha," roared Martin, as he dragged her dying into the
+boat. While he spoke, lo! the cutter began to fill and sink.
+
+"There is but one chance for it," cried Ramiro, "overboard and at
+them. It is not deep," and springing into the water, which reached to
+his neck, he began to wade towards the shore.
+
+"Push off," cried Foy, and they thrust and pulled. But the gold was
+heavy, and their boat had settled far into the mud. Do what they
+might, she would not stir. Then uttering some strange Frisian oath,
+Martin sprang over her stern, and putting out all his mighty strength
+thrust at it to loose her. Still she would not move. The Spaniards
+came up, now the water reached only to their thighs, and their bright
+swords flashed in the sunlight.
+
+"Cut them down!" yelled Ramiro. "At them for your lives' sake."
+
+The boat trembled, but she would not stir.
+
+"Too heavy in the bows," screamed Martha, and struggling to her feet,
+with one wild scream she launched herself straight at the throat of
+the nearest Spaniard. She gripped him with her long arms, and down
+they went together. Once they rose, then fell again, and through a
+cloud of mud might be seen struggling upon the bottom of the Mere till
+presently they lay still, both of them.
+
+The lightened boat lifted, and in answer to Martin's mighty efforts
+glided forward through the clinging mud. Again he thrust, and she was
+clear.
+
+"Climb in, Martin, climb in," shouted Foy as he stabbed at a Spaniard.
+
+"By heaven! no," roared Ramiro splashing towards him with the face of
+a devil.
+
+For a second Martin stood still. Then he bent, and the sword-cut fell
+harmless upon his leather jerkin. Now very suddenly his great arms
+shot out; yes, he seized Ramiro by the thighs and lifted, and there
+was seen the sight of a man thrown into the air as though he were a
+ball tossed by a child at play, to fall headlong upon the casks of
+treasure in the skiff prow where he lay still.
+
+Martin sprang forward and gripped the tiller with his outstretched
+hand as it glided away from him.
+
+"Row, master, row," he cried, and Foy rowed madly until they were
+clear of the last Spaniard, clear by ten yards. Even Elsa snatched a
+rollock, and with it struck a soldier on the hand who tried to stay
+them, forcing him to loose his grip; a deed of valour she boasted of
+with pride all her life through. Then they dragged Martin into the
+boat.
+
+"Now, you Spanish dogs," the great man roared back at them as he shook
+the water from his flaming hair and beard, "go dig for Brant's
+treasure and live on ducks' eggs here till Don Frederic sends to fetch
+you."
+
+
+
+The island had melted away into a mist of other islands. No living
+thing was to be seen save the wild creatures and birds of the great
+lake, and no sound was to be heard except their calling and the voices
+of the wind and water. They were alone--alone and safe, and there at a
+distance towards the skyline rose the church towers of Leyden, for
+which they headed.
+
+"Jufvrouw," said Martin presently, "there is another flagon of wine in
+that locker, and we should be glad of a pull at it."
+
+Elsa, who was steering the boat, rose and found the wine and a horn
+mug, which she filled and handed first to Foy.
+
+"Here's a health," said Foy as he drank, "to the memory of Mother
+Martha, who saved us all. Well, she died as she would have wished to
+die, taking a Spaniard for company, and her story will live on."
+
+"Amen," said Martin. Then a thought struck him, and, leaving his oars
+for a minute, for he rowed two as against Foy's and Adrian's one, he
+went forward to where Ramiro lay stricken senseless on the kegs of
+specie and jewels in the bows, and took from him the great sword
+Silence. But he strapped the Spaniard's legs together with his belt.
+
+"That crack on the head keeps him quiet enough," he said in
+explanation, "but he might come to and give trouble, or try to swim
+for it, since such cats have many lives. Ah! Senor Ramiro, I told you
+I would have my sword back before I was half an hour older, or go
+where I shouldn't want one." Then he touched the spring in the hilt
+and examined the cavity. "Why," he said, "here's my legacy left in it
+safe and sound. No wonder my good angel made me mad to get that sword
+again."
+
+"No wonder," echoed Foy, "especially as you got Ramiro with it," and
+he glanced at Adrian, who was labouring at the bow oar, looking, now
+that the excitement of the fight had gone by, most downcast and
+wretched. Well he might, seeing the welcome that, as he feared,
+awaited him in Leyden.
+
+For a while they rowed on in silence. All that they had gone through
+during the last four and twenty hours and the seven preceding months
+of war and privation, had broken their nerve. Even now, although they
+had escaped the danger and won back the buried gold, capturing the
+arch-villain who had brought them so much death and misery, and their
+home, which, for the present moment at any rate, was a strong place of
+refuge, lay before them, still they could not be at ease. Where so
+many had died, where the risks had been so fearful, it seemed almost
+incredible that they four should be living and hale, though weary,
+with a prospect of continuing to live for many years.
+
+That the girl whom he loved so dearly, and whom he had so nearly lost,
+should be sitting before him safe and sound, ready to become his wife
+whensoever he might wish it, seemed to Foy also a thing too good to be
+true. Too good to be true was it, moreover, that his brother, the
+wayward, passionate, weak, poetical-minded Adrian, made by nature to
+be the tool of others, and bear the burden of their evil doing, should
+have been dragged before it was over late, out of the net of the
+fowler, have repented of his sins and follies, and, at the risk of his
+own life, shown that he was still a man, no longer the base slave of
+passion and self-love. For Foy always loved his brother, and knowing
+him better than any others knew him, had found it hard to believe that
+however black things might look against him, he was at heart a
+villain.
+
+Thus he thought, and Elsa too had her thoughts, which may be guessed.
+They were silent all of them, till of a sudden, Elsa seated in the
+stern-sheets, saw Adrian suddenly let fall his oar, throw his arms
+wide, and pitch forward against the back of Martin. Yes, and in place
+of where he had sat appeared the dreadful countenance of Ramiro,
+stamped with a grin of hideous hate such as Satan might wear when
+souls escape him at the last. Ramiro recovered and sitting up, for to
+his feet he could not rise because of the sword strap, in his hand a
+thin, deadly-looking knife.
+
+"/Habet!/" he said with a short laugh, "/habes/, Weather-cock!" and he
+turned the knife against himself.
+
+But Martin was on him, and in five more seconds he lay trussed like a
+fowl in the bottom of the boat.
+
+"Shall I kill him?" said Martin to Foy, who with Elsa was bending over
+Adrian.
+
+"No," answered Foy grimly, "let him take his trial in Leyden. Oh! what
+accursed fools were we not to search him!"
+
+Ramiro's face turned a shade more ghastly.
+
+"It is your hour," he said in a hoarse voice, "you have won, thanks to
+that dog of a son of mine, who, I trust, may linger long before he
+dies, as die he must. Ah! well, this is what comes of breaking my oath
+to the Virgin and again lifting my hand against a woman." He looked at
+Elsa and shuddered, then went on: "It is your hour, make an end of me
+at once. I do not wish to appear thus before those boors."
+
+"Gag him," said Foy to Martin, "lest our ears be poisoned," and Martin
+obeyed with good will. Then he flung him down, and there the man lay,
+his back supported by the kegs of treasure he had worked so hard and
+sinned so deeply to win, making, as he knew well, his last journey to
+death and to whatever may lie beyond that solemn gate.
+
+They were passing the island that, many years ago, had formed the
+turning post of the great sledge race in which his passenger had been
+the fair Leyden heiress, Lysbeth van Hout. Ramiro could see her now as
+she was that day; he could see also how that race, which he just
+failed to win, had been for him an augury of disaster. Had not the
+Hollander again beaten him at the post, and that Hollander--Lysbeth's
+own son by another father--helped to it by her son born of himself,
+who now lay there death-stricken by him that gave him life. . . . They
+would take him to Lysbeth, he knew it; she would be his judge, that
+woman against whom he had piled up injury after injury, whom, even
+when she seemed to be in his power, he had feared more than any living
+being. . . . And after he had met her eyes for the last time, then
+would come the end. What sort of an end would it be for the captain
+red-handed from the siege of Haarlem, for the man who had brought Dirk
+van Goorl to his death, for the father who had just planted a dagger
+between the shoulders of his son because, at the last, that son had
+chosen to be true to his own people, and to deliver them from a
+dreadful doom? . . . Why did it come back to him, that horrible dream
+which had risen in his mind when, for the first time after many years,
+he met Lysbeth face to face there in the Gevangenhuis, that dream of
+the pitiful little man falling, falling through endless space, and at
+the bottom of the gulf two great hands, hands hideous and suggestive,
+reaching through the shadows to receive him?
+
+
+
+Like his son, Adrian, Ramiro was superstitious; more, his intellect,
+his reading, which in youth had been considerable, his observation of
+men and women, all led him to the conclusion that death is a wall with
+many doors in it; that on this side of the wall we may not linger or
+sleep, but must pass each of us through his appointed portal straight
+to the domain prepared for us. If so, what would be his lot, and who
+would be waiting to greet him yonder? Oh! terrors may attend the
+wicked after death, but in the case of some they do not tarry until
+death; they leap forward to him whom it is decreed must die, forcing
+attention with their eager, craving hands, with their obscure and
+ominous voices. . . . About him the sweet breath of the summer
+afternoon, the skimming swallows, the meadows starred with flowers;
+within him every hell at which the imagination can so much as hint.
+
+Before he passed the gates of Leyden, in those few short hours,
+Ramiro, to Elsa's eyes, had aged by twenty years.
+
+Their little boat was heavy laden, the wind was against them, and they
+had a dying man and a prisoner aboard. So it came about that the day
+was closing before the soldiers challenged them from the watergate,
+asking who they were and whither they went. Foy stood up and said:
+
+"We are Foy van Goorl, Red Martin, Elsa Brant, a wounded man and a
+prisoner, escaped from Haarlem, and we go to the house of Lysbeth van
+Goorl in the Bree Straat."
+
+Then they let them through the watergate, and there, on the further
+side, were many gathered who thanked God for their deliverance, and
+begged tidings of them.
+
+"Come to the house in the Bree Straat and we will tell you from the
+balcony," answered Foy.
+
+So they rowed from one cut and canal to another till at last they came
+to the private boat-house of the van Goorls, and entered it, and thus
+by the small door into the house.
+
+
+
+Lysbeth van Goorl, recovered from her illness now, but aged and grown
+stern with suffering, sat in an armchair in the great parlour of her
+home in the Bree Straat, the room where as a girl she had cursed
+Montalvo; where too not a year ago, she had driven his son, the
+traitor Adrian, from her presence. At her side was a table on which
+stood a silver bell and two brass holders with candles ready to be
+lighted. She rang the bell and a woman-servant entered, the same who,
+with Elsa, had nursed her in the plague.
+
+"What is that murmuring in the street?" Lysbeth asked. "I hear the
+sound of many voices. Is there more news from Haarlem?"
+
+"Alas! yes," answered the woman. "A fugitive says that the
+executioners there are weary, so now they tie the poor prisoners back
+to back and throw them into the mere to drown."
+
+A groan burst from Lysbeth's lips. "Foy, my son, is there," she
+muttered, "and Elsa Brant his affianced wife, and Martin his servant,
+and many another friend. Oh! God, how long, how long?" and her head
+sank upon her bosom.
+
+Soon she raised it again and said, "Light the candles, woman, this
+place grows dark, and in its gloom I see the ghosts of all my dead."
+
+They burned up--two stars of light in the great room.
+
+"Whose feet are those upon the stairs?" asked Lysbeth, "the feet of
+men who bear burdens. Open the large doors, woman, and let that enter
+which it pleases God to send us."
+
+So the doors were flung wide, and through them came people carrying a
+wounded man, then following him Foy and Elsa, and, lastly, towering
+above them all, Red Martin, who thrust before him another man. Lysbeth
+rose from her chair to look.
+
+"Do I dream?" she said, "or, son Foy, hath the Angel of the Lord
+delivered you out of the hell of Haarlem?"
+
+"We are here, mother," he answered.
+
+"And whom," she said, pointing to the figure covered with a cloak, "do
+you bring with you?"
+
+"Adrian, mother, who is dying."
+
+"Then, son Foy, take him hence; alive, dying, or dead, I have done
+with----" Here her eyes fell upon Red Martin and the man he held,
+"Martin the Frisian," she muttered, "but who----"
+
+Martin heard, and by way of answer lifted up his prisoner so that the
+fading light from the balcony windows fell full upon his face.
+
+"What!" she cried. "Juan de Montalvo as well as his son Adrian, and in
+this room----" Then she checked herself and added, "Foy, tell me your
+story."
+
+In few words and brief he told it, or so much as she need know to
+understand. His last words were: "Mother, be merciful to Adrian; from
+the first he meant no ill; he saved all our lives, and he lies dying
+by that man's dagger."
+
+"Lift him up," she said.
+
+So they lifted him up, and Adrian, who, since the knife pierced him
+had uttered no word, spoke for the first and last time, muttering
+hoarsely:
+
+"Mother, take back your words and forgive me--before I die."
+
+Now the sorrow-frozen heart of Lysbeth melted, and she bent over him
+and said, speaking so that all might hear:
+
+"Welcome to your home again, Adrian. You who once were led astray,
+have done bravely, and I am proud to call you son. Though you have
+left the faith in which you were bred, here and hereafter may God
+bless you and reward you, beloved Adrian!" Then she bent down and
+kissed his dying lips. Foy and Elsa kissed him also in farewell before
+they bore him, smiling happily to himself, to the chamber, his own
+chamber, where within some few hours death found him.
+
+Adrian had been borne away, and for a little while there was silence.
+Then, none commanding him, but as though an instinct pushed him
+forward, Red Martin began to move up the length of the long room, half
+dragging, half carrying his captive Ramiro. It was as if some
+automaton had suddenly been put in motion, some machine of gigantic
+strength that nothing could stop. The man in his grip set his heels in
+the floor and hung back, but Martin scarcely seemed to heed his
+resistance. On he came, and the victim with him, till they stood
+together before the oaken chair and the stern-faced, white-haired
+woman who sat in it, her cold countenance lit by the light of the two
+candles. She looked and shuddered. Then she spoke, asking:
+
+"Why do you bring this man to me, Martin?"
+
+"For judgment, Lysbeth van Goorl," he answered.
+
+"Who made me a judge over him?" she asked.
+
+"My master, Dirk van Goorl, your son, Adrian, and Hendrik Brant. Their
+blood makes you judge of his blood."
+
+"I will have none of it," Lysbeth said passionately, "let the people
+judge him." As she spoke, from the crowd in the street below there
+swelled a sudden clamour.
+
+"Good," said Martin, "the people shall judge," and he began to turn
+towards the window, when suddenly, by a desperate effort, Ramiro
+wrenched his doublet from his hand, and flung himself at Lysbeth's
+feet and grovelled there.
+
+"What do you seek?" she asked, drawing back her dress so that he
+should not touch it.
+
+"Mercy," he gasped.
+
+"Mercy! Look, son and daughter, this man asks for mercy who for many a
+year has given none. Well, Juan de Montalvo, take your prayer to God
+and to the people. I have done with you."
+
+"Mercy, mercy!" he cried again.
+
+"Eight months ago," she said, "I uttered that prayer to you, begging
+of you in the Name of Christ to spare the life of an innocent man, and
+what was your answer, Juan de Montalvo?"
+
+"Once you were my wife," he pleaded; "being a woman, does not that
+weigh with you?"
+
+"Once he was my husband, being a man did that weigh with you? The last
+word is said. Take him, Martin, to those who deal with murderers."
+
+Then that look came upon Montalvo which twice or thrice before Lysbeth
+has seen written in his face--once when the race was run and lost, and
+once when in after years she had petitioned for the life of her
+husband. Lo! it was no longer the face of a man, but such a
+countenance as might have been worn by a devil or a beast. The eyeball
+started, the grey moustache curled upwards, the cheek-bones grew high
+and sharp.
+
+"Night after night," he gasped, "you lay at my side, and I might have
+killed you, as I have killed that brat of yours--and I spared you, I
+spared you."
+
+"God spared me, Juan de Montalvo, that He might bring us to this hour;
+let Him spare you also if He will. I do not judge. He judges and the
+people," and Lysbeth rose from her chair.
+
+"Stay!" he cried, gnashing his teeth.
+
+"No, I stay not, I go to receive the last breath of him you have
+murdered, my son and yours."
+
+He raised himself upon his knees, and for a moment their eyes met for
+the last time.
+
+"Do you remember?" she said in a quiet voice, "many years ago, in this
+very room, after you had bought me at the cost of Dirk's life, certain
+words I spoke to you? Now I do not think that it was I who spoke, Juan
+de Montalvo."
+
+And she swept past him and though the wide doorway.
+
+
+
+Red Martin stood upon the balcony gripping the man Ramiro. Beneath him
+the broad street was packed with people, hundreds and thousands of
+them, a dense mass seething in the shadows, save here and again where
+a torch or a lantern flared showing their white faces, for the moon,
+which shone upon Martin and his captive, scarcely reached those down
+below. As gaunt, haggard, and long-haired, he stepped upon the
+balcony, they saw him and his burden, and there went up such a yell as
+shook the very roofs of Leyden. Martin held up his hand, and there was
+silence, deep silence, through which the breath of all that multitude
+rose in sighs, like the sighing of a little wind.
+
+"Citizens my Leyden, my masters," the Frisian cried, in a great, deep
+voice that echoed down the street, "I have a word to say to you. This
+man here--do you know him?"
+
+Back came an answering yell of "/Aye!/"
+
+"He is a Spaniard," went on Martin, "the noble Count Juan de Montalvo,
+who many years past forced one Lysbeth van Hout of this city into a
+false marriage, buying her at the price of the life of her affianced
+husband, Dirk van Goorl, that he might win her fortune."
+
+"We know it," they shouted.
+
+"Afterwards he was sent to the galleys for his crimes. He came back,
+and was made Governor of the Gevangenhuis by the bloody Alva, where he
+brought to death your brother and past burgomaster, Dirk van Goorl.
+Afterwards he kidnapped the person of Elsa Brant, the daughter of
+Hendrik Brant, whom the Inquisition murdered at The Hague. We rescued
+her from him, my master, Foy van Goorl, and I. Afterwards he served
+with the Spaniards as a captain of their forces in the siege of
+Haarlem yonder--Haarlem that fell three days ago, and whose citizens
+they are murdering to-night, throwing them two by two to drown in the
+waters of the Mere."
+
+"Kill him! Cast him down!" roared the mob. "Give him to us, Red
+Martin."
+
+Again the Frisian lifted his hand and again there was silence; a
+sudden, terrible silence.
+
+"This man had a son; my mistress, Lysbeth van Goorl, to her shame and
+sorrow, was the mother of him. That son, repenting, saved us from the
+sack of Haarlem, yea, through him the three of us, Foy van Goorl, Elsa
+Brant, and I, Martin Roos, their servant, are alive to-night. This man
+and his Spaniards overtook us on the lake, and there we conquered him
+by the help of Martha the Mare, Martha whom they made to carry her own
+husband to the fire. We conquered him, but she--she died in the fray;
+they stabbed her to death in the water as men stab an otter. Well,
+that son, the Heer Adrian, he was murdered in the boat with a knife-
+blow given by his own father from behind, and he lies here in this
+house dead or dying.
+
+"My master and I, we brought this man, who to-day is called Ramiro, to
+be judged by the woman whose husband and son he slew. But she would
+not judge him; she said, 'Take him to the people, let them judge.' So
+judge now, ye people," and with an effort of his mighty strength
+Martin swung the struggling body of Ramiro over the parapet of the
+balcony and let him hang there above their heads.
+
+They yelled, they screamed in their ravenous hate and rage; they leapt
+up as hounds leap at a wolf upon a wall.
+
+"Give him to us, give him to us!" that was their cry.
+
+Martin laughed aloud. "Take him then," he said; "take him, ye people,
+and judge him as you will," and with one great heave he hurled the
+thing that writhed between his hands far out into the centre of the
+street.
+
+The crowd below gathered themselves into a heap like water above a
+boat sinking in the heart of a whirlpool. For a minute or more they
+snarled and surged and twisted. Then they broke up and went away,
+talking in short, eager sentences. And there, small and dreadful on
+the stones, lay something that once had been a man.
+
+
+
+Thus did the burghers of Leyden pass judgment and execute it upon that
+noble Spaniard, the Count Juan de Montalvo.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX
+
+                              TWO SCENES
+
+
+                          /Scene the First/
+
+Some months had gone by, and Alkmaar, that heroic little city of the
+north, had turned the flood of Spanish victory. Full of shame and
+rage, the armies of Philip and of Valdez marched upon Leyden, and from
+November, 1573, to the end of March, 1574, the town was besieged. Then
+the soldiers were called away to fight Louis of Nassau, and the
+leaguer was raised till, on the fatal field of Mook Heath, the gallant
+Louis, with his brother Henry and four thousand of their soldiers,
+perished, defeated by D'Avila. Now once more the victorious Spaniards
+threatened Leyden.
+
+In a large bare room of the Stadthuis of that city, at the beginning
+of the month of May, a man of middle-age might have been seen one
+morning walking up and down, muttering to himself as he walked. He was
+not a tall man and rather thin in figure, with brown eyes and beard,
+hair tinged with grey, and a wide brow lined by thought. This was
+William of Orange, called the Silent, one of the greatest and most
+noble of human beings who ever lived in any age; the man called forth
+by God to whom Holland owes its liberties, and who for ever broke the
+hideous yoke of religious fanaticism among the Teuton races.
+
+Sore was his trouble on this May morning. But last month two more of
+his brothers had found death beneath the sword of the Spaniard, and
+now this same Spaniard, with whom he had struggled for all these weary
+years, was marching in his thousands upon Leyden.
+
+"Money," he was muttering to himself. "Give me money, and I will save
+the city yet. With money ships can be built, more men can be raised,
+powder can be bought. Money, money, money--and I have not a ducat! All
+gone, everything, even to my mother's trinkets and the plate upon my
+table. Nothing is left, no, not the credit to buy a dozen geldings."
+
+As he thought thus one of his secretaries entered the room.
+
+"Well, Count," said the Prince, "have you been to them all?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And with what success?"
+
+"The burgomaster, van de Werff, promises to do everything he can, and
+will, for he is a man to lean on, but money is short. It has all left
+the country and there is not much to get."
+
+"I know it," groaned Orange, "you can't make a loaf from the crumbs
+beneath the table. Is the proclamation put up inviting all good
+citizens to give or lend in this hour of their country's need?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Thank you, Count, you can go; there is nothing more to do. We will
+ride for Delft to-night."
+
+"Sir," said the secretary, "there are two men in the courtyard who
+wish to see you."
+
+"Are they known?"
+
+"Oh yes, perfectly. One is Foy van Goorl, who went through the siege
+of Haarlem and escaped, the son of the worthy burgher, Dirk van Goorl,
+whom they did to death yonder in the Gevangenhuis; and the other a
+Friesland giant of a man called Red Martin, his servant, of whose
+feats of arms you may have heard. The two of them held a shot tower in
+this town against forty or fifty Spaniards, and killed I don't know
+how many."
+
+The Prince nodded. "I know. This Red Martin is a Goliath, a brave
+fellow. What do they want?"
+
+"I am not sure," said the secretary with a smile, "but they have
+brought a herring-cart here, the Frisian in the shafts for a horse,
+and the Heer van Goorl pushing behind. They say that it is laden with
+ammunition for the service of their country."
+
+"Then why do they not take it to the Burgomaster, or somebody in
+authority?"
+
+"I don't know, but they declare that they will only deliver it to you
+in person."
+
+"You are sure of your men, Count? You know," he added, with a smile,
+"I have to be careful."
+
+"Quite, they were identified by several of the people in the other
+room."
+
+"Then admit them, they may have something to say."
+
+"But, sir, they wish to bring in their cart."
+
+"Very well, let them bring it in if it will come through the door,"
+answered the Prince, with a sigh, for his thoughts were far from these
+worthy citizens and their cart.
+
+Presently the wide double doors were opened, and Red Martin appeared,
+not as he was after the siege of Haarlem, but as he used to be, well-
+covered and bland, with a beard even longer and more fiery than of
+yore. At the moment he was strangely employed, for across his great
+breast lay the broad belly-band of a horse, and by its means,
+harnessed between the shafts, he dragged a laden cart covered with an
+old sail. Moreover the load must have been heavy, for notwithstanding
+his strength and that of Foy, no weakling, who pushed behind, they had
+trouble in getting the wheels up a little rise at the threshold.
+
+Foy shut the doors, then they trundled their cart into the middle of
+the great room, halted and saluted. So curious was the sight, and so
+inexplicable, that the Prince, forgetting his troubles for a minute,
+burst out laughing.
+
+"I daresay it looks strange, sir," said Foy, hotly, the colour rising
+to the roots of his fair hair, "but when you have heard our story I am
+not sure that you will laugh at us."
+
+"Mynheer van Goorl," said the Prince with grave courtesy, "be assured
+that I laugh at no true men such as yourself and your servant, Martin
+the Frisian, and least of all at men who could hold yonder shot tower
+against fifty Spaniards, who could escape out of Haarlem and bring
+home with them the greatest devil in Don Frederic's army. It was your
+equipage I laughed at, not yourselves," and he bowed slightly first to
+the one and then to the other.
+
+"His Highness thinks perhaps," said Martin, "that the man who does an
+ass's work must necessarily be an ass," at which sally the Prince
+laughed again.
+
+"Sir," said Foy, "I crave your patience for a while, and on no mean
+matter. Your Highness has heard, perhaps, of one Hendrik Brant, who
+perished in the Inquisition."
+
+"Do you mean the goldsmith and banker who was said to be the richest
+man in the Netherlands?"
+
+"Yes, sir, the man whose treasure was lost."
+
+"I remember--whose treasure was lost--though it was reported that some
+of our own people got away with it," and his eyes wandered wonderingly
+to the sail which hid the burden on the cart.
+
+"Sir," went on Foy, "you heard right; Red Martin and I, with a pilot
+man who was killed, were they who got away with it, and by the help of
+the waterwife, who now is dead, and who was known as Mother Martha, or
+the Mare, we hid it in Haarlemer Meer, whence we recovered it after we
+escaped from Haarlem. If you care to know how, I will tell you later,
+but the tale is long and strange. Elsa Brant was with us at the
+time----"
+
+"She is Hendrik Brant's only child, and therefore the owner of his
+wealth, I believe?" interrupted the Prince.
+
+"Yes, sir, and my affianced wife."
+
+"I have heard of the young lady, and I congratulate you. Is she in
+Leyden?"
+
+"No, sir, her strength and mind were much broken by the horrors which
+she passed through in the siege of Haarlem, and by other events more
+personal to her. Therefore, when the Spaniards threatened their first
+leaguer of this place, I sent her and my mother to Norwich in England,
+where they may sleep in peace."
+
+"You were wise indeed, Heer van Goorl," replied the Prince with a
+sigh, "but it seems that you stopped behind?"
+
+"Yes, sir, Martin and I thought it our duty to see this war out. When
+Leyden is safe from the Spaniards, then we go to England, not before."
+
+"When Leyden is safe from the Spaniards----" and again the Prince
+sighed, adding, "well, you have a true heart, young sir, and a right
+spirit, for which I honour both of you. But I fear that things being
+thus the Jufvrouw cannot sleep so very peacefully in Norwich after
+all."
+
+"We must each bear our share of the basket," answered Foy sadly; "I
+must do the fighting and she the watching."
+
+"It is so, I know it, who have both fought and watched. Well, I hope
+that a time will come when you will both of you do the loving. And now
+for the rest of the story."
+
+"Sir, it is very short. We read your proclamation in the streets this
+morning, and learned from it for certain what we have heard before,
+that you are in sore want of money for the defence of Leyden and the
+war at large. Therefore, hearing that you were still in the city, and
+believing this proclamation of yours to be the summons and clear
+command for which we waited, we have brought you Hendrik Brant's
+treasure. It is there upon the cart."
+
+The Prince put his hand to his forehead and reeled back a step.
+
+"You do not jest with me, Foy van Goorl?" he said.
+
+"Indeed no."
+
+"But stay; this treasure is not yours to give, it belongs to Elsa
+Brant."
+
+"Sir, the legal title to it is in myself, for my father was Brant's
+lawful heir and executor, and I inherit his rights. Moreover, although
+a provision for her is charged upon it, it is Elsa's desire--I have it
+written here under her hand and witnessed--that the money should be
+used, every ducat of it, for the service of the country in such way as
+I might find good. Lastly, her father, Hendrik Brant, always believed
+that this wealth of his would in due season be of such service. Here
+is a copy of his will, in which he directs that we are to apply the
+money 'for the defence of our country, the freedom of religious Faith,
+and the destruction of the Spaniards in such fashion and at such time
+or times as God shall reveal to us.' When he gave us charge of it
+also, his words to me were: 'I am certain that thousands and tens of
+thousands of our folk will live to bless the gold of Hendrik Brant.'
+On that belief too, thinking that God put it into his mind, and would
+reveal His purpose in His own hour, we have acted all of us, and
+therefore for the sake of this stuff we have gone to death and
+torture. Now it has come about as Brant foretold; now we understand
+why all these things have happened, and why we live, this man and I,
+to stand before you, sir, to-day, with the hoard unminished by a
+single florin, no, not even by Martin's legacy."
+
+"Man, you jest, you jest!" said Orange.
+
+Foy made a sign, and Martin going to the cart, pulled off the sail-
+cloth, revealing the five mud-stained barrels painted, each of them,
+with the mark B. There, too, ready for the purpose, were a hammer,
+mallet, and chisel. Resting the shafts of the cart upon a table,
+Martin climbed into it, and with a few great blows of the mallet,
+drove in the head of a cask selected at hazard. Beneath appeared wool,
+which he removed, not without fear lest there might be some mistake;
+then, as he could wait no longer, he tilted the barrel up and shot its
+contents out upon the floor.
+
+As it chanced this was the keg that contained the jewels into which,
+foreseeing troublous days, from time to time Brant had converted the
+most of his vast wealth. Now in one glittering stream of red and white
+and blue and green, breaking from their cases and wrappings that the
+damp had rotted, save for those pearls, the most valuable of them all,
+which were in the watertight copper box--they fell jingling to the
+open floor, where they rolled hither and thither like beans shot from
+a sack in the steading.
+
+"I think there is only this one tub of jewels," said Foy quietly; "the
+rest, which are much heavier, are full of gold coin. Here, sir, is the
+inventory so that you may check the list and see that we have kept
+back nothing."
+
+But William of Orange heeded him not, only he looked at the priceless
+gems and muttered, "Fleets of ships, armies of men, convoys of food,
+means to bribe the great and buy goodwill--aye, and the Netherlands
+themselves wrung from the grip of Spain, the Netherlands free and rich
+and happy! O God! I thank Thee Who thus hast moved the hearts of men
+to the salvation of this Thy people from sore danger."
+
+Then in the sudden ecstasy of relief and joy, the great Prince hid his
+face in his hands and wept.
+
+
+
+Thus it came about that the riches of Hendrik Brant, when Leyden lay
+at her last gasp, paid the soldiers and built the fleets which, in due
+time, driven by a great wind sent suddenly from heaven across the
+flooded meadows, raised the dreadful siege and signed the doom of
+Spanish rule in Holland. Therefore it would seem that not in vain was
+Hendrik Brant stubborn and foresighted, that his blood and the blood
+of Dirk van Goorl were not shed in vain; that not in vain also did
+Elsa suffer the worst torments of a woman's fear in the Red Mill on
+the marshes; and Foy and Martin play their parts like men in the shot-
+tower, the Gevangenhuis and the siege, and Mother Martha the Sword
+find a grave and rest in the waters of the Haarlem Meer.
+
+There are other morals to this story also, applicable, perhaps, to our
+life to-day, but the reader is left to guess them.
+
+
+                          /Scene the Second/
+
+Leyden is safe at last, and through the broken dykes Foy and Martin,
+with the rescuing ships, have sailed, shouting and red-handed, into
+her famine-stricken streets. For the Spaniards, those that are left of
+them, are broken and have fled away from their forts and flooded
+trenches.
+
+So the scene changes from warring, blood-stained, triumphant Holland
+to the quiet city of Norwich and a quaint gabled house in Tombland
+almost beneath the shadow of the tall spire of the cathedral, which
+now for about a year had been the home of Lysbeth van Goorl and Elsa
+Brant. Here to Norwich they had come in safety in the autumn of 1573
+just before the first siege of Leyden was begun, and here they had
+dwelt for twelve long, doubtful, anxious months. News, or rather
+rumours, of what was passing in the Netherlands reached them from time
+to time; twice even there came letters from Foy himself, but the last
+of these had been received many weeks ago just as the iron grip of the
+second leaguer was closing round the city. Then Foy and Martin, so
+they learned from the letter, were not in the town but with the Prince
+of Orange in Delft, working hard at the fleet which was being built
+and armed for its relief.
+
+After this there was a long silence, and none could tell what had
+happened, although a horrible report reached them that Leyden had been
+taken, sacked, and burnt, and all its inhabitants massacred. They
+lived in comfort here in Norwich, for the firm of Munt and Brown, Dirk
+van Goorl's agents, were honest, and the fortune which he had sent
+over when the clouds were gathering thick, had been well invested by
+them and produced an ample revenue. But what comfort could there be
+for their poor hearts thus agonised by doubts and sickening fears?
+
+One evening they sat in the parlour on the ground floor of the house,
+or rather Lysbeth sat, for Elsa knelt by her, her head resting upon
+the arm of the chair, and wept.
+
+"Oh! it is cruel," she sobbed, "it is too much to bear. How can you be
+so calm, mother, when perhaps Foy is dead?"
+
+"If my son is dead, Elsa, that is God's Will, and I am calm, because
+now, as many a time before, I resign myself to the Will of God, not
+because I do not suffer. Mothers can feel, girl, as well as
+sweethearts."
+
+"Would that I had never left him," moaned Elsa.
+
+"You asked to leave, child; for my part I should have bided the best
+or the worst in Leyden."
+
+"It is true, it is because I am a coward; also he wished it."
+
+"He wished it, Elsa, therefore it is for the best; let us await the
+issue in patience. Come, our meal is set."
+
+They sat themselves down to eat, these two lonely women, but at their
+board were laid four covers as though they expected guests. Yet none
+were bidden--only this was Elsa's fancy.
+
+"Foy and Martin /might/ come," she said, "and be vexed if it seemed
+that we did not expect them." So for the last three months or more she
+had always set four covers at the table, and Lysbeth did not gainsay
+her. In her heart she too hoped that Foy might come.
+
+
+
+That very night Foy came, and with him Red Martin, the great sword
+Silence still strapped about his middle.
+
+"Hark!" said Lysbeth suddenly, "I hear my son's footsteps at the door.
+It seems, Elsa, that, after all, the ears of a mother are quicker than
+those of a lover."
+
+But Elsa never heard her, for now--now at length, she was wrapped in
+the arms of Foy; the same Foy, but grown older and with a long pale
+scar across his forehead.
+
+"Yet," went on Lysbeth to herself, with a faint smile on her white and
+stately face, "the son's lips are for the lover first."
+
+An hour later, or two, or three, for who reckoned time that night when
+there was so much to hear and tell, while the others knelt before her,
+Foy and Elsa hand in hand, and behind them Martin like a guardian
+giant, Lysbeth put up her evening prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
+
+"Almighty God," she said in her slow, sonorous voice, "Thy awful Hand
+that by my own faithless sin took from me my husband, hath given back
+his son and mine who shall be to this child a husband, and for us as
+for our country over sea, out of the night of desolation is arisen a
+dawn of peace. Above us throughout the years is Thy Everlasting Will,
+beneath us when our years are done, shall by Thy Everlasting Arms. So
+for the bitter and the sweet, for the evil and the good, for the past
+and for the present, we, Thy servants, render Thee glory, thanks, and
+praise, O God of our fathers, That fashioneth us and all according to
+Thy desire, remembering those things which we have forgotten and
+foreknowing those things which are not yet. Therefore to Thee, Who
+through so many dreadful days hast led us to this hour of joy, be
+glory and thanks, O Lord of the living and the dead. Amen."
+
+And the others echoed "To Thee be glory and thanks, O Lord of the
+living and the dead. Amen."
+
+
+
+Then, their prayer ended, the living rose, and, with separations done
+and fears appeased at last, leant towards each other in the love and
+hope of their beautiful youth.
+
+But Lysbeth sat silent in the new home, far from the land where she
+was born, and turned her stricken heart towards the dead.
+
+
+
+                                FINIS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lysbeth, A Tale Of The Dutch, by H. Rider Haggard
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LYSBETH, A TALE OF THE DUTCH ***
+
+This file should be named lsbth10.txt or lsbth10.zip
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+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
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