The Cloister and the Hearth

THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH

by Charles Reade

Etext Notes:

1. Greek passages are enclosed in angled brackets, e.g. {methua}, and

have been transliterated according to:alpha A, a

beta B, b

gamma G, g

delta D, d

epsilon E, e

zeta Z, z

eta Y, y

theta Th, th

iota I, i

kappa K, k

lamda L, l

mu M, m

nu N, n

omicron O, o

pi P, p

rho R, r

sigma S, s

tau T, t

phi Ph, ph

chi Ch, ch

psi Ps, ps

xi X, x

upsilon U, u

omega W, w

2. All diacritics have been removed from this version

3. References for the Author's footnotes are enclosed in square

brackets(e.g. (1)) and collected at the end of the chapter they occur

in.

4. There are 100 chapters in the book, each starting with CHAPTER R,

where R is the chapter number expressed as a Roman numeral.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

A small portion of this tale appeared in Once a Week, July-September,

1859, under the title of “A Good Fight.”

After writing it, I took wider views of the subject, and also felt

uneasy at having deviated unnecessarily from the historical outline of

a true story. These two sentiments have cost me more than a year's very

hard labour, which I venture to think has not been wasted. After this

plain statement I trust all who comment on this work will see that to

describe it as a reprint would be unfair to the public and to me. The

English language is copious, and, in any true man's hands, quite able

to convey the truth--namely, that one-fifth of the present work is a

reprint, and four-fifths of it a new composition.

CHARLES READE

CHAPTER I

Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great

deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure

heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, the greater part will never be known

till that hour, when many that are great shall be small, and the small

great; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep: their

lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record

them. The general reader cannot feel them, they are presented so curtly

and coldly: they are not like breathing stories appealing to his heart,

but little historic hail-stones striking him but to glance off his

bosom: nor can he understand them; for epitomes are not narratives, as

skeletons are not human figures.

Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk: the

writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so

rare a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the

public--as an interpreter.

There is a musty chronicle, written in intolerable Latin, and in it

a chapter where every sentence holds a fact. Here is told, with harsh

brevity, the strange history of a pair, who lived untrumpeted, and died

unsung, four hundred years ago; and lie now, as unpitied, in that stern

page, as fossils in a rock. Thus, living or dead, Fate is still unjust

to them. For if I can but show you what lies below that dry chronicler's

words, methinks you will correct the indifference of centuries, and give

those two sore-tried souls a place in your heart--for a day.

It was past the middle of the fifteenth century; Louis XI was sovereign

of France; Edward IV was wrongful king of England; and Philip “the

Good,” having by force and cunning dispossessed his cousin Jacqueline,

and broken her heart, reigned undisturbed this many years in Holland,

where our tale begins.

Elias, and Catherine his wife, lived in the little town of Tergou. He

traded, wholesale and retail, in cloth, silk, brown holland, and,

above all, in curried leather, a material highly valued by the middling

people, because it would stand twenty years' wear, and turn an ordinary

knife, no small virtue in a jerkin of that century, in which folk were

so liberal of their steel; even at dinner a man would leave his meat

awhile, and carve you his neighbour, on a very moderate difference of

opinion.

The couple were well to do, and would have been free from all earthly

care, but for nine children. When these were coming into the world, one

per annum, each was hailed with rejoicings, and the saints were thanked,

not expostulated with; and when parents and children were all young

together, the latter were looked upon as lovely little playthings

invented by Heaven for the amusement, joy, and evening solace of people

in business.

But as the olive-branches shot up, and the parents grew older, and saw

with their own eyes the fate of large families, misgivings and care

mingled with their love. They belonged to a singularly wise and

provident people: in Holland reckless parents were as rare as

disobedient children. So now when the huge loaf came in on a gigantic

trencher, looking like a fortress in its moat, and, the tour of the

table once made, seemed to have melted away, Elias and Catherine would

look at one another and say, “Who is to find bread for them all when we

are gone?”

At this observation the younger ones needed all their filial respect to

keep their little Dutch countenances; for in their opinion dinner and

supper came by nature like sunrise and sunset, and, so long as that

luminary should travel round the earth, so long as the brown loaf go

round their family circle, and set in their stomachs only to rise again

in the family oven. But the remark awakened the national thoughtfulness

of the elder boys, and being often repeated, set several of the family

thinking, some of them good thoughts, some ill thoughts, according to

the nature of the thinkers.

“Kate, the children grow so, this table will soon be too small.”

“We cannot afford it, Eli,” replied Catherine, answering not his words,

but his thought, after the manner of women.

Their anxiety for the future took at times a less dismal but more

mortifying turn. The free burghers had their pride as well as the

nobles; and these two could not bear that any of their blood should go

down in the burgh after their decease.

So by prudence and self-denial they managed to clothe all the little

bodies, and feed all the great mouths, and yet put by a small hoard

to meet the future; and, as it grew and grew, they felt a pleasure the

miser hoarding for himself knows not.

One day the eldest boy but one, aged nineteen, came to his mother, and,

with that outward composure which has so misled some persons as to the

real nature of this people, begged her to intercede with his father to

send him to Amsterdam, and place him with a merchant. “It is the way

of life that likes me: merchants are wealthy; I am good at numbers;

prithee, good mother, take my part in this, and I shall ever be, as I am

now, your debtor.”

Catherine threw up her hands with dismay and incredulity.

“What! leave Tergou!”

“What is one street to me more than another? If I can leave the folk of

Tergou, I can surely leave the stones.”

“What! quit your poor father now he is no longer young?”

“Mother, if I can leave you, I can leave”

“What! leave your poor brothers and sisters, that love you so dear?”

“There are enough in the house without me.”

“What mean you, Richart? Who is more thought of than you Stay, have I

spoken sharp to you? Have I been unkind to you?”

“Never that I know of; and if you had, you should never hear of it from

me. Mother,” said Richart gravely, but the tear was in his eye, “it all

lies in a word, and nothing can change my mind. There will be one mouth

less for you to feed.'

“There now, see what my tongue has done,” said Catherine, and the next

moment she began to cry. For she saw her first young bird on the edge

of the nest trying his wings to fly into the world. Richart had a calm,

strong will, and she knew he never wasted a word.

It ended as nature has willed all such discourse shall end: young

Richart went to Amsterdam with a face so long and sad as it had never

been seen before, and a heart like granite.

That afternoon at supper there was one mouth less. Catherine looked at

Richart's chair and wept bitterly. On this Elias shouted roughly and

angrily to the children, “Sit wider, can't ye: sit wider!” and turned

his head away over the back of his seat awhile, and was silent.

Richart was launched, and never cost them another penny; but to fit him

out and place him in the house of Vander Stegen, the merchant, took all

the little hoard but one gold crown. They began again. Two years passed,

Richart found a niche in commerce for his brother Jacob, and Jacob left

Tergou directly after dinner, which was at eleven in the forenoon. At

supper that day Elias remembered what had happened the last time; so it

was in a low whisper he said, “Sit wider, dears!” Now until that moment,

Catherine would not see the gap at table, for her daughter Catherine had

besought her not to grieve to-night, and she had said, “No, sweetheart,

I promise I will not, since it vexes my children.” But when Elias

whispered “Sit wider!” says she, “Ay! the table will soon be too big

for the children, and you thought it would be too small;” and having

delivered this with forced calmness, she put up her apron the next

moment, and wept sore.

“'Tis the best that leave us,” sobbed she; “that is the cruel part.”

“Nay! nay!” said Elias, “our children are good children, and all are

dear to us alike. Heed her not! What God takes from us still seems

better that what He spares to us; that is to say, men are by nature

unthankful--and women silly.”

“And I say Richart and Jacob were the flower of the flock,” sobbed

Catherine.

The little coffer was empty again, and to fill it they gathered

like ants. In those days speculation was pretty much confined to the

card-and-dice business. Elias knew no way to wealth but the slow and

sure one. “A penny saved is a penny gained,” was his humble creed. All

that was not required for the business and the necessaries of life went

into the little coffer with steel bands and florid key. They denied

themselves in turn the humblest luxuries, and then, catching one

another's looks, smiled; perhaps with a greater joy than self-indulgence

has to bestow. And so in three years more they had gleaned enough to set

up their fourth son as a master-tailor, and their eldest daughter as a

robemaker, in Tergou. Here were two more provided for: their own trade

would enable them to throw work into the hands of this pair. But the

coffer was drained to the dregs, and this time the shop too bled a

little in goods if not in coin.

Alas! there remained on hand two that were unable to get their bread,

and two that were unwilling. The unable ones were, 1, Giles, a dwarf,

of the wrong sort, half stupidity, half malice, all head and claws and

voice, run from by dogs and unprejudiced females, and sided with through

thick and thin by his mother; 2, Little Catherine, a poor little girl

that could only move on crutches. She lived in pain, but smiled through

it, with her marble face and violet eyes and long silky lashes; and

fretful or repining word never came from her lips. The unwilling ones

were Sybrandt, the youngest, a ne'er-do-weel, too much in love with play

to work; and Cornelis, the eldest, who had made calculations, and stuck

to the hearth, waiting for dead men's shoes. Almost worn out by their

repeated efforts, and above all dispirited by the moral and physical

infirmities of those that now remained on hand, the anxious couple would

often say, “What will become of all these when we shall be no longer

here to take care of them?” But when they had said this a good many

times, suddenly the domestic horizon cleared, and then they used

still to say it, because a habit is a habit, but they uttered it half

mechanically now, and added brightly and cheerfully, “But thanks to St.

Bavon and all the saints, there's Gerard.”

Young Gerard was for many years of his life a son apart and he was going

into the Church, and the Church could always maintain her children by

hook or by crook in those days: no great hopes, because his family had

no interest with the great to get him a benefice, and the young man's

own habits were frivolous, and, indeed, such as our cloth merchant

would not have put up with in any one but a clerk that was to be. His

trivialities were reading and penmanship, and he was so wrapped up in

them that often he could hardly be got away to his meals. The day

was never long enough for him; and he carried ever a tinder-box and

brimstone matches, and begged ends of candles of the neighbours, which

he lighted at unreasonable hours--ay, even at eight of the clock at

night in winter, when the very burgomaster was abed. Endured at home,

his practices were encouraged by the monks of a neighbouring convent.

They had taught him penmanship, and continued to teach him until one day

they discovered, in the middle of a lesson, that he was teaching them.

They pointed this out to him in a merry way: he hung his head and

blushed: he had suspected as much himself, but mistrusted his judgment

in so delicate a matter. “But, my son,” said an elderly monk, “how is

it that you, to whom God has given an eye so true, a hand so subtle yet

firm, and a heart to love these beautiful crafts, how is it you do not

colour as well as write? A scroll looks but barren unless a border of

fruit, and leaves, and rich arabesques surround the good words, and

charm the sense as those do the soul and understanding; to say nothing

of the pictures of holy men and women departed, with which the several

chapters should be adorned, and not alone the eye soothed with the brave

and sweetly blended colours, but the heart lifted by effigies of the

saints in glory. Answer me, my son.”

At this Gerard was confused, and muttered that he had made several

trials at illuminating, but had not succeeded well; and thus the matter

rested.

Soon after this a fellow-enthusiast came on the scene in the unwonted

form of an old lady. Margaret, sister and survivor of the brothers Van

Eyck, left Flanders, and came to end her days in her native country. She

bought a small house near Tergou. In course of time she heard of Gerard,

and saw some of his handiwork: it pleased her so well that she sent her

female servant, Reicht Heynes, to ask him to come to her. This led to an

acquaintance: it could hardly be otherwise, for little Tergou had never

held so many as two zealots of this sort before. At first the old lady

damped Gerard's courage terribly. At each visit she fished out of holes

and corners drawings and paintings, some of them by her own hand, that

seemed to him unapproachable; but if the artist overpowered him, the

woman kept his heart up. She and Reicht soon turned him inside out like

a glove: among other things, they drew from him what the good monks had

failed to hit upon, the reason why he did not illuminate, viz., that

he could not afford the gold, the blue, and the red, but only the cheap

earths; and that he was afraid to ask his mother to buy the choice

colours, and was sure he should ask her in vain. Then Margaret Van Eyck

gave him a little brush--gold, and some vermilion and ultramarine, and

a piece of good vellum to lay them on. He almost adored her. As he left

the house Reicht ran after him with a candle and two quarters: he

quite kissed her. But better even than the gold and lapis-lazuli to the

illuminator was the sympathy to the isolated enthusiast. That sympathy

was always ready, and, as he returned it, an affection sprung up between

the old painter and the young caligrapher that was doubly characteristic

of the time. For this was a century in which the fine arts and the

higher mechanical arts were not separated by any distinct boundary, nor

were those who practised them; and it was an age in which artists sought

out and loved one another. Should this last statement stagger a painter

or writer of our day, let me remind him that even Christians loved one

another at first starting.

Backed by an acquaintance so venerable, and strengthened by female

sympathy, Gerard advanced in learning and skill. His spirits, too, rose

visibly: he still looked behind him when dragged to dinner in the

middle of an initial G; but once seated, showed great social qualities;

likewise a gay humour, that had hitherto but peeped in him, shone out,

and often he set the table in a roar, and kept it there, sometimes with

his own wit, sometimes with jests which were glossy new to his family,

being drawn from antiquity.

As a return for all he owed his friends the monks, he made them

exquisite copies from two of their choicest MSS., viz., the life of

their founder, and their Comedies of Terence, the monastery finding the

vellum.

The high and puissant Prince, Philip “the Good,” Duke of Burgundy,

Luxemburg, and Brabant, Earl of Holland and Zealand, Lord of Friesland,

Count of Flanders, Artois, and Hainault, Lord of Salins and Macklyn--was

versatile.

He could fight as well as any king going; and lie could lie as well as

any, except the King of France. He was a mighty hunter, and could read

and write. His tastes were wide and ardent. He loved jewels like a

woman, and gorgeous apparel. He dearly loved maids of honour, and indeed

paintings generally; in proof of which he ennobled Jan Van Eyck. He had

also a rage for giants, dwarfs, and Turks. These last stood ever planted

about him, turbaned and blazing with jewels. His agents inveigled them

from Istamboul with fair promises; but the moment he had got them, he

baptized them by brute force in a large tub; and this done, let them

squat with their faces towards Mecca, and invoke Mahound as much as they

pleased, laughing in his sleeve at their simplicity in fancying they

were still infidels. He had lions in cages, and fleet leopards trained

by Orientals to run down hares and deer. In short, he relished all

rarities, except the humdrum virtues. For anything singularly pretty or

diabolically ugly, this was your customer. The best of him was, he was

openhanded to the poor; and the next best was, he fostered the arts in

earnest: whereof he now gave a signal proof. He offered prizes for the

best specimens of orfevrerie in two kinds, religious and secular: item,

for the best paintings in white of egg, oils, and tempera; these to

be on panel, silk, or metal, as the artists chose: item, for the best

transparent painting on glass: item, for the best illuminating and

border-painting on vellum: item, for the fairest writing on vellum. The

burgomasters of the several towns were commanded to aid all the poorer

competitors by receiving their specimens and sending them with due care

to Rotterdam at the expense of their several burghs. When this was cried

by the bellman through the streets of Tergou, a thousand mouths opened,

and one heart beat--Gerard's. He told his family timidly he should try

for two of those prizes. They stared in silence, for their breath was

gone at his audacity; but one horrid laugh exploded on the floor like

a petard. Gerard looked down, and there was the dwarf, slit and fanged

from ear to ear at his expense, and laughing like a lion. Nature,

relenting at having made Giles so small, had given him as a set-off the

biggest voice on record. His very whisper was a bassoon. He was like

those stunted wide-mouthed pieces of ordnance we see on fortifications;

more like a flower-pot than a cannon; but ods tympana how they bellow!

Gerard turned red with anger, the more so as the others began to titter.

White Catherine saw, and a pink tinge came on her cheek. She said

softly, “Why do you laugh? Is it because he is our brother you think

he cannot be capable? Yes, Gerard, try with the rest. Many say you are

skilful; and mother and I will pray the Virgin to guide your hand.”

“Thank you, little Kate. You shall pray to our Lady, and our mother

shall buy me vellum and the colours to illuminate with.”

“What will they cost, my lad?”

“Two gold crowns” (about three shillings and fourpence English money).

“What!” screamed the housewife, “when the bushel of rye costs but a

groat! What! me spend a month's meal and meat and fire on such vanity as

that: the lightning from Heaven would fall on me, and my children would

all be beggars.”

“Mother!” sighed little Catherine, imploringly.

“Oh! it is in vain, Kate,” said Gerard, with a sigh. “I shall have to

give it up, or ask the dame Van Eyck. She would give it me, but I think

shame to be for ever taking from her.”

“It is not her affair,” said Catherine, very sharply; “what has she to

do coming between me and my son?” and she left the room with a red

face. Little Catherine smiled. Presently the housewife returned with a

gracious, affectionate air, and two little gold pieces in her hand.

“There, sweetheart,” said she, “you won't have to trouble dame or

demoiselle for two paltry crowns.”

But on this Gerard fell a thinking how he could spare her purse.

“One will do, mother. I will ask the good monks to let me send my copy

of their 'Terence:' it is on snowy vellum, and I can write no better:

so then I shall only need six sheets of vellum for my borders and

miniatures, and gold for my ground, and prime colours--one crown will

do.'

“Never tyne the ship for want of a bit of tar, Gerard,” said his

changeable mother. But she added, “Well, there, I will put the crown in

my pocket. That won't be like putting it back in the box. Going to the

box to take out instead of putting in, it is like going to my heart with

a knife for so many drops of blood. You will be sure to want it, Gerard.

The house is never built for less than the builder counted on.”

Sure enough, when the time came, Gerard longed to go to Rotterdam and

see the Duke, and above all to see the work of his competitors, and

so get a lesson from defeat. And the crown came out of the housewife's

pocket with a very good grace. Gerard would soon be a priest. It seemed

hard if he might not enjoy the world a little before separating himself

from it for life.

The night before he went, Margaret Van Eyck asked him to take a letter

for her, and when he came to look at it, to his surprise he found it was

addressed to the Princess Marie, at the Stadthouse in Rotterdam.

The day before the prizes were to be distributed, Gerard started for

Rotterdam in his holiday suit, to wit, a doublet of silver-grey cloth,

with sleeves, and a jerkin of the same over it, but without sleeves.

From his waist to his heels he was clad in a pair of tight-fitting

buckskin hose fastened by laces (called points) to his doublet. His

shoes were pointed, in moderation, and secured by a strap that passed

under the hollow of the foot. On his head and the back of his neck he

wore his flowing hair, and pinned to his back between his shoulders was

his hat: it was further secured by a purple silk ribbon little Kate had

passed round him from the sides of the hat, and knotted neatly on

his breast; below his hat, attached to the upper rim of his broad

waist-belt, was his leathern wallet. When he got within a league of

Rotterdam he was pretty tired, but he soon fell in with a pair that were

more so. He found an old man sitting by the roadside quite worn out, and

a comely young woman holding his hand, with a face brimful of concern.

The country people trudged by, and noticed nothing amiss; but Gerard, as

he passed, drew conclusions. Even dress tells a tale to those who study

it so closely as he did, being an illuminator. The old man wore a gown,

and a fur tippet, and a velvet cap, sure signs of dignity; but the

triangular purse at his girdle was lean, the gown rusty, the fur worn,

sure signs of poverty. The young woman was dressed in plain russet

cloth: yet snow-white lawn covered that part of her neck the gown left

visible, and ended half way up her white throat in a little band of gold

embroidery; and her head-dress was new to Gerard: instead of hiding her

hair in a pile of linen or lawn, she wore an open network of silver cord

with silver spangles at the interstices: in this her glossy auburn hair

was rolled in front into two solid waves, and supported behind in a

luxurious and shapely mass. His quick eye took in all this, and the old

man's pallor, and the tears in the young woman's eyes. So when he had

passed them a few yards, he reflected, and turned back, and came towards

them bashfully.

“Father, I fear you are tired.”

“Indeed, my son, I am,” replied the old man, “and faint for lack of

food.”

Gerard's address did not appear so agreeable to the girl as to the old

man. She seemed ashamed, and with much reserve in her manner, said,

that it was her fault--she had underrated the distance, and imprudently

allowed her father to start too late in the day.

“No, no,” said the old man; “it is not the distance, it is the want of

nourishment.”

The girl put her arms round his neck with tender concern, but took that

opportunity of whispering, “Father, a stranger--a young man!”

But it was too late. Gerard, with simplicity, and quite as a matter of

course, fell to gathering sticks with great expedition. This done, he

took down his wallet, out with the manchet of bread and the iron flask

his careful mother had put up, and his everlasting tinder-box; lighted a

match, then a candle-end, then the sticks; and put his iron flask on it.

Then down he went on his stomach, and took a good blow: then looking up,

he saw the girl's face had thawed, and she was looking down at him and

his energy with a demure smile. He laughed back to her. “Mind the pot,”

said he, “and don't let it spill, for Heaven's sake: there's a cleft

stick to hold it safe with;” and with this he set off running towards a

corn-field at some distance.

Whilst he was gone, there came by, on a mule with rich purple housings,

an old man redolent of wealth. The purse at his girdle was plethoric,

the fur on his tippet was ermine, broad and new.

It was Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, the burgomaster of Tergou.

He was old, and his face furrowed. He was a notorious miser, and looked

one generally. But the idea of supping with the Duke raised him just now

into manifest complacency. Yet at the sight of the faded old man and his

bright daughter sitting by a fire of sticks, the smile died out of his

face, and he wore a strange look of pain and uneasiness. He reined in

his mule.

“Why, Peter,--Margaret,” said he, almost fiercely, “what mummery is

this?” Peter was going to answer, but Margaret interposed hastily, and

said: “My father was exhausted, so I am warming something to give him

strength before we go on.”

“What! reduced to feed by the roadside like the Bohemians,” said

Ghysbrecht, and his hand went into his purse; but it did not seem at

home there; it fumbled uncertainly, afraid too large a coin might stick

to a finger and come out.

At this moment who should come bounding up but Gerard. He had two straws

in his hand, and he threw himself down by the fire and relieved Margaret

of the cooking part: then suddenly recognizing the burgomaster, he

coloured all over. Ghysbrecht Van Swieten started and glared at him,

and took his hand out of his purse. “Oh!” said he bitterly, “I am

not wanted,” and went slowly on, casting a long look of suspicion on

Margaret, and hostility on Gerard, that was not very intelligible.

However, there was something about it that Margaret could read enough

to blush at, and almost toss her head. Gerard only stared with surprise.

“By St. Bavon, I think the old miser grudges us three our quart

of soup,” said he. When the young man put that interpretation on

Ghysbrecht's strange and meaning look, Margaret was greatly relieved,

and smiled gaily on the speaker.

Meanwhile Ghysbrecht plodded on, more wretched in his wealth than these

in their poverty. And the curious thing is, that the mule, the purple

housings, and one-half the coin in that plethoric purse, belonged not to

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, but to that faded old man and that comely girl,

who sat by a roadside fire to be fed by a stranger. They did not know

this; but Ghysbrecht knew it, and carried in his heart a scorpion of

his own begetting; that scorpion is remorse--the remorse that, not

being penitence, is incurable, and ready for fresh misdeeds upon a fresh

temptation.

Twenty years ago, when Ghysbrecht Van Swieten was a hard and honest man,

the touchstone opportunity came to him, and he did an act of heartless

roguery. It seemed a safe one. It had hitherto proved a safe one, though

he had never felt safe. To-day he had seen youth, enterprise, and, above

all, knowledge, seated by fair Margaret and her father on terms that

look familiar and loving.

And the fiends are at big ear again.

CHAPTER II

“The soup is hot,” said Gerard.

“But how are we to get it to our mouths?” inquired the senior,

despondingly.

“Father, the young man has brought us straws.” And Margaret smiled

slily.

“Ay, ay!” said the old man; “but my poor bones are stiff, and indeed the

fire is too hot for a body to kneel over with these short straws. St.

John the Baptist, but the young man is adroit!”

For, while he stated his difficulty, Gerard removed it. He untied in a

moment the knot on his breast, took his hat off, put a stone into each

corner of it, then, wrapping his hand in the tail of his jerkin, whipped

the flask off the fire, wedged it in between the stones, and put the

hat under the old man's nose with a merry smile. The other tremulously

inserted the pipe of rye-straw and sucked. Lo and behold, his wan, drawn

face was seen to light up more and more, till it quite glowed; and as

soon as he had drawn a long breath:

“Hippocrates and Galen!” he cried, “'tis a soupe au vin--the restorative

of restoratives. Blessed be the nation that invented it, and the woman

that made it, and the young man who brings it to fainting folk. Have a

suck, my girl, while I relate to our young host the history and virtues

of this his sovereign compound. This corroborative, young sir, was

unknown to the ancients: we find it neither in their treatises of

medicine, nor in those popular narratives, which reveal many of their

remedies, both in chirurgery and medicine proper. Hector, in the Ilias,

if my memory does not play me false--

(Margaret. “Alas! he's off.”)

----was invited by one of the ladies of the poem to drink a draught of

wine; but he declined, on the plea that he was just going into battle,

and must not take aught to weaken his powers. Now, if the soupe au vin

had been known in Troy, it is clear that in declining vinum merum upon

that score, he would have added in the hexameter, 'But a soupe au vin,

madam, I will degust, and gratefully.' Not only would this have been but

common civility--a virtue no perfect commander is wanting in--but not

to have done it would have proved him a shallow and improvident person,

unfit to be trusted with the conduct of a war; for men going into a

battle need sustenance and all possible support, as is proved by this,

that foolish generals, bringing hungry soldiers to blows with full ones,

have been defeated, in all ages, by inferior numbers. The Romans lost

a great battle in the north of Italy to Hannibal, the Carthaginian, by

this neglect alone. Now, this divine elixir gives in one moment force to

the limbs and ardour to the spirits; and taken into Hector's body at

the nick of time, would, by the aid of Phoebus, Venus, and the blessed

saints, have most likely procured the Greeks a defeat. For note how

faint and weary and heart-sick I was a minute ago; well, I suck this

celestial cordial, and now behold me brave as Achilles and strong as an

eagle.”

“Oh, father, now? an eagle, alack!”

“Girl, I defy thee and all the world. Ready, I say, like a foaming

charger, to devour the space between this and Rotterdam, and strong

to combat the ills of life, even poverty and old age, which last

philosophers have called the summum malum. Negatur; unless the man's

life has been ill-spent--which, by the bye, it generally has. Now for

the moderns!”

“Father! dear father!”

“Fear me not, girl; I will be brief, unreasonably and unseasonably

brief. The soupe au vin occurs not in modern science; but this is only

one proof more, if proof were needed, that for the last few hundred

years physicians have been idiots, with their chicken-broth and their

decoction of gold, whereby they attribute the highest qualities to that

meat which has the least juice of any meat, and to that metal which

has less chemical qualities than all the metals; mountebanks! dunces!

homicides! Since, then, from these no light is to be gathered, go we

to the chroniclers; and first we find that Duguesclin, a French knight,

being about to join battle with the English--masters, at that time, of

half France, and sturdy strikers by sea and land--drank, not one, but

three soupes au vin in honour of the Blessed Trinity. This done, he

charged the islanders; and, as might have been foretold, killed a

multitude, and drove the rest into the sea. But he was only the first

of a long list of holy and hard-hitting ones who have, by this divine

restorative, been sustentated, fortified, corroborated, and consoled.”

“Dear father, prithee add thyself to that venerable company ere the

soup cools.” And Margaret held the hat imploringly in both hands till he

inserted the straw once more.

This spared them the “modern instances,” and gave Gerard an opportunity

of telling Margaret how proud his mother would be her soup had profited

a man of learning.

“Ay! but,” said Margaret, “it would like her ill to see her son give all

and take none himself. Why brought you but two straws?”

“Fair mistress, I hoped you would let me put my lips to your straw,

there being but two.”

Margaret smiled and blushed. “Never beg that you may command,” said she.

“The straw is not mine, 'tis yours: you cut it in yonder field.”

“I cut it, and that made it mine; but after that, your lip touched it,

and that made it yours.”

“Did it Then I will lend it you. There--now it is yours again; your lip

has touched it.”

“No, it belongs to us both now. Let us divide it.”

“By all means; you have a knife.”

“No, I will not cut it--that would be unlucky. I'll bite it. There I

shall keep my half: you will burn yours, once you get home, I doubt.'

“You know me not. I waste nothing. It is odds but I make a hairpin of

it, or something.”

This answer dashed the novice Gerard, instead of provoking him, to fresh

efforts, and he was silent. And now, the bread and soup being disposed

of, the old scholar prepared to continue his journey. Then came a

little difficulty: Gerard the adroit could not tie his ribbon again as

Catherine had tied it. Margaret, after slily eyeing his efforts for

some time, offered to help him; for at her age girls love to be coy and

tender, saucy and gentle, by turns, and she saw she had put him out of

countenance but now. Then a fair head, with its stately crown of auburn

hair, glossy and glowing through silver, bowed sweetly towards him; and,

while it ravished his eye, two white supple hands played delicately upon

the stubborn ribbon, and moulded it with soft and airy touches. Then a

heavenly thrill ran through the innocent young man, and vague glimpses

of a new world of feeling and sentiment opened on him. And these new and

exquisite sensations Margaret unwittingly prolonged: it is not natural

to her sex to hurry aught that pertains to the sacred toilet. Nay, when

the taper fingers had at last subjugated the ends of the knot, her mind

was not quite easy, till, by a manoeuvre peculiar to the female hand,

she had made her palm convex, and so applied it with a gentle pressure

to the centre of the knot--a sweet little coaxing hand-kiss, as much as

to say, “Now be a good knot, and stay so.” The palm-kiss was bestowed on

the ribbon, but the wearer's heart leaped to meet it.

“There, that is how it was,” said Margaret, and drew back to take one

last keen survey of her work; then, looking up for simple approval

of her skill, received full in her eyes a longing gaze of such ardent

adoration, as made her lower them quickly and colour all over. An

indescribable tremor seized her, and she retreated with downcast lashes

and tell-tale cheeks, and took her father's arm on the opposite side.

Gerard, blushing at having scared her away with his eyes, took the

other arm; and so the two young things went downcast and conscious, and

propped the eagle along in silence.

They entered Rotterdam by the Schiedamze Poort; and, as Gerard was

unacquainted with the town, Peter directed him the way to the Hooch

Straet, in which the Stadthouse was. He himself was going with Margaret

to his cousin, in the Ooster-Waagen Straet, so, almost on entering the

gate, their roads lay apart. They bade each other a friendly adieu, and

Gerard dived into the great town. A profound sense of solitude fell upon

him, yet the streets were crowded. Then he lamented too late that, out

of delicacy, he had not asked his late companions who they were and

where they lived.

“Beshrew my shamefacedness!” said he. “But their words and their

breeding were above their means, and something did whisper me they would

not be known. I shall never see her more. Oh weary world, I hate you and

your ways. To think I must meet beauty and goodness and learning--three

pearls of price--and never see them more!”

Falling into this sad reverie, and letting his body go where it would,

he lost his way; but presently meeting a crowd of persons all moving in

one direction, he mingled with them, for he argued they must be making

for the Stadthouse. Soon the noisy troop that contained the moody Gerard

emerged, not upon the Stadthouse, but upon a large meadow by the side of

the Maas; and then the attraction was revealed. Games of all sorts

were going on: wrestling, the game of palm, the quintain, legerdemain,

archery, tumbling, in which art, I blush to say, women as well as men

performed, to the great delectation of the company. There was also a

trained bear, who stood on his head, and marched upright, and bowed with

prodigious gravity to his master; and a hare that beat a drum, and a

cock that strutted on little stilts disdainfully. These things made

Gerard laugh now and then; but the gay scene could not really enliven

it, for his heart was not in tune with it. So hearing a young man say

to his fellow that the Duke had been in the meadow, but was gone to

the Stadthouse to entertain the burgomasters and aldermen and the

competitors for the prizes, and their friends, he suddenly remembered

he was hungry, and should like to sup with a prince. He left the

river-side, and this time he found the Hooch Straet, and it speedily led

him to the Stadthouse. But when he got there he was refused, first

at one door, then at another, till he came to the great gate of the

courtyard. It was kept by soldiers, and superintended by a pompous

major-domo, glittering in an embroidered collar and a gold chain of

office, and holding a white staff with a gold knob. There was a crowd of

persons at the gate endeavouring to soften this official rock. They came

up in turn like ripples, and retired as such in turn. It cost Gerard a

struggle to get near him, and when he was within four heads of the

gate, he saw something that made his heart beat; there was Peter, with

Margaret on his arm, soliciting humbly for entrance.

“My cousin the alderman is not at home; they say he is here.”

“What is that to me, old man?”

“If you will not let us pass in to him, at least take this leaf from my

tablet to my cousin. See, I have written his name; he will come out to

us.

“For what do you take me? I carry no messages, I keep the gate.”

He then bawled, in a stentorian voice, inexorably:

“No strangers enter here, but the competitors and their companies.”

“Come, old man,” cried a voice in the crowd, “you have gotten your

answer; make way.”

Margaret turned half round imploringly:

“Good people, we are come from far, and my father is old; and my cousin

has a new servant that knows us not, and would not let us sit in our

cousin's house.”

At this the crowd laughed hoarsely. Margaret shrank as if they had

struck her. At that moment a hand grasped hers--a magic grasp; it felt

like heart meeting heart, or magnet steel. She turned quickly round at

it, and it was Gerard. Such a little cry of joy and appeal came from her

bosom, and she began to whimper prettily.

They had hustled her and frightened her, for one thing; and her cousin's

thoughtlessness, in not even telling his servant they were coming,

was cruel; and the servant's caution, however wise and faithful to her

master, was bitterly mortifying to her father and her. And to her so

mortified, and anxious and jostled, came suddenly this kind hand and

face. “Hinc illae lacrimae.”

“All is well now,” remarked a coarse humourist; “she hath gotten her

sweetheart.”

“Haw! haw! haw!” went the crowd.

She dropped Gerard's hand directly, and turned round, with eyes flashing

through her tears:

“I have no sweetheart, you rude men. But I am friendless in your boorish

town, and this is a friend; and one who knows, what you know not, how to

treat the aged and the weak.”

The crowd was dead silent. They had only been thoughtless, and now felt

the rebuke, though severe, was just. The silence enabled Gerard to treat

with the porter.

“I am a competitor, sir.”

“What is your name?” and the man eyed him suspiciously.

“Gerard, the son of Elias.”

The janitor inspected a slip of parchment he held in his hand:

“Gerard Eliassoen can enter.”

“With my company, these two?”

“Nay; those are not your company they came before you.”

“What matter? They are my friends, and without them I go not in.”

“Stay without, then.”

“That will I not.”

“That we shall see.”

“We will, and speedily.” And with this, Gerard raised a voice of

astounding volume and power, and routed so that the whole street rang:

“Ho! PHILIP, EARL OF HOLLAND!”

“Are you mad?” cried the porter.

“HERE IS ONE OF YOUR VARLETS DEFIES YOU.”

“Hush, hush!”

“AND WILL NOT LET YOUR GUESTS PASS IN.”

“Hush! murder! The Dukes there. I'm dead,” cried the janitor, quaking.

Then suddenly trying to overpower Gerard's thunder, he shouted, with all

his lungs:

“OPEN THE GATE, YE KNAVES! WAY THERE FOR GERARD ELIASSOEN AND HIS

COMPANY! (The fiends go with him!)”

The gate swung open as by magic. Eight soldiers lowered their pikes

halfway, and made an arch, under which the victorious three marched

in triumphant. The moment they had passed, the pikes clashed together

horizontally to bar the gateway, and all but pinned an abdominal citizen

that sought to wedge in along with them.

Once past the guarded portal, a few steps brought the trio upon a scene

of Oriental luxury. The courtyard was laid out in tables loaded with

rich meats and piled with gorgeous plate. Guests in rich and various

costumes sat beneath a leafy canopy of fresh-cut branches fastened

tastefully to golden, silver, and blue silken cords that traversed the

area; and fruits of many hues, including some artificial ones of gold,

silver, and wax, hung pendant, or peeped like fair eyes among the green

leaves of plane-trees and lime-trees. The Duke's minstrels swept their

lutes at intervals, and a fountain played red Burgundy in six jets that

met and battled in the air. The evening sun darted its fires through

those bright and purple wine spouts, making them jets and cascades of

molten rubies, then passing on, tinged with the blood of the grape,

shed crimson glories here and there on fair faces, snowy beards, velvet,

satin, jewelled hilts, glowing gold, gleaming silver, and sparkling

glass. Gerard and his friends stood dazzled, spell-bound. Presently

a whisper buzzed round them, “Salute the Duke! Salute the Duke!” They

looked up, and there on high, under the dais, was their sovereign,

bidding them welcome with a kindly wave of the hand. The men bowed low,

and Margaret curtsied with a deep and graceful obeisance. The Duke's

hand being up, he gave it another turn, and pointed the new-comers out

to a knot of valets. Instantly seven of his people, with an obedient

start, went headlong at our friends, seated them at a table, and put

fifteen many-coloured soups before them, in little silver bowls, and as

many wines in crystal vases.

“Nay, father, let us not eat until we have thanked our good friend,”

said Margaret, now first recovering from all this bustle.

“Girl, he is our guardian angel.”

Gerard put his face into his hands.

“Tell me when you have done,” said he, “and I will reappear and have

my supper, for I am hungry. I know which of us three is the happiest at

meeting again.”

“Me?” inquired Margaret.

“No: guess again.”

“Father?”

“No.”

“Then I have no guess which it can be;” and she gave a little crow of

happiness and gaiety. The soup was tasted, and vanished in a twirl

of fourteen hands, and fish came on the table in a dozen forms, with

patties of lobster and almonds mixed, and of almonds and cream, and an

immense variety of brouets known to us as rissoles. The next trifle was

a wild boar, which smelt divine. Why, then, did Margaret start away from

it with two shrieks of dismay, and pinch so good a friend as Gerard?

Because the Duke's cuisinier had been too clever; had made this

excellent dish too captivating to the sight as well as taste. He had

restored to the animal, by elaborate mimicry with burnt sugar and other

edible colours, the hair and bristles he had robbed him of by fire and

water. To make him still more enticing, the huge tusks were carefully

preserved in the brute's jaw, and gave his mouth the winning smile that

comes of tusk in man or beast; and two eyes of coloured sugar glowed

in his head. St. Argus! what eyes! so bright, so bloodshot, so

threatening--they followed a man and every movement of his knife and

spoon. But, indeed, I need the pencil of Granville or Tenniel to make

you see the two gilt valets on the opposite side of the table putting

the monster down before our friends, with a smiling, self-satisfied,

benevolent obsequiousness for this ghastly monster was the flower of all

comestibles--old Peter clasping both hands in pious admiration of

it; Margaret wheeling round with horror-stricken eyes and her hand on

Gerard's shoulder, squeaking and pinching; his face of unwise delight at

being pinched, the grizzly brute glaring sulkily on all, and the guests

grinning from ear to ear.

“What's to do?” shouted the Duke, hearing the signals of female

distress. Seven of his people with a zealous start went headlong and

told him. He laughed and said, “Give her of the beef-stuffing, then, and

bring me Sir Boar.” Benevolent monarch! The beef-stuffing was his own

private dish. On these grand occasions an ox was roasted whole, and

reserved for the poor. But this wise as well as charitable prince had

discovered, that whatever venison, bares, lamb, poultry, etc., you

skewered into that beef cavern, got cooked to perfection, retaining

their own juices and receiving those of the reeking ox. These he called

his beef-stuffing, and took delight therein, as did now our trio;

for, at his word, seven of his people went headlong, and drove silver

tridents into the steaming cave at random, and speared a kid, a cygnet,

and a flock of wildfowl. These presently smoked before Gerard and

company; and Peter's face, sad and slightly morose at the loss of the

savage hog, expanded and shone. After this, twenty different tarts of

fruits and herbs, and last of all, confectionery on a Titanic scale;

cathedrals of sugar, all gilt painted in the interstices of the

bas-reliefs; castles with moats, and ditches imitated to the life;

elephants, camels, toads; knights on horseback jousting; kings and

princesses looking on trumpeters blowing; and all these personages

eating, and their veins filled with sweet-scented juices: works of art

made to be destroyed. The guests breached a bastion, crunched a crusader

and his horse and lance, or cracked a bishop, cope, chasuble, crosier

and all, as remorselessly as we do a caraway comfit; sipping meanwhile

hippocras and other spiced drinks, and Greek and Corsican wines, while

every now and then little Turkish boys, turbaned, spangled, jewelled,

and gilt, came offering on bended knee golden troughs of rose-water and

orange-water to keep the guests' hands cool and perfumed.

But long before our party arrived at this final stage appetite had

succumbed, and Gerard had suddenly remembered he was the bearer of a

letter to the Princess Marie, and, in an under-tone, had asked one of

the servants if he would undertake to deliver it. The man took it with

a deep obeisance: “He could not deliver it himself, but would instantly

give it one of the Princess's suite, several of whom were about.”

It may be remembered that Peter and Margaret came here not to dine, but

to find their cousin. Well, the old gentleman ate heartily, and--being

much fatigued, dropped asleep, and forgot all about his cousin. Margaret

did not remind him; we shall hear why.

Meanwhile, that Cousin was seated within a few feet of them, at their

backs, and discovered them when Margaret turned round and screamed

at the boar. But he forbore to speak to them, for municipal reasons.

Margaret was very plainly dressed, and Peter inclined to threadbare. So

the alderman said to himself:

“'Twill be time to make up to them when the sun sets and the company

disperses then I will take my poor relations to my house, and none will

be the wiser.”

Half the courses were lost on Gerard and Margaret. They were no great

eaters, and just now were feeding on sweet thoughts that have ever been

unfavourable to appetite. But there is a delicate kind of sensuality,

to whose influence these two were perhaps more sensitive than any other

pair in that assembly--the delights of colour, music, and perfume, all

of which blended so fascinatingly here.

Margaret leaned back and half closed her eyes, and murmured to Gerard:

“What a lovely scene! the warm sun, the green shade, the rich dresses,

the bright music of the lutes and the cool music of the fountain, and

all faces so happy and gay! and then, it is to you we owe it.”

Gerard was silent all but his eyes; observing which--

“Now, speak not to me,” said Margaret languidly; “let me listen to the

fountain: what are you a competitor for?”

He told her.

“Very well! You will gain one prize, at least.”

“Which? which? have you seen any of my work?”

“I? no. But you will gain a prize.

“I hope so; but what makes you think so?”

“Because you were so good to my father.”

Gerard smiled at the feminine logic, and hung his head at the sweet

praise, and was silent.

“Speak not,” murmured Margaret. “They say this is a world of sin and

misery. Can that be? What is your opinion?”

“No! that is all a silly old song,” explained Gerard. “'Tis a byword our

elders keep repeating, out of custom: it is not true.”

“How can you know? You are but a child,” said Margaret, with pensive

dignity.

“Why, only look round! And then thought I had lost you for ever; and you

are by my side; and now the minstrels are going to play again. Sin and

misery? Stuff and nonsense!”

The lutes burst out. The courtyard rang again with their delicate

harmony.

“What do you admire most of all these beautiful things, Gerard?”

“You know my name? How is that?”

“White magic. I am a--witch.”

“Angels are never witches. But I can't think how you--”

“Foolish boy! was it not cried at the gate loud enough to deave one?”

“So it was. Where is my head? What do I admire most? If you will sit a

little more that way, I'll tell you.”

“This way?”

“Yes; so that the light may fall on you. There! I see many fair things

here, fairer than I could have conceived; but the fairest of all, to

my eye, is your lovely hair in its silver frame, and the setting sun

kissing it. It minds me of what the Vulgate praises for beauty, 'an

apple of gold in a network of silver,' and oh, what a pity I did not

know you before I sent in my poor endeavours at illuminating! I could

illuminate so much better now. I could do everything better. There, now

the sun is full on it, it is like an aureole. So our Lady looked, and

none since her until to-day.”

“Oh, fie! it is wicked to talk so. Compare a poor, coarse-favoured girl

like me with the Queen of Heaven? Oh, Gerard! I thought you were a good

young man.” And Margaret was shocked apparently.

Gerard tried to explain. “I am no worse than the rest; but how can I

help having eyes, and a heart Margaret!”

“Gerard!”

“Be not angry now!”

“Now, is it likely?”

“I love you.”

“Oh, for shame! you must not say that to me,” and Margaret coloured

furiously at this sudden assault.

“I can't help it. I love you. I love you.”

“Hush, hush! for pity's sake! I must not listen to such words from a

stranger. I am ungrateful to call you a stranger. Oh! how one may be

mistaken! If I had known you were so bold--” And Margaret's bosom began

to heave, and her cheeks were covered with blushes, and she looked

towards her sleeping father, very much like a timid thing that meditates

actual flight.

Then Gerard was frightened at the alarm he caused. “Forgive me,” said he

imploringly. “How could any one help loving you?”

“Well, sir, I will try and forgive you--you are so good in other

respects; but then you must promise me never to say you--to say that

again.”

“Give me your hand then, or you don't forgive me.”

She hesitated; but eventually put out her hand a very little way, very

slowly, and with seeming reluctance. He took it, and held it prisoner.

When she thought it had been there long enough, she tried gently to draw

it away. He held it tight: it submitted quite patiently to force.

What is the use resisting force. She turned her head away, and her long

eyelashes drooped sweetly. Gerard lost nothing by his promise. Words

were not needed here; and silence was more eloquent. Nature was in that

day what she is in ours; but manners were somewhat freer. Then as now,

virgins drew back alarmed at the first words of love; but of prudery

and artificial coquetry there was little, and the young soon read one

another's hearts. Everything was on Gerard's side, his good looks, her

belief in his goodness, her gratitude; and opportunity for at the Duke's

banquet this mellow summer eve, all things disposed the female nature

to tenderness: the avenues to the heart lay open; the senses were so

soothed and subdued with lovely colours, gentle sounds, and delicate

odours; the sun gently sinking, the warm air, the green canopy, the cool

music of the now violet fountain.

Gerard and Margaret sat hand in hand in silence; and Gerard's eyes

sought hers lovingly; and hers now and then turned on him timidly and

imploringly and presently two sweet unreasonable tears rolled down her

cheeks, and she smiled while they were drying: yet they did not take

long.

And the sun declined; and the air cooled; and the fountain plashed more

gently; and the pair throbbed in unison and silence, and this weary

world looked heaven to them.

Oh, the merry days, the merry days when we were young.

Oh, the merry days, the merry days when we were young.

CHAPTER III

A grave white-haired seneschal came to their table, and inquired

courteously whether Gerard Eliassoen was of their company. Upon Gerard's

answer, he said:

“The Princess Marie would confer with you, young sir; I am to conduct

you to her presence.”

Instantly all faces within hearing turned sharp round, and were bent

with curiosity and envy on the man that was to go to a princess.

Gerard rose to obey.

“I wager we shall not see you again,” said Margaret calmly, but

colouring a little.

“That you will,” was the reply: then he whispered in her ear: “This is

my good princess; but you are my queen.” He added aloud: “Wait for me, I

pray you, I will presently return.”

“Ay, ay!” said Peter, awaking and speaking at one and the same moment.

Gerard gone, the pair whose dress was so homely, yet they were with the

man whom the Princess sent for, became “the cynosure of neighbouring

eyes;” observing which, William Johnson came forward, acted surprise,

and claimed his relations.

“And to think that there was I at your backs, and you saw me not”

“Nay, cousin Johnson, I saw you long syne,” said Margaret coldly.

“You saw me, and spoke not to me?”

“Cousin, it was for you to welcome us to Rotterdam, as it is for us

to welcome you at Sevenbergen. Your servant denied us a seat in your

house.”

“The idiot!”

“And I had a mind to see whether it was 'like maid like master:' for

there is sooth in bywords.”

William Johnson blushed purple. He saw Margaret was keen, and suspected

him. He did the wisest thing under the circumstances, trusted to deeds

not words. He insisted on their coming home with him at once, and he

would show them whether they were welcome to Rotterdam or not.

“Who doubts it, cousin? Who doubts it?” said the scholar.

Margaret thanked him graciously, but demurred to go just now: said

she wanted to hear the minstrels again. In about a quarter of an hour

Johnson renewed his proposal, and bade her observe that many of the

guests had left. Then her real reason came out.

“It were ill manners to our friend; and he will lose us. He knows not

where we lodge in Rotterdam, and the city is large, and we have parted

company once already.”

“Oh!” said Johnson, “we will provide for that. My young man, ahem!

I mean my secretary, shall sit here and wait, and bring him on to my

house: he shall lodge with me and with no other.”

“Cousin, we shall be too burdensome.”

“Nay, nay; you shall see whether you are welcome or not, you and your

friends, and your friends' friends, if need be; and I shall hear what

the Princess would with him.”

Margaret felt a thrill of joy that Gerard should be lodged under the

same roof with her; then she had a slight misgiving.

“But if your young man should be thoughtless, and go play, and Gerard

miss him?”

“He go play? He leave that spot where I put him, and bid him stay? Ho!

stand forth, Hans Cloterman.”

A figure clad in black serge and dark violet hose arose, and took two

steps and stood before them without moving a muscle: a solemn, precise

young man, the very statue of gravity and starched propriety. At his

aspect Margaret, being very happy, could hardly keep her countenance.

But she whispered Johnson, “I would put my hand in the fire for him. We

are at your command, cousin, as soon as you have given him his orders.”

Hans was then instructed to sit at the table and wait for Gerard, and

conduct him to Ooster-Waagen Straet. He replied, not in words, but

by calmly taking the seat indicated, and Margaret, Peter, and William

Johnson went away together.

“And, indeed, it is time you were abed, father, after all your travel,”

said Margaret. This had been in her mind all along.

Hans Cloterman sat waiting for Gerard, solemn and businesslike. The

minutes flew by, but excited no impatience in that perfect young man.

Johnson did him no more than justice when he laughed to scorn the idea

of his secretary leaving his post or neglecting his duty in pursuit of

sport or out of youthful hilarity and frivolity.

As Gerard was long in coming, the patient Hans--his employer's eye being

no longer on him improved the time by quaffing solemnly, silently, and

at short but accurately measured intervals, goblets of Corsican wine.

The wine was strong, so was Cloterman's head; and Gerard had been gone

a good hour ere the model secretary imbibed the notion that Creation

expected Cloterman to drink the health of all good fellows, and

nommement of the Duke of Burgundy there present. With this view he

filled bumper nine, and rose gingerly but solemnly and slowly. Having

reached his full height, he instantly rolled upon the grass, goblet

in hand, spilling the cold liquor on more than one ankle--whose owners

frisked--but not disturbing a muscle in his own long face, which, in

the total eclipse of reason, retained its gravity, primness, and

infallibility.

The seneschal led Gerard through several passages to the door of the

pavilion, where some young noblemen, embroidered and feathered, sat

sentinel, guarding the heir-apparent, and playing cards by the red light

of torches their servants held. A whisper from the seneschal, and one

of them rose reluctantly, stared at Gerard with haughty surprise, and

entered the pavilion. He presently returned, and, beckoning the pair,

led then, through a passage or two and landed them in an ante-chamber,

where sat three more young gentlemen, feathered, furred, and embroidered

like pieces of fancy work, and deep in that instructive and edifying

branch of learning, dice.

“You can't see the Princess--it is too late,” said one.

Another followed suit:

“She passed this way but now with her nurse. She is gone to bed, doll

and all. Deuce--ace again!”

Gerard prepared to retire. The seneschal, with an incredulous smile,

replied:

“The young man is here by the Countess's orders; be so good as conduct

him to her ladies.”

On this a superb Adonis rose, with an injured look, and led Gerard into

a room where sat or lolloped eleven ladies, chattering like magpies.

Two, more industrious than the rest, were playing cat's-cradle with

fingers as nimble as their tongues. At the sight of a stranger all the

tongues stopped like one piece of complicated machinery, and all the

eyes turned on Gerard, as if the same string that checked the tongues

had turned the eyes on. Gerard was ill at ease before, but this battery

of eyes discountenanced him, and down went his eyes on the ground. Then

the cowards finding, like the hare who ran by the pond and the frogs

scuttled into the water, that there was a creature they could frighten,

giggled and enjoyed their prowess. Then a duenna said severely,

“Mesdames!” and they were all abashed at once as though a modesty string

had been pulled. This same duenna took Gerard, and marched before him

in solemn silence. The young man's heart sank, and he had half a mind to

turn and run out of the place.

“What must princes be,” he thought, “when their courtiers are so

freezing? Doubtless they take their breeding from him they serve.” These

reflections were interrupted by the duenna suddenly introducing him into

a room where three ladies sat working, and a pretty little girl tuning

a lute. The ladies were richly but not showily dressed, and the duenna

went up to the one who was hemming a kerchief, and said a few words in

a low tone. This lady then turned towards Gerard with a smile, and

beckoned him to come near her. She did not rise, but she laid aside her

work, and her manner of turning towards him, slight as the movement was,

was full of grace and ease and courtesy. She began a conversation at

once.

“Margaret Van Eyck is an old friend of mine, sir, and I am right glad to

have a letter from her hand, and thankful to you, sir, for bringing it

to me safely. Marie, my love, this is the gentleman who brought you that

pretty miniature.”

“Sir, I thank you a thousand times,” said the young lady.

“I am glad you feel her debtor, sweetheart, for our friend would have us

to do him a little service in return.

“I will do anything on earth for him,” replied the young lady with

ardour.

“Anything on earth is nothing in the world,” said the Countess of

Charolois quietly.

“Well, then, I will--What would you have me to do, sir?”

Gerard had just found out what high society he was in. “My sovereign

demoiselle,” said he, gently and a little tremulously, “where there have

been no pains, there needs no reward.”

But we must obey mamma. All the world must obey

“That is true. Then, our demoiselle, reward me, if you will by letting

me hear the stave you were going to sing and I did interrupt it.”

“What! you love music, sir?”

“I adore it.”

The little princess looked inquiringly at her mother, and received a

smile of assent. She then took her lute and sang a romaunt of the day.

Although but twelve years old, she was a well-taught and painstaking

musician. Her little claw swept the chords with Courage and precision,

and struck out the notes of the arpeggio clear, and distinct, and

bright, like twinkling stars; but the main charm was her voice. It was

not mighty, but it was round, clear, full, and ringing like a bell. She

sang with a certain modest eloquence, though she knew none of the tricks

of feeling. She was too young to be theatrical, or even sentimental,

so nothing was forced--all gushed. Her little mouth seemed the mouth of

Nature. The ditty, too, was as pure as its utterance. As there were none

of those false divisions--those whining slurs, which are now sold so

dear by Italian songsters, though every jackal in India delivers them

gratis to his customers all night, and sometimes gets shot for them, and

always deserves it--so there were no cadences and fiorituri, the trite,

turgid, and feeble expletives of song, the skim-milk with which mindless

musicians and mindless writers quench fire, wash out colour, and drown

melody and meaning dead.

While the pure and tender strain was flowing from the pure young throat,

Gerard's eyes filled. The Countess watched him with interest, for it

was usual to applaud the Princess loudly, but not with cheek and eye.

So when the voice ceased, and the glasses left off ringing, she asked

demurely, “Was he content?”

Gerard gave a little start; the spoken voice broke a charm and brought

him back to earth.

“Oh, madam!” he cried, “surely it is thus that cherubs and seraphs sing,

and charm the saints in heaven.”

“I am somewhat of your opinion, my young friend,” said the Countess,

with emotion; and she bent a look of love and gentle pride upon her

girl: a heavenly look, such as, they say, is given to the eye of the

short-lived resting on the short-lived.

The Countess resumed: “My old friend request me to be serviceable to

you. It is the first favour she has done us the honour of asking us, and

the request is sacred. You are in holy orders, sir?”

Gerard bowed.

“I fear you are not a priest, you look too young.”

“Oh no, madam; I am not even a sub-deacon. I am only a lector; but next

month I shall be an exorcist, and before long an acolyth.”

“Well, Monsieur Gerard, with your accomplishments you can soon pass

through the inferior orders. And let me beg you to do so. For the

day after you have said your first mass I shall have the pleasure of

appointing you to a benefice.”

“Oh, madam!”

“And, Marie, remember I make this promise in your name as well as my

own.”

“Fear not, mamma: I will not forget. But if he will take my advice,

what he will be is Bishop of Liege. The Bishop of Liege is a beautiful

bishop. What! do you not remember him, mamma, that day we were at Liege?

he was braver than grandpapa himself. He had on a crown, a high one, and

it was cut in the middle, and it was full of oh! such beautiful jewels;

and his gown stiff with gold; and his mantle, too; and it had a broad

border, all pictures; but, above all, his gloves; you have no such

gloves, mamma. They were embroidered and covered with jewels, and

scented with such lovely scent; I smelt them all the time he was giving

me his blessing on my head with them. Dear old man! I dare say he will

die soon most old people do and then, sir, you Can be bishop you know,

and wear--

“Gently, Marie, gently: bishoprics are for old gentlemen; and this is a

young gentleman.”

“Mamma! he is not so very young.

“Not compared with you, Marie, eh?”

“He is a good birth dear mamma; and I am sure he is good enough for a

bishop.

“Alas! mademoiselle, you are mistaken”

“I know not that, Monsieur Gerard; but I am a little puzzled to know on

what grounds mademoiselle there pronounces your character so boldly.”

“Alas! mamma,” said the Princess, “you have not looked at his face,

then;” and she raised her eyebrows at her mother's simplicity.

“I beg your pardon,” said the Countess, “I have. Well, sir, if I cannot

go quite so fast as my daughter, attribute it to my age, not to a want

of interest in your welfare. A benefice will do to begin your Career

with; and I must take care it is not too far from--what call you the

place?”

“Tergou, madam

“A priest gives up much,” continued the Countess; “often, I fear, he

learns too late how much;” and her woman's eye rested a moment on Gerard

with mild pity and half surprise at his resigning her sex and all the

heaven they can bestow, and the great parental joys: “at least you shall

be near your friends. Have you a mother?”

“Yes, madam, thanks be to God!”

“Good! You shall have a church near Tergou. She will thank me. And now,

sir, we must not detain you too long from those who have a better claim

on your society than we have. Duchess, oblige me by bidding one of the

pages conduct him to the hall of banquet; the way is hard to find.”

Gerard bowed low to the Countess and the Princess, and backed towards

the door.

“I hope it will be a nice benefice,” said the Princess to him, with a

pretty smile, as he was going out; then, shaking her head with an air of

solemn misgiving, “but you had better have been Bishop of Liege.”

Gerard followed his new conductor, his heart warm with gratitude; but

ere he reached the banquet-hall a chill came over him. The mind of one

who has led a quiet, uneventful life is not apt to take in contradictory

feelings at the same moment and balance them, but rather to be

overpowered by each in turn. While Gerard was with the Countess, the

excitement of so new a situation, the unlooked-for promise the joy

and pride it would cause at home, possessed him wholly; but now it was

passion's turn to be heard again. What! give up Margaret, whose soft

hand he still felt in his, and her deep eyes in his heart? resign her

and all the world of love and joy she had opened on him to-day? The

revulsion, when it did come, was so strong that he hastily resolved

to say nothing at home about the offered benefice. “The Countess is

so good,” thought he, “she has a hundred ways of aiding a young man's

fortune: she will not compel me to be a priest when she shall learn I

love one of her sex: one would almost think she does know it, for she

cast a strange look on me, and said, 'A priest gives up much, too much.'

I dare say she will give me a place about the palace.” And with this

hopeful reflection his mind was eased, and, being now at the entrance

of the banqueting hall, he thanked his conductor, and ran hastily with

joyful eyes to Margaret. He came in sight of the table--she was gone.

Peter was gone too. Nobody was at the table at all; only a citizen in

sober garments had just tumbled under it dead drunk, and several persons

were raising him to carry him away. Gerard never guessed how important

this solemn drunkard was to him: he was looking for “Beauty,” and

let the “Beast” lie. He ran wildly round the hall, which was now

comparatively empty. She was not there. He left the palace: outside he

found a crowd gaping at two great fan-lights just lighted over the gate.

He asked them earnestly if they had seen an old man in a gown, and a

lovely girl pass out. They laughed at the question. “They were staring

at these new lights that turn night into day. They didn't trouble their

heads about old men and young wenches, every-day sights.” From another

group he learned there was a Mystery being played under canvas hard by,

and all the world gone to see it. This revived his hopes, and he went

and saw the Mystery.

In this representation divine personages, too sacred for me to name

here, came clumsily down from heaven to talk sophistry with the cardinal

Virtues, the nine Muses, and the seven deadly sins, all present in

human shape, and not unlike one another. To enliven which weary stuff

in rattled the Prince of the power of the air, and an imp that kept

molesting him and buffeting him with a bladder, at each thwack of which

the crowd were in ecstasies. When the Vices had uttered good store of

obscenity and the Virtues twaddle, the celestials, including the nine

Muses went gingerly back to heaven one by one; for there was but one

cloud; and two artisans worked it up with its supernatural freight,

and worked it down with a winch, in full sight of the audience. These

disposed of, the bottomless pit opened and flamed in the centre of the

stage; the carpenters and Virtues shoved the Vices in, and the Virtues

and Beelzebub and his tormentor danced merrily round the place of

eternal torture to the fife and tabor.

This entertainment was writ by the Bishop of Ghent for the diffusion

of religious sentiment by the aid of the senses, and was an average

specimen of theatrical exhibitions so long as they were in the hands of

the clergy. But, in course of time, the laity conducted plays, and so

the theatre, I learn from the pulpit, has become profane.

Margaret was nowhere in the crowd, and Gerard could not enjoy the

performance; he actually went away in Act 2, in the midst of a

much-admired piece of dialogue, in which Justice out-quibbled Satan. He

walked through many streets, but could not find her he sought. At last,

fairly worn out, he went to a hostelry and slept till daybreak. All that

day, heavy and heartsick, he sought her, but could never fall in with

her or her father, nor ever obtain the slightest clue. Then he felt she

was false or had changed her mind. He was irritated now, as well as sad.

More good fortune fell on him; he almost hated it. At last, on the third

day, after he had once more been through every street, he said, “She is

not in the town, and I shall never see her again. I will go home.”

He started for Tergou with royal favour promised, with fifteen golden

angels in his purse, a golden medal on his bosom, and a heart like a

lump of lead.

CHAPTER IV

It was near four o'clock in the afternoon. Eli was in the shop. His

eldest and youngest sons were abroad. Catherine and her little crippled

daughter had long been anxious about Gerard, and now they were gone a

little way down the road, to see if by good luck he might be visible

in the distance; and Giles was alone in the sitting-room, which I will

sketch, furniture and dwarf included.

The Hollanders were always an original and leading people. They claim

to have invented printing (wooden type), oil-painting, liberty,

banking, gardening, etc. Above all, years before my tale, they invented

cleanliness. So, while the English gentry, in velvet jerkins and

chicken-toed shoes, trode floors of stale rushes, foul receptacle of

bones, decomposing morsels, spittle, dogs, eggs, and all abominations,

this hosier's sitting-room at Tergou was floored with Dutch tiles, so

highly glazed and constantly washed, that you could eat off them. There

was one large window; the cross stone-work in the centre of it was

very massive, and stood in relief, looking like an actual cross to the

inmates, and was eyed as such in their devotions. The panes were very

small and lozenge-shaped, and soldered to one another with strips of

lead: the like you may see to this day in our rural cottages. The chairs

were rude and primitive, all but the arm-chair, whose back, at right

angles with its seat, was so high that the sitter's head stopped two

feet short of the top. This chair was of oak, and carved at the summit.

There was a copper pail, that went in at the waist, holding holy water,

and a little hand-besom to sprinkle it far and wide; and a long, narrow,

but massive oak table, and a dwarf sticking to its rim by his teeth, his

eyes glaring, and his claws in the air like a pouncing vampire. Nature,

it would seem, did not make Giles a dwarf out of malice prepense; she

constructed a head and torso with her usual care; but just then her

attention was distracted, and she left the rest to chance; the result

was a human wedge, an inverted cone. He might justly have taken her to

task in the terms of Horace,

“Amphora coepit

Institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?”

His centre was anything but his centre of gravity. Bisected, upper Giles

would have outweighed three lower Giles. But this very disproportion

enabled him to do feats that would have baffled Milo. His brawny arms

had no weight to draw after them; so he could go up a vertical pole like

a squirrel, and hang for hours from a bough by one hand like a cherry by

its stalk. If he could have made a vacuum with his hands, as the lizard

is said to do with its feet, he would have gone along a ceiling. Now,

this pocket-athlete was insanely fond of gripping the dinner-table with

both hands, and so swinging; and then--climax of delight! he would seize

it with his teeth, and, taking off his hands, hold on like grim death by

his huge ivories.

But all our joys, however elevating, suffer interruption. Little Kate

caught Sampsonet in this posture, and stood aghast. She was her mother's

daughter, and her heart was with the furniture, not with the 12mo

gymnast.

“Oh, Giles! how can you? Mother is at hand. It dents the table.”

“Go and tell her, little tale-bearer,” snarled Giles. “You are the one

for making mischief.”

“Am I?” inquired Kate calmly; “that is news to me.”

“The biggest in Tergou,” growled Giles, fastening on again.

“Oh, indeed!” said Kate drily.

This piece of unwonted satire launched, and Giles not visibly blasted,

she sat down quietly and cried.

Her mother came in almost at that moment, and Giles hurled himself under

the table, and there glared.

“What is to do now?” said the dame sharply. Then turning her experienced

eyes from Kate to Giles, and observing the position he had taken up, and

a sheepish expression, she hinted at cuffing of ears.

“Nay, mother,” said the girl; “it was but a foolish word Giles spoke.

I had not noticed it at another time; but I was tired and in care for

Gerard, you know.”

“Let no one be in care for me,” said a faint voice at the door, and in

tottered Gerard, pale, dusty, and worn out; and amidst uplifted hands

and cries of delight, curiosity, and anxiety mingled, dropped exhausted

into the nearest chair.

Beating Rotterdam, like a covert, for Margaret, and the long journey

afterwards, had fairly knocked Gerard up. But elastic youth soon

revived, and behold him the centre of an eager circle. First of all they

must hear about the prizes. Then Gerard told them he had been admitted

to see the competitors' works, all laid out in an enormous hall before

the judges pronounced.

“Oh, mother! oh, Kate! when I saw the goldsmiths' work, I had liked to

have fallen on the floor. I thought not all the goldsmiths on earth had

so much gold, silver, jewels, and craft of design and facture. But, in

sooth, all the arts are divine.”

Then, to please the females, he described to them the reliquaries,

feretories, calices, crosiers, crosses, pyxes, monstrances, and other

wonders ecclesiastical, and the goblets, hanaps, watches, Clocks,

chains, brooches, &c., so that their mouths watered.

“But, Kate, when I came to the illuminated work from Ghent and Bruges,

my heart sank. Mine was dirt by the side of it. For the first minute I

could almost have cried; but I prayed for a better spirit, and presently

I was able to enjoy them, and thank God for those lovely works, and

for those skilful, patient craftsmen, whom I own my masters. Well, the

coloured work was so beautiful I forgot all about the black and white.

But next day, when all the other prizes had been given, they came to the

writing, and whose name think you was called first?”

“Yours,” said Kate.

The others laughed her to scorn.

“You may well laugh,” said Gerard, “but for all that, Gerard Eliassoen

of Tergou was the name the herald shouted. I stood stupid; they thrust

me forward. Everything swam before my eyes. I found myself kneeling on

a cushion at the feet of the Duke. He said something to me, but I was so

fluttered I could not answer him. So then he put his hand to his side,

and did not draw a glaive and cut off my dull head, but gave me a gold

medal, and there it is.” There was a yell and almost a scramble. “And

then he gave me fifteen great bright golden angels. I had seen one

before, but I never handled one. Here they are.”

“Oh, Gerard! oh, Gerard!”

“There is one for you, our eldest; and one for you, Sybrandt, and for

you, Little Mischief; and two for thee, Little Lily, because God hath

afflicted thee; and one for myself, to buy colours and vellum; and nine

for her that nursed us all, and risked the two crowns upon poor Gerard's

hand.”

The gold drew out their characters. Cornelis and Sybrandt clutched each

his coin with one glare of greediness and another glare of envy at Kate,

who had got two pieces. Giles seized his and rolled it along the floor

and gambolled after it. Kate put down her crutches and sat down, and

held out her little arms to Gerard with a heavenly gesture of love and

tenderness; and the mother, fairly benumbed at first by the shower of

gold that fell on her apron, now cried out, “Leave kissing him, Kate;

he is my son, not yours. Ah. Gerard! my boy! I have not loved you as you

deserved.”

Then Gerard threw himself on his knees beside her, and she flung her

arms round him and wept for joy and pride upon his neck.

“Good lad! good lad!” cried the hosier, with some emotion. “I must go

and tell the neighbours. Lend me the medal, Gerard; I'll show it my good

friend Peter Buyskens; he is ever regaling me with how his son Jorian

won the tin mug a shooting at the butts.”

“Ay, do, my man; and show Peter Buyskens one of the angels. Tell him

there are fourteen more where that came from. Mind you bring it me

back!”

“Stay a minute, father; there is better news behind,” said Gerard,

flushing with joy at the joy he caused.

“Better! better than this?”

Then Gerard told his interview with the Countess, and the house rang

with joy.

“Now, God bless the good lady, and bless the dame Van Eyck! A benefice?

our son! My cares are at an end. Eli, my good friend and master, now we

two can die happy whenever our time comes. This dear boy will take our

place, and none of these loved ones will want a home or a friend.”

From that hour Gerard was looked upon as the stay of the family. He

was a son apart, but in another sense. He was always in the right, and

nothing too good for him. Cornelis and Sybrandt became more and more

jealous of him, and longed for the day he should go to his benefice;

they would get rid of the favourite, and his reverence's purse would be

open to them. With these views he co-operated. The wound love had

given him throbbed duller and duller. His success and the affection and

admiration of his parents made him think more highly of himself, and

resent with more spirit Margaret's ingratitude and discourtesy. For all

that, she had power to cool him towards the rest of her sex, and now for

every reason he wished to be ordained priest as soon as he could pass

the intermediate orders. He knew the Vulgate already better than most of

the clergy, and studied the rubric and the dogmas of the Church with

his friends the monks; and, the first time the bishop came that way, he

applied to be admitted “exorcist,” the third step in holy orders. The

bishop questioned him, and ordained him at once. He had to kneel, and,

after a short prayer, the bishop delivered to him a little MS. full of

exorcisms, and said: “Take this, Gerard, and have power to lay hands

on the possessed, whether baptized or catechumens!” and he took it

reverently, and went home invested by the Church with power to cast out

demons.

Returning home from the church, he was met by little Kate on her

crutches.

“Oh, Gerard! who, think you, hath sent to our house seeking you?--the

burgomaster himself.”

“Ghysbrecht Van Swieten! What would he with me?”

“Nay, Gerard, I know not. But he seems urgent to see you. You are to go

to his house on the instant.”

“Well, he is the burgomaster: I will go; but it likes me not. Kate, I

have seen him cast such a look on me as no friend casts. No matter; such

looks forewarn the wise. To be sure, he knows.”

“Knows what, Gerard?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Kate, I'll go.”

CHAPTER V

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten was an artful man. He opened on the novice with

something quite wide of the mark he was really aiming at. “The town

records,” said he, “are crabbedly written, and the ink rusty with age.”

He offered Gerard the honour of transcribing them fair.

Gerard inquired what he was to be paid.

Ghysbrecht offered a sum that would have just purchased the pens, ink,

and parchment.

“But, burgomaster, my labour? Here is a year's work.”

“Your labour? Call you marking parchment labour? Little sweat goes to

that, I trow.”

“'Tis labour, and skilled labour to boot; and that is better paid in all

crafts than rude labour, sweat or no sweat. Besides, there's my time.”

“Your time? Why, what is time to you, at two-and-twenty?” Then fixing

his eyes keenly on Gerard, to mark the effect of his words, he said:

“Say, rather, you are idle grown. You are in love. Your body is with

these chanting monks, but your heart is with Peter Brandt and his

red-haired girl.”

“I know no Peter Brandt.”

This denial confirmed Ghysbrecht's suspicion that the caster-out of

demons was playing a deep game.

“Ye lie!” he shouted. “Did I not find you at her elbow on the road to

Rotterdam?”

“Ah!”

“Ah! And you were seen at Sevenbergen but t'other day.”

“Was I?'

“Ah and at Peter's house.”

“At Sevenbergen?”

“Ay, at Sevenbergen.”

Now, this was what in modern days is called a draw. It was a guess, put

boldly forth as fact, to elicit by the young man's answer whether he had

been there lately or not.

The result of the artifice surprised the crafty one. Gerard started up

in a strange state of nervous excitement.

“Burgomaster,” said he, with trembling voice, “I have not been at

Sevenbergen these three years, and I know not the name of those you saw

me with, nor where they dwelt; but, as my time is precious, though

you value it not, give you good day.” And he darted out, with his eyes

sparkling.

Ghysbrecht started up in huge ire; but he sank into his chair again.

“He fears me not. He knows something, if not all.”

Then he called hastily to his trusty servant, and almost dragged him to

a window.

“See you yon man?” he cried. “Haste! follow him! But let him not see

you. He is young, but old in craft. Keep him in sight all day. Let me

know whither he goes, and what he does.”

It was night when the servant returned.

“Well? well?” cried Van Swieten eagerly.

“Master, the young man went from you to Sevenbergen.”

Ghysbrecht groaned.

“To the house of Peter the Magician.”

CHAPTER VI

“Look into your own heart and write!” said Herr Cant; and earth's

cuckoos echoed the cry. Look into the Rhine where it is deepest, and the

Thames where it is thickest, and paint the bottom. Lower a bucket into

a well of self-deception, and what comes up must be immortal truth,

mustn't it? Now, in the first place, no son of Adam ever reads his own

heart at all, except by the habit acquired, and the light gained, from

some years perusal of other hearts; and even then, with his acquired

sagacity and reflected light, he can but spell and decipher his own

heart, not read it fluently. Half way to Sevenbergen Gerard looked into

his own heart, and asked it why he was going to Sevenbergen. His heart

replied without a moment's hesitation, “We are going out of curiosity

to know why she jilted us, and to show her it has not broken our hearts,

and that we are quite content with our honours and our benefice in

prospectu, and don't want her nor ally of her fickle sex.”

He soon found out Peter Brandt's cottage; and there sat a girl in the

doorway, plying her needle, and a stalwart figure leaned on a long bow

and talked to her. Gerard felt an unaccountable pang at the sight of

him. However, the man turned out to be past fifty years of age, an old

soldier, whom Gerard remembered to have seen shoot at the butts with

admirable force and skill. Another minute and the youth stood before

them. Margaret looked up and dropped her work, and uttered a faint cry,

and was white and red by turns. But these signs of emotion were swiftly

dismissed, and she turned far more chill and indifferent than she would

if she had not betrayed this agitation.

“What! is it you, Master Gerard? What on earth brings you here, I

wonder?”

“I was passing by and saw you; so I thought I would give you good day,

and ask after your father.”

“My father is well. He will be here anon.”

“Then I may as well stay till he comes.”

“As you will. Good Martin, step into the village and tell my father here

is a friend of his.”

“And not of yours?”

“My father's friends are mine.”

“That is doubtful. It was not like a friend to promise to wait for me,

and then make off the moment my back was turned. Cruel Margaret you

little know how I searched the town for you; how for want of you nothing

was pleasant to me.”

“These are idle words; if you had desired my father's company, or mine,

you would have come back. There I had a bed laid for you, sir, at my

cousin's, and he would have made much of you, and, who knows, I might

have made much of you too. I was in the humour that day. You will

not catch me in the same mind again, neither you nor any young man, I

warrant me.”

“Margaret, I came back the moment the Countess let me go; but you were

not there.”

“Nay, you did not, or you had seen Hans Cloterman at our table; we left

him to bring you on.”

“I saw no one there, but only a drunken man, that had just tumbled

down.”

“At our table? How was he clad?”

“Nay, I took little heed: in sad-coloured garb.”

At this Margaret's face gradually warmed; but presently, assuming

incredulity and severity, she put many shrewd questions, all of which

Gerard answered most loyally. Finally, the clouds cleared, and they

guessed how the misunderstanding had come about. Then came a revulsion

of tenderness, all the more powerful that they had done each other

wrong; and then, more dangerous still, came mutual confessions. Neither

had been happy since; neither ever would have been happy but for this

fortunate meeting.

And Gerard found a MS. Vulgate lying open on the table, and pounced upon

it like a hawk. MSS. were his delight; but before he could get to it two

white hands quickly came flat upon the page, and a red face over them.

“Nay, take away your hands, Margaret, that I may see where you are

reading, and I will read there too at home; so shall my soul meet yours

in the sacred page. You will not? Nay, then I must kiss them away.” And

he kissed them so often, that for very shame they were fain to withdraw,

and, lo! the sacred book lay open at,

“An apple of gold in a network of silver.”

“There, now,” said she, “I had been hunting for it ever so long,

and found it but even now--and to be caught!” and with a touch of

inconsistency she pointed it out to Gerard with her white finger.

“Ay,” said he, “but to-day it is all hidden in that great cap.”

“It is a comely cap, I'm told by some.”

“Maybe; but what it hides is beautiful.”

“It is not: it is hideous.”

“Well, it was beautiful at Rotterdam.”

“Ay, everything was beautiful that day” (with a little sigh).

And now Peter came in, and welcomed Gerard cordially, and would have him

to stay supper. And Margaret disappeared; and Gerard had a nice learned

chat with Peter; and Margaret reappeared with her hair in her silver

net, and shot a glance half arch, half coy, and glided about them, and

spread supper, and beamed bright with gaiety and happiness. And in

the cool evening Gerard coaxed her out, and she objected and came; and

coaxed her on to the road to Tergou, and she declined, and came; and

there they strolled up and down, hand in hand; and when he must go, they

pledged each other never to quarrel or misunderstand one another again;

and they sealed the promise with a long loving kiss, and Gerard went

home on wings.

From that day Gerard spent most of his evenings with Margaret, and the

attachment deepened and deepened on both sides, till the hours they

spent together were the hours they lived; the rest they counted and

underwent. And at the outset of this deep attachment all went smoothly.

Obstacles there were, but they seemed distant and small to the eyes of

hope, youth, and love. The feelings and passions of so many persons,

that this attachment would thwart, gave no warning smoke to show

their volcanic nature and power. The course of true love ran smoothly,

placidly, until it had drawn these two young hearts into its current for

ever.

And then--

CHAPTER VII

One bright morning unwonted velvet shone, unwonted feathers waved, and

horses' hoofs glinted and ran through the streets of Tergou, and the

windows and balconies were studded with wondering faces. The French

ambassador was riding through to sport in the neighbouring forest.

Besides his own suite, he was attended by several servants of the Duke

of Burgundy, lent to do him honour and minister to his pleasure. The

Duke's tumbler rode before him with a grave, sedate majesty, that made

his more noble companions seem light, frivolous persons. But ever and

anon, when respect and awe neared the oppressive, he rolled off his

horse so ignobly and funnily, that even the ambassador was fain' to

burst out laughing. He also climbed up again by the tail in a way

provocative of mirth, and so he played his part. Towards the rear of the

pageant rode one that excited more attention still--the Duke's leopard.

A huntsman, mounted on a Flemish horse of giant prodigious size and

power, carried a long box fastened to the rider's loins by straps

curiously contrived, and on this box sat a bright leopard crouching.

She was chained to the huntsman. The people admired her glossy hide

and spots, and pressed near, and one or two were for feeling her,

and pulling her tail; then the huntsman shouted in a terrible voice,

“Beware! At Antwerp one did but throw a handful of dust at her, and the

Duke made dust of him.”

“Gramercy!”

“I speak sooth. The good Duke shut him up in prison, in a cell under

ground, and the rats cleaned the flesh off his bones in a night. Served

him right for molesting the poor thing.”

There was a murmur of fear, and the Tergovians shrank from tickling the

leopard of their sovereign.

But an incident followed that raised their spirits again. The Duke's

giant, a Hungarian seven feet four inches high, brought up the rear.

This enormous creature had, like some other giants, a treble, fluty

voice of little power. He was a vain fellow, and not conscious of this

nor any defect. Now it happened he caught sight of Giles sitting on the

top of the balcony; so he stopped and began to make fun of him.

“Hallo! brother!” squeaked he, “I had nearly passed without seeing

thee.”

“You are plain enough to see,” bellowed Giles in his bass tones.

“Come on my shoulder, brother,” squeaked Titan, and held out a shoulder

of mutton fist to help him down.

“If I do I'll cuff your ears,” roared the dwarf.

The giant saw the homuncule was irascible, and played upon him, being

encouraged thereto by the shouts of laughter. For he did not see

that the people were laughing not at his wit, but at the ridiculous

incongruity of the two voices--the gigantic feeble fife, and the petty

deep, loud drum, the mountain delivered of a squeak, and the mole-hill

belching thunder.

The singular duet came to as singular an end. Giles lost all patience

and self-command, and being a creature devoid of fear, and in a rage to

boot, he actually dropped upon the giant's neck, seized his hair with

one hand, and punched his head with the other. The giant's first impulse

was to laugh, but the weight and rapidity of the blows soon corrected

that inclination.

“He! he! Ah! ha! hallo! oh! oh! Holy saints! here! help! or I must

throttle the imp. I can't! I'll split your skull against the--” and he

made a wild run backwards at the balcony. Giles saw his danger, seized

the balcony in time with both hands, and whipped over it just as the

giant's head came against it with a stunning crack. The people roared

with laughter and exultation at the address of their little champion.

The indignant giant seized two of the laughers, knocked them together

like dumb-bells, shook them and strewed them flat--Catherine shrieked

and threw her apron over Giles--then strode wrathfully away after the

party. This incident had consequences no one then present foresaw. Its

immediate results were agreeable. The Tergovians turned proud of Giles,

and listened with more affability to his prayers for parchment. For

he drove a regular trade with his brother Gerard in this article. Went

about and begged it gratis, and Gerard gave him coppers for it.

On the afternoon of the same day, Catherine and her daughter were

chatting together about their favourite theme, Gerard, his goodness, his

benefice, and the brightened prospects of the whole family.

Their good luck had come to them in the very shape they would have

chosen; besides the advantages of a benefice such as the Countess

Charolois would not disdain to give, there was the feminine delight

at having a priest, a holy man, in their own family. “He will marry

Cornelis and Sybrandt: for they can wed (good housewives), now, if they

will. Gerard will take care of you and Giles, when we are gone.”

“Yes, mother, and we can confess to him instead of to a stranger,” said

Kate.

“Ay, girl! and he can give the sacred oil to your father and me, and

close our eyes when our time comes.”

“Oh, mother! not for many, many years, I do pray Heaven. Pray speak not

of that, it always makes me sad. I hope to go before you, mother dear.

No; let us be gay to-day. I am out of pain, mother, quite out of

all pain; it does seem so strange; and I feel so bright and happy,

that--mother, Can you keep a secret?”

“Nobody better, child. Why, you know I can.”

“Then I will show you something so beautiful. You never saw the like, I

trow. Only Gerard must never know; for sure he means to surprise us with

it; he covers it up so, and sometimes he carries it away altogether.”

Kate took her crutches, and moved slowly away, leaving her mother in an

exalted state of curiosity. She soon returned with something in a cloth,

uncovered it, and there was a lovely picture of the Virgin, with all her

insignia, and wearing her tiara over a wealth of beautiful hair, which

flowed loose over her shoulders. Catherine, at first, was struck with

awe.

“It is herself,” she cried; “it is the Queen of Heaven. I never saw one

like her to my mind before.”

“And her eyes, mother: lifted to the sky, as if they belonged there, and

not to a mortal creature. And her beautiful hair of burning gold.”

“And to think I have a son that can make the saints live again upon a

piece of wood!”

“The reason is, he is a young saint himself, mother. He is too good for

this world; he is here to portray the blessed, and then to go away and

be with them for ever.”

Ere they had half done admiring it, a strange voice was heard at the

door. By one of the furtive instincts of their sex they hastily hid the

picture in the cloth, though there was no need, And the next moment in

came, casting his eyes furtively around, a man that had not entered the

house this ten years Ghysbrecht Van Swieten.

The two women were so taken by surprise, that they merely stared at

him and at one another, and said, “The burgomaster!” in a tone so

expressive, that Ghysbrecht felt compelled to answer it.

“Yes! I own the last time I came here was not on a friendly errand. Men

love their own interest--Eli's and mine were contrary. Well, let this

visit atone the last. To-day I come on your business and none of mine.”

Catherine and her daughter exchanged a swift glance of contemptuous

incredulity. They knew the man better than he thought.

“It is about your son Gerard.”

“Ay! ay! you want him to work for the town all for nothing. He told us.”

“I come on no such errand. It is to let you know he has fallen into bad

hands.”

“Now Heaven and the saints forbid! Man, torture not a mother! Speak out,

and quickly: speak ere you have time to coin falsehood: we know thee.”

Ghysbrecht turned pale at this affront, and spite mingled with the other

motives that brought him here. “Thus it is, then,” said he, grinding his

teeth and speaking very fast. “Your son Gerard is more like to be father

of a family than a priest: he is for ever with Margaret, Peter Brandt's

red-haired girl, and loves her like a cow her calf.”

Mother and daughter both burst out laughing. Ghysbrecht stared at them.

“What! you knew it?”

“Carry this tale to those who know not my son, Gerard. Women are nought

to him.”

“Other women, mayhap. But this one is the apple of his eye to him, or

will be, if you part them not, and soon. Come, dame, make me not waste

time and friendly counsel: my servant has seen them together a score

times, handed, and reading babies in one another's eyes like--you know,

dame--you have been young, too.”

“Girl, I am ill at ease. Yea, I have been young, and know how blind

and foolish the young are. My heart! he has turned me sick in a moment.

Kate, if it should be true?”

“Nay, nay!” cried Kate eagerly. “Gerard might love a young woman: all

young men do: I can't find what they see in them to love so; but if he

did, he would let us know; he would not deceive us. You wicked man!

No, dear mother, look not so! Gerard is too good to love a creature of

earth. His love is for our Lady and the saints. Ah! I will show you the

picture there: if his heart was earthly, could he paint the Queen

of Heaven like that--look! look!” and she held the picture out

triumphantly, and, more radiant and beautiful in this moment of

enthusiasm than ever dead picture was or will be, over-powered the

burgomaster with her eloquence and her feminine proof of Gerard's

purity. His eyes and mouth opened, and remained open: in which state

they kept turning, face and all as if on a pivot, from the picture to

the women, and from the women to the picture.

“Why, it is herself,” he gasped.

“Isn't it!” cried Kate, and her hostility was softened. “You admire it?

I forgive you for frightening us.”

“Am I in a mad-house?” said Ghysbrecht Van Swieten thoroughly puzzled.

“You show me a picture of the girl; and you say he painted it; and that

is a proof he cannot love her. Why, they all paint their sweethearts,

painters do.”

“A picture of the girl?” exclaimed Kate, shocked. “Fie! this is no girl;

this is our blessed Lady.”

“No, no; it is Margaret Brandt.”

“Oh blind! It is the Queen of Heaven.”

“No; only of Sevenbergen village.”

“Profane man! behold her crown!”

“Silly child! look at her red hair! Would the Virgin be seen in red

hair? She who had the pick of all the colours ten thousand years before

the world began.”

At this moment an anxious face was insinuated round the edge of the open

door: it was their neighbour Peter Buyskens.

“What is to do?” said he in a cautious whisper. “We can hear you all

across the street. What on earth is to do?”

“Oh, neighbour! What is to do? Why, here is the burgomaster blackening

our Gerard.”

“Stop!” cried Van Swieten. “Peter Buyskens is come in the nick of time.

He knows father and daughter both. They cast their glamour on him.”

“What! is she a witch too?”

“Else the egg takes not after the bird. Why is her father called the

magician? I tell you they bewitched this very Peter here; they cast

unholy spells on him, and cured him of the colic: now, Peter, look and

tell me who is that? and you be silent, women, for a moment, if you can;

who is it, Peter?”

“Well, to be sure!” said Peter, in reply; and his eye seemed fascinated

by the picture.

“Who is it?” repeated Ghysbrecht impetuously.

Peter Buyskens smiled. “Why, you know as well as I do; but what have

they put a crown on her for? I never saw her in a crown, for my part.”

“Man alive! Can't you open your great jaws, and just speak a wench's

name plain out to oblige three people?”

“I'd do a great deal more to oblige one of you than that, burgomaster.

If it isn't as natural as life!”

“Curse the man! he won't, he won't--curse him!”

“Why, what have I done now?”

“Oh, sir!” said little Kate, “for pity's sake tell us; are these the

features of a living woman, of--of--Margaret Brandt?”

“A mirror is not truer, my little maid.”

“But is it she, sir, for very certain?”

“Why, who else should it be?”

“Now, why couldn't you say so at once?” snarled Ghysbrecht.

“I did say so, as plain as I could speak,” snapped Peter; and they

growled over this small bone of contention so zealously, that they did

not see Catherine and her daughter had thrown their aprons over their

heads, and were rocking to and fro in deep distress. The next moment

Elias came in from the shop, and stood aghast. Catherine, though her

face was covered, knew his footstep.

“That is my poor man,” she sobbed. “Tell him, good Peter Buyskens, for I

have not the courage.”

Elias turned pale. The presence of the burgomaster in his house, after

so many years of coolness, coupled with his wife's and daughter's

distress, made him fear some heavy misfortune.

“Richart! Jacob!” he gasped.

“No, no!” said the burgomaster; “it is nearer home, and nobody is dead

or dying, old friend.”

“God bless you, burgomaster! Ah! something has gone off my breast that

was like to choke me. Now, what is the matter?”

Ghysbrecht then told him all that he told the women, and showed the

picture in evidence.

“Is that all?” said Eli, profoundly relieved. “What are ye roaring and

bellowing for? It is vexing--it is angering, but it is not like death,

not even sickness. Boys will be boys. He will outgrow that disease: 'tis

but skin-deep.”

But when Ghysbrecht told him that Margaret was a girl of good character;

that it was not to be supposed she would be so intimate if marriage had

not been spoken of between them, his brow darkened.

“Marriage! that shall never be,” said he sternly. “I'll stay that; ay,

by force, if need be--as I would his hand lifted to cut his throat. I'd

do what old John Koestein did t'other day.”

“And what is that, in Heaven's name?” asked the mother, suddenly

removing her apron.

It was the burgomaster who replied:

“He made me shut young Albert Koestein up in the prison of the

Stadthouse till he knocked under. It was not long: forty-eight hours,

all alone, on bread and water, cooled his hot stomach. 'Tell my father I

am his humble servant,' says he, 'and let me into the sun once more--the

sun is worth all the wenches in the world.'”

“Oh, the cruelty of men!” sighed Catherine.

“As to that, the burgomaster has no choice: it is the law. And if a

father says, 'Burgomaster, lock up my son,' he must do it. A fine thing

it would be if a father might not lock up his own son.”

“Well, well! it won't come to that with me and my son. He never

disobeyed me in his life: he never shall, Where is he? It is past

supper-time. Where is he, Kate?”

“Alas! I know not, father.”

“I know,” said Ghysbrecht; “he is at Sevenbergen. My servant met him on

the road.”

Supper passed in gloomy silence. Evening descended--no Gerard! Eight

o'clock came--no Gerard! Then the father sent all to bed, except

Catherine.

“You and I will walk abroad, wife, and talk over this new care.”

“Abroad, my man, at this time? Whither?”

“Why, on the road to Sevenbergen.”

“Oh no; no hasty words, father. Poor Gerard! he never vexed you before.”

“Fear me not. But it must end; and I am not one that trusts to-morrow

with to-day's work.”

The old pair walked hand in hand; for, strange is it may appear to

some of my readers, the use of the elbow to couples walking was not

discovered in Europe till centuries after this. They sauntered on a long

time in silence. The night was clear and balmy. Such nights, calm and

silent, recall the past from the dead.

“It is a many years since we walked so late, my man,” said Catherine

softly.

“Ay, sweetheart, more than we shall see again (is he never coming, I

wonder?)”

“Not since our courting days, Eli.”

“No. Ay, you were a buxom lass then.”

“And you were a comely lad, as ever a girl's eye stole a look at. I do

suppose Gerard is with her now, as you used to be with me. Nature is

strong, and the same in all our generations.”

“Nay, I hope he has left her by now, confound her, or we shall be here

all night.”

“Eli!”

“Well, Kate?”

“I have been happy with you, sweetheart, for all our rubs--much happier,

I trow, than if I had--been--a--a--nun. You won't speak harshly to the

poor child? One can be firm without being harsh.”

“Surely.”

“Have you been happy with me, my poor Eli?”

“Why, you know I have. Friends I have known, but none like thee. Buss

me, wife!”

“A heart to share joy and grief with is a great comfort to man or woman.

Isn't it, Eli?”

“It is so, my lass.

'It doth joy double,

And halveth trouble,'

runs the byword. And so I have found it, sweetheart. Ah! here comes the

young fool.”

Catherine trembled, and held her husband's hand tight.

The moon was bright, but they were in the shadow of some trees, and

their son did not see them. He came singing in the moonlight, and his

face shining.

CHAPTER VIII

While the burgomaster was exposing Gerard at Tergou, Margaret had a

trouble of her own at Sevenbergen. It was a housewife's distress, but

deeper than we can well conceive. She came to Martin Wittenhaagen, the

old soldier, with tears in her eyes.

“Martin, there's nothing in the house, and Gerard is coming, and he is

so thoughtless. He forgets to sup at home. When he gives over work, then

he runs to me straight, poor soul; and often he comes quite faint. And

to think I have nothing to set before my servant that loves me so dear.”

Martin scratched his head. “What can I do?”

“It is Thursday; it is your day to shoot; sooth to Say, I counted on you

to-day.”

“Nay,” said the soldier, “I may not shoot when the Duke or his friends

are at the chase; read else. I am no scholar.” And he took out of his

pouch a parchment with a grand seal. It purported to be a stipend and a

licence given by Philip, Duke of Burgundy, to Martin Wittenhaagen, one

of his archers, in return for services in the wars, and for a wound

received at the Dukes side. The stipend was four merks yearly, to be

paid by the Duke's almoner, and the licence was to shoot three arrows

once a week, viz., on Thursday, and no other day, in any of the Duke's

forests in Holland, at any game but a seven-year-old buck or a doe

carrying fawn; proviso, that the Duke should not be hunting on that day,

or any of his friends. In this case Martin was not to go and disturb the

woods on peril of his salary and his head, and a fine of a penny.

Margaret sighed and was silent.

“Come, cheer up, mistress,” said he; “for your sake I'll peril my

carcass; I have done that for many a one that was not worth your

forefinger. It is no such mighty risk either. I'll but step into the

skirts of the forest here. It is odds but they drive a hare or a fawn

within reach of my arrow.”

“Well, if I let you go, you must promise me not to go far, and not to

be seen; far better Gerard went supperless than ill should come to you,

faithful Martin.”

The required promise given, Martin took his bow and three arrows, and

stole cautiously into the wood: it was scarce a furlong distant. The

horns were heard faintly in the distance, and all the game was afoot.

“Come,” thought Martin, “I shall soon fill the pot, and no one be the

wiser.” He took his stand behind a thick oak that commanded a view of

an open glade, and strung his bow, a truly formidable weapon. It was

of English yew, six feet two inches high, and thick in proportion; and

Martin, broad-chested, with arms all iron and cord, and used to the bow

from infancy, could draw a three-foot arrow to the head, and, when

it flew, the eye could scarce follow it, and the bowstring twanged as

musical as a harp. This bow had laid many a stout soldier low in the

wars of the Hoecks and Cabbel-jaws. In those days a battlefield was not

a cloud of smoke; the combatants were few, but the deaths many--for they

saw what they were about; and fewer bloodless arrows flew than bloodless

bullets now. A hare came cantering, then sat sprightly, and her ears

made a capital V. Martin levelled his tremendous weapon at her. The

arrow flew, the string twanged; but Martin had been in a hurry to pot

her, and lost her by an inch: the arrow seemed to hit her, but it struck

the ground close to her, and passed under her belly like a flash, and

hissed along the short grass and disappeared. She jumped three feet

perpendicular and away at the top of her speed. “Bungler!” said Martin.

A sure proof he was not an habitual bungler, or he would have blamed

the hare. He had scarcely fitted another arrow to his string when a

wood-pigeon settled on the very tree he stood under. “Aha!” thought he,

“you are small, but dainty.” This time he took more pains; drew his arrow

carefully, loosed it smoothly, and saw it, to all appearance, go clean

through the bird, carrying feathers skyward like dust. Instead of

falling at his feet, the bird, whose breast was torn, not fairly

pierced, fluttered feebly away, and, by a great effort, rose above the

trees, flew some fifty yards and dead at last; but where, he could not

see for the thick foliage.

“Luck is against me,” said he despondingly. But he fitted another arrow,

and eyed the glade keenly. Presently he heard a bustle behind him, and

turned round just in time to see a noble buck cross the open, but too

late to shoot at him. He dashed his bow down with an imprecation. At

that moment a long spotted animal glided swiftly across after the deer;

its belly seemed to touch the ground as it went. Martin took up his bow

hastily: he recognized the Duke's leopard. “The hunters will not be far

from her,” said he, “and I must not be seen. Gerard must go supperless

this night.”

He plunged into the wood, following the buck and leopard, for that was

his way home. He had not gone far when he heard an unusual sound ahead

of him--leaves rustling violently and the ground trampled. He hurried in

the direction. He found the leopard on the buck's back, tearing him

with teeth and claw, and the buck running in a circle and bounding

convulsively, with the blood pouring down his hide. Then Martin formed a

desperate resolution to have the venison for Margaret. He drew his arrow

to the head, and buried it in the deer, who, spite of the creature on

his back, bounded high into the air, and fell dead. The leopard went on

tearing him as if nothing had happened.

Martin hoped that the creature would gorge itself with blood, and then

let him take the meat. He waited some minutes, then walked resolutely

up, and laid his hand on the buck's leg. The leopard gave a frightful

growl, and left off sucking blood. She saw Martin's game, and was

sulky and on her guard. What was to be done? Martin had heard that wild

creatures cannot stand the human eye. Accordingly, he stood erect, and

fixed his on the leopard: the leopard returned a savage glance, and

never took her eye off Martin. Then Martin continuing to look the beast

down, the leopard, brutally ignorant of natural history, flew at his

head with a frightful yell, flaming eyes, and jaws and distended. He had

but just time to catch her by the throat, before her teeth could crush

his face; one of her claws seized his shoulder and rent it, the other,

aimed at his cheek, would have been more deadly still, but Martin was

old-fashioned, and wore no hat, but a scapulary of the same stuff as his

jerkin, and this scapulary he had brought over his head like a hood; the

brute's claw caught in the loose leather. Martin kept her teeth off his

face with great difficulty, and griped her throat fiercely, and she

kept rending his shoulder. It was like blunt reaping-hooks grinding and

tearing. The pain was fearful; but, instead of cowing the old soldier,

it put his blood up, and he gnashed his teeth with rage almost as fierce

as hers, and squeezed her neck with iron force. The two pair of eyes

flared at one another--and now the man's were almost as furious as the

brute's. She found he was throttling her, and made a wild attempt

to free herself, in which she dragged his cowl all over his face and

blinded him, and tore her claw out of his shoulder, flesh and all; but

still he throttled her with hand and arm of iron. Presently her

long tail, that was high in the air, went down. “Aha!” cried Martin,

joyfully, and gripped her like death; next, her body lost its

elasticity, and he held a choked and powerless thing: he gripped it

still, till all motion ceased, then dashed it to the earth; then,

panting, removed his cowl: the leopard lay mute at his feet with tongue

protruding and bloody paw; and for the first time terror fell on Martin.

“I am a dead man: I have slain the Duke's leopard.” He hastily seized

a few handfuls of leaves and threw them over her; then shouldered the

buck, and staggered away, leaving a trail of blood all the way his own

and the buck's. He burst into Peter's house a horrible figure, bleeding

and bloodstained, and flung the deer's carcass down.

“There--no questions,” said he, “but broil me a steak on't, for I am

faint.”

Margaret did not see he was wounded; she thought the blood was all from

the deer.

She busied herself at the fire, and the stout soldier stanched and bound

his own wound apart; and soon he and Gerard and Margaret were supping

royally on broiled venison.

They were very merry; and Gerard, with wonderful thoughtfulness, had

brought a flask of Schiedam, and under its influence Martin revived,

and told them how the venison was got; and they all made merry over the

exploit.

Their mirth was strangely interrupted. Margaret's eye became fixed and

fascinated, and her cheek pale with fear. She gasped, and could not

speak, but pointed to the window with trembling finger. Their eyes

followed hers, and there in the twilight crouched a dark form with eyes

like glowworms.

It was the leopard.

While they stood petrified, fascinated by the eyes of green fire, there

sounded in the wood a single deep bay. Martin trembled at it.

“They have lost her, and laid muzzled bloodhounds on her scent;

they will find her here, and the venison. Good-bye, friends, Martin

Wittenhaagen ends here.”

Gerard seized his bow, and put it into the soldier's hands.

“Be a man,” he cried; “shoot her, and fling her into the wood ere they

come up. Who will know?”

More voices of hounds broke out, and nearer.

“Curse her!” cried Martin; “I spared her once; now she must die, or I,

or both more likely;” and he reared his bow, and drew his arrow to the

head.

“Nay! nay!” cried Margaret, and seized the arrow. It broke in half: the

pieces fell on each side the bow. The air at the same time filled with

the tongues of the hounds: they were hot upon the scent.

“What have you done, wench? You have put the halter round my throat.”

“No!” cried Margaret. “I have saved you: stand back from the window,

both! Your knife, quick!”

She seized his long-pointed knife, almost tore it out of his girdle, and

darted from the room. The house was now surrounded with baying dogs and

shouting men.

The glowworm eyes moved not.

CHAPTER IX

Margaret cut off a huge piece of venison, and ran to the window and

threw it out to the green eyes of fire. They darted on to it with a

savage snarl; and there was a sound of rending and crunching: at this

moment, a hound uttered a bay so near and loud it rang through the

house; and the three at the window shrank together. Then the leopard

feared for her supper, and glided swiftly and stealthily away with it

towards the woods, and the very next moment horses and men and dogs came

helter-skelter past the window, and followed her full cry. Martin and

his companions breathed again: the leopard was swift, and would not

be caught within a league of their house. They grasped hands. Margaret

seized this opportunity, and cried a little; Gerard kissed the tears

away.

To table once more, and Gerard drank to woman's wit: “'Tis stronger than

man's force,” said he.

“Ay,” said Margaret, “when those she loves are in danger; not else.”

To-night Gerard stayed with her longer than usual, and went home prouder

than ever of her, and happy as a prince. Some little distance from home,

under the shadow of some trees, he encountered two figures: they almost

barred his way.

It was his father and mother.

Out so late! what could be the cause?

A chill fell on him.

He stopped and looked at them: they stood grim and silent. He stammered

out some words of inquiry.

“Why ask?” said the father; “you know why we are here.”

“Oh, Gerard!” said his mother, with a voice full of reproach yet of

affection.

Gerard's heart quaked: he was silent.

Then his father pitied his confusion, and said to him:

“Nay, you need not to hang your head. You are not the first young fool

that has been caught by a red cheek and a pair of blue eyes.”

“Nay, nay!” put in Catherine, “it was witchcraft; Peter the Magician is

well known for that.”

“Come, Sir Priest,” resumed his father, “you know you must not meddle

with women folk. But give us your promise to go no more to Sevenbergen,

and here all ends: we won't be hard on you for one fault.”

“I cannot promise that, father.”

“Not promise it, you young hypocrite!”

“Nay, father, miscall me not: I lacked courage to tell you what I knew

would vex you; and right grateful am I to that good friend, whoever he

be, that has let you wot. 'Tis a load off my mind. Yes, father, I love

Margaret; and call me not a priest, for a priest I will never be. I will

die sooner.”

“That we shall see, young man. Come, gainsay me no more; you will learn

what 'tis to disrespect a father.”

Gerard held his peace, and the three walked home in gloomy silence,

broken only by a deep sigh or two from Catherine.

From that hour the little house at Tergou was no longer the abode of

peace. Gerard was taken to task next day before the whole family; and

every voice was loud against him, except little Kate's and the dwarf's,

who was apt to take his cue from her without knowing why. As for

Cornelis and Sybrandt, they were bitterer than their father. Gerard

was dismayed at finding so many enemies, and looked wistfully into his

little sister's face: her eyes were brimming at the harsh words showered

on one who but yesterday was the universal pet. But she gave him no

encouragement: she turned her head away from him and said:

“Dear, dear Gerard, pray to Heaven to cure you of this folly!”

“What, are you against me too?” said Gerard, sadly; and he rose with a

deep sigh, and left the house and went to Sevenbergen.

The beginning of a quarrel, where the parties are bound by affection

though opposed in interest and sentiment, is comparatively innocent:

both are perhaps in the right at first starting, and then it is that

a calm, judicious friend, capable of seeing both sides, is a gift from

Heaven. For the longer the dissension endures, the wider and deeper it

grows by the fallibility and irascibility of human nature: these are

not confined to either side, and finally the invariable end is

reached--both in the wrong.

The combatants were unequally matched: Elias was angry, Cornelis and

Sybrandt spiteful; but Gerard, having a larger and more cultivated mind,

saw both sides where they saw but one, and had fits of irresolution,

and was not wroth, but unhappy. He was lonely, too, in this struggle.

He could open his heart to no one. Margaret was a high-spirited girl:

he dared not tell her what he had to endure at home; she was capable of

siding with his relations by resigning him, though at the cost of her

own happiness. Margaret Van Eyck had been a great comfort to him on

another occasion; but now he dared not make her his confidant. Her own

history was well known. In early life she had many offers of marriage;

but refused them all for the sake of that art, to which a wife's and

mother's duties are so fatal: thus she remained single and painted with

her brothers. How could he tell her that he declined the benefice she

had got him, and declined it for the sake of that which at his age she

had despised and sacrificed so lightly?

Gerard at this period bade fair to succumb. But the other side had a

horrible ally in Catherine, senior. This good-hearted but uneducated

woman could not, like her daughter, act quietly and firmly: still less

could she act upon a plan. She irritated Gerard at times, and so helped

him; for anger is a great sustainer of the courage: at others she turned

round in a moment and made onslaughts on her own forces. To take

a single instance out of many: one day that they were all at home,

Catherine and all, Cornelis said: “Our Gerard wed Margaret Brandt? Why,

it is hunger marrying thirst.”

“And what will it be when you marry?” cried Catherine. “Gerard can

paint, Gerard can write, but what can you do to keep a woman, ye lazy

loon? Nought but wait for your father's shoon. Oh we can see why you and

Sybrandt would not have the poor boy to marry. You are afraid he will

come to us for a share of our substance. And say that he does, and say

that we give it him, it isn't yourn we part from, and mayhap never will

be.”

On these occasions Gerard smiled slily, and picked up heart, and

temporary confusion fell on Catherine's unfortunate allies. But at last,

after more than six months of irritation, came the climax. The father

told the son before the whole family he had ordered the burgomaster

to imprison him in the Stadthouse rather than let him marry Margaret.

Gerard turned pale with anger at this, but by a great effort held his

peace. His father went on to say, “And a priest you shall be before the

year is out, nilly-willy.”

“Is it so?” cried Gerard. “Then, hear me, all. By God and St. Bavon I

swear I will never be a priest while Margaret lives. Since force is to

decide it, and not love and duty, try force, father; but force shall not

serve you, for the day I see the burgomaster come for me, I leave Tergou

for ever, and Holland too, and my father's house, where it seems I have

been valued all these years, not for myself, but for what is to be got

out of me.”

And he flung out of the room white with anger and desperation.

“There!” cried Catherine, “that comes of driving young folks too hard.

But men are crueller than tigers, even to their own flesh and blood.

Now, Heaven forbid he should ever leave us, married or single.”

As Gerard came out of the house, his cheeks pale and his heart panting,

he met Reicht Heynes: she had a message for him: Margaret Van Eyck

desired to see him. He found the old lady seated grim as a judge. She

wasted no time in preliminaries, but inquired coldly why he had not

visited her of late: before he could answer, she said in a sarcastic

tone, “I thought we had been friends, young sir.”

At this Gerard looked the picture of doubt and consternation.

“It is because you never told her you were in love,” said Reicht Heynes,

pitying his confusion.

“Silence, wench! Why should he tell us his affairs? We are not his

friends: we have not deserved his confidence.”

“Alas! my second mother,” said Gerard, “I did not dare to tell you my

folly.”

“What folly? Is it folly to love?”

“I am told so every day of my life.”

“You need not have been afraid to tell my mistress; she is always kind

to true lovers.”

“Madam--Reicht I was afraid because I was told...”

“Well, you were told--?”

“That in your youth you scorned love, preferring art.”

“I did, boy; and what is the end of it? Behold me here a barren stock,

while the women of my youth have a troop of children at their side, and

grandchildren at their knee I gave up the sweet joys of wifehood and

motherhood for what? For my dear brothers. They have gone and left me

long ago. For my art. It has all but left me too. I have the knowledge

still, but what avails that when the hand trembles. No, Gerard; I look

on you as my son. You are good, you are handsome, you are a painter,

though not like some I have known. I will not let you throw your youth

away as I did mine: you shall marry this Margaret. I have inquired, and

she is a good daughter. Reicht here is a gossip. She has told me all

about it. But that need not hinder you to tell me.”

Poor Gerard was overjoyed to be permitted to praise Margaret aloud, and

to one who could understand what he loved in her.

Soon there were two pair of wet eyes over his story; and when the poor

boy saw that, there were three.

Women are creatures brimful of courage. Theirs is not exactly the same

quality as manly courage; that would never do, hang it all; we should

have to give up trampling on them. No; it is a vicarious courage. They

never take part in a bull-fight by any chance; but it is remarked that

they sit at one unshaken by those tremors and apprehensions for the

combatants to which the male spectator--feeble-minded wretch!--is

subject. Nothing can exceed the resolution with which they have been

known to send forth men to battle: as some witty dog says,

“Les femmes sont tres braves avec le peur d'autrui.”

By this trait Gerard now profited. Margaret and Reicht were agreed that

a man should always take the bull by the horns. Gerard's only course was

to marry Margaret Brandt off-hand; the old people would come to after

a while, the deed once done. Whereas, the longer this misunderstanding

continued on its present footing, the worse for all parties, especially

for Gerard.

“See how pale and thin they have made him amongst them.”

“Indeed you are, Master Gerard,” said Reicht. “It makes a body sad to

see a young man so wasted and worn. Mistress, when I met him in the

street to-day, I had liked to have burst out crying: he was so changed.

“And I'll be bound the others keep their colour; ah, Reicht? such as it

is.”

“Oh, I see no odds in them.”

“Of course not. We painters are no match for boors. We are glass, they

are stone. We can't stand the worry, worry, worry of little minds; and

it is not for the good of mankind we should be exposed to it. It is hard

enough, Heaven knows, to design and paint a masterpiece, without having

gnats and flies stinging us to death into the bargain.”

Exasperated as Gerard was by his father's threat of violence, he

listened to these friendly voices telling him the prudent course was

rebellion. But though he listened, he was not convinced.

“I do not fear my father's violence,” he said, “but I do fear his

anger. When it came to the point he would not imprison me. I would marry

Margaret to-morrow if that was my only fear. No; he would disown me. I

should take Margaret from her father, and give her a poor husband,

who would never thrive, weighed down by his parent's curse. Madam! I

sometimes think if I could marry her secretly, and then take her away

to some country where my craft is better paid than in this; and after

a year or two, when the storm had blown over, you know, could come back

with money in my purse, and say, 'My dear parents, we do not seek your

substance, we but ask you to love us once more as you used, and as we

have never ceased to love you'--but, alas! I shall be told these are the

dreams of an inexperienced young man.”

The old lady's eyes sparkled.

“It is no dream, but a piece of wonderful common-sense in a boy;

it remains to be seen whether you have spirit to carry out your own

thought. There is a country, Gerard, where certain fortune awaits you

at this moment. Here the arts freeze, but there they flourish, as they

never yet flourished in any age or land.”

“It is Italy!” cried Gerard. “It is Italy!”

“Ay, Italy! where painters are honoured like princes, and scribes are

paid three hundred crowns for copying a single manuscript. Know you not

that his Holiness the Pope has written to every land for skilful scribes

to copy the hundreds of precious manuscripts that are pouring into that

favoured land from Constantinople, whence learning and learned men are

driven by the barbarian Turks?”

“Nay, I know not that; but it has been the dream and hope of my life to

visit Italy, the queen of all the arts; oh, madam! But the journey, and

we are all so poor.”

“Find you the heart to go, I'll find the means. I know where to lay my

hand on ten golden angels: they will take you to Rome: and the girl with

you, if she loves you as she ought.”

They sat till midnight over this theme. And, after that day, Gerard

recovered his spirits, and seemed to carry a secret talisman against all

the gibes and the harsh words that flew about his ears at home.

Besides the money she procured him for the journey, Margaret Van Eyck

gave him money's worth. Said she, “I will tell you secrets that I

learned from masters that are gone from me, and have left no fellow

behind. Even the Italians know them not; and what I tell you now in

Tergou you shall sell here in Florence. Note my brother Jan's pictures:

time, which fades all other paintings, leaves his colours bright as the

day they left the easel. The reason is, he did nothing blindly, in

a hurry. He trusted to no hireling to grind his colours; he did it

himself, or saw it done. His panel was prepared and prepared again--I

will show you how--a year before he laid his colour on. Most of them are

quite content to have their work sucked up and lost, sooner than not

be in a hurry. Bad painters are always in a hurry. Above all, Gerard,

I warn you use but little oil, and never boil it: boiling it melts that

vegetable dross into its heart which it is our business to clear away;

for impure oil is death to colour. No; take your oil and pour it into

a bottle with water. In a day or two the water will turn muddy: that is

muck from the oil. Pour the dirty water carefully away and add fresh.

When that is poured away, you will fancy the oil is clear. You're

mistaken. Reicht, fetch me that!” Reicht brought a glass trough with a

glass lid fitting tight. “When your oil has been washed in bottle, put

it into this trough with water, and put the trough in the sun all day.

You will soon see the water turbid again. But mark, you must not carry

this game too far, or the sun will turn your oil to varnish. When it is

as clear as crystal, not too luscious, drain carefully, and cork it up

tight. Grind your own prime colours, and lay them on with this oil, and

they shall live. Hubert would put sand or salt in the water to clear the

oil quicker. But Jan used to say, 'Water will do it best; give water

time.' Jan Van Eyck was never in a hurry, and that is why the world will

not forget him in a hurry.”

This and several other receipts, quae nunc perscribere longum est,

Margaret gave him with sparkling eyes, and Gerard received them like

a legacy from Heaven, so interesting are some things that read

uninteresting. Thus provided with money and knowledge, Gerard decided to

marry and fly with his wife to Italy. Nothing remained now but to inform

Margaret Brandt of his resolution, and to publish the banns as quietly

as possible. He went to Sevenbergen earlier than usual on both these

errands. He began with Margaret; told her of the Dame Van Eyck's

goodness, and the resolution he had come to at last, and invited her

co-operation.

She refused it plump.

“No, Gerard; you and I have never spoken of your family, but when you

come to marriage--” She stopped, then began again. “I do think your

father has no ill-will to me more than to another. He told Peter

Buyskens as much, and Peter told me. But so long as he is bent on your

being a priest (you ought have told me this instead of I you), I could

not marry you, Gerard, dearly as I love you.”

Gerard strove in vain to shake this resolution. He found it very easy

to make her cry, but impossible to make her yield. Then Gerard was

impatient and unjust.

“Very well!” he cried; “then you are on their side, and you will drive

me to be a priest, for this must end one way or another. My parents hate

me in earnest, but my lover only loves me in jest.”

And with this wild, bitter speech, he flung away home again, and left

Margaret weeping.

When a man misbehaves, the effect is curious on a girl who loves him

sincerely. It makes her pity him. This, to some of us males, seems

anything but logical. The fault is in our own eye; the logic is too

swift for us. The girl argues thus:--“How unhappy, how vexed, how poor

he must be to misbehave! Poor thing!”

Margaret was full of this sweet womanly pity, when, to her great

surprise, scarce an hour and a half after he left her, Gerard came

running back to her with the fragments of a picture in his hand, and

panting with anger and grief.

“There, Margaret! see! see! the wretches! Look at their spite! They have

cut your portrait to pieces.”

Margaret looked, and, sure enough, some malicious hand had cut her

portrait into five pieces. She was a good girl, but she was not ice; she

turned red to her very forehead.

“Who did it?”

“Nay, I know not. I dared not ask; for I should hate the hand that did

it, ay, till my dying day. My poor Margaret! The butchers, the ruffians!

Six months' work cut out of my life, and nothing to show for it now.

See, they have hacked through your very face; the sweet face that every

one loves who knows it. Oh, heartless, merciless vipers!”

“Never mind, Gerard,” said Margaret, panting. “Since this is how they

treat you for my sake--Ye rob him of my portrait, do ye? Well, then, he

shall have the face itself, such as it is.”

“Oh, Margaret!”

“Yes, Gerard; since they are so cruel, I will be the kinder: forgive

me for refusing you. I will be your wife: to-morrow, if it is your

pleasure.”

Gerard kissed her hands with rapture, and then her lips; and in a tumult

of joy ran for Peter and Martin. They came and witnessed the betrothal;

a solemn ceremony in those days, and indeed for more than a century

later, though now abolished.

CHAPTER X

The banns of marriage had to be read three times, as in our days; with

this difference, that they were commonly read on week-days, and the

young couple easily persuaded the cure to do the three readings in

twenty-four hours: he was new to the place, and their looks spoke

volumes in their favour. They were cried on Monday at matins and at

vespers; and, to their great delight, nobody from Tergou was in the

church. The next morning they were both there, palpitating with anxiety,

when, to their horror, a stranger stood up and forbade the banns, On

the score that the parties were not of age, and their parents not

consenting.

Outside the church door Margaret and Gerard held a trembling, and almost

despairing consultation; but, before they could settle anything, the man

who had done them so ill a turn approached, and gave them to understand

that he was very sorry to interfere: that his inclination was to further

the happiness of the young; but that in point of fact his only means of

getting a living was by forbidding banns: what then? “The young people

give me a crown, and I undo my work handsomely; tell the cure I was

misinformed, and all goes smoothly.”

“A crown! I will give you a golden angel to do this,” said Gerard

eagerly; the man consented as eagerly, and went with Gerard to the cure,

and told him he had made a ridiculous mistake, which a sight of the

parties had rectified. On this the cure agreed to marry the young couple

next day at ten: and the professional obstructor of bliss went home with

Gerard's angel. Like most of these very clever knaves, he was a fool,

and proceeded to drink his angel at a certain hostelry in Tergou where

was a green devoted to archery and the common sports of the day. There,

being drunk, he bragged of his day's exploit; and who should be

there, imbibing every word, but a great frequenter of the spot, the

ne'er-do-weel Sybrandt. Sybrandt ran home to tell his father; his father

was not at home; he was gone to Rotterdam to buy cloth of the merchants.

Catching his elder brother's eye, he made him a signal to come out, and

told him what he had heard.

There are black sheep in nearly every large family; and these two were

Gerard's black brothers. Idleness is vitiating: waiting for the death of

those we ought to love is vitiating; and these two one-idea'd curs were

ready to tear any one to death that should interfere with that miserable

inheritance which was their thought by day and their dream by night.

Their parents' parsimony was a virtue; it was accompanied by industry,

and its motive was love of their offspring; but in these perverse and

selfish hearts that homely virtue was perverted into avarice, than which

no more fruitful source of crimes is to be found in nature.

They put their heads together, and agreed not to tell their mother,

whose sentiments were so uncertain, but to go first to the burgomaster.

They were cunning enough to see that he was averse to the match, though

they could not divine why.

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten saw through them at once; but he took care not

to let them see through him. He heard their story, and putting on

magisterial dignity and coldness, he said;

“Since the father of the family is not here, his duty falleth on me, who

am the father of the town. I know your father's mind; leave all to me;

and, above all, tell not a woman a word of this, least of all the women

that are in your own house: for chattering tongues mar wisest counsels.”

So he dismissed them, a little superciliously: he was ashamed of his

confederates.

On their return home they found their brother Gerard seated on a low

stool at their mother's knee: she was caressing his hair with her hand,

speaking very kindly to him, and promising to take his part with his

father and thwart his love no more. The main cause of this change of

mind was characteristic of the woman. She it was who in a moment of

female irritation had cut Margaret's picture to pieces. She had watched

the effect with some misgivings, and had seen Gerard turn pale as death,

and sit motionless like a bereaved creature, with the pieces in his

hands, and his eyes fixed on them till tears came and blinded them. Then

she was terrified at what she had done; and next her heart smote her

bitterly; and she wept sore apart; but, being what she was, dared not

own it, but said to herself, “I'll not say a word, but I'll make it up

to him.” And her bowels yearned over her son, and her feeble violence

died a natural death, and she was transferring her fatal alliance to

Gerard when the two black sheep came in. Gerard knew nothing of the

immediate cause; on the contrary, inexperienced as he was in the ins

and outs of females, her kindness made him ashamed of a suspicion he

had entertained that she was the depredator, and he kissed her again

and again, and went to bed happy as a prince to think his mother was his

mother once more at the very crisis of his fate.

The next morning, at ten o'clock, Gerard and Margaret were in the church

at Sevenbergen, he radiant with joy, she with blushes. Peter was

also there, and Martin Wittenhaagen, but no other friend. Secrecy was

everything. Margaret had declined Italy. She could not leave her father;

he was too learned and too helpless. But it was settled they should

retire into Flanders for a few weeks until the storm should be blown

over at Tergou. The cure did not keep them waiting long, though it

seemed an age. Presently he stood at the altar, and called them to him.

They went hand in hand, the happiest in Holland. The cure opened his

book.

But ere he uttered a single word of the sacred rite, a harsh voice cried

“Forbear!” And the constables of Tergou came up the aisle and seized

Gerard in the name of the law. Martin's long knife flashed out directly.

“Forbear, man!” cried the priest. “What! draw your weapon in a church,

and ye who interrupt this holy sacrament, what means this impiety?”

“There is no impiety, father,” said the burgomaster's servant

respectfully. “This young man would marry against his father's will, and

his father has prayed our burgomaster to deal with him according to the

law. Let him deny it if he can.”

“Is this so, young man?”

Gerard hung his head.

“We take him to Rotterdam to abide the sentence of the Duke.”

At this Margaret uttered a cry of despair, and the young creatures, who

were so happy a moment ago, fell to sobbing in one another's arms so

piteously, that the instruments of oppression drew back a step and were

ashamed; but one of them that was good-natured stepped up under pretence

of separating them, and whispered to Margaret:

“Rotterdam? it is a lie. We but take him to our Stadthouse.”

They took him away on horseback, on the road to Rotterdam; and, after a

dozen halts, and by sly detours, to Tergou. Just outside the town they

were met by a rude vehicle covered with canvas. Gerard was put into

this, and about five in the evening was secretly conveyed into the

prison of the Stadthouse. He was taken up several flights of stairs

and thrust into a small room lighted only by a narrow window, with a

vertical iron bar. The whole furniture was a huge oak chest.

Imprisonment in that age was one of the highroads to death. It is

horrible in its mildest form; but in those days it implied cold,

unbroken solitude, torture, starvation, and often poison. Gerard felt he

was in the hands of an enemy.

“Oh, the look that man gave me on the road to Rotterdam. There is more

here than my father's wrath. I doubt I shall see no more the light of

day.” And he kneeled down and commended his soul to God.

Presently he rose and sprang at the iron bar of the window, and clutched

it. This enabled him to look out by pressing his knees against the wall.

It was but for a minute; but in that minute he saw a sight such as none

but a captive can appreciate.

Martin Wittenhaagen's back.

Martin was sitting, quietly fishing in the brook near the Stadthouse.

Gerard sprang again at the window, and whistled. Martin instantly showed

that he was watching much harder than fishing. He turned hastily round

and saw Gerard--made him a signal, and taking up his line and bow, went

quickly off.

Gerard saw by this that his friends were not idle: yet had rather Martin

had stayed. The very sight of him was a comfort. He held on, looking

at the soldier's retiring form as long as he could, then falling back

somewhat heavily wrenched the rusty iron bar, held only by rusty nails,

away from the stone-work just as Ghysbrecht Van Swieten opened the door

stealthily behind him. The burgomaster's eye fell instantly on the iron,

and then glanced at the window; but he said nothing. The window was a

hundred feet from the ground; and if Gerard had a fancy for jumping out,

why should he balk it? He brought a brown loaf and a pitcher of water,

and set them on the chest in solemn silence. Gerard's first impulse

was to brain him with the iron bar and fly down the stairs; but the

burgomaster seeing something wicked in his eye, gave a little cough, and

three stout fellows, armed, showed themselves directly at the door.

“My orders are to keep you thus until you shall bind yourself by an oath

to leave Margaret Brandt, and return to the Church, to which you have

belonged from your cradle.”

“Death sooner.”

“With all my heart.” And the burgomaster retired.

Martin went with all speed to Sevenbergen; there he found Margaret pale

and agitated, but full of resolution and energy. She was just finishing

a letter to the Countess Charolois, appealing to her against the

violence and treachery of Ghysbrecht.

“Courage!” cried Martin on entering. “I have found him. He is in the

haunted tower, right at the top of it. Ay, I know the place: many a poor

fellow has gone up there straight, and come down feet foremost.”

He then told them how he had looked up and seen Gerard's face at a

window that was like a slit in the wall.

“Oh, Martin! how did he look?”

“What mean you? He looked like Gerard Eliassoen.”

“But was he pale?”

“A little.”

“Looked he anxious? Looked he like one doomed?”

“Nay, nay; as bright as a pewter pot.”

“You mock me. Stay! then that must have been at sight of you. He counts

on us. Oh, what shall we do? Martin, good friend, take this at once to

Rotterdam.”

Martin held out his hand for the letter.

Peter had sat silent all this time, but pondering, and yet, contrary to

custom, keenly attentive to what was going on around him.

“Put not your trust in princes,” said he.

“Alas! what else have we to trust in?”

“Knowledge.”

“Well-a-day, father! your learning will not serve us here.”

“How know you that? Wit has been too strong for iron bars ere to-day.

“Ay, father; but nature is stronger than wit, and she is against us.

Think of the height! No ladder in Holland might reach him.”

“I need no ladder; what I need is a gold crown.”

“Nay, I have money, for that matter. I have nine angels. Gerard gave

them me to keep; but what do they avail? The burgomaster will not be

bribed to let Gerard free.”

“What do they avail? Give me but one crown, and the young man shall sup

with us this night.”

Peter spoke so eagerly and confidently, that for a moment Margaret

felt hopeful; but she caught Martin's eye dwelling upon him with an

expression of benevolent contempt.

“It passes the powers of man's invention,” said she, with a deep sigh.

“Invention!” cried the old man. “A fig for invention. What need we

invention at this time of day? Everything has been said that is to be

said, and done that ever will be done. I shall tell you how a Florentine

knight was shut up in a tower higher than Gerard's; yet did his faithful

squire stand at the tower foot and get him out, with no other engine

than that in your hand, Martin, and certain kickshaws I shall buy for a

crown.”

Martin looked at his bow, and turned it round in his hand, and seemed to

interrogate it. But the examination left him as incredulous as before.

Then Peter told them his story, how the faithful squire got the knight

out of a high tower at Brescia. The manoeuvre, like most things that

are really scientific, was so simple, that now their wonder was they had

taken for impossible what was not even difficult.

The letter never went to Rotterdam. They trusted to Peter's learning and

their own dexterity.

It was nine o'clock on a clear moonlight night; Gerard, senior, was

still away; the rest of his little family had been some time abed.

A figure stood by the dwarf's bed. It was white, and the moonlight shone

on it.

With an unearthly noise, between a yell and a snarl, the gymnast rolled

off his bed and under it by a single unbroken movement. A soft voice

followed him in his retreat.

“Why, Giles, are you afeard of me?”

At this, Giles's head peeped cautiously up, and he saw it was only his

sister Kate.

She put her finger to her lips. “Hush! lest the wicked Cornelis or the

wicked Sybrandt hear us.” Giles's claws seized the side of the bed, and

he returned to his place by one undivided gymnastic.

Kate then revealed to Giles that she had heard Cornelis and Sybrandt

mention Gerard's name; and being herself in great anxiety at his not

coming home all day, had listened at their door, and had made a fearful

discovery. Gerard was in prison, in the haunted tower of the Stadthouse.

He was there, it seemed, by their father's authority. But here must be

some treachery; for how could their father have ordered this cruel act?

He was at Rotterdam. She ended by entreating Giles to bear her company

to the foot of the haunted tower, to say a word of comfort to poor

Gerard, and let him know their father was absent, and would be sure to

release him on his return.

“Dear Giles, I would go alone, but I am afeard of the spirits that men

say do haunt the tower; but with you I shall not be afeard.”

“Nor I with you,” said Giles. “I don't believe there are any spirits in

Tergou. I never saw one. This last was the likest one ever I saw; and it

was but you, Kate, after all.”

In less than half an hour Giles and Kate opened the housedoor cautiously

and issued forth. She made him carry a lantern, though the night was

bright. “The lantern gives me more courage against the evil spirits,”

said she.

The first day of imprisonment is very trying, especially if to the

horror of captivity is added the horror of utter solitude. I observe

that in our own day a great many persons commit suicide during the first

twenty-four hours of the solitary cell. This is doubtless why our Jairi

abstain so carefully from the impertinence of watching their little

experiment upon the human soul at that particular stage of it.

As the sun declined, Gerard's heart too sank and sank; with the waning

light even the embers of hope went out. He was faint, too, with hunger;

for he was afraid to eat the food Ghysbrecht had brought him; and hunger

alone cows men. He sat upon the chest, his arms and his head drooping

before him, a picture of despondency. Suddenly something struck the wall

beyond him very sharply, and then rattled on the floor at his feet. It

was an arrow; he saw the white feather. A chill ran through him--they

meant then to assassinate him from the outside. He crouched. No more

missiles came. He crawled on all fours, and took up the arrow; there was

no head to it. He uttered a cry of hope: had a friendly hand shot it? He

took it up, and felt it all over: he found a soft substance attached

to it. Then one of his eccentricities was of grand use to him. His

tinder-box enabled him to strike a light: it showed him two things that

made his heart bound with delight, none the less thrilling for being

somewhat vague. Attached to the arrow was a skein of silk, and on the

arrow itself were words written.

How his eyes devoured them, his heart panting the while!

Well beloved, make fast the silk to thy knife and lower to us: but hold

thine end fast: then count an hundred and draw up.

Gerard seized the oak chest, and with almost superhuman energy dragged

it to the window: a moment ago he could not have moved it. Standing on

the chest and looking down, he saw figures at the tower foot. They were

so indistinct, they looked like one huge form. He waved his bonnet to

them with trembling hand: then he undid the silk rapidly but carefully,

and made one end fast to his knife and lowered it till it ceased to

draw. Then he counted a hundred. Then pulled the silk carefully up: it

came up a little heavier. At last he came to a large knot, and by that

knot a stout whipcord was attached to the silk. What could this mean?

While he was puzzling himself Margaret's voice came up to him, low but

clear. “Draw up, Gerard, till you see liberty.” At the word Gerard drew

the whipcord line up, and drew and drew till he came to another knot,

and found a cord of some thickness take the place of the whipcord. He

had no sooner begun to draw this up, than he found that he had now a

heavy weight to deal with. Then the truth suddenly flashed on him, and

he went to work and pulled and pulled till the perspiration rolled down

him: the weight got heavier and heavier, and at last he was well-nigh

exhausted: looking down, he saw in the moonlight a sight that revived

him: it was as it were a great snake coming up to him out of the deep

shadow cast by the tower. He gave a shout of joy, and a score more wild

pulls, and lo! a stout new rope touched his hand: he hauled and hauled,

and dragged the end into his prison, and instantly passed it through

both handles of the chest in succession, and knotted it firmly; then sat

for a moment to recover his breath and collect his courage. The

first thing was to make sure that the chest was sound, and capable of

resisting his weight poised in mid-air. He jumped with all his force

upon it. At the third jump the whole side burst open, and out scuttled

the contents, a host of parchments.

After the first start and misgiving this gave him, Gerard comprehended

that the chest had not burst, but opened: he had doubtless jumped upon

some secret spring. Still it shook in some degree his confidence in the

chest's powers of resistance; so he gave it an ally: he took the iron

bar and fastened it with the small rope across the large rope, and

across the window. He now mounted the chest, and from the chest put his

foot through the window, and sat half in and half out, with one hand on

that part of the rope which was inside. In the silent night he heard his

own heart beat.

The free air breathed on his face, and gave him the courage to risk what

we must all lose one day--for liberty. Many dangers awaited him, but the

greatest was the first getting on to the rope outside. Gerard reflected.

Finally, he put himself in the attitude of a swimmer, his body to the

waist being in the prison, his legs outside. Then holding the inside

rope with both hands, he felt anxiously with his feet for the outside

rope, and when he had got it, he worked it in between the palms of his

feet, and kept it there tight: then he uttered a short prayer, and, all

the calmer for it, put his left hand on the sill and gradually wriggled

out. Then he seized the iron bar, and for one fearful moment hung

outside from it by his right hand, while his left hand felt for the rope

down at his knees; it was too tight against the wall for his fingers to

get round it higher up. The moment he had fairly grasped it, he left the

bar, and swiftly seized the rope with the right hand too; but in this

manoeuvre his body necessarily fell about a yard. A stifled cry came up

from below. Gerard hung in mid-air. He clenched his teeth, and nipped

the rope tight with his feet and gripped it with his hands, and went

down slowly hand below hand. He passed by one huge rough stone after

another. He saw there was green moss on one. He looked up and he looked

down. The moon shone into his prison window: it seemed very near. The

fluttering figures below seemed an awful distance. It made him dizzy to

look down: so he fixed his eyes steadily on the wall close to him, and

went slowly down, down, down.

He passed a rusty, slimy streak on the wall: it was some ten feet long.

The rope made his hands very hot. He stole another look up.

The prison window was a good way off now.

Down--down--down--down.

The rope made his hands sore.

He looked up. The window was so distant, he ventured now to turn his

eyes downward again; and there, not more than thirty feet below him,

were Margaret and Martin, their faithful hands upstretched to catch him

should he fall. He could see their eyes and their teeth shine in the

moonlight. For their mouths were open, and they were breathing hard.

“Take care, Gerard oh, take care! Look not down.”

“Fear me not,” cried Gerard joyfully, and eyed the wall, but came down

faster.

In another minute his feet were at their hands. They seized him ere he

touched the ground, and all three clung together in one embrace.

“Hush! away in silence, dear one.”

They stole along the shadow of the wall.

Now, ere they had gone many yards, suddenly a stream of light shot from

an angle of the building, and lay across their path like a barrier of

fire, and they heard whispers and footsteps close at hand.

“Back!” hissed Martin. “Keep in the shade.”

They hurried back, passed the dangling rope, and made for a little

square projecting tower. They had barely rounded it when the light shot

trembling past them, and flickered uncertainly into the distance.

“A lantern!” groaned Martin in a whisper. “They are after us.”

“Give me my knife,” whispered Gerard. “I'll never be taken alive.”

“No, no!” murmured Margaret; “is there no way out where we are?”

“None! none! But I carry six lives at my shoulder;” and with the word,

Martin strung his bow, and fitted an arrow to the string: “in war never

wait to be struck: I will kill one or two ere they shall know where

their death comes from:” then, motioning his companions to be quiet he

began to draw his bow, and, ere the arrow was quite drawn to the head,

he glided round the corner ready to loose the string the moment the

enemy should offer a mark.

Gerard and Margaret held their breath in horrible expectation: they had

never seen a human being killed.

And now a wild hope, but half repressed, thrilled through Gerard, that

this watchful enemy might be the burgomaster in person. The soldier, he

knew, would send an arrow through a burgher or burgomaster, as he would

through a boar in a wood.

But who may foretell the future, however near? The bow, instead of

remaining firm, and loosing the deadly shaft, was seen to waver first,

then shake violently, and the stout soldier staggered back to them, his

knees knocking and his cheeks blanched with fear. He let his arrow fall,

and clutched Gerard's shoulder.

“Let me feel flesh and blood,” he gasped. “The haunted tower! the

haunted tower!”

His terror communicated itself to Margaret and Gerard. They gasped

rather than uttered an inquiry.

“Hush!” he cried, “it will hear you up the wall! it is going up the

wall! Its head is on fire. Up the wall, as mortal creatures walk upon

green sward. If you know a prayer, say it, for hell is loose to-night.”

“I have power to exorcise spirits,” said Gerard, trembling. “I will

venture forth.”

“Go alone then,” said Martin; “I have looked on't once, and live.”

CHAPTER XI

The strange glance of hatred the burgomaster had cast on Gerard, coupled

with his imprisonment, had filled the young man with a persuasion that

Ghysbrecht was his enemy to the death, and he glided round the angle of

the tower, fully expecting to see no supernatural appearance, but some

cruel and treacherous contrivance of a bad man to do him a mischief in

that prison, his escape from which could hardly be known.

As he stole forth, a soft but brave hand crept into his; and Margaret

was by his side, to share this new peril.

No sooner was the haunted tower visible, than a sight struck their eyes

that benumbed them as they stood. More than halfway up the tower, a

creature with a fiery head, like an enormous glowworm, was steadily

mounting the wall: the body was dark, but its outline visible through

the glare from the head, and the whole creature not much less than four

feet long.

At the foot of the tower stood a thing in white, that looked exactly

like the figure of a female. Gerard and Margaret palpitated with awe.

“The rope! the rope! It is going up the rope,” gasped Gerard.

As they gazed, the glowworm disappeared in Gerard's late prison, but

its light illuminated the cell inside and reddened the window. The white

figure stood motionless below.

Such as can retain their senses after the first prostrating effect of

the supernatural are apt to experience terror in one of its strangest

forms, a wild desire to fling themselves upon the terrible object. It

fascinates them as the snake the bird. The great tragedian Macready

used to render this finely in Macbeth, at Banquo's second appearance.

He flung himself with averted head at the horrible shadow. This strange

impulse now seized Margaret. She put down Gerard's hand quietly, and

stood bewildered; then, all in a moment, with a wild cry, darted towards

the spectre. Gerard, not aware of the natural impulse I have spoken of,

never doubted the evil one was drawing her to her perdition. He fell on

his knees.

“Exorcizo vos. In nomine beatae Mariae, exorcizo vos.”

While the exorcist was shrieking his incantations in extremity of

terror, to his infinite relief he heard the spectre utter a feeble

cry of fear. To find that hell had also its little weaknesses was

encouraging. He redoubled his exorcisms, and presently he saw the

ghastly shape kneeling at Margaret's knees, and heard it praying

piteously for mercy.

Kate and Giles soon reached the haunted tower. Judge their surprise when

they found a new rope dangling from the prisoner's window to the ground.

“I see how it is,” said the inferior intelligence, taking facts as they

came. “Our Gerard has come down this rope. He has got clear. Up I go,

and see.”

“No, Giles, no!” said the superior intelligence, blinded by prejudice.

“See you not this is glamour? This rope is a line the evil one casts out

to wile thee to destruction. He knows the weaknesses of all our hearts;

he has seen how fond you are of going up things. Where should our Gerard

procure a rope? how fasten it in the sky like this? It is not in nature.

Holy saints protect us this night, for hell is abroad.”

“Stuff!” said the dwarf; “the way to hell is down, and this rope leads

up. I never had the luck to go up such a long rope. It may be years ere

I fall in with such a long rope all ready for me. As well be knocked on

the head at once as never know happiness.”

And he sprung on to the rope with a cry of delight, as a cat jumps with

a mew on to a table where fish is. All the gymnast was on fire; and the

only concession Kate could gain from him was permission to fasten the

lantern on his neck first.

“A light scares the ill spirits,” said she.

And so, with his huge arms, and his legs like feathers, Giles went up

the rope faster than his brother came down it. The light at the nape of

his neck made a glowworm of him. His sister watched his progress, with

trembling anxiety. Suddenly a female figure started out of the solid

masonry, and came flying at her with more than mortal velocity.

Kate uttered a feeble cry. It was all she could, for her tongue clove to

her palate with terror. Then she dropped her crutches, and sank upon her

knees, hiding her face and moaning:

“Take my body, but spare my soul!”

Margaret (panting). “Why, it is a woman!”

Kate (quivering). “Why, it is a woman!”

Margaret. “How you scared me!”

Kate. “I am scared enough myself. Oh! oh! oh!”

“This is strange! But the fiery-headed thing? Yet it was with you, and

you are harmless! But why are you here at this time of night?”

“Nay, why are YOU?”

“Perhaps we are on the same errand? Ah! you are his good sister, Kate!”

“And you are Margaret Brandt.”

“Yes.

“All the better. You love him; you are here. Then Giles was right. He

has won free.”

Gerard came forward, and put the question at rest. But all further

explanation was cut short by a horrible unearthly noise, like a

sepulchre ventriloquizing:

“PARCHMENT!--PARCHMENT!--PARCHMENT!”

At each repetition, it rose in intensity. They looked up, and there was

the dwarf, with his hands full of parchments, and his face lighted with

fiendish joy and lurid with diabolical fire. The light being at his

neck, a more infernal “transparency” never startled mortal eye. With the

word, the awful imp hurled parchment at the astonished heads below.

Down came records, like wounded wild-ducks; some collapsed, others

fluttering, and others spread out and wheeling slowly down in airy

circles. They had hardly settled, when again the sepulchral roar was

heard--“Parchment--parchment!” and down pattered and sailed another

flock of documents: another followed: they whitened the grass. Finally,

the fire-headed imp, with his light body and horny hands, slid down the

rope like a falling star, and (business before sentiment) proposed to

his rescued brother an immediate settlement for the merchandise he had

just delivered.

“Hush!” said Gerard; “you speak too loud. Gather them up, and follow us

to a safer place than this.”

“Will you come home with me, Gerard?” said little Kate.

“I have no home.”

“You shall not say so. Who is more welcome than you will be, after this

cruel wrong, to your father's house?

“Father! I have no father,” said Gerard sternly. “He that was my father

is turned my gaoler. I have escaped from his hands; I will never come

within their reach again.”

“An enemy did this, and not our father.”

And she told him what she had overheard Cornelis and Sybrandt say. But

the injury was too recent to be soothed. Gerard showed a bitterness of

indignation he had hitherto seemed incapable of.

“Cornelis and Sybrandt are two ill curs that have shown me their teeth

and their heart a long while; but they could do no more. My father it is

that gave the burgomaster authority, or he durst not have laid a finger

on me, that am a free burgher of this town. So be it, then. I was his

son. I am his prisoner. He has played his part. I shall play mine.

Farewell the burgh where I was born, and lived honestly and was put in

prison. While there is another town left in creation, I'll never trouble

you again, Tergou.”

“Oh! Gerard! Gerard!”

Margaret whispered her: “Do not gainsay him now. Give his choler time to

cool!”

Kate turned quickly towards her. “Let me look at your face?” The

inspection was favourable, it seemed, for she whispered: “It is a comely

face, and no mischief-maker's.”

“Fear me not,” said Margaret, in the same tone. “I could not be happy

without your love, as well as Gerard's.”

“These are comfortable words,” sobbed Kate. Then, looking up, she said,

“I little thought to like you so well. My heart is willing, but my

infirmity will not let me embrace you.”

At this hint, Margaret wound gently round Gerard's sister, and kissed

her lovingly.

“Often he has spoken of you to me, Kate; and often I longed for this.”

“You, too, Gerard,” said Kate; “kiss me ere you go; for my heart lies

heavy at parting with you this night.”

Gerard kissed her, and she went on her crutches home. The last thing

they heard of her was a little patient sigh. Then the tears came and

stood thick in Margaret's eyes. But Gerard was a man, and noticed not

his sister's sigh.

As they turned to go to Sevenbergen, the dwarf nudged Gerard with his

bundle of parchments and held out a concave claw.

Margaret dissuaded Gerard. “Why take what is not ours?”

“Oh, spoil an enemy how you can.”

“But may they not make this a handle for fresh violence?”

“How can they? Think you I shall stay in Tergou after this? The

burgomaster robbed me of my liberty; I doubt I should take his life for

it, if I could.”

“Oh, fie! Gerard.”

“What! Is life worth more than liberty? Well, I can't take his life, so

I take the first thing that comes to hand.”

He gave Giles a few small coins, with which the urchin was gladdened,

and shuffled after his sister. Margaret and Gerard were speedily joined

by Martin, and away to Sevenbergen.

CHAPTER XII

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten kept the key of Gerard's prison in his pouch. He

waited till ten of the clock ere he visited for he said to himself, “A

little hunger sometimes does well it breaks 'em.” At ten he crept up

the stairs with a loaf and pitcher, followed by his trusty servant well

armed. Ghysbrecht listened at the door. There was no sound inside.

A grim smile stole over his features. “By this time he will be as

down-hearted as Albert Koestein was,” thought he. He opened the door.

No Gerard.

Ghysbrecht stood stupefied.

Although his face was not visible, his body seemed to lose all motion

in so peculiar a way, and then after a little he fell trembling so, that

the servant behind him saw there was something amiss, and crept close

to him and peeped over his shoulder. At sight of the empty cell, and

the rope, and iron bar, he uttered a loud exclamation of wonder; but his

surprise doubled when his master, disregarding all else, suddenly flung

himself on his knees before the empty chest, and felt wildly all over it

with quivering hands, as if unwilling to trust his eyes in a matter so

important.

The servant gazed at him in utter bewilderment.

“Why, master, what is the matter?”

Ghysbrecht's pale lips worked as if he was going to answer; but they

uttered no sound: his hands fell by his side, and he stared into the

chest.

“Why, master, what avails glaring into that empty box? The lad is not

there. See here! note the cunning of the young rogue; he hath taken out

the bar, and--”

“GONE! GONE! GONE!”

“Gone! What is gone, Holy saints! he is planet-struck!”

“STOP THIEF!” shrieked Ghysbrecht, and suddenly turned, on his servant

and collared him, and shook him with rage. “D'ye stand there, knave, and

see your master robbed? Run! fly! A hundred crowns to him that finds

it me again. No, no! 'tis in vain. Oh, fool! fool! to leave that in the

same room with him. But none ever found the secret spring before. None

ever would but he. It was to be. It is to be. Lost! lost!” and his years

and infirmity now gained the better of his short-lived frenzy, and he

sank on the chest muttering “Lost! lost!”

“What is lost, master?” asked the servant kindly.

“House and lands and good name,” groaned Ghysbrecht, and wrung his hands

feebly.

“WHAT?” cried the servant.

This emphatic word, and the tone of eager curiosity, struck on

Ghysbrecht's ear and revived his natural cunning.

“I have lost the town records,” stammered he, and he looked askant at

the man like a fox caught near a hen-roost.

“Oh, is that all?”

“Is't not enough? What will the burghers say to me? What will the burghs

do?” Then he suddenly burst out again, “A hundred crowns to him who

shall recover them; all, mind, all that were in this box. If one be

missing, I give nothing.”

“'Tis a bargain, master: the hundred crowns are in my pouch. See you not

that where Gerard Eliassoen is, there are the pieces of sheepskin you

rate so high?”

“That is true; that is true, good Dierich: good faithful Dierich. All,

mind, all that were in the chest.”

“Master, I will take the constables to Gerard's house, and seize him for

the theft.”

“The theft? ay! good; very good. It is theft. I forgot that. So, as he

is a thief now, we will put him in the dungeons below, where the toads

are and the rats. Dierich, that man must never see daylight again. 'Tis

his own fault; he must be prying. Quick, quick! ere he has time to talk,

you know, time to talk.”

In less than half an hour Dierich Brower and four constables entered

the hosier's house, and demanded young Gerard of the panic-stricken

Catherine.

“Alas! what has he done now?” cried she; “that boy will break my heart.”

“Nay, dame, but a trick of youth,” said Dierich. “He hath but made

off with certain skins of parchment, in a frolic doubtless but the

burgomaster is answerable to the burgh for their safe keeping, so he is

in care about them; as for the youth, he will doubtless be quit for a

reprimand.”

This smooth speech completely imposed on Catherine; but her daughter

was more suspicious, and that suspicion was strengthened by the

disproportionate anger and disappointment Dierich showed the moment he

learned Gerard was not at home, had not been at home that night.

“Come away then,” said he roughly. “We are wasting time.” He added

vehemently, “I'll find him if he is above ground.”

Affection sharpens the wits, and often it has made an innocent person

more than a match for the wily. As Dierich was going out, Kate made him

a signal she would speak with him privately. He bade his men go on, and

waited outside the door. She joined him.

“Hush!” said she; “my mother knows not. Gerard has left Tergou.”

“How?”

“I saw him last night.”

“Ay! Where?” cried Dierich eagerly.

“At the foot of the haunted tower.”

“How did he get the rope?”

“I know not; but this I know; my brother Gerard bade me there farewell,

and he is many leagues from Tergou ere this. The town, you know, was

always unworthy of him, and when it imprisoned him, he vowed never

to set foot in it again. Let the burgomaster be content, then. He has

imprisoned him, and he has driven him from his birthplace and from his

native land. What need now to rob him and us of our good name?”

This might at another moment have struck Dierich as good sense; but he

was too mortified at this escape of Gerard and the loss of a hundred

crowns.

“What need had he to steal?” retorted he bitterly.

“Gerard stole not the trash; he but took it to spite the burgomaster,

who stole his liberty; but he shall answer to the Duke for it, he shall.

As for these skins of parchment you keep such a coil about, look in the

nearest brook or stye, and 'tis odds but you find them.”

“Think ye so, mistress?--think ye so?” And Dierich's eyes flashed.

“Mayhap you know 'tis so.”

“This I know, that Gerard is too good to steal, and too wise to load

himself with rubbish, going a journey.”

“Give you good day, then,” said Dierich sharply. “The sheepskin you

scorn, I value it more than the skin of any in Tergou.”

And he went off hastily on a false scent.

Kate returned into the house and drew Giles aside.

“Giles, my heart misgives me; breathe not to a soul what I say to you. I

have told Dirk Brower that Gerard is out of Holland, but much I doubt he

is not a league from Tergou.”

“Why, where is he, then?”

“Where should he be, but with her he loves? But if so, he must not

loiter. These be deep and dark and wicked men that seek him. Giles, I

see that in Dirk Brower's eye makes me tremble. Oh, why cannot I fly to

Sevenbergen and bid him away? Why am I not lusty and active like other

girls? God forgive me for fretting at His will; but I never felt till

now what it is to be lame and weak and useless. But you are strong, dear

Giles,” added she coaxingly; “you are very strong.”

“Yes, I am strong,” thundered Perpusillus; then, catching sight of her

meaning, “but I hate to go on foot,” he added sulkily.

“Alas! alas! who will help me if you will not? Dear Giles, do you not

love Gerard?”

“Yes, I like him best of the lot. I'll go to Sevenbergen on Peter

Buyskens his mule. Ask you him, for he won't lend her me.”

Kate remonstrated. The whole town would follow him. It would be known

whither he was gone, and Gerard be in worse danger than before.

Giles parried this by promising to ride out of the town the opposite

way, and not turn the mule's head towards Sevenbergen till he had got

rid of the curious.

Kate then assented and borrowed the mule. She charged Giles with a short

but meaning message, and made him repeat it after her over and over,

till he could say it word for word.

Giles started on the mule, and little Kate retired, and did the last

thing now in her power for her beloved brother--prayed on her knees long

and earnestly for his safety.

CHAPTER XIII

Gerard and Margaret went gaily to Sevenbergen in the first flush of

recovered liberty and successful adventure. But these soon yielded

to sadder thoughts. Gerard was an escaped prisoner, and liable to be

retaken and perhaps punished; and therefore he and Margaret would have

to part for a time. Moreover, he had conceived a hatred to his native

place. Margaret wished him to leave the country for a while, but at

the thought of his going to Italy her heart fainted. Gerard, on the

contrary, was reconciled to leaving Margaret only by his desire to visit

Italy, and his strong conviction that there he should earn money and

reputation, and remove every obstacle to their marriage. He had already

told her all that the demoiselle Van Eyck had said to him. He repeated

it, and reminded Margaret that the gold pieces were only given him to go

to Italy with. The journey was clearly for Gerard's interest. He was a

craftsman and an artist, lost in this boorish place. In Italy they would

know how to value him. On this ground above all the unselfish girl gave

her consent; but many tender tears came with it, and at that Gerard,

young and loving as herself, cried bitterly with her, and often they

asked one another what they had done, that so many different persons

should be their enemies, and combine, as it seemed, to part them.

They sat hand in hand till midnight, now deploring their hard fate, now

drawing bright and hopeful pictures of the future, in the midst of which

Margaret's tears would suddenly flow, and then poor Gerard's eloquence

would die away in a sigh.

The morning found them resigned to part, but neither had the courage to

say when; and much I doubt whether the hour of parting ever would have

struck.

But about three in the afternoon, Giles, who had made a circuit of many

miles to avoid suspicion, rode up to the door. They both ran out to him,

eager with curiosity.

“Brother Gerard,” cried he, in his tremendous tones, “Kate bids you run

for your life. They charge you with theft; you have given them a handle.

Think not to explain. Hope not for justice in Tergou. The parchments you

took, they are but a blind. She hath seen your death in the men's eyes;

a price is on your head. Fly! For Margaret's sake and all who love you,

loiter not life away, but fly!”

It was a thunder-clap, and left two white faces looking at one another,

and at the terrible messenger.

Then Giles, who had hitherto but uttered by rote what Catherine bade

him, put in a word of his own.

“All the constables were at our house after you, and so was Dirk Brower.

Kate is wise, Gerard. Best give ear to her rede, and fly!”

“Oh, yes, Gerard,” cried Margaret wildly. “Fly on the instant. Ah! those

parchments; my mind misgave me: why did I let you take them?”

“Margaret, they are but a blind: Giles says so. No matter: the old

caitiff shall never see them again; I will not go till I have hidden

his treasure where he shall never find it.” Gerard then, after thanking

Giles warmly, bade him farewell, and told him to go back and tell Kate

he was gone. “For I shall be gone ere you reach home,” said he. He then

shouted for Martin; and told him what had happened, and begged him to go

a little way towards Tergou, and watch the road.

“Ay!” said Martin, “and if I see Dirk Brower or any of his men, I will

shoot an arrow into the oak-tree that is in our garden; and on that

you must run into the forest hard by, and meet me at the weird hunter's

spring. Then I will guide you through the wood.”

Surprise thus provided against, Gerard breathed again. He went with

Margaret, and while she watched the oak-tree tremblingly, fearing every

moment to see an arrow strike among the branches, Gerard dug a deep hole

to bury the parchments in.

He threw them in, one by one. They were nearly all charters and records

of the burgh; but one appeared to be a private deed between Floris

Brandt, father of Peter, and Ghysbrecht.

“Why, this is as much yours as his,” said Gerard. “I will read this.”

“Oh, not now, Gerard, not now,” cried Margaret. “Every moment you lose

fills me with fear; and see, large drops of rain are beginning to fall,

and the clouds lower.”

Gerard yielded to this remonstrance; but he put the deed into his bosom,

and threw the earth in over the others, and stamped it down. While thus

employed there came a flash of lightning followed by a peal of distant

thunder, and the rain came down heavily. Margaret and Gerard ran into

the house, whither they were speedily followed by Martin.

“The road is clear,” said he, “and a heavy storm coming on.”

His words proved true. The thunder came nearer and nearer till it

crashed overhead: the flashes followed one another close, like the

strokes of a whip, and the rain fell in torrents. Margaret hid her face

not to see the lightning. On this, Gerard put up the rough shutter and

lighted a candle. The lovers consulted together, and Gerard blessed

the storm that gave him a few hours more with Margaret. The sun set

unperceived, and still the thunder pealed, and the lightning flashed,

and the rain poured. Supper was set; but Gerard and Margaret could not

eat: the thought that this was the last time they should sup together

choked them. The storm lulled a little. Peter retired to rest. But

Gerard was to go at peep of day, and neither he nor Margaret could

afford to lose an hour in sleep. Martin sat a while, too; for he was

fitting a new string to his bow, a matter in which he was very nice.

The lovers murmured their sorrows and their love beside him.

Suddenly the old man held up his hand to them to be silent.

They were quiet and listened, and heard nothing. But the next moment a

footstep crackled faintly upon the autumn leaves that lay strewn in the

garden at the back door of the house. To those who had nothing to fear

such a step would have said nothing; but to those who had enemies it was

terrible. For it was a foot trying to be noiseless.

Martin fitted an arrow to his string and hastily blew out the candle. At

this moment, to their horror, they heard more than one footstep approach

the other door of the cottage, not quite so noiselessly as the other,

but very stealthily--and then a dead pause.

Their blood froze in their veins.

“Oh, Kate, oh, Kate! You said fly on the instant.” And Margaret moaned

and wrung her hands in anguish and terror and wild remorse for having

kept Gerard.

“Hush, girl!” said Martin, in a stern whisper.

A heavy knock fell on the door.

And on the hearts within.

CHAPTER XIV

As if this had been a concerted signal, the back door was struck as

rudely the next instant. They were hemmed in. But at these alarming

sounds Margaret seemed to recover some share of self-possession. She

whispered, “Say he was here, but is gone.” And with this she seized

Gerard and almost dragged him up the rude steps that led to her father's

sleeping-room. Her own lay next beyond it.

The blows on the door were repeated.

“Who knocks at this hour?”

“Open, and you will see!”

“I open not to thieves--honest men are all abed now.”

“Open to the law, Martin Wittenhaagen, or you shall rue it.”

“Why, that is Dirk Brower's voice, I trow. What make you so far from

Tergou?”

“Open, and you will know.”

Martin drew the bolt very slowly, and in rushed Dierich and four more.

They let in their companion who was at the back door.

“Now, Martin, where is Gerard Eliassoen?”

“Gerard Eliassoen? Why, he was here but now!”

“Was here?” Dierich's countenance fell. “And where is he now?”

“They say he has gone to Italy. Why, what is to do?”

“No matter. When did he go? Tell me not that he went in such a storm as

this!”

“Here is a coil about Gerard Eliassoen,” said Martin contemptuously.

Then he lighted the candle, and seating himself coolly by the fire,

proceeded to whip some fine silk round his bow-string at the place where

the nick of the arrow frets it.

“I'll tell you,” said he carelessly. “Know you his brother Giles?--a

little misbegotten imp, all head and arms? Well, he came tearing over

here on a mule, and bawled out something, I was too far off to hear the

creature's words, but only its noise. Any way, he started Gerard. For as

soon as he was gone, there was such crying and kissing, and then Gerard

went away. They do tell me he has gone to Italy--mayhap you know where

that is, for I don't.”

Dierich's countenance fell lower and lower at this account. There was

no flaw in it, A cunninger man than Martin would perhaps have told a

lie too many and raised suspicion. But Martin did his task well. He only

told the one falsehood he was bade to tell, and of his own head invented

nothing.

“Mates,” said Dierich, “I doubt he speaks sooth. I told the burgomaster

how 'twould be. He met the dwarf galloping Peter Buyskens's mule from

Sevenbergen. 'They have sent that imp to Gerard,' says he, 'so, then,

Gerard is at Sevenbergen.' 'Ah, master!' says I, ''tis too late now. We

should have thought of Sevenbergen before, instead of wasting our time

hunting all the odd corners of Tergou for those cursed parchments that

we shall never find till we find the man that took 'em. If he was at

Sevenbergen,' quoth I, 'and they sent the dwarf to him, it must have

been to warn him we are after him. He is leagues away by now,' quoth I.

Confound that chalk-faced girl! she has outwitted us bearded men; and

so I told the burgomaster, but he would not hear reason. A wet jerkin

apiece, that is all we shall get, mates, by this job.”

Martin grinned coolly in Dierich's face.

“However,” added the latter, “to content the burgomaster, we will search

the house.”

Martin turned grave directly.

This change of countenance did not escape Dierich. He reflected a

moment.

“Watch outside two of you, one on each side of the house, that no one

jump from the upper windows. The rest come with me.”

And he took the candle and mounted the stairs, followed by three of his

comrades.

Martin was left alone.

The stout soldier hung his head. All had gone so well at first; and now

this fatal turn! Suddenly it occurred to him that all was not yet lost.

Gerard must be either in Peter's room or Margaret's; they were not so

very high from the ground. Gerard would leap out. Dierich had left a man

below; but what then? For half a minute Gerard and he would be two to

one, and in that brief space, what might not be done?

Martin then held the back door ajar and watched. The light shone in

Peter's room. “Curse the fool!” said he, “is he going to let them take

him like a girl?”

The light now passed into Margaret's bedroom. Still no window was

opened. Had Gerard intended to escape that way, he would not have waited

till the men were in the room. Martin saw that at once, and left the

door, and came to the foot-stair and listened.

He began to think Gerard must have escaped by the window while all the

men were in the house. The longer the silence continued, the stronger

grew this conviction. But it was suddenly and rudely dissipated.

Faint cries issued from the inner bedroom--Margaret's.

“They have taken him,” groaned Martin; “they have got him.”

It now flashed across Martin's mind that if they took Gerard away, his

life was not worth a button; and that, if evil befell him, Margaret's

heart would break. He cast his eyes wildly round like some savage beast

seeking an escape, and in a twinkling formed a resolution terribly

characteristic of those iron times and of a soldier driven to bay. He

stepped to each door in turn, and imitating Dierich Brower's voice,

said sharply, “Watch the window!” He then quietly closed and bolted

both doors. He then took up his bow and six arrows; one he fitted to his

string, the others he put into his quiver. His knife he placed upon a

chair behind him, the hilt towards him; and there he waited at the foot

of the stair with the calm determination to slay those four men, or be

slain by them. Two, he knew, he could dispose of by his arrows, ere

they could get near him, and Gerard and he must take their chance

hand-to-hand with the remaining pair. Besides, he had seen men

panic-stricken by a sudden attack of this sort. Should Brower and his

men hesitate but an instant before closing with him, he should shoot

three instead of two, and then the odds would be on the right side.

He had not long to wait. The heavy steps sounded in Margaret's room, and

came nearer and nearer.

The light also approached, and voices.

Martin's heart, stout as it was, beat hard, to hear men coming thus to

their death, and perhaps to his; more likely so than not: for four is

long odds in a battlefield of ten feet square, and Gerard might be bound

perhaps, and powerless to help. But this man, whom we have seen shake in

his shoes at a Giles-o'-lanthorn, never wavered in this awful moment of

real danger, but stood there, his body all braced for combat, and his

eye glowing, equally ready to take life and lose it. Desperate game! to

win which was exile instant and for life, and to lose it was to die that

moment upon that floor he stood on.

Dierich Brower and his men found Peter in his first sleep. They opened

his cupboards, they ran their knives into an alligator he had nailed to

his wall; they looked under his bed: it was a large room, and apparently

full of hiding-places, but they found no Gerard.

Then they went on to Margaret's room, and the very sight of it was

discouraging--it was small and bare, and not a cupboard in it; there

was, however, a large fireplace and chimney. Dierich's eye fell on these

directly. Here they found the beauty of Sevenbergen sleeping on an old

chest not a foot high, and no attempt made to cover it; but the sheets

were snowy white, and so was Margaret's own linen. And there she lay,

looking like a lily fallen into a rut.

Presently she awoke, and sat up in the bed, like one amazed; then,

seeing the men, began to scream faintly, and pray for mercy.

She made Dierich Brower ashamed of his errand.

“Here is a to-do,” said he, a little confused. “We are not going to hurt

you, my pretty maid. Lie you still, and shut your eyes, and think of

your wedding-night, while I look up this chimney to see if Master Gerard

is there.”

“Gerard! in my room?”

“Why not? They say that you and he--”

“Cruel! you know they have driven him away from me--driven him from his

native place. This is a blind. You are thieves; you are wicked men; you

are not men of Sevenbergen, or you would know Margaret Brandt better

than to look for her lover in this room of all others in the world. Oh,

brave! Four great hulking men to come, armed to the teeth, to insult one

poor honest girl! The women that live in your own houses must be naught,

or you would respect them too much to insult a girl of good character.”

“There! come away, before we hear worse,” said Dierich hastily. “He

is not in the chimney. Plaster will mend what a cudgel breaks; but a

woman's tongue is a double-edged dagger, and a girl is a woman with her

mother's milk still in her.” And he beat a hasty retreat. “I told the

burgomaster how 'twould be.”

CHAPTER XV

Where is the woman that cannot act a part? Where is she who will not

do it, and do it well, to save the man she loves? Nature on these great

occasions comes to the aid of the simplest of the sex, and teaches her

to throw dust in Solomon's eyes. The men had no sooner retired than

Margaret stepped out of bed, and opened the long chest on which she had

been lying down in her skirt and petticoat and stockings, and nightdress

over all; and put the lid, bed-clothes and all, against the wall: then

glided to the door and listened. The footsteps died away through her

father's room and down the stairs.

Now in that chest there was a peculiarity that it was almost impossible

for a stranger to detect. A part of the boarding of the room had been

broken, and Gerard being applied to to make it look neater, and being

short of materials, had ingeniously sawed away a space sufficient just

to admit Margaret's soi-disant bed, and with the materials thus acquired

he had repaired the whole room. As for the bed or chest, it really

rested on the rafters a foot below the boards. Consequently it was full

two feet deep, though it looked scarce one.

All was quiet. Margaret kneeled and gave thanks to Heaven. Then she

glided from the door and leaned over the chest, and whispered tenderly,

“Gerard!”

Gerard did not reply.

She then whispered a little louder, “Gerard, all is safe, thank Heaven!

You may rise; but oh! be cautious!”

Gerard made no reply.

She laid her hand upon his shoulder--“Gerard!”

No reply.

“Oh, what is this?” she cried, and her hands ran wildly over his face

and his bosom. She took him by the shoulders; she shook him; she lifted

him; but he escaped from her trembling hands, and fell back, not like a

man, but like a body. A great dread fell on her. The lid had been down.

She had lain upon it. The men had been some time in the room. With all

the strength of frenzy she tore him out of the chest. She bore him in

her arms to the window. She dashed the window open. The sweet air came

in. She laid him in it and in the moonlight. His face was the colour of

ashes; his body was all limp and motionless. She felt his heart. Horror!

it was as still as the rest! Horror of horrors! she had stifled him with

her own body.

The mind cannot all at once believe so great and sudden and strange a

calamity. Gerard, who had got alive into that chest scarce five minutes

ago, how could he be dead?

She called him by all the endearing names that heart could think or

tongue could frame. She kissed him and fondled him and coaxed him and

implored him to speak to her.

No answer to words of love, such as she had never uttered to him before,

nor thought she could utter. Then the poor creature, trembling all over,

began to say over that ashy face little foolish things that were at once

terrible and pitiable.

“Oh, Gerard! I am very sorry you are dead. I am very sorry I have killed

you. Forgive me for not letting the men take you; it would have been

better than this. Oh, Gerard! I am very, very sorry for what I have

done.” Then she began suddenly to rave.

“No! no! such things can't be, or there is no God. It is monstrous. How

can my Gerard be dead? How can I have killed my Gerard? I love him. Oh,

God! you know how I love him. He does not. I never told him. If he knew

my heart, he would speak to me, he would not be so deaf to his poor

Margaret. It is all a trick to make me cry out and betray him; but no!

I love him too well for that. I'll choke first.” And she seized her own

throat, to check her wild desire to scream in her terror and anguish.

“If he would but say one word. Oh, Gerard! don't die without a word.

Have mercy on me and scold me, but speak to me: if you are angry with

me, scold me! curse me! I deserve it: the idiot that killed the man she

loved better than herself. Ah I am a murderess. The worst in all the

world. Help! help! I have murdered him. Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!”

She tore her hair, and uttered shriek after shriek, so wild, so

piercing, they fell like a knell upon the ears of Dierich Brower and his

men. All started to their feet and looked at one another.

CHAPTER XVI

Martin Wittenhaagen, standing at the foot of the stairs with his arrow

drawn nearly to the head and his knife behind him, was struck with

amazement to see the men come back without Gerard: he lowered his bow

and looked open-mouthed at them. They, for their part, were equally

puzzled at the attitude they had caught him in.

“Why, mates, was the old fellow making ready to shoot at us?”

“Stuff!” said Martin, recovering his stolid composure; “I was but trying

my new string. There! I'll unstring my bow, if you think that.”

“Humph!” said Dierich suspiciously, “there is something more in you than

I understand: put a log on, and let us dry our hides a bit ere we go.”

A blazing fire was soon made, and the men gathered round it, and their

clothes and long hair were soon smoking from the cheerful blaze. Then it

was that the shrieks were heard in Margaret's room. They all started up,

and one of them seized the candle and ran up the steps that led to the

bedrooms.

Martin rose hastily too, and being confused by these sudden screams, and

apprehending danger from the man's curiosity, tried to prevent him from

going there.

At this Dierich threw his arms round him from behind, and called on the

others to keep him. The man that had the candle got clear away, and all

the rest fell upon Martin, and after a long and fierce struggle, in the

course of which they were more than once all rolling on the floor, with

Martin in the middle, they succeeded in mastering the old Samson, and

binding him hand and foot with a rope they had brought for Gerard.

Martin groaned aloud. He saw the man had made his way to Margaret's room

during the struggle, and here was he powerless.

“Ay, grind your teeth, you old rogue,” said Dierich, panting with the

struggle. “You shan't use them.”

“It is my belief, mates, that our lives were scarce safe while this old

fellow's bones were free.”

“He makes me think this Gerard is not far off,” put in another.

“No such luck,” replied Dierich. “Hallo, mates. Jorian Ketel is a long

time in that girl's bedroom. Best go and see after him, some of us.”

The rude laugh caused by this remark had hardly subsided, when hasty

footsteps were heard running along over head.

“Oh, here he comes, at last. Well, Jorian, what is to do now up there?”

CHAPTER XVII

Jorian Ketel went straight to Margaret's room, and there, to his

infinite surprise, he found the man he had been in search of, pale and

motionless, his head in Margaret's lap, and she kneeling over him, mute

now, and stricken to stone. Her eyes were dilated yet glazed, and she

neither saw the light nor heard the man, nor cared for anything on

earth, but the white face in her lap.

Jorian stood awe-struck, the candle shaking in his hand.

“Why, where was he, then, all the time?”

Margaret heeded him not. Jorian went to the empty chest and inspected

it. He began to comprehend. The girl's dumb and frozen despair moved

him.

“This is a sorry sight,” said he; “it is a black night's work: all for

a few skins! Better have gone with us than so. She is past answering me,

poor wench. Stop! let us try whether--”

He took down a little round mirror, no bigger than his hand, and put it

to Gerard's mouth and nostrils, and held it there. When he withdrew it,

it was dull.

“THERE IS LIFE IN HIM!” said Jorian Ketel to himself.

Margaret caught the words instantly, though only muttered, and it was if

a statue should start into life and passion. She rose and flung her arms

round Jorian's neck.

“Oh, bless the tongue that tells me so!” and she clasped the great rough

fellow again and again, eagerly, almost fiercely.

“There, there! let us lay him warm, said Jorian; and in a moment he

raised Gerard and laid him on the bed-clothes. Then he took out a flask

he carried, and filled his hand twice with Schiedamze, and flung it

sharply each time in Gerard's face. The pungent liquor co-operated with

his recovery--he gave a faint sigh. Oh, never was sound so joyful to

human ear! She flew towards him, but then stopped, quivering for fear

she should hurt him. She had lost all confidence in herself.

“That is right--let him alone,” said Jorian; “don't go cuddling him as

you did me, or you'll drive his breath back again. Let him alone: he is

sure to come to. 'Tisn't like as if he was an old man.”

Gerard sighed deeply, and a faint streak of colour stole to his lips.

Jorian made for the door. He had hardly reached it, when he found his

legs seized from behind.

It was Margaret! She curled round his knees like a serpent, and kissed

his hand, and fawned on him. “You won't tell? You have saved his life;

you have not the heart to thrust him back into his grave, to undo your

own good work?”

“No, no! It is not the first time I have done you two a good turn; 'twas

I told you in the church whither we had to take him. Besides, what is

Dierich Brower to me? I'll see him hanged ere I'll tell him. But I

wish you'd tell me where the parchments are! There are a hundred crowns

offered for them. That would be a good windfall for my Joan and the

children, you know.”

“Ah! they shall have those hundred crowns.

“What! are the things in the house?” asked Jorian eagerly.

“No; but I know where they are; and by God and St. Bavon I swear you

shall have them to-morrow. Come to me for them when you will, but come

alone.”

“I were made else. What! share the hundred crowns with Dirk Brower? And

now may my bones rot in my skin if I let a soul know the poor boy is

here.”

He then ran off, lest by staying longer he should excite suspicion,

and have them all after him. And Margaret knelt, quivering from head to

foot, and prayed beside Gerard and for Gerard.

“What is to do?” replied Jorian to Dierich Brower's query; “why, we have

scared the girl out of her wits. She was in a kind of fit.”

“We had better all go and doctor her, then.”

“Oh, yes! and frighten her into the churchyard. Her father is a doctor,

and I have roused him, and set him to bring her round. Let us see the

fire, will ye?”

His off-hand way disarmed all suspicion. And soon after the party agreed

that the kitchen of the “Three Kings” was much warmer than Peter's

house, and they departed, having first untied Martin.

“Take note, mate, that I was right, and the burgomaster wrong,” said

Dierich Brower at the door; “I said we should be too late to catch him,

and we were too late.”

Thus Gerard, in one terrible night, grazed the prison and the grave.

And how did he get clear at last? Not by his cunningly contrived

hiding-place, nor by Margaret's ready wit; but by a good impulse in

one of his captors, by the bit of humanity left in a somewhat reckless

fellow's heart, aided by his desire of gain. So mixed and seemingly

incongruous are human motives, so shortsighted our shrewdest counsels.

They whose moderate natures or gentle fates keep them, in life's

passage, from the fierce extremes of joy and anguish our nature is

capable of, are perhaps the best, and certainly the happiest of

mankind. But to such readers I should try in vain to convey what bliss

unspeakable settled now upon these persecuted lovers, Even to those who

have joyed greatly and greatly suffered, my feeble art can present but a

pale reflection of Margaret's and Gerard's ecstasy.

To sit and see a beloved face come back from the grave to the world, to

health and beauty, by swift gradations; to see the roses return to the

loved cheek, love's glance to the loved eye, and his words to the loved

mouth--this was Margaret's--a joy to balance years of sorrow. It

was Gerard's to awake from a trance, and find his head pillowed on

Margaret's arm; to hear the woman he adored murmur new words of eloquent

love, and shower tears and tender kisses and caresses on him. He never

knew, till this sweet moment, how ardently, how tenderly, she loved

him. He thanked his enemies. They wreathed their arms sweetly round each

other, and trouble and danger seemed a world, an age behind them. They

called each other husband and wife. Were they not solemnly betrothed?

And had they not stood before the altar together? Was not the blessing

of Holy Church upon their union?--her curse on all who would part them?

But as no woman's nerves can bear with impunity so terrible a strain.

presently Margaret turned faint, and sank on Gerard's shoulder, smiling

feebly, but quite, quite unstrung. Then Gerard was anxious, and would

seek assistance. But she held him with a gentle grasp, and implored him

not to leave her for a moment.

“While I can lay my hand on you, I feel you are safe, not else. Foolish

Gerard! nothing ails me. I am weak, dearest, but happy, oh! so happy!”

Then it was Gerard's turn to support that dear head, with its great

waves of hair flowing loose over him, and nurse her, and soothe her,

quivering on his bosom, with soft encouraging words and murmurs of love,

and gentle caresses. Sweetest of all her charms is a woman's weakness to

a manly heart.

Poor things! they were happy. To-morrow they must part. But that was

nothing to them now. They had seen Death, and all other troubles seemed

light as air. While there is life there is hope; while there is hope

there is joy. Separation for a year or two, what was it to them, who

were so young, and had caught a glimpse of the grave? The future was

bright, the present was Heaven: so passed the blissful hours.

Alas! their innocence ran other risks besides the prison and the grave.

They were in most danger from their own hearts and their inexperience,

now that visible danger there was none.

CHAPTER XVIII

Ghysbrecht Van Swieten could not sleep all night for anxiety. He was

afraid of thunder and lightning, or he would have made one of the party

that searched Peter's house. As soon as the storm ceased altogether,

he crept downstairs, saddled his mule, and rode to the “Three Kings” at

Sevenbergen. There he found his men sleeping, some on the chairs, some

on the tables, some on the floor. He roused them furiously, and heard

the story of their unsuccessful search, interlarded with praises of

their zeal.

“Fool! to let you go without me,” cried the burgomaster. “My life on't

he was there all the time. Looked ye under the girl's bed?”

“No; there was no room for a man there.”

“How know ye that, if ye looked not?” snarled Ghysbrecht. “Ye should

have looked under her bed, and in it too, and sounded all the panels

with your knives. Come, now, get up, and I shall show ye how to search.”

Dierich Brower got up and shook himself. “If you find him, call me a

horse and no man.”

In a few minutes Peter's house was again surrounded.

The fiery old man left his mule in the hands of Jorian Ketel, and, with

Dierich Brower and the others, entered the house.

The house was empty.

Not a creature to be seen, not even Peter. They went upstairs, and

then suddenly one of the men gave a shout, and pointed through Peter's

window, which was open. The others looked, and there, at some little

distance, walking quietly across the fields with Margaret and Martin,

was the man they sought. Ghysbrecht, with an exulting yell, descended

the stairs and flung himself on his mule; and he and his men set off in

hot pursuit.

CHAPTER XIX

Gerard warned by recent peril, rose before daybreak and waked Martin.

The old soldier was astonished. He thought Gerard had escaped by the

window last night. Being consulted as to the best way for him to leave

the country and elude pursuit, he said there was but one road safe. “I

must guide you through the great forest to a bridle-road I know of. This

will take you speedily to a hostelry, where they will lend you a swift

horse; and then a day's gallop will take you out of Holland. But let us

start ere the folk here quit their beds.”

Peter's house was but a furlong and a half from the forest. They

started, Martin with his bow and three arrows, for it was Thursday;

Gerard with nothing but a stout oak staff Peter gave him for the

journey.

Margaret pinned up her kirtle and farthingale, for the road was wet.

Peter went as far as his garden hedge with them, and then with more

emotion than he often bestowed on passing events, gave the young man his

blessing.

The sun was peeping above the horizon as they crossed the stony field

and made for the wood. They had crossed about half, when Margaret, who

kept nervously looking back every now and then, uttered a cry, and,

following her instinct, began to run towards the wood, screaming with

terror all the way.

Ghysbrecht and his men were in hot pursuit.

Resistance would have been madness. Martin and Gerard followed

Margaret's example. The pursuers gained slightly on them; but Martin

kept shouting, “Only win the wood! only win the wood!”

They had too good a start for the men on foot, and their hearts bounded

with hope at Martin's words, for the great trees seemed now to stretch

their branches like friendly arms towards them, and their leaves like a

screen.

But an unforeseen danger attacked them. The fiery old burgomaster flung

himself on his mule, and, spurring him to a gallop, he headed not his

own men only, but the fugitives. His object was to cut them off. The

old man came galloping in a semicircle, and got on the edge of the wood,

right in front of Gerard; the others might escape for aught he cared.

Margaret shrieked, and tried to protect Gerard by clasping him; but he

shook her off without ceremony.

Ghysbrecht in his ardour forgot that hunted animals turn on the hunter;

and that two men can hate, and two can long to kill the thing they hate.

Instead of attempting to dodge him, as the burgomaster made sure he

would, Gerard flew right at him, with a savage, exulting cry, and struck

at him with all his heart, and soul and strength. The oak staff came

down on Ghysbrecht's face with a frightful crash, and laid him under

his mule's tail beating the devil's tattoo with his heels, his face

streaming, and his collar spattered with blood.

The next moment the three were in the wood. The yell of dismay and

vengeance that burst from Ghysbrecht's men at that terrible blow which

felled their leader, told the fugitives that it was now a race for life

or death.

“Why run?” cried Gerard, panting. “You have your bow, and I have this,”

and he shook his bloody staff.

“Boy!” roared Martin; “the GALLOWS! Follow me,” and he fled into the

wood. Soon they heard a cry like a pack of hounds opening on sight of

the game. The men were in the wood, and saw them flitting amongst the

trees. Margaret moaned and panted as she ran; and Gerard clenched his

teeth and grasped his staff. The next minute they came to a stiff hazel

coppice. Martin dashed into it, and shouldered the young wood aside as

if it were standing corn.

Ere they had gone fifty yards in it they came to four blind paths.

Martin took one. “Bend low,” said he. And, half creeping, they glided

along. Presently their path was again intersected with other little

tortuous paths. They took one of them. It seemed to lead back; but

it soon took a turn, and, after a while, brought them to a thick pine

grove, where the walking was good and hard. There were no paths here;

and the young fir-trees were so thick, you could not see three yards

before your nose.

When they had gone some way in this, Martin sat down; and, having

learned in war to lose all impression of danger with the danger itself,

took a piece of bread and a slice of ham out of his wallet, and began

quietly to eat his breakfast.

The young ones looked at him with dismay. He replied to their looks.

“All Sevenbergen could not find you now; you will lose your purse,

Gerard, long before you get to Italy; is that the way to carry a purse?”

Gerard looked, and there was a large triangular purse, entangled by its

chains to the buckle and strap of his wallet.

“This is none of mine,” said he. “What is in it, I wonder?” and he

tried to detach it; but in passing through the coppice it had become

inextricably entangled in his strap and buckle. “It seems loath to leave

me,” said Gerard, and he had to cut it loose with his knife. The purse,

on examination, proved to be well provided with silver coins of all

sizes, but its bloated appearance was greatly owing to a number of

pieces of brown paper folded and doubled. A light burst on Gerard. “Why,

it must be that old thief's; and see! stuffed with paper to deceive the

world!”

The wonder was how the burgomaster's purse came on Gerard.

They hit at last upon the right solution. The purse must have been

at Ghysbrecht's saddle-bow, and Gerard rushing at his enemy, had

unconsciously torn it away, thus felling his enemy and robbing him, with

a single gesture.

Gerard was delighted at this feat, but Margaret was uneasy.

“Throw it away, Gerard, or let Martin take it back. Already they call

you a thief. I cannot bear it.”

“Throw it away! give it him back? not a stiver! This is spoil lawfully

won in battle from an enemy. Is it not, Martin?”

“Why, of course. Send him back the brown paper, and you will; but the

purse or the coin--that were a sin.”

“Oh, Gerard!” said Margaret, “you are going to a distant land. We need

the goodwill of Heaven. How can we hope for that if we take what is not

ours?”

But Gerard saw it in a different light.

“It is Heaven that gives it me by a miracle, and I shall cherish it

accordingly,” said this pious youth. “Thus the favoured people spoiled

the Egyptians, and were blessed.”

“Take your own way,” said Margaret humbly; “you are wiser than I am. You

are my husband,” added she, in a low murmuring voice; “is it for me to

gainsay you?”

These humble words from Margaret, who, till that day, had held the

whip-hand, rather surprised Martin for the moment. They recurred to him

some time afterwards, and then they surprised him less.

Gerard kissed her tenderly in return for her wife-like docility, and

they pursued their journey hand in hand, Martin leading the way,

into the depths of the huge forest. The farther they went, the more

absolutely secure from pursuit they felt. Indeed, the townspeople never

ventured so far as this into the trackless part of the forest.

Impetuous natures repent quickly. Gerard was no sooner out of all danger

than his conscience began to prick him.

“Martin, would I had not struck quite so hard.”

“Whom? Oh! let that pass, he is cheap served.”

“Martin, I saw his grey hairs as my stick fell on him. I doubt they will

not from my sight this while.”

Martin grunted with contempt. “Who spares a badger for his grey hairs?

The greyer your enemy is, the older; and the older the craftier and the

craftier the better for a little killing.”

“Killing? killing, Martin? Speak not of killing!” and Gerard shook all

over.

“I am much mistook if you have not,” said Martin cheerfully.

“Now Heaven forbid!”

“The old vagabond's skull cracked like a walnut. Aha!”

“Heaven and the saints forbid it!”

“He rolled off his mule like a stone shot out of a cart. Said I to

myself, 'There is one wiped out,'” and the iron old soldier grinned

ruthlessly.

Gerard fell on his knees and began to pray for his enemy's life.

At this Martin lost his patience. “Here's mummery. What! you that set up

for learning, know you not that a wise man never strikes his enemy but

to kill him? And what is all this coil about killing of old men? If it

had been a young one, now, with the joys of life waiting for him, wine,

women, and pillage! But an old fellow at the edge of the grave, why not

shove him in? Go he must, to-day or to-morrow; and what better place for

greybeards? Now, if ever I should be so mischancy as to last so long

as Ghysbrecht did, and have to go on a mule's legs instead of Martin

Wittenhaagen's, and a back like this (striking the wood of his bow),

instead of this (striking the string), I'll thank and bless any

young fellow who will knock me on the head, as you have done that old

shopkeeper; malison on his memory.

“Oh, culpa mea! culpa mea!” cried Gerard, and smote upon his breast.

“Look there!” cried Martin to Margaret scornfully, “he is a priest at

heart still--and when he is not in ire, St. Paul, what a milksop!”

“Tush, Martin!” cried Margaret reproachfully: then she wreathed her arms

round Gerard, and comforted him with the double magic of a woman's sense

and a woman's voice.

“Sweetheart!” murmured she, “you forget: you went not a step out of the

way to harm him, who hunted you to your death. You fled from him. He it

was who spurred on you. Then did you strike; but in self-defence and

a single blow, and with that which was in your hand. Malice had drawn

knife, or struck again and again. How often have men been smitten with

staves not one but many blows, yet no lives lost! If then your enemy

has fallen, it is through his own malice, not yours, and by the will of

God.”

“Bless you, Margaret; bless you for thinking so!”

“Yes; but, beloved one, if you have had the misfortune to kill that

wicked man, the more need is there that you fly with haste from Holland.

Oh, let us on.”

“Nay, Margaret,” said Gerard. “I fear not man's vengeance, thanks to

Martin here and this thick wood: only Him I fear whose eye pierces the

forest and reads the heart of man. If I but struck in self-defence,

'tis well; but if in hate, He may bid the avenger of blood follow me to

Italy--to Italy? ay, to earth's remotest bounds.”

“Hush!” said Martin peevishly. “I can't hear for your chat.”

“What is it?”

“Do you hear nothing, Margaret; my ears are getting old.”

Margaret listened, and presently she heard a tuneful sound, like a

single stroke upon a deep ringing bell. She described it so to Martin.

“Nay, I heard it,” said he.

“And so did I,” said Gerard; “it was beautiful. Ah! there it is again.

How sweetly it blends with the air. It is a long way off. It is before

us, is it not?”

“No, no! the echoes of this wood confound the ear of a stranger. It

comes from the pine grove.”

“What! the one we passed?”

“Why, Martin, is this anything? You look pale.”

“Wonderful!” said Martin, with a sickly sneer. “He asks me is it

anything? Come, on, on! at any rate, let us reach a better place than

this.”

“A better place--for what?”

“To stand at bay, Gerard,” said Martin gravely; “and die like soldiers,

killing three for one.”

“What's that sound?”

“IT IS THE AVENGER OF BLOOD.”

“Oh, Martin, save him! Oh, Heaven be merciful What new mysterious peril

is this?”

“GIRL, IT'S A BLOODHOUND.”

CHAPTER XX

The courage, like the talent, of common men, runs in a narrow groove.

Take them but an inch out of that, and they are done. Martin's courage

was perfect as far as it went. He had met and baffled many dangers in

the course of his rude life, and these familiar dangers he could face

with Spartan fortitude, almost with indifference; but he had never

been hunted by a bloodhound, nor had he ever seen that brute's unerring

instinct baffled by human cunning. Here then a sense of the supernatural

combined with novelty to ungenteel his heart. After going a few steps,

he leaned on his bow, and energy and hope oozed out of him. Gerard, to

whom the danger appeared slight in proportion as it was distant, urged

him to flight.

“What avails it?” said Martin sadly; “if we get clear of the wood we

shall die cheap; here, hard by, I know a place where we may die dear.”

“Alas! good Martin,” cried Gerard, “despair not so quickly; there must

be some way to escape.”

“Oh, Martin!” cried Margaret, “what if we were to part company? Gerard's

life alone is forfeit. Is there no way to draw the pursuit on us twain

and let him go safe?”

“Girl, you know not the bloodhound's nature. He is not on this man's

track or that; he is on the track of blood. My life on't they have taken

him to where Ghysbrecht fell, and from the dead man's blood to the man

that shed it that cursed hound will lead them, though Gerard should run

through an army or swim the Meuse.” And again he leaned upon his bow,

and his head sank.

The hound's mellow voice rang through the wood.

A cry more tunable

Was never halloed to, nor cheered with horn,

In Crete, in Sparta, or in Thessaly.

Strange that things beautiful should be terrible and deadly' The eye

of the boa-constrictor, while fascinating its prey, is lovely. No royal

crown holds such a jewel; it is a ruby with the emerald's green light

playing ever upon it. Yet the deer that sees it loses all power of

motion, and trembles, and awaits his death and even so, to compare

hearing with sight, this sweet and mellow sound seemed to fascinate

Martin Wittenhaagen. He stood uncertain, bewildered, and unnerved.

Gerard was little better now. Martin's last words had daunted him, He

had struck an old man and shed his blood, and, by means of that very

blood, blood's four-footed avenger was on his track. Was not the finger

of Heaven in this?

Whilst the men were thus benumbed, the woman's brain was all activity.

The man she loved was in danger.

“Lend me your knife,” said she to Martin. He gave it her.

“But 'twill be little use in your hands,” said he.

Then Margaret did a sly thing. She stepped behind Gerard, and furtively

drew the knife across her arm, and made it bleed freely; then stooping,

smeared her hose and shoes; and still as the blood trickled she smeared

them; but so adroitly that neither Gerard nor Martin saw. Then she

seized the soldier's arm.

“Come, be a man!” she said, “and let this end. Take us to some thick

place, where numbers will not avail our foes.”

“I am going,” said Martin sulkily. “Hurry avails not; we cannot shun the

hound, and the place is hard by;” then turning to the left, he led the

way, as men go to execution.

He soon brought them to a thick hazel coppice, like the one that had

favoured their escape in the morning.

“There,” said he, “this is but a furlong broad, but it will serve our

turn.”

“What are we to do?”

“Get through this, and wait on the other side; then as they come

straggling through, shoot three, knock two on the head, and the rest

will kill us.”

“Is that all you can think of?” said Gerard.

“That is all.”

“Then, Martin Wittenhaagen, I take the lead, for you have lost your

head. Come, can you obey so young a man as I am?”

“Oh, yes, Martin,” cried Margaret, “do not gainsay Gerard! He is wiser

than his years.”

Martin yielded a sullen assent.

“Do then as you see me do,” said Gerard; and drawing his huge knife, he

cut at every step a hazel shoot or two close by the ground, and turning

round twisted them breast-high behind him among the standing shoots.

Martin did the same, but with a dogged hopeless air. When they had

thus painfully travelled through the greater part of the coppice, the

bloodhound's deep bay came nearer and nearer, less and less musical,

louder and sterner.

Margaret trembled.

Martin went down on his stomach and listened.

“I hear a horse's feet.”

“No,” said Gerard; “I doubt it is a mule's. That cursed Ghysbrecht is

still alive: none other would follow me up so bitterly.”

“Never strike your enemy but to slay him,” said Martin gloomily.

“I'll hit harder this time, if Heaven gives me the chance,” said Gerard.

At last they worked through the coppice, and there was an open wood. The

trees were large, but far apart, and no escape possible that way.

And now with the hound's bay mingled a score of voices hooping and

hallooing.

“The whole village is out after us,” said Martin.

“I care not,” said Gerard. “Listen, Martin. I have made the track smooth

to the dog, but rough to the men, that we may deal with them apart.

Thus the hound will gain on the men, and as soon as he comes out of the

coppice we must kill him.”

“The hound? There are more than one.”

“I hear but one.”

“Ay! but one speaks, the others run mute; but let the leading hound lose

the scent, then another shall give tongue. There will be two dogs, at

least, or devils in dog's hides.”

“Then we must kill two instead of one. The moment they are dead, into

the coppice again, and go right back.”

“That is a good thought, Gerard,” said Martin, plucking up heart.

“Hush! the men are in the wood.”

Gerard now gave his orders in a whisper.

“Stand you with your bow by the side of the coppice--there, in the

ditch. I will go but a few yards to yon oak-tree, and hide behind it;

the dogs will follow me, and, as they come out, shoot as many as you

can, the rest will I brain as they come round the tree.”

Martin's eye flashed. They took up their places.

The hooping and hallooing came closer and closer, and soon even the

rustling of the young wood was heard, and every now and then the

unerring bloodhound gave a single bay.

It was terrible! the branches rustling nearer and nearer, and the

inevitable struggle for life and death coming on minute by minute,

and that death-knell leading it. A trembling hand was laid on Gerard's

shoulder. It made him start violently, strung up as he was.

“Martin says if we are forced to part company, make for that high

ash-tree we came in by.”

“Yes! yes! yes! but go back for Heaven's sake! don't come here, all out

in the open!”

She ran back towards Martin; but, ere she could get to him, suddenly a

huge dog burst out of the coppice, and stood erect a moment. Margaret

cowered with fear, but he never noticed her. Scent was to him what sight

is to us. He lowered his nose an instant, and the next moment, with an

awful yell, sprang straight at Gerard's tree and rolled head-over-heels

dead as a stone, literally spitted with an arrow from the bow that

twanged beside the coppice in Martin's hand. That same moment out came

another hound and smelt his dead comrade. Gerald rushed out at him;

but ere he could use his cudgel, a streak of white lightning seemed to

strike the hound, and he grovelled in the dust, wounded desperately, but

not killed, and howling piteously.

Gerard had not time to despatch him: the coppice rustled too near: it

seemed alive. Pointing wildly to Martin to go back, Gerard ran a few

yards to the right, then crept cautiously into the thick coppice just as

three men burst out. These had headed their comrades considerably: the

rest were following at various distances. Gerard crawled back almost on

all-fours. Instinct taught Martin and Margaret to do the same upon their

line of retreat. Thus, within the distance of a few yards, the pursuers

and pursued were passing one another upon opposite tracks.

A loud cry announced the discovery of the dead and the wounded hound.

Then followed a babble of voices, still swelling as fresh pursuers

reached the spot. The hunters, as usual on a surprise, were wasting

time, and the hunted ones were making the most of it.

“I hear no more hounds,” whispered Martin to Margaret, and he was

himself again.

It was Margaret's turn to tremble and despair.

“Oh, why did we part with Gerard? They will kill my Gerard, and I not

near him.”

“Nay, nay! the head to catch him is not on their shoulders. You bade him

meet us at the ash-tree?”

“And so I did. Bless you, Martin, for thinking of that. To the

ash-tree!”

“Ay! but with less noise.”

They were now nearly at the edge of the coppice, when suddenly

they heard hooping and hallooing behind them. The men had satisfied

themselves the fugitives were in the coppice, and were beating back.

“No matter,” whispered Martin to his trembling companion. “We shall have

time to win clear and slip back out of sight by hard running. Ah!”

He stooped suddenly; for just as he was going to burst out of the

brushwood, his eye caught a figure keeping sentinel. It was Ghysbrecht

Van Swieten seated on his mule; a bloody bandage was across his nose,

the bridge of which was broken; but over this his eyes peered keenly,

and it was plain by their expression he had heard the fugitives rustle,

and was looking out for them. Martin muttered a terrible oath, and

cautiously strung his bow, then with equal caution fitted his last arrow

to the string. Margaret put her hands to her face, but said nothing.

She saw this man must die or Gerard. After the first impulse she peered

through her fingers, her heart panting to her throat.

The bow was raised, and the deadly arrow steadily drawn to its head,

when at that moment an active figure leaped on Ghysbrecht from behind so

swiftly, it was like a hawk swooping on a pigeon. A kerchief went over

the burgomaster, in a turn of the hand his head was muffled in it, and

he was whirled from his seat and fell heavily upon the ground, where he

lay groaning with terror; and Gerard jumped down after him.

“Hist, Martin! Martin!”

Martin and Margaret came out, the former openmouthed crying, “Now fly!

fly! while they are all in the thicket; we are saved.”

At this crisis, when safety seemed at hand, as fate would have it,

Margaret, who had borne up so bravely till now, began to succumb, partly

from loss of blood.

“Oh, my beloved, fly!” she gasped. “Leave me, for I am faint.”

“No! no!” cried Gerard. “Death together, or safety. Ah! the mule! mount

her, you, and I'll run by your side.”

In a moment Martin was on Ghysbrecht's mule, and Gerard raised the

fainting girl in his arms and placed her on the saddle, and relieved

Martin of his bow.

“Help! treason! murder! murder!” shrieked Ghysbrecht, suddenly rising on

his hams.

“Silence, cur,” roared Gerard, and trode him down again by the throat as

men crush an adder.

“Now, have you got her firm? Then fly! for our lives! for our lives!”

But even as the mule, urged suddenly by Martin's heel, scattered the

flints with his hind hoofs ere he got into a canter, and even as Gerard

withdrew his foot from Ghysbrecht's throat to run, Dierich Brower and

his five men, who had come back for orders, and heard the burgomaster's

cries, burst roaring out of the coppice on them.

CHAPTER XXI

Speech is the familiar vent of human thoughts; but there are emotions so

simple and overpowering, that they rush out not in words, but eloquent

sounds. At such moments man seems to lose his characteristics, and to

be merely one of the higher animals; for these, when greatly agitated,

ejaculate, though they cannot speak.

There was something terrible and truly animal, both in the roar

of triumph with which the pursuers burst out of the thicket on our

fugitives, and the sharp cry of terror with which these latter darted

away. The pursuers hands clutched the empty air, scarce two feet behind

them, as they fled for life. Confused for a moment, like lions that miss

their spring, Dierich and his men let Gerard and the mule put ten yards

between them. Then they flew after with uplifted weapons. They were

sure of catching them; for this was not the first time the parties had

measured speed. In the open ground they had gained visibly on the three

this morning, and now, at last, it was a fair race again, to be settled

by speed alone. A hundred yards were covered in no time. Yet still there

remained these ten yards between the pursuers and the pursued.

This increase of speed since the morning puzzled Dierich Brower. The

reason was this. When three run in company, the pace is that of the

slowest of the three. From Peter's house to the edge of the forest

Gerard ran Margaret's pace; but now he ran his own; for the mule was

fleet, and could have left them all far behind. Moreover, youth and

chaste living began to tell. Daylight grew imperceptibly between the

hunted ones and the hunters. Then Dierich made a desperate effort, and

gained two yards; but in a few seconds Gerard had stolen them quietly

back. The pursuers began to curse.

Martin heard, and his face lighted up. “Courage, Gerard! courage, brave

lad! they are straggling.”

It was so. Dierich was now headed by one of his men, and another dropped

into the rear altogether.

They came to a rising ground, not sharp, but long; and here youth, and

grit, and sober living told more than ever.

Ere he reached the top, Dierich's forty years weighed him down like

forty bullets. “Our cake is dough,” he gasped. “Take him dead, if you

can't alive;” and he left running, and followed at a foot's pace. Jorian

Ketel tailed off next; and then another, and so, one by one, Gerard ran

them all to a standstill, except one who kept on stanch as a bloodhound,

though losing ground every minute. His name, if I am not mistaken,

was Eric Wouverman. Followed by him, they came to a rise in the wood,

shorter, but much steeper than the last.

“Hand on mane!” cried Martin.

Gerard obeyed, and the mule helped him up the hill faster even than he

was running before.

At the sight of this manoeuvre, Dierich's man lost heart, and, being now

full eighty yards behind Gerard, and rather more than that in advance of

his nearest comrade, he pulled up short, and, in obedience to Dierich's

order, took down his crossbow, levelled it deliberately, and just as the

trio were sinking out of sight over the crest of the hill, sent the bolt

whizzing among them.

There was a cry of dismay; and, next moment, as if a thunder-bolt had

fallen on them, they were all lying on the ground, mule and all.

CHAPTER XXII

The effect was so sudden and magical, that the shooter himself was

stupefied for an instant. Then he hailed his companions to join him in

effecting the capture, and himself set off up the hill; but, ere he had

got half way, up rose the figure of Martin Wittenhaagen with a bent bow

in his hand. Eric Wouverman no sooner saw him in this attitude, than he

darted behind a tree, and made himself as small as possible. Martin's

skill with that weapon was well known, and the slain dog was a keen

reminder of it.

Wouverman peered round the bark cautiously: there was the arrow's point

still aimed at him. He saw it shine. He dared not move from his shelter.

When he had been at peep-ho some minutes, his companions came up in

great force.

Then, with a scornful laugh, Martin vanished, and presently was heard to

ride off on the mule.

All the men ran up together. The high ground commanded a view of a

narrow but almost interminable glade.

They saw Gerard and Margaret running along at a prodigious distance;

they looked like gnats; and Martin galloping after them ventre a terre.

The hunters were outwitted as well as outrun. A few words will explain

Martin's conduct. We arrive at causes by noting coincidences; yet, now

and then, coincidences are deceitful. As we have all seen a hare tumble

over a briar just as the gun went off, and so raise expectations, then

dash them to earth by scudding away untouched, so the burgomaster's mule

put her foot in a rabbit-hole at or about the time the crossbow bolt

whizzed innocuous over her head: she fell and threw both her riders.

Gerard caught Margaret, but was carried down by her weight and impetus;

and, behold, the soil was strewed with dramatis personae.

The docile mule was up again directly, and stood trembling. Martin was

next, and looking round saw there was but one in pursuit; on this he

made the young lovers fly on foot, while he checked the enemy as I have

recorded.

He now galloped after his companions, and when after a long race he

caught them, he instantly put Gerard and Margaret on the mule, and ran

by their side till his breath failed, then took his turn to ride, and so

in rotation. Thus the runner was always fresh, and long ere they relaxed

their speed all sound and trace of them was hopelessly lost to Dierich

and his men. These latter went crestfallen back to look after their

chief and their winged bloodhound.

CHAPTER XXIII

Life and liberty, while safe, are little thought of: for why? they are

matters of course. Endangered, they are rated at their real value. In

this, too, they are like sunshine, whose beauty men notice not at noon

when it is greatest, but towards evening, when it lies in flakes of

topaz under shady elms. Yet it is feebler then; but gloom lies beside

it, and contrast reveals its fire. Thus Gerard and Margaret, though they

started at every leaf that rustled louder than its fellows, glowed all

over with joy and thankfulness as they glided among the friendly trees

in safety and deep tranquil silence, baying dogs and brutal voices yet

ringing in their mind's ears.

But presently Gerard found stains of blood on Margaret's ankles.

“Martin! Martin! help! they have wounded her: the crossbow!”

“No, no!” said Margaret, smiling to reassure him; “I am not wounded, nor

hurt at all.”

“But what is it, then, in Heaven's name?” cried Gerard, in great

agitation.

“Scold me not, then!” and Margaret blushed.

“Did I ever scold you?”

“No, dear Gerard. Well, then, Martin said it was blood those cruel dogs

followed; so I thought if I could but have a little blood on my shoon,

the dogs would follow me instead, and let my Gerard wend free. So I

scratched my arm with Martin's knife--forgive me! Whose else could I

take? Yours, Gerard? Ah, no. You forgive me?” said she beseechingly, and

lovingly and fawningly, all in one.

“Let me see this scratch first,” said Gerard, choking with emotion.

“There, I thought so. A scratch? I call it a cut--a deep, terrible,

cruel cut.”

Gerard shuddered at sight of it.

“She might have done it with her bodkin,” said the soldier. “Milksop!

that sickens at sight of a scratch and a little blood.”

“No, no. I could look on a sea of blood, but not on hers. Oh, Margaret!

how could you be so cruel?”

Margaret smiled with love ineffable. “Foolish Gerard,” murmured she, “to

make so much of nothing.” And she flung the guilty arm round his neck.

“As if I would not give all the blood in my heart for you, let alone

a few drops from my arm.” And with this, under the sense of his recent

danger, she wept on his neck for pity and love; and he wept with her.

“And I must part from her,” he sobbed; “we two that love so dear--one

must be in Holland, one in Italy. Ah me! ah me! ah me!”

At this Margaret wept afresh, but patiently and silently. Instinct is

never off its guard, and with her unselfishness was an instinct.

To utter her present thoughts would be to add to Gerard's misery at

parting, so she wept in silence.

Suddenly they emerged upon a beaten path, and Martin stopped.

“This is the bridle-road I spoke of,” said he hanging his head; “and

there away lies the hostelry.”

Margaret and Gerard cast a scared look at one another.

“Come a step with me, Martin,” whispered Gerard. When he had drawn him

aside, he said to him in a broken voice, “Good Martin, watch over her

for me! She is my wife; yet I leave her. See Martin! here is gold--it

was for my journey; it is no use my asking her to take it--she would

not; but you will for her, will you not? Oh, Heaven! and is this all I

can do for her? Money? But poverty is a curse. You will not let her want

for anything, dear Martin? The burgomaster's silver is enough for me.”

“Thou art a good lad, Gerard. Neither want nor harm shall come to her.

I care more for her little finger than for all the world; and were she

nought to me, even for thy sake would I be a father to her. Go with

a stout heart, and God be with thee going and coming.” And the rough

soldier wrung Gerard's hand, and turned his head away, with unwonted

feeling.

After a moment's silence he was for going back to Margaret, but Gerard

stopped him. “No, good Martin; prithee, stay here behind this thicket,

and turn your head away from us, while I-oh, Martin! Martin!”

By this means Gerard escaped a witness of his anguish at leaving her he

loved, and Martin escaped a piteous sight. He did not see the poor

young things kneel and renew before Heaven those holy vows cruel men had

interrupted. He did not see them cling together like one, and then try

to part, and fail, and return to one another, and cling again, like

drowning, despairing creatures. But he heard Gerard sob, and sob, and

Margaret moan.

At last there was a hoarse cry, and feet pattered on the hard road.

He started up, and there was Gerard running wildly, with both hands

clasped above his head, in prayer, and Margaret tottering back towards

him with palms extended piteously, as if for help, and ashy cheek and

eyes fixed on vacancy.

He caught her in his arms, and spoke words of comfort to her; but her

mind could not take them in; only at the sound of his voice she moaned

and held him tight, and trembled violently.

He got her on the mule, and put his arm around her, and so, supporting

her frame, which, from being strong like a boy, had now turned all

relaxed and powerless, he took her slowly and sadly home.

She did not shed one tear, nor speak one word.

At the edge of the wood he took her off the mule, and bade her go across

to her father's house. She did as she was bid.

Martin to Rotterdam. Sevenbergen was too hot for him.

Gerard, severed from her he loved, went like one in a dream. He hired a

horse and a guide at the little hostelry, and rode swiftly towards the

German frontier. But all was mechanical; his senses felt blunted; trees

and houses and men moved by him like objects seen through a veil. His

companions spoke to him twice, but he did not answer. Only once he cried

out savagely, “Shall we never be out of this hateful country?”

After many hours' riding they came to the brow of a steep hill; a small

brook ran at the bottom.

“Halt!” cried the guide, and pointed across the valley. “Here is

Germany.”

“Where?”

“On t'other side of the bourn. No need to ride down the hill, I trow.”

Gerard dismounted without a word, and took the burgomaster's purse from

his girdle: while he opened it, “You will soon be out of this hateful

country,” said his guide, half sulkily; “mayhap the one you are going to

will like you no better; any way, though it be a church you have robbed,

they cannot take you, once across that bourn.”

These words at another time would have earned the speaker an admonition

or a cuff. They fell on Gerard now like idle air. He paid the lad in

silence, and descended the hill alone. The brook was silvery; it ran

murmuring over little pebbles, that glittered, varnished by the clear

water; he sat down and looked stupidly at them. Then he drank of the

brook; then he laved his hot feet and hands in it; it was very cold:

it waked him. He rose, and taking a run, leaped across it into Germany.

Even as he touched the strange land he turned suddenly and looked back.

“Farewell, ungrateful country!” he cried. “But for her it would cost me

nought to leave you for ever, and all my kith and kin, and--the mother

that bore me, and--my playmates, and my little native town. Farewell,

fatherland--welcome the wide world! omne so-lum for-ti p p-at-r-a.” And

with these brave words in his mouth he drooped suddenly with arms and

legs all weak, and sat down and sobbed bitterly upon the foreign soil.

When the young exile had sat a while bowed down, he rose and dashed the

tears from his eyes like a man; and not casting a single glance more

behind him, to weaken his heart, stepped out into the wide world.

His love and heavy sorrow left no room in him for vulgar misgivings.

Compared with rending himself from Margaret, it seemed a small thing to

go on foot to Italy in that rude age.

All nations meet in a convent. So, thanks to his good friends the monks,

and his own thirst of knowledge, he could speak most of the languages

needed on that long road. He said to himself, “I will soon be at Rome;

the sooner the better now.”

After walking a good league, he came to a place where four ways

met. Being country roads, and serpentine, they had puzzled many an

inexperienced neighbour passing from village to village. Gerard took out

a little dial Peter had given him, and set it in the autumn sun, and by

this compass steered unhesitatingly for Rome inexperienced as a young

swallow flying south; but unlike the swallow, wandering south alone.

CHAPTER XXIV

Not far on this road he came upon a little group. Two men in sober suits

stood leaning lazily on each side of a horse, talking to one another.

The rider, in a silk doublet and bright green jerkin and hose, both

of English cloth, glossy as a mole, lay flat on his stomach in the

afternoon sun, and looked an enormous lizard. His velvet cloak (flaming

yellow) was carefully spread over the horse's loins.

“Is aught amiss?” inquired Gerard.

“Not that I wot of,” replied one of the servants.

“But your master, he lies like a corpse. Are ye not ashamed to let him

grovel on the ground?”

“Go to; the bare ground is the best cure for his disorder. If you get

sober in bed, it gives you a headache; but you leap up from the hard

ground like a lark in spring. Eh, Ulric?”

“He speaks sooth, young man,” said Ulric warmly.

“What, is the gentleman drunk?”

The servants burst into a hoarse laugh at the simplicity of Gerard's

question. But suddenly Ulric stopped, and eyeing him all over, said very

gravely, “Who are you, and where born, that know not the Count is ever

drunk at this hour?” And Gerard found himself a suspected character.

“I am a stranger,” said he, “but a true man, and one that loves

knowledge; therefore ask I questions, and not for love of prying.”

“If you be a true man,” said Ulric shrewdly, “then give us trinkgeld for

the knowledge we have given you.”

Gerard looked blank, but putting a good face on it, said, “Trinkgeld you

shall have, such as my lean purse can spare, an if you will tell me why

ye have ta'en his cloak from the man and laid it on the beast.”

Under the inspiring influence of coming trinkgeld, two solutions were

instantly offered Gerard at once: the one was, that should the Count

come to himself (which, being a seasoned toper, he was apt to do all

in a minute), and find his horse standing sweating in the cold, while

a cloak lay idle at hand, he would fall to cursing, and peradventure

to laying on; the other, more pretentious, was, that a horse is a poor

milksop, which, drinking nothing but water, has to be cockered up and

warmed outside; but a master, being a creature ever filled with good

beer, has a store of inward heat that warms him to the skin, and renders

a cloak a mere shred of idle vanity.

Each of the speakers fell in love with his theory, and, to tell the

truth, both had taken a hair or two of the dog that had bitten their

master to the brain; so their voices presently rose so high, that the

green sot began to growl instead of snoring. In their heat they did not

notice this.

Ere long the argument took a turn that sooner or later was pretty sure

to enliven a discussion in that age. Hans, holding the bridle with his

right hand, gave Ulric a sound cuff with his left; Ulric returned it

with interest, his right hand being free; and at it they went, ding

dong, over the horse's mane, pommelling one another, and jagging the

poor beast, till he ran backward, and trode with iron heel upon a

promontory of the green lord; he, like the toad stung by Ithuriel's

spear, started up howling, with one hand clapped to the smart and the

other tugging at his hilt. The servants, amazed with terror, let the

horse go; he galloped off whinnying, the men in pursuit of him crying

out with fear, and the green noble after them, volleying curses, his

naked sword in his hand, and his body rebounding from hedge to hedge in

his headlong but zigzag career down the narrow lane.

“In which hurtling” Gerard turned his back on them all, and went calmly

south, glad to have saved the four tin farthings he had got ready for

trinkgeld, but far too heavy hearted even to smile at their drunken

extravagance.

The sun was nearly setting, and Gerard, who had now for some time been

hoping in vain to find an inn by the way, was very ill at ease. To make

matters worse, black clouds gathered over the sky.

Gerard quickened his pace almost to a run.

It was in vain; down came the rain in torrents, drenched the bewildered

traveller, and seemed to extinguish the very sun-for his rays, already

fading, could not cope with this new assailant.

Gerard trudged on, dark, and wet, and in an unknown region. “Fool! to

leave Margaret,” said he.

Presently the darkness thickened.

He was entering a great wood. Huge branches shot across the narrow road,

and the benighted stranger groped his way in what seemed an interminable

and inky cave with a rugged floor, on which he stumbled and stumbled as

he went.

On, and on, and on, with shivering limbs and empty stomach, and fainting

heart, till the wolves rose from their lairs and bayed all round the

wood.

His hair bristled; but he grasped his cudgel, and prepared to sell his

life dear.

There was no wind; and his excited ear heard light feet patter at times

over the newly fallen leaves, and low branches rustle with creatures

gliding swiftly past them.

Presently in the sea of ink there was a great fiery star close to the

ground. He hailed it as he would his patron saint. “CANDLE! a CANDLE!”

he shouted, and tried to run. But the dark and rugged way soon stopped

that. The light was more distant than he had thought. But at last, in

the very heart of the forest, he found a house, with lighted candles

and loud voices inside it. He looked up to see if there was a signboard.

There was none. “Not an inn after all!” said he sadly. “No matter; what

Christian would turn a dog out into this wood to-night?” and with this

he made for the door that led to the voices. He opened it slowly, and

put his head in timidly. He drew it out abruptly, as if slapped in the

face, and recoiled into the rain and darkness.

He had peeped into a large but low room, the middle of which was filled

by a huge round stove, or clay oven, that reached to the ceiling;

round this, wet clothes were drying-some on lines, and some more

compendiously, on rustics. These latter habiliments, impregnated with

the wet of the day, but the dirt of a life, and lined with what another

foot traveller in these parts call “rammish clowns,” evolved rank

vapours and compound odours inexpressible, in steaming clouds.

In one corner was a travelling family, a large one: thence flowed into

the common stock the peculiar sickly smell of neglected brats. Garlic

filled up the interstices of the air. And all this with closed window,

and intense heat of the central furnace, and the breath of at least

forty persons.

They had just supped.

Now Gerard, like most artists, had sensitive organs, and the potent

effluvia struck dismay into him. But the rain lashed him outside, and

the light and the fire tempted him in.

He could not force his way all at once through the palpable perfumes,

but he returned to the light again and again, like the singed moth.

At last he discovered that the various smells did not entirely mix, no

fiend being there to stir them round. Odour of family predominated in

two corners; stewed rustic reigned supreme in the centre; and garlic in

the noisy group by the window. He found, too, by hasty analysis, that of

these the garlic described the smallest aerial orbit, and the scent of

reeking rustic darted farthest--a flavour as if ancient goats, or the

fathers of all foxes, had been drawn through a river, and were here

dried by Nebuchadnezzar.

So Gerard crept into a corner close to the door. But though the solidity

of the main fetors isolated them somewhat, the heat and reeking vapours

circulated, and made the walls drip; and the home-nurtured novice found

something like a cold snake wind about his legs, and his head turn to a

great lump of lead; and next, he felt like choking, sweetly slumbering,

and dying, all in one.

He was within an ace of swooning, but recovered to a deep sense of

disgust and discouragement; and settled to go back to Holland at peep

of day. This resolution formed, he plucked up a little heart; and being

faint with hunger, asked one of the men of garlic whether this was not

an inn after all?

“Whence come you, who know not 'The Star of the Forest'?” was the reply.

“I am a stranger; and in my country inns have aye a sign.”

“Droll country yours! What need of a sign to a public-house--a place

that every soul knows?”

Gerard was too tired and faint for the labour of argument, so he turned

the conversation, and asked where he could find the landlord?

At this fresh display of ignorance, the native's contempt rose too high

for words. He pointed to a middle-aged woman seated on the other side

of the oven; and turning to his mates, let them know what an outlandish

animal was in the room. Thereat the loud voices stopped, one by one, as

the information penetrated the mass; and each eye turned, as on a pivot,

following Gerard, and his every movement, silently and zoologically.

The landlady sat on a chair an inch or two higher than the rest, between

two bundles. From the first, a huge heap of feathers and wings, she was

taking the downy plumes, and pulling the others from the quills, and so

filling bundle two littering the floor ankle-deep, and contributing to

the general stock a stuffy little malaria, which might have played a

distinguished part in a sweet room, but went for nothing here. Gerard

asked her if he could have something to eat.

She opened her eyes with astonishment. “Supper is over this hour and

more.

“But I had none of it, good dame.”

“Is that my fault? You were welcome to your share for me.”

“But I was benighted, and a stranger; and belated sore against my will.”

“What have I to do with that? All the world knows 'The Star of the

Forest' sups from six till eight. Come before six, ye sup well; come

before eight, ye sup as pleases Heaven; come after eight, ye get a clean

bed, and a stirrup cup, or a horn of kine's milk, at the dawning.”

Gerard looked blank. “May I go to bed, then, dame?” said he sulkily “for

it is ill sitting up wet and fasting, and the byword saith, 'He sups who

sleeps.'”

“The beds are not come yet,” replied the landlady. “You will sleep when

the rest do. Inns are not built for one.”

It was Gerard's turn to be astonished. “The beds were not come! what, in

Heaven's name, did she mean?” But he was afraid to ask for every word

he had spoken hitherto had amazed the assembly, and zoological eyes were

upon him--he felt them. He leaned against the wall, and sighed audibly.

At this fresh zoological trait, a titter went round the watchful

company.

“So this is Germany,” thought Gerard; “and Germany is a great country by

Holland. Small nations for me.”

He consoled himself by reflecting it was to be his last, as well as his

first, night in the land. His reverie was interrupted by an elbow driven

into his ribs. He turned sharp on his assailant, who pointed across the

room. Gerard looked, and a woman in the corner was beckoning him. He

went towards her gingerly, being surprised and irresolute, so that to a

spectator her beckoning finger seemed to be pulling him across the floor

with a gut-line. When he had got up to her, “Hold the child,” said

she, in a fine hearty voice; and in a moment she plumped the bairn into

Gerard's arms.

He stood transfixed, jelly of lead in his hands, and sudden horror in

his elongated countenance.

At this ruefully expressive face, the lynx-eyed conclave laughed loud

and long.

“Never heed them,” said the woman cheerfully; “they know no better;

how should they, bred an' born in a wood?” She was rummaging among her

clothes with the two penetrating hands, one of which Gerard had set

free. Presently she fished out a small tin plate and a dried pudding;

and resuming her child with one arm, held them forth to Gerard with the

other, keeping a thumb on the pudding to prevent it from slipping off.

“Put it in the stove,” said she; “you are too young to lie down

fasting.”

Gerard thanked her warmly. But on his way to the stove, his eye fell on

the landlady. “May I, dame?” said he beseechingly.

“Why not?” said she.

The question was evidently another surprise, though less startling than

its predecessors.

Coming to the stove, Gerard found the oven door obstructed by “the

rammish clowns.” They did not budge. He hesitated a moment. The landlady

saw, calmly put down her work, and coming up, pulled a hircine man or

two hither, and pushed a hircine man or two thither, with the impassive

countenance of a housewife moving her furniture. “Turn about is fair

play,” she said; “ye have been dry this ten minutes and better.”

Her experienced eye was not deceived; Gorgonii had done stewing, and

begun baking. Debarred the stove, they trundled home, all but one, who

stood like a table, where the landlady had moved him to, like a table.

And Gerard baked his pudding; and getting to the stove, burst into

steam.

The door opened, and in flew a bundle of straw.

It was hurled by a hind with a pitchfork. Another and another came

flying after it, till the room was like a clean farmyard. These were

then dispersed round the stove in layers, like the seats in an arena,

and in a moment the company was all on its back.

The beds had come.

Gerard took out his pudding, and found it delicious. While he was

relishing it, the woman who had given it him, and who was now abed,

beckoned him again. He went to her bundle side. “She is waiting for

you,” whispered the woman. Gerard returned to the stove, and gobbled.

the rest of his sausage, casting uneasy glances at the landlady, seated

silent as fate amid the prostrate multitude. The food bolted, he went to

her, and said, “Thank you kindly, dame, for waiting for me.”

“You are welcome,” said she calmly, making neither much nor little of

the favour; and with that began to gather up the feathers. But Gerard

stopped her. “Nay, that is my task;” and he went down on his knees, and

collected them with ardour. She watched him demurely.

“I wot not whence ye come,” said she, with a relic of distrust; adding,

more cordially, “but ye have been well brought up;--y' have had a good

mother, I'll go bail.”

At the door she committed the whole company to Heaven, in a formula, and

disappeared. Gerard to his straw in the very corner-for the guests lay

round the sacred stove by seniority, i.e. priority of arrival.

This punishment was a boon to Gerard, for thus he lay on the shore of

odour and stifling heat, instead of in mid-ocean.

He was just dropping off, when he was awaked by a noise; and lo there

was the hind remorselessly shaking and waking guest after guest, to ask

him whether it was he who had picked up the mistress's feathers.

“It was I,” cried Gerard.

“Oh, it was you, was it?” said the other, and came striding rapidly over

the intermediate sleepers. “She bade me say, 'One good turn deserves

another,' and so here's your nightcap,” and he thrust a great oaken mug

under Gerard's nose.

“I thank her, and bless her; here goes--ugh!” and his gratitude ended in

a wry face; for the beer was muddy, and had a strange, medicinal twang

new to the Hollander.

“Trinke aus!” shouted the hind reproachfully.

“Enow is as good as a feast,” said the youth Jesuitically.

The hind cast a look of pity on this stranger who left liquor in his

mug. “Ich brings euch,” said he, and drained it to the bottom.

And now Gerard turned his face to the wall and pulled up two handfuls of

the nice clean straw, and bored in them with his finger, and so made a

scabbard, and sheathed his nose in it. And soon they were all asleep;

men, maids, wives, and children all lying higgledy-piggledy, and snoring

in a dozen keys like an orchestra slowly tuning; and Gerard's body lay

on straw in Germany, and his spirit was away to Sevenbergen.

When he woke in the morning he found nearly all his fellow-passengers

gone. One or two were waiting for dinner, nine o'clock; it was now

six. He paid the landlady her demand, two pfenning, or about an English

halfpenny, and he of the pitchfork demanded trinkgeld, and getting a

trifle more than usual, and seeing Gerard eye a foaming milk-pail he had

just brought from the cow, hoisted it up bodily to his lips. “Drink your

fill, man,” said he, and on Gerard offering to pay for the delicious

draught, told him in broad patois that a man might swallow a skinful of

milk, or a breakfast of air, without putting hand to pouch. At the door

Gerard found his benefactress of last night, and a huge-chested artisan,

her husband.

Gerard thanked her, and in the spirit of the age offered her a creutzer

for her pudding.

But she repulsed his hand quietly. “For what do you take me?” said she,

colouring faintly; “we are travellers and strangers the same as you, and

bound to feel for those in like plight.”

Then Gerard blushed in his turn and stammered excuses.

The hulking husband grinned superior to them both.

“Give the vixen a kiss for her pudding, and cry quits,” said he, with an

air impartial, judge-like and Jove-like.

Gerard obeyed the lofty behest, and kissed the wife's cheek. “A blessing

go with you both, good people,” said he.

“And God speed you, young man!” replied the honest couple; and with that

they parted, and never met again in this world.

The sun had just risen: the rain-drops on the leaves glittered like

diamonds. The air was fresh and bracing, and Gerard steered south, and

did not even remember his resolve of overnight.

Eight leagues he walked that day, and in the afternoon came upon a huge

building with an enormous arched gateway and a postern by its side.

“A monastery!” cried he joyfully; “I go no further lest I fare worse.” He

applied at the postern, and on stating whence he came and whither bound,

was instantly admitted and directed to the guestchamber, a large and

lofty room, where travellers were fed and lodged gratis by the charity

of the monastic orders. Soon the bell tinkled for vespers, and Gerard

entered the church of the convent, and from his place heard a service

sung so exquisitely, it seemed the choir of heaven. But one thing was

wanting, Margaret was not there to hear it with him, and this made

him sigh bitterly in mid rapture. At supper, plain but wholesome and

abundant food, and good beer, brewed in the convent, were set before

him and his fellows, and at an early hour they were ushered into a large

dormitory, and the number being moderate, had each a truckle bed, and

for covering, sheepskins dressed with the fleece on; but previously to

this a monk, struck by his youth and beauty, questioned him, and soon

drew out his projects and his heart. When he was found to be convent

bred, and going alone to Rome, he became a personage, and in the morning

they showed him over the convent and made him stay and dine in the

refectory. They also pricked him a route on a slip of parchment, and the

prior gave him a silver guilden to help him on the road, and advised him

to join the first honest company he should fall in with, “and not face

alone the manifold perils of the way.”

“Perils?” said Gerard to himself.

That evening he came to a small straggling town where was one inn; it

had no sign; but being now better versed in the customs of the country,

he detected it at once by the coats of arms on its walls. These belonged

to the distinguished visitors who had slept in it at different

epochs since its foundation, and left these customary tokens of their

patronage. At present it looked more like a mausoleum than a hotel.

Nothing moved nor sounded either in it or about it. Gerard hammered on

the great oak door: no answer. He hallooed: no reply. After a while he

hallooed louder, and at last a little round window, or rather hole in

the wall, opened, a man's head protruded cautiously, like a tortoise's

from its shell, and eyed Gerard stolidly, but never uttered a syllable.

“Is this an inn?” asked Gerard, with a covert sneer.

The head seemed to fall into a brown study; eventually it nodded, but

lazily.

“Can I have entertainment here?”

Again the head pondered and ended by nodding, but sullenly, and seemed a

skull overburdened with catch-penny interrogatories.

“How am I to get within, an't please you?”

At this the head popped in, as if the last question had shot it; and a

hand popped out, pointed round the corner of the building, and slammed

the window.

Gerard followed the indication, and after some research discovered

that the fortification had one vulnerable part, a small low door on its

flank. As for the main entrance, that was used to keep out thieves and

customers, except once or twice in a year, when they entered together,

i.e., when some duke or count arrived in pomp with his train of gaudy

ruffians.

Gerard, having penetrated the outer fort, soon found his way to the

stove (as the public room was called from the principal article in it),

and sat down near the oven, in which were only a few live embers that

diffused a mild and grateful heat.

After waiting patiently a long time, he asked a grim old fellow with a

long white beard, who stalked solemnly in, and turned the hour-glass,

and then was stalking out, when supper would be. The grisly Ganymede

counted the guests on his fingers--“When I see thrice as many here as

now.” Gerard groaned.

The grisly tyrant resented the rebellious sound. “Inns are not built

for one,” said he; “if you can't wait for the rest, look out for another

lodging.”

Gerard sighed.

At this the greybeard frowned.

After a while company trickled steadily in, till full eighty persons of

various conditions were congregated, and to our novice the place became

a chamber of horrors; for here the mothers got together and compared

ringworms, and the men scraped the mud off their shoes with their

knives, and left it on the floor, and combed their long hair out,

inmates included, and made their toilet, consisting generally of a dry

rub. Water, however, was brought in ewers. Gerard pounced on one of

these, but at sight of the liquid contents lost his temper and said

to the waiter, “Wash you first your water, and then a man may wash his

hands withal.”

“An' it likes you not, seek another inn!”

Gerard said nothing, but went quietly and courteously besought an old

traveller to tell him how far it was to the next inn.

“About four leagues.”

Then Gerard appreciated the grim pleasantry of the unbending sire.

That worthy now returned with an armful of wood, and counting the

travellers, put on a log for every six, by which act of raw justice the

hotter the room the more heat he added. Poor Gerard noticed this little

flaw in the ancient man's logic, but carefully suppressed every symptom

of intelligence, lest his feet should have to carry his brains four

leagues farther that night.

When perspiration and suffocation were far advanced, they brought in

the table-cloths; but oh, so brown, so dirty, and so coarse; they seemed

like sacks that had been worn out in agriculture and come down to this,

or like shreads from the mainsail of some worn-out ship. The Hollander,

who had never seen such linen even in nightmare, uttered a faint cry.

“What is to do?” inquired a traveller. Gerard pointed ruefully to

the dirty sackcloth. The other looked at it with lack lustre eye, and

comprehended nought.

A Burgundian soldier with his arbalest at his back came peeping over

Gerard's shoulder, and seeing what was amiss, laughed so loud that the

room rang again, then slapped him on the back and cried, “Courage! le

diable est mort.”

Gerard stared: he doubted alike the good tidings and their

relevancy; but the tones were so hearty and the arbalestrier's face,

notwithstanding a formidable beard, was so gay and genial, that he

smiled, and after a pause said drily, “Il a bien faite avec l'eau et

linge du pays on allait le noircir a ne se reconnaitre plus.”

“Tiens, tiens!” cried the soldier, “v'la qui parle le Francais peu s'en

faut,” and he seated himself by Gerard, and in a moment was talking

volubly of war, women, and pillage, interlarding his discourse with

curious oaths, at which Gerard drew away from him more or less.

Presently in came the grisly servant, and counted them all on his

fingers superciliously, like Abraham telling sheep; then went out again,

and returned with a deal trencher and deal spoon to each.

Then there was an interval. Then he brought them a long mug apiece made

of glass, and frowned. By-and-by he stalked gloomily in with a hunch of

bread apiece, and exit with an injured air. Expectation thus raised,

the guests sat for nearly an hour balancing the wooden spoons, and with

their own knives whittling the bread. Eventually, when hope was extinct,

patience worn out, and hunger exhausted, a huge vessel was brought

in with pomp, the lid was removed, a cloud of steam rolled forth, and

behold some thin broth with square pieces of bread floating. This,

though not agreeable to the mind, served to distend the body. Slices of

Strasbourg ham followed, and pieces of salt fish, both so highly salted

that Gerard could hardly swallow a mouthful. Then came a kind of gruel,

and when the repast had lasted an hour and more, some hashed meat highly

peppered and the French and Dutch being now full to the brim with the

above dainties, and the draughts of beer the salt and spiced meats had

provoked, in came roasted kids, most excellent, and carp and trout fresh

from the stream. Gerard made an effort and looked angrily at them, but

“could no more,” as the poets say. The Burgundian swore by the liver and

pike-staff of the good centurion, the natives had outwitted him. Then

turning to Gerard, he said, “Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort,” as

loudly as before, but not with the same tone of conviction. The canny

natives had kept an internal corner for contingencies, and polished the

kid's very bones.

The feast ended with a dish of raw animalcula in a wicker cage. A cheese

had been surrounded with little twigs and strings; then a hole made

in it and a little sour wine poured in. This speedily bred a small but

numerous vermin. When the cheese was so rotten with them that only

the twigs and string kept it from tumbling to pieces and walking off

quadrivious, it came to table. By a malicious caprice of fate, cage

and menagerie were put down right under the Dutchman's organ of

self-torture. He recoiled with a loud ejaculation, and hung to the bench

by the calves of his legs.

“What is the matter?” said a traveller disdainfully. “Does the good

cheese scare ye? Then put it hither, in the name of all the saints!”

“Cheese!” cried Gerard, “I see none. These nauseous reptiles have made

away with every bit of it.”

“Well,” replied another, “it is not gone far. By eating of the mites we

eat the cheese to boot.”

“Nay, not so,” said Gerard. “These reptiles are made like us, and digest

their food and turn it to foul flesh even as we do ours to sweet; as

well might you think to chew grass by eating of grass-fed beeves, as to

eat cheese by swallowing these uncleanly insects.”

Gerard raised his voice in uttering this, and the company received the

paradox in dead silence, and with a distrustful air, like any other

stranger, during which the Burgundian, who understood German but

imperfectly, made Gerard Gallicize the discussion. He patted his

interpreter on the back. “C'est bien, mon gars; plus fin que toi n'est

pas bete,” and administered his formula of encouragement; and Gerard

edged away from him; for next to ugly sights and ill odours, the poor

wretch disliked profaneness.

Meantime, though shaken in argument, the raw reptiles were duly eaten

and relished by the company, and served to provoke thirst, a principal

aim of all the solids in that part of Germany. So now the company drank

garausses all round, and their tongues were unloosed, and oh, the Babel!

But above the fierce clamour rose at intervals, like some hero's war-cry

in battle, the trumpet-like voice of the Burgundian soldier shouting

lustily, “Courage, camarades, le diable est mort!”

Entered grisly Ganymede holding in his hand a wooden dish with circles

and semicircles marked on it in chalk. He put it down on the table

and stood silent, sad, and sombre, as Charon by Styx waiting for his

boat-load of souls. Then pouches and purses were rummaged, and each

threw a coin into the dish. Gerard timidly observed that he had drunk

next to no beer, and inquired how much less he was to pay than the

others.

“What mean you?” said Ganymede roughly. “Whose fault is it you have not

drunken? Are all to suffer because one chooses to be a milksop? You will

pay no more than the rest, and no less.”

Gerard was abashed.

“Courage, petit, le diable est mort,” hiccoughed the soldier and flung

Ganymede a coin.

“You are bad as he is,” said the old man peevishly; “you are paying too

much;” and the tyrannical old Aristides returned him some coin out of

the trencher with a most reproachful countenance. And now the man whom

Gerard had confuted an hour and a half ago awoke from a brown study, in

which he had been ever since, and came to him and said, “Yes, but the

honey is none the worse for passing through the bees' bellies.”

Gerard stared. The answer had been so long on the road he hadn't an idea

what it was an answer to. Seeing him dumfounded, the other concluded him

confuted, and withdrew calmed.

The bedrooms were upstairs, dungeons with not a scrap of furniture

except the bed, and a male servant settled inexorably who should sleep

with whom. Neither money nor prayers would get a man a bed to himself

here; custom forbade it sternly. You might as well have asked to

monopolize a see-saw. They assigned to Gerard a man with a great black

beard. He was an honest fellow enough, but not perfect; he would not go

to bed, and would sit on the edge of it telling the wretched Gerard by

force, and at length, the events of the day, and alternately laughing

and crying at the same circumstances, which were not in the smallest

degree pathetic or humorous, but only dead trivial. At last Gerard put

his fingers in his ears, and lying down in his clothes, for the sheets

were too dirty for him to undress, contrived to sleep. But in an hour or

two he awoke cold, and found that his drunken companion had got all the

feather bed; so mighty is instinct. They lay between two beds; the lower

one hard and made of straw, the upper soft and filled with feathers

light as down. Gerard pulled at it, but the experienced drunkard held

it fast mechanically. Gerard tried to twitch it away by surprise, but

instinct was too many for him. On this he got out of bed, and kneeling

down on his bedfellow's unguarded side, easily whipped the prize away

and rolled with it under the bed, and there lay on one edge of it, and

curled the rest round his shoulders. Before he slept he often heard

something grumbling and growling above him, which was some little

satisfaction. Thus instinct was outwitted, and victorious Reason lay

chuckling on feathers, and not quite choked with dust.

At peep of day Gerard rose, flung the feather bed upon his snoring

companion, and went in search of milk and air.

A cheerful voice hailed him in French: “What ho! you are up with the

sun, comrade.”

“He rises betimes that lies in a dog's lair,” answered Gerard crossly.

“Courage, l'ami! le diable est mort,” was the instant reply. The soldier

then told him his name was Denys, and he was passing from Flushing in

Zealand to the Duke's French dominions; a change the more agreeable to

him, as he should revisit his native place, and a host of pretty girls

who had wept at his departure, and should hear French spoken again. “And

who are you, and whither bound?”

“My name is Gerard, and I am going to Rome,” said the more reserved

Hollander, and in a way that invited no further confidences.

“All the better; we will go together as far as Burgundy.”

“That is not my road.”

“All roads take to Rome.”

“Ay, but the shortest road thither is my way.”

“Well, then, it is I who must go out of my way a step for the sake

of good company, for thy face likes me, and thou speakest French, or

nearly.”

“There go two words to that bargain,” said Gerard coldly. “I steer by

proverbs, too. They do put old heads on young men's shoulders. 'Bon loup

mauvais compagnon, dit le brebis;' and a soldier, they say, is near akin

to a wolf.”

“They lie,” said Denys; “besides, if he is, 'les loups ne se mangent pas

entre eux.'”

“Aye but, sir soldier, I am not a wolf; and thou knowest, a bien petite

occasion se saisit le loup du mouton.'”

“Let us drop wolves and sheep, being men; my meaning is, that a good

soldier never pillages-a comrade. Come, young man, too much suspicion

becomes not your years. They who travel should learn to read faces;

methinks you might see lealty in mine sith I have seen it in yourn. Is

it yon fat purse at your girdle you fear for?” (Gerard turned pale.)

“Look hither!” and he undid his belt, and poured out of it a double

handful of gold pieces, then returned them to their hiding-place.

“There is a hostage for you,” said he; “carry you that, and let us be

comrades,” and handed him his belt, gold and all.

Gerard stared. “If I am over prudent, you have not enow.” But he flushed

and looked pleased at the other's trust in him.

“Bah! I can read faces; and so must you, or you'll never take your four

bones safe to Rome.”

“Soldier, you would find me a dull companion, for my heart is very

heavy,” said Gerard, yielding.

“I'll cheer you, mon gars.”

“I think you would,” said Gerard sweetly; “and sore need have I of a

kindly voice in mine ear this day.”

“Oh! no soul is sad alongside me. I lift up their poor little hearts

with my consigne: 'Courage, tout le monde, le diable est mort.' Ha! ha!”

“So be it, then,” said Gerard. “But take back your belt, for I could

never trust by halves. We will go together as far as Rhine, and God go

with us both!”

“Amen!” said Denys, and lifted his cap. “En avant!”

The pair trudged manfully on, and Denys enlivened the weary way. He

chattered about battles and sieges, and things which were new to Gerard;

and he was one of those who make little incidents wherever they go. He

passed nobody without addressing them. “They don't understand it, but

it wakes them up,” said he. But whenever they fell in with a monk

or priest. He pulled a long face, and sought the reverend father's

blessing, and fearlessly poured out on him floods of German words in

such order as not to produce a single German sentence--He doffed his

cap to every woman, high or low, he caught sight of, and with eagle eye

discerned her best feature, and complimented her on it in his native

tongue, well adapted to such matters; and at each carrion crow or

magpie, down came his crossbow, and he would go a furlong off the road

to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable

neatness and despatch, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and

there slipped in and set it upon a nest. “The good-wife will say,

'Alack, here is Beelzebub ahatching of my eggs.'”

“No, you forget he is dead,” objected Gerard.

“So he is, so he is. But she doesn't know that, not having the luck

to be acquainted with me, who carry the good news from city to city,

uplifting men's hearts.”

Such was Denys in time of peace.

Our travellers towards nightfall reached a village; it was a very small

one, but contained a place of entertainment. They searched for it,

and found a small house with barn and stables. In the former was the

everlasting stove, and the clothes drying round it on lines, and a

traveller or two sitting morose. Gerard asked for supper.

“Supper? We have no time to cook for travellers; we only provide

lodging, good lodging for man and beast. You can have some beer.”

“Madman, who, born in Holland, sought other lands!” snorted Gerard in

Dutch. The landlady started.

“What gibberish is that?” asked she, and crossed herself with looks of

superstitious alarm. “You can buy what you like in the village, and cook

it in our oven; but, prithee, mutter no charms nor sorceries here, good

man; don't ye now, it do make my flesh creep so.”

They scoured the village for food, and ended by supping on roasted eggs

and brown bread.

At a very early hour their chambermaid came for them. It was a

rosy-cheeked old fellow with a lanthorn.

They followed him. He led them across a dirty farmyard, where they had

much ado to pick their steps, and brought them into a cow-house. There,

on each side of every cow, was laid a little clean straw, and a tied

bundle of ditto for a pillow. The old man looked down on this his work

with paternal pride. Not so Gerard. “What, do you set Christian men to

lie among cattle?”

“Well, it is hard upon the poor beasts. They have scarce room to turn.”

“Oh! what, it is not hard on us, then?”

“Where is the hardship? I have lain among them all my life. Look at me!

I am fourscore, and never had a headache in all my born days--all along

of lying among the kye. Bless your silly head, kine's breath is ten

times sweeter to drink nor Christians'. You try it!” and he slammed the

bedroom door.

“Denys, where are you?” whined Gerard.

“Here, on her other side.”

“What are you doing?”

“I know not; but as near as I can guess, I think I must be going to

sleep. What are you at?

“I am saying my prayers.”

“Forget me not in them!”

“Is it likely? Denys, I shall soon have done: do not go to sleep, I want

to talk.

“Despatch then! for I feel--augh like floating-in the sky on a warm

cloud.”

“Denys!”

“Augh! eh! hallo! is it time to get up?”

“Alack, no. There, I hurried my orisons to talk; and look at you, going

to sleep! We shall be starved before morning, having no coverlets.”

“Well, you know what to do.”

“Not I, in sooth.”

“Cuddle the cow.”

“Thank you.”

“Burrow in the straw, then. You must be very new to the world, to

grumble at this. How would you bear to lie on the field of battle on a

frosty night, as I did t'other day, stark naked, with nothing to keep me

warm but the carcass of a fellow I had been and helped kill?”

“Horrible! horrible! Tell me all about it! Oh, but this is sweet.”

“Well, we had a little battle in Brabant, and won a little victory, but

it cost us dear; several arbalestriers turned their toes up, and I among

them.”

“Killed, Denys? come now!”

“Dead as mutton. Stuck full of pike-holes till the blood ran out of

me, like the good wine of Macon from the trodden grapes. It is right

bounteous in me to pour the tale in minstrel phrase, for--augh--I am

sleepy. Augh--now where was I?”

“Left dead on the field of battle, bleeding like a pig; that is to say,

like grapes, or something; go on, prithee go on, 'tis a sin to sleep in

the midst of a good story.”

“Granted. Well, some of those vagabonds, that strip the dead soldier on

the field of glory, came and took every rag off me; they wrought me no

further ill, because there was no need.”

“No; you were dead.”

“C'est convenu. This must have been at sundown; and with the night came

a shrewd frost that barkened the blood on my wounds, and stopped all the

rivulets that were running from my heart, and about midnight I awoke as

from a trance.'

“And thought you were in heaven?” asked Gerard eagerly, being a youth

inoculated with monkish tales.

“Too frost-bitten for that, mon gars; besides, I heard the wounded

groaning on all sides, so I knew I was in the old place. I saw I could

not live the night through without cover. I groped about shivering and

shivering; at last one did suddenly leave groaning. 'You are sped,' said

I, so made up to him, and true enough he was dead, but warm, you know.

I took my lord in my arms, but was too weak to carry him, so rolled with

him into a ditch hard by; and there my comrades found me in the morning

properly stung with nettles, and hugging a dead Fleming for the bare

life.”

Gerard shuddered. “And this is war; this is the chosen theme of poets

and troubadours, and Reden Ryckers. Truly was it said by the men of old,

dulce bellum inexpertis.”

“Tu dis?”

“I say-oh, what stout hearts some men have!”

“N'est-ce pas, p'tit? So after that sort--thing--this sort thing is

heaven. Soft--warm--good company, comradancow--cou'age--diable--m-ornk!”

And the glib tongue was still for some hours.

In the morning Gerard was wakened by a liquid hitting his eye, and it

was Denys employing the cow's udder as a squirt.

“Oh, fie!” cried Gerard, “to waste the good milk;” and he took a horn

out of his wallet. “Fill this! but indeed I see not what right we have

to meddle with her milk at all.”

“Make your mind easy! Last night la camarade was not nice; but what

then, true friendship dispenses with ceremony. To-day we make as free

with her.”

“Why, what did she do, poor thing?”

“Ate my pillow.”

“Ha! ha!”

“On waking I had to hunt for my head, and found it down in the stable

gutter. She ate our pillow from us, we drink our pillow from her. A

votre sante, madame; et sans rancune;” and the dog drank her milk to her

own health.

“The ancient was right though,” said Gerard. “Never have I risen so

refreshed since I left my native land. Henceforth let us shun great

towns, and still lie in a convent or a cow-house; for I'd liever sleep

on fresh straw, than on linen well washed six months agone; and the

breath of kine it is sweeter than that of Christians, let alone the

garlic, which men and women folk affect, but cowen abhor from, and so do

I, St. Bavon be my witness!”

The soldier eyed him from head to foot: “Now but for that little tuft on

your chin I should take you for a girl; and by the finger-nails of St.

Luke, no ill-favoured one neither.”

These three towns proved types and repeated themselves with slight

variations for many a weary league; but even when he could get neither a

convent nor a cow-house, Gerard learned in time to steel himself to

the inevitable, and to emulate his comrade, whom he looked on as almost

superhuman for hardihood of body and spirit.

There was, however, a balance to all this veneration.

Denys, like his predecessor Achilles, had his weak part, his very weak

part, thought Gerard.

His foible was “woman.”

Whatever he was saying or doing, he stopped short at sight of a

farthingale, and his whole soul became occupied with that garment and

its inmate till they had disappeared; and sometimes for a good while

after.

He often put Gerard to the blush by talking his amazing German to such

females as he caught standing or sitting indoors or out, at which they

stared; and when he met a peasant girl on the road, he took off his cap

to her and saluted her as if she was a queen; the invariable effect of

which was, that she suddenly drew herself up quite stiff like a soldier

on parade, and wore a forbidding countenance.

“They drive me to despair,” said Denys. “Is that a just return to a

civil bonnetade? They are large, they are fair, but stupid as swans.”

“What breeding can you expect from women that wear no hose?” inquired

Gerard; “and some of them no shoon? They seem to me reserved and modest,

as becomes their sex, and sober, whereas the men are little better than

beer-barrels. Would you have them brazen as well as hoseless?”

“A little affability adorns even beauty,” sighed Denys.

“Then let these alone, sith they are not to your taste,” retorted

Gerard. “What, is there no sweet face in Burgundy that would pale to see

you so wrapped up in strange women?”

“Half-a-dozen that would cry their eyes out.”

“Well then!”

“But it is a long way to Burgundy.”

“Ay, to the foot, but not to the heart. I am there, sleeping and waking,

and almost every minute of the day.”

“In Burgundy? Why, I thought you had never--”

“In Burgundy?” cried Gerard contemptuously. “No, in sweet Sevenbergen.

Ah! well-a-day! well-a-day!”

Many such dialogues as this passed between the pair on the long and

weary road, and neither could change the other.

One day about noon they reached a town of some pretensions, and Gerard

was glad, for he wanted to buy a pair of shoes; his own were quite worn

out. They soon found a shop that displayed a goodly array, and made up

to it, and would have entered it, but the shopkeeper sat on the doorstep

taking a nap, and was so fat as to block up the narrow doorway; the very

light could hardly struggle past his “too, too solid flesh,” much less a

carnal customer.

My fair readers, accustomed, when they go shopping, to be met half way

with nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, and waved into a seat, while

almost at the same instant an eager shopman flings himself half

across the counter in a semi-circle to learn their commands, can best

appreciate this mediaeval Teuton, who kept a shop as a dog keeps a

kennel, and sat at the exclusion of custom snoring like a pig.

Denys and Gerard stood and contemplated this curiosity; emblem, permit

me to remark, of the lets and hindrances to commerce that characterized

his epoch.

“Jump over him!”

“The door is too low.”

“March through him!”

“The man is too thick.”

“What is the coil?” inquired a mumbling voice from the interior;

apprentice with his mouth full.

“We want to get into your shop?”

“What for, in Heaven's name??!!!”

“Shoon, lazy bones!”

The ire of the apprentice began to rise at such an explanation. “And

could ye find no hour out of all the twelve to come pestering us for

shoon, but the one little, little hour my master takes his nap, and I

sit down to my dinner, when all the rest of the world is full long ago?”

Denys heard, but could not follow the sense. “Waste no more time talking

their German gibberish,” said he; “take out thy knife and tickle his fat

ribs.”

“That I will not,” said Gerard.

“Then here goes; I'll prong him with this.”

Gerard seized the mad fellow's arm in dismay, for he had been long

enough in the country to guess that the whole town would take part in

any brawl with the native against a stranger. But Denys twisted away

from him, and the cross-bow bolt in his hand was actually on the road to

the sleeper's ribs; but at that very moment two females crossed the road

towards him; he saw the blissful vision, and instantly forgot what he

was about, and awaited their approach with unreasonable joy.

Though companions, they were not equals, except in attractiveness to a

Burgundian crossbow man; for one was very tall, the other short, and

by one of those anomalies which society, however primitive, speedily

establishes, the long one held up the little one's tail. The tall one

wore a plain linen coif on her head, a little grogram cloak over her

shoulders, a grey kirtle, and a short farthingale or petticoat of bright

red cloth, and feet and legs quite bare, though her arms were veiled in

tight linen sleeves.

The other a kirtle broadly trimmed with fur, her arms in double sleeves,

whereof the inner of yellow satin clung to the skin; the outer, all

befurred, were open at the inside of the elbow, and so the arm passed

through and left them dangling. Velvet head-dress, huge purse at girdle,

gorgeous train, bare legs. And thus they came on, the citizen's wife

strutting, and the maid gliding after, holding her mistress's train

devoutly in both hands, and bending and winding her lithe body prettily

enough to do it. Imagine (if not pressed for time) a bantam, with a

guineahen stepping obsequious at its stately heel.

This pageant made straight for the shoemaker's shop. Denys louted low;

the worshipful lady nodded graciously, but rapidly, having business

on hand, or rather on foot; for in a moment she poked the point of her

little shoe into the sleeper, and worked it round in him like a gimlet,

till with a long snarl he woke. The incarnate shutter rising and

grumbling vaguely, the lady swept in and deigned him no further notice.

He retreated to his neighbour's shop, the tailor's, and sitting on the

step, protected it from the impertinence of morning calls. Neighbours

should be neighbourly.

Denys and Gerard followed the dignity into the shop, where sat the

apprentice at dinner; the maid stood outside with her insteps crossed,

leaning against the wall, and tapping it with her nails.

“Those, yonder,” said the dignity briefly, pointing with an imperious

little white hand to some yellow shoes gilded at the toe. While the

apprentice stood stock still neutralized by his dinner and his duty,

Denys sprang at the shoes, and brought them to her; she smiled, and

calmly seating herself, protruded her foot, shod, but hoseless, and

scented. Down went Denys on his knees, and drew off her shoe, and tried

the new ones on the white skin devoutly. Finding she had a willing

victim, she abused the opportunity, tried first one pair, then another,

then the first again, and so on, balancing and hesitating for about half

an hour, to Gerard's disgust, and Denys's weak delight. At last she was

fitted, and handed two pair of yellow and one pair of red shoes out to

her servant. Then was heard a sigh. It burst from the owner of the shop:

he had risen from slumber, and was now hovering about, like a partridge

near her brood in danger.

“There go all my coloured shoes,” said he, as they disappeared in the

girl's apron.

The lady departed: Gerard fitted himself with a stout pair, asked the

price, paid it without a word, and gave his old ones to a beggar in the

street, who blessed him in the marketplace, and threw them furiously

down a well in the suburbs. The comrades left the shop, and in it two

melancholy men, that looked, and even talked, as if they had been robbed

wholesale.

“My shoon are sore worn,” said Denys, grinding his teeth; “but I'll go

barefoot till I reach France, ere I'll leave my money with such churls

as these.”

The Dutchman replied calmly, “They seem indifferent well sewn.”

As they drew near the Rhine, they passed through forest after forest,

and now for the first time ugly words sounded in travellers' mouths,

seated around stoves. “Thieves!” “black gangs!” “cut-throats!” etc.

The very rustics were said to have a custom hereabouts of murdering the

unwary traveller in these gloomy woods, whose dark and devious winding

enabled those who were familiar with them to do deeds of rapine and

blood undetected, or if detected, easily to baffle pursuit.

Certain it was, that every clown they met carried, whether for offence

or defence, a most formidable weapon; a light axe, with a short pike at

the head, and a long slender handle of ash or yew, well seasoned. These

the natives could all throw with singular precision, so as to make

the point strike an object at several yard's distance, or could slay

a bullock at hand with a stroke of the blade. Gerard bought one and

practised with it. Denys quietly filed and ground his bolt sharp,

whistling the whilst; and when they entered a gloomy wood, he would

unsling his crossbow and carry it ready for action; but not so much like

a traveller fearing an attack, as a sportsman watchful not to miss a

snap shot.

One day, being in a forest a few leagues from Dusseldorf, as Gerard was

walking like one in a dream, thinking of Margaret, and scarce seeing the

road he trode, his companion laid a hand on his shoulder, and strung

his crossbow with glittering eye. “Hush!” said he, in a low whisper that

startled Gerard more than thunder. Gerard grasped his axe tight, and

shook a little: he heard a rustling in the wood hard by, and at the

same moment Denys sprang into the wood, and his crossbow went to his

shoulder, even as he jumped. Twang! went the metal string; and after an

instant's suspense he roared, “Run forward, guard the road, he is hit!

he is hit!”

Gerard darted forward, and as he ran a young bear burst out of the wood

right upon him; finding itself intercepted, it went upon its hind legs

with a snarl, and though not half grown, opened formidable jaws and long

claws. Gerard, in a fury of excitement and agitation, flung himself on

it, and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe, and the

creature staggered; another, and it lay grovelling, with Gerard hacking

it.

“Hallo! stop! you are mad to spoil the meat.”

“I took it for a robber,” said Gerard, panting. “I mean, I had made

ready for a robber, so I could not hold my hand.”

“Ay, these chattering travellers have stuffed your head full of thieves

and assassins; they have not got a real live robber in their whole

nation. Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear thou my crossbow.”

“We will carry it by turns, then,” said Gerard, “for 'tis a heavy load:

poor thing, how its blood drips. Why did we slay it?”

“For supper and the reward the baillie of the next town shall give us.”

“And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live; and

perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves

it as ours love us; more than mine does me.”

“What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month,

and her skin is now at the tanner's? and his father was stuck full of

cloth-yard shafts t'other day, and died like Julius Caesar, with his

hands folded on his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?”

But Gerard would not view it jestingly. “Why, then,” said he, “we have

killed one of God's creatures that was all alone in the world-as I am

this day, in this strange land.”

“You young milksop,” roared Denys, “these things must not be looked

at so, or not another bow would be drawn nor quarrel fly in forest nor

battlefield. Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pikemen

should turn them to a row of milk-pails; it is ended, to Rome thou goest

not alone, for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin. I take

thee to Remiremont, my native place, and there I marry thee to my young

sister, she is blooming as a peach. Thou shakest thy head? ah! I forgot;

thou lovest elsewhere, and art a one woman man, a creature to me scarce

conceivable. Well then I shall find thee, not a wife, nor a leman, but

a friend; some honest Burgundian who shall go with thee as far as Lyons;

and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor

thou has dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I endured

not doves in doublet and hose. From Lyons, I say, I can trust thee

by ship to Italy, which being by all accounts the very stronghold of

milksops, thou wilt there be safe: they will hear thy words, and make

thee their duke in a twinkling.”

Gerard sighed. “In sooth I love not to think of this Dusseldorf, where

we are to part company, good friend.”

They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the

thought checked trifling conversation, and at these moments it is a

relief to do something, however insignificant. Gerard asked Denys to

lend him a bolt. “I have often shot with a long bow, but never with one

of these!”

“Draw thy knife and cut this one out of the cub,” said Denys slily.

“Nay, Day, I want a clean one.”

Denys gave him three out of his quiver.

Gerard strung the bow, and levelled it at a bough that had fallen into

the road at some distance. The power of the instrument surprised him;

the short but thick steel bow jarred him to the very heel as it went

off, and the swift steel shaft was invisible in its passage; only the

dead leaves, with which November had carpeted the narrow road, flew

about on the other side of the bough.

“Ye aimed a thought too high,” said Denys.

“What a deadly thing! no wonder it is driving out the longbow--to

Martin's much discontent.”

“Ay, lad,” said Denys triumphantly, “it gains ground every day, in spite

of their laws and their proclamations to keep up the yewen bow, because

forsooth their grandsires shot with it, knowing no better. You see,

Gerard, war is not pastime. Men will shoot at their enemies with the

hittingest arm and the killingest, not with the longest and missingest.”

“Then these new engines I hear of will put both bows down; for these

with a pinch of black dust, and a leaden ball, and a child's finger,

shall slay you Mars and Goliath, and the Seven Champions.”

“Pooh! pooh!” said Denys warmly; “petrone nor harquebuss shall ever put

down Sir Arbalest. Why, we can shoot ten times while they are putting

their charcoal and their lead into their leathern smoke belchers, and

then kindling their matches. All that is too fumbling for the field of

battle; there a soldier's weapon needs be aye ready, like his heart.”

Gerard did not answer, for his ear was attracted by a sound behind

them. It was a peculiar sound, too, like something heavy, but not hard,

rushing softly over the dead leaves. He turned round with some little

curiosity. A colossal creature was coming down the road at about sixty

paces' distance.

He looked at it in a sort of calm stupor at first, but the next moment,

he turned ashy pale.

“Denys!” he cried. “Oh, God! Denys!”

Denys whirled round.

It was a bear as big as a cart-horse.

It was tearing along with its huge head down, running on a hot scent.

The very moment he saw it Denys said in a sickening whisper--

“THE CUB!”

Oh! the concentrated horror of that one word, whispered hoarsely, with

dilating eyes! For in that syllable it all flashed upon them both like

a sudden stroke of lightning in the dark--the bloody trail, the murdered

cub, the mother upon them, and it. DEATH.

All this in a moment of time. The next, she saw them. Huge as she was,

she seemed to double herself (it was her long hair bristling with rage):

she raised her head big as a hull's, her swine-shaped jaws opened wide

at them, her eyes turned to blood and flame, and she rushed upon them,

scattering the leaves about her like a whirlwind as she came.

“Shoot!” screamed Denys, but Gerard stood shaking from head to foot,

useless.

“Shoot, man! ten thousand devils, shoot! too late! Tree! tree!” and he

dropped the cub, pushed Gerard across the road, and flew to the first

tree and climbed it, Gerard the same on his side; and as they fled, both

men uttered inhuman howls like savage creatures grazed by death.

With all their speed one or other would have been torn to fragments at

the foot of his tree; but the bear stopped a moment at the cub.

Without taking her bloodshot eyes off those she was hunting, she smelt

it all round, and found, how, her Creator only knows, that it was dead,

quite dead. She gave a yell such as neither of the hunted ones had ever

heard, nor dreamed to be in nature, and flew after Denys. She reared and

struck at him as he climbed. He was just out of reach.

Instantly she seized the tree, and with her huge teeth tore a great

piece out of it with a crash. Then she reared again, dug her claws deep

into the bark, and began to mount it slowly, but as surely as a monkey.

Denys's evil star had led him to a dead tree, a mere shaft, and of no

very great height. He climbed faster than his pursuer, and was soon at

the top. He looked this way and that for some bough of another tree to

spring to. There was none; and if he jumped down, he knew the bear would

be upon him ere he could recover the fall, and make short work of him.

Moreover, Denys was little used to turning his back on danger, and his

blood was rising at being hunted. He turned to bay.

“My hour is come,” thought he. “Let me meet death like a man.” He

kneeled down and grasped a small shoot to steady himself, drew his long

knife, and clenching his teeth, prepared to jab the huge brute as soon

as it should mount within reach.

Of this combat the result was not doubtful.

The monster's head and neck were scarce vulnerable for bone and masses

of hair. The man was going to sting the bear, and the bear to crack the

man like a nut.

Gerard's heart was better than his nerves. He saw his friend's mortal

danger, and passed at once from fear to blindish rage. He slipped down

his tree in a moment, caught up the crossbow, which he had dropped in

the road, and running furiously up, sent a bolt into the bear's body

with a loud shout. The bear gave a snarl of rage and pain, and turned

its head irresolutely.

“Keep aloof!” cried Denys, “or you are a dead man.”

“I care not;” and in a moment he had another bolt ready and shot it

fiercely into the bear, screaming, “Take that! take that!”

Denys poured a volley of oaths down at him. “Get away, idiot!”

He was right: the bear finding so formidable and noisy a foe behind

her, slipped growling down the tree, rending deep furrows in it as she

slipped. Gerard ran back to his tree and climbed it swiftly. But while

his legs were dangling some eight feet from the ground, the bear came

rearing and struck with her fore paw, and out flew a piece of bloody

cloth from Gerard's hose. He climbed, and climbed; and presently he

heard as it were in the air a voice say, “Go out on the bough!” He

looked, and there was a long massive branch before him shooting upwards

at a slight angle: he threw his body across it, and by a series of

convulsive efforts worked up it to the end.

Then he looked round panting.

The bear was mounting the tree on the other side. He heard her claws

scrape, and saw her bulge on both sides of the massive tree. Her eye not

being very quick, she reached the fork and passed it, mounting the main

stem. Gerard drew breath more freely. The bear either heard him, or

found by scent she was wrong: she paused; presently she caught sight of

him. She eyed him steadily, then quietly descended to the fork.

Slowly and cautiously she stretched out a paw and tried the bough. It

was a stiff oak branch, sound as iron. Instinct taught the creature

this: it crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as it

came.

Gerard looked wildly down. He was forty feet from the ground. Death

below. Death moving slow but sure on him in a still more horrible

form. His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless,

fascinated, tongue-tied.

As the fearful monster crawled growling towards him, incongruous

thoughts coursed through his mind. Margaret: the Vulgate, where it

speaks of the rage of a she-bear robbed of her whelps--Rome--Eternity.

The bear crawled on. And now the stupor of death fell on the doomed man;

he saw the open jaws and bloodshot eyes coming, but in a mist.

As in a mist he heard a twang; he glanced down; Denys, white and silent

as death, was shooting up at the bear. The bear snarled at the twang.

but crawled on. Again the crossbow twanged, and the bear snarled, and

came nearer. Again the cross bow twanged; and the next moment the bear

was close upon Gerard, where he sat, with hair standing stiff on end and

eyes starting from their sockets, palsied. The bear opened her jaws like

a grave, and hot blood spouted from them upon Gerard as from a pump. The

bough rocked. The wounded monster was reeling; it clung, it stuck its

sickles of claws deep into the wood; it toppled, its claws held firm,

but its body rolled off, and the sudden shock to the branch shook Gerard

forward on his stomach with his face upon one of the bear's straining

paws. At this, by a convulsive effort, she raised her head up, up, till

he felt her hot fetid breath. Then huge teeth snapped together loudly

close below him in the air, with a last effort of baffled hate. The

ponderous carcass rent the claws out of the bough, then pounded the

earth with a tremendous thump. There was a shout of triumph below,

and the very next instant a cry of dismay, for Gerard had swooned, and

without an attempt to save himself, rolled headlong from the perilous

height.

CHAPTER XXV

Denys caught at Gerard, and somewhat checked his fall; but it may be

doubted whether this alone would have saved him from breaking his

neck, or a limb. His best friend now was the dying bear, on whose hairy

carcass his head and shoulders descended. Denys tore him off her. It was

needless. She panted still, and her limbs quivered, but a hare was not

so harmless; and soon she breathed her last; and the judicious Denys

propped Gerard up against her, being soft, and fanned him. He came to

by degrees, but confused, and feeling the bear around him, rolled away,

yelling.

“Courage,” cried Denys, “le diable est mort.”

“Is it dead? quite dead?” inquired Gerard from behind a tree; for his

courage was feverish, and the cold fit was on him just now, and had been

for some time.

“Behold,” said Denys, and pulled the brute's ear playfully, and opened

her jaws and put in his head, with other insulting antics; in the midst

of which Gerard was violently sick.

Denys laughed at him.

“What is the matter now?” said he, “also, why tumble off your perch just

when we had won the day?”

“I swooned, I trow.”

“But why?”

Not receiving an answer, he continued, “Green girls faint as soon

as look at you, but then they choose time and place. What woman ever

fainted up a tree?”

“She sent her nasty blood all over me. I think the smell must have

overpowered me! Faugh! I hate blood.”

“I do believe it potently.”

“See what a mess she has made me

“But with her blood, not yours. I pity the enemy that strives to satisfy

you.”'

“You need not to brag, Maitre Denys; I saw you under the tree, the

colour of your shirt.”

“Let us distinguish,” said Denys, colouring; “it is permitted to tremble

for a friend.”

Gerard, for answer, flung his arms round Denys's neck in silence.

“Look here,” whined the stout soldier, affected by this little gush of

nature and youth, “was ever aught so like a woman? I love thee, little

milksop--go to. Good! behold him on his knees now. What new caprice is

this?”

“Oh, Denys, ought we not to return thanks to Him who has saved both our

lives against such fearful odds?” And Gerard kneeled, and prayed aloud.

And presently he found Denys kneeling quiet beside him, with his hands

across his bosom after the custom of his nation, and a face as long as

his arm. When they rose, Gerard's countenance was beaming.

“Good Denys,” said he, “Heaven will reward thy piety.”

“Ah, bah! I did it out of politeness,” said the Frenchman. “It was to

please thee, little one. C'est egal, 'twas well and orderly prayed, and

edified me to the core while it lasted. A bishop had scarce handled the

matter better; so now our evensong being sung, and the saints enlisted

with us--marchons.”

Ere they had taken two steps, he stopped. “By-the-by, the cub!”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Gerard.

“You are right. It is late. We have lost time climbing trees, and

tumbling off 'em, and swooning, and vomiting, and praying; and the brute

is heavy to carry. And now I think on't, we shall have papa after it

next; these bears make such a coil about an odd cub. What is this? you

are wounded! you are wounded!”

“Not I.”

“He is wounded; miserable that I am!”

“Be calm, Denys. I am not touched; I feel no pain anywhere.”

“You? you only feel when another is hurt,” cried Denys, with great

emotion; and throwing himself on his knees, he examined Gerard's leg

with glistening eyes.

“Quick! quick! before it stiffens,” he cried, and hurried him on.

“Who makes the coil about nothing now?” inquired Gerard composedly.

Denys's reply was a very indirect one.

“Be pleased to note,” said he, “that I have a bad heart. You were man

enough to save my life, yet I must sneer at you, a novice in war. Was

not I a novice once myself? Then you fainted from a wound, and I thought

you swooned for fear, and called you a milksop. Briefly, I have a bad

tongue and a bad heart.”

“Denys!”

“Plait-il?”

“You lie.”

“You are very good to say so, little one, and I am eternally obliged to

you,” mumbled the remorseful Denys.

Ere they had walked many furlongs, the muscles of the wounded leg

contracted and stiffened, till presently Gerard could only just put his

toe to the ground, and that with great pain.

At last he could bear it no longer.

“Let me lie down and die,” he groaned, “for this is intolerable.”

Denys represented that it was afternoon, and the nights were now frosty;

and cold and hunger ill companions; and that it would be unreasonable

to lose heart, a certain great personage being notoriously defunct. So

Gerard leaned upon his axe, and hobbled on; but presently he gave in,

all of a sudden, and sank helpless in the road.

Denys drew him aside into the wood, and to his surprise gave him his

crossbow and bolts, enjoining him strictly to lie quiet, and if any

ill-looking fellows should find him out and come to him, to bid them

keep aloof; and should they refuse, to shoot them dead at twenty paces.

“Honest men keep the path; and, knaves in a wood, none but fools do

parley with them.” With this he snatched up Gerard's axe, and set off

running--not, as Gerard expected, towards Dusseldorf, but on the road

they had come.

Gerard lay aching and smarting; and to him Rome, that seemed so near at

starting, looked far, far off, now that he was two hundred miles nearer

it. But soon all his thoughts turned Sevenbergen-wards. How sweet it

would be one day to hold Margaret's hand, and tell her all he had gone

through for her! The very thought of it, and her, soothed him; and in

the midst of pain and irritation of the nerves be lay resigned, and

sweetly, though faintly, smiling.

He had lain thus more than two hours, when suddenly there were shouts;

and the next moment something struck a tree hard by, and quivered in it.

He looked, it was an arrow.

He started to his feet. Several missiles rattled among the boughs, and

the wood echoed with battle-cries. Whence they came he could not tell,

for noises in these huge woods are so reverberated, that a stranger

is always at fault as to their whereabout; but they seemed to fill

the whole air. Presently there was a lull; then he heard the fierce

galloping of hoofs; and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled

with shrieks and groans; and above all, strange and terrible sounds,

like fierce claps of thunder, bellowing loud, and then dying off in

cracking echoes; and red tongues of flame shot out ever and anon among

the trees, and clouds of sulphurous smoke came drifting over his head.

And all was still.

Gerard was struck with awe. “What will become of Denys?” he cried. “Oh,

why did you leave me? Oh, Denys, my friend! my friend!”

Just before sunset Denys returned, almost sinking under a hairy bundle.

It was the bear's skin.

Gerard welcomed him with a burst of joy that astonished him.

“I thought never to see you again, dear Denys. Were you in the battle?”

“No. What battle?”

“The bloody battle of men, or fiends, that raged in the wood a while

agone;” and with this he described it to the life, and more fully than I

have done.

Denys patted him indulgently on the back.

“It is well,” said he; “thou art a good limner; and fever is a great

spur to the imagination. One day I lay in a cart-shed with a cracked

skull, and saw two hosts manoeuvre and fight a good hour on eight feet

square, the which I did fairly describe to my comrade in due order, only

not so gorgeously as thou, for want of book learning.

“What, then, you believe me not? when I tell you the arrows whizzed over

my head, and the combatants shouted, and--”

“May the foul fiends fly away with me if I believe a word of it.”

Gerard took his arm, and quietly pointed to a tree close by.

“Why, it looks like--it is-a broad arrow, as I live!” And he went close,

and looked up at it.

“It came out of the battle. I heard it, and saw it.”

“An English arrow.”

“How know you that?”

“Marry, by its length. The English bowmen draw the bow to the ear,

others only to the right breast. Hence the English loose a three-foot

shaft, and this is one of them, perdition seize them! Well, if this is

not glamour, there has been a trifle of a battle. And if there has been

a battle in so ridiculous a place for a battle as this, why then 'tis

no business of mine, for my Duke hath no quarrel hereabouts. So let's to

bed,” said the professional. And with this he scraped together a heap of

leaves, and made Gerard lie on it, his axe by his side. He then lay down

beside him, with one hand on his arbalest, and drew the bear-skin over

them, hair inward. They were soon as warm as toast, and fast asleep.

But long before the dawn Gerard woke his comrade.

“What shall I do, Denys, I die of famine?”

“Do? why, go to sleep again incontinent: qui dort dine.”

“But I tell you I am too hungry to sleep,” snapped Gerard.

“Let us march, then,” replied Denys, with paternal indulgence.

He had a brief paroxysm of yawns; then made a small bundle of bears'

ears, rolling them up in a strip of the skin, cut for the purpose; and

they took the road.

Gerard leaned on his axe, and propped by Denys on the other side,

hobbled along, not without sighs.

“I hate pain.” said Gerard viciously.

“Therein you show judgment,” replied papa smoothly.

It was a clear starlight night; and soon the moon rising revealed the

end of the wood at no great distance: a pleasant sight, since Dusseldorf

they knew was but a short league further.

At the edge of the wood they came upon something so mysterious that they

stopped to gaze at it, before going up to it. Two white pillars rose

in the air, distant a few paces from each other; and between them stood

many figures, that looked like human forms.

“I go no farther till I know what this is,” said Gerard, in an agitated

whisper. “Are they effigies of the saints, for men to pray to on the

road? or live robbers waiting to shoot down honest travellers? Nay,

living men they cannot be, for they stand on nothing that I see. Oh!

Denys, let us turn back till daybreak; this is no mortal sight.”

Denys halted, and peered long and keenly. “They are men,” said he, at

last. Gerard was for turning back all the more. “But men that will never

hurt us, nor we them. Look not to their feet, for that they stand on!”

“Where, then, i' the name of all the saints?”

“Look over their heads,” said Denys gravely.

Following this direction, Gerard presently discerned the outline of

a dark wooden beam passing from pillar to pillar; and as the pair got

nearer, walking now on tiptoe, one by one dark snake-like cords came out

in the moonlight, each pendent from the beam to a dead man, and tight as

wire.

Now as they came under this awful monument of crime and wholesale

vengeance a light air swept by, and several of the corpses swung, or

gently gyrated, and every rope creaked. Gerard shuddered at this ghastly

salute. So thoroughly had the gibbet, with its sickening load, seized

and held their eyes, that it was but now they perceived a fire right

underneath, and a living figure sitting huddled over it. His axe lay

beside him, the bright blade shining red in the glow. He was asleep.

Gerard started, but Denys only whispered, “courage, comrade, here is a

fire.”

“Ay! but there is a man at it.”

“There will soon be three;” and he began to heap some wood on it that

the watcher had prepared; during which the prudent Gerard seized the

man's axe, and sat down tight on it, grasping his own, and examining the

sleeper. There was nothing outwardly distinctive in the man. He wore the

dress of the country folk, and the hat of the district, a three-cornered

hat called a Brunswicker, stiff enough to turn a sword cut, and with a

thick brass hat-band. The weight of the whole thing had turned his ears

entirely down, like a fancy rabbit's in our century; but even this,

though it spoiled him as a man, was nothing remarkable. They had of late

met scores of these dog's-eared rustics. The peculiarity was, this clown

watching under a laden gallows. What for?

Denys, if he felt curious, would not show it; he took out two bears'

ears from his bundle, and running sticks through them, began to toast

them. “'Twill be eating coined money,” said he; “for the burgomaster

of Dusseldorf had given us a rix-dollar for these ears, as proving the

death of their owners; but better a lean purse than a lere stomach.”

“Unhappy man!” cried Gerard, “could you eat food here?”

“Where the fire is lighted there must the meat roast, and where it

roasts there must it be eaten; for nought travels worse than your

roasted meat.”

“Well, eat thou, Denys, an thou canst! but I am cold and sick; there is

no room for hunger in my heart after what mine eyes have seen,” and he

shuddered over the fire. “Oh! how they creak! and who is this man, I

wonder? what an ill-favoured churl!”

Denys examined him like a connoisseur looking at a picture, and in

due course delivered judgment. “I take him to be of the refuse of that

company, whereof these (pointing carelessly upward) were the cream, and

so ran their heads into danger.

“At that rate, why not stun him before he wakes?” and Gerard fidgeted

where he sat.

Denys opened his eyes with humorous surprise. “For one who sets up for

a milksop you have the readiest hand. Why should two stun one? tush! he

wakes: note now what he says at waking, and tell me.”

These last words were hardly whispered when the watcher opened his eyes.

At sight of the fire made up, and two strangers eyeing him keenly, he

stared, and there was a severe and pretty successful effort to be calm;

still a perceptible tremor ran all over him. Soon he manned himself,

and said gruffly. “Good morrow. But at the very moment of saying it he

missed his axe, and saw how Gerard was sitting upon it, with his own

laid ready to his hand. He lost countenance again directly. Denys smiled

grimly at this bit of byplay.

“Good morrow!” said Gerard quietly, keeping his eye on him.

The watcher was now too ill at ease to be silent. “You make free with

my fire,” said he; but he added in a somewhat faltering voice, “you are

welcome.”

Denys whispered Gerard. The watcher eyed them askant.

“My comrade says, sith we share your fire, you shall share his meat.”

“So be it,” said the man warmly. “I have half a kid hanging on a bush

hard by, I'll go fetch it;” and he arose with a cheerful and obliging

countenance, and was retiring.

Denys caught up his crossbow, and levelled it at his head. The man fell

on his knees.

Denys lowered his weapon, and pointed him back to his place. He rose and

went back slowly and unsteadily, like one disjointed; and sick at heart

as the mouse, that the cat lets go a little way, and then darts and

replaces.

“Sit down, friend,” said Denys grimly, in French.

The man obeyed finger and tone, though he knew not a word of French.

“Tell him the fire is not big enough for more than thee. He will take my

meaning.”

This being communicated by Gerard, the man grinned; ever since Denys

spoke he had seemed greatly relieved. “I wist not ye were strangers,”

said he to Gerard.

Denys cut a piece of bear's ear, and offered it with grace to him he had

just levelled crossbow at.

He took it calmly, and drew a piece of bread from his wallet, and

divided it with the pair. Nay, more, he winked and thrust his hand into

the heap of leaves he sat on (Gerard grasped his axe ready to brain him)

and produced a leathern bottle holding full two gallons. He put it to

his mouth, and drank their healths, then handed it to Gerard; he passed

it untouched to Denys.

“Mort de ma vie!” cried the soldier, “it is Rhenish wine, and fit

for the gullet of an archbishop. Here's to thee, thou prince of good

fellows, wishing thee a short life and a merry one! Come, Gerard, sup!

sup! Pshaw, never heed them, man! they heed not thee. Natheless, did I

hang over such a skin of Rhenish as this, and three churls sat beneath a

drinking it and offered me not a drop, I'd soon be down among them.”

“Denys! Denys!”

“My spirit would cut the cord, and womp would come my body amongst ye,

with a hand on the bottle, and one eye winking, t'other.”

Gerard started up with a cry of horror and his fingers to his ears, and

was running from the place, when his eye fell on the watcher's axe. The

tangible danger brought him back. He sat down again on the axe with his

fingers in his ears.

“Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort!” shouted Denys gaily, and offered

him a piece of bear's ear, put it right under his nose as he stopped his

ears. Gerard turned his head away with loathing.

“Wine!” he gasped. “Heaven knows I have much need of it, with such

companions as thee and--”

He took a long draught of the Rhenish wine: it ran glowing through his

veins, and warmed and strengthened his heart, but could not check his

tremors whenever a gust of wind came. As for Denys and the other, they

feasted recklessly, and plied the bottle unceasingly, and drank healths

and caroused beneath that creaking sepulchre and its ghastly tenants.

“Ask him how they came here,” said Denys, with his mouth full, and

pointing up without looking.

On this question being interpreted to the watcher, he replied that

treason had been their end, diabolical treason and priest-craft. He

then, being rendered communicative by drink, delivered a long prosy

narrative, the purport of which was as follows. These honest gentlemen

who now dangled here so miserably were all stout men and true, and

lived in the forest by their wits. Their independence and thriving state

excited the jealousy and hatred of a large portion of mankind, and many

attempts were made on their lives and liberties; these the Virgin and

their patron saints, coupled with their individual skill and courage

constantly baffled. But yester eve a party of merchants came slowly on

their mules from Dusseldorf. The honest men saw them crawling, and let

them penetrate near a league into the forest, then set upon them to

make them disgorge a portion of their ill-gotten gains. But alas!

the merchants were no merchants at all, but soldiers of more than one

nation, in the pay of the Archbishop of Cologne; haubergeons had they

beneath their gowns, and weapons of all sorts at hand; natheless, the

honest men fought stoutly, and pressed the traitors hard, when lo!

horsemen, that had been planted in ambush many hours before, galloped

up, and with these new diabolical engines of war, shot leaden bullets,

and laid many an honest fellow low, and so quelled the courage of others

that they yielded them prisoners. These being taken red-handed, the

victors, who with malice inconceivable had brought cords knotted round

their waists, did speedily hang, and by their side the dead ones, to

make the gallanter show. “That one at the end was the captain. He never

felt the cord. He was riddled with broad arrows and leaden balls or ever

they could take him: a worthy man as ever cried, 'Stand and deliver!'

but a little hasty, not much: stay! I forgot; he is dead. Very hasty,

and obstinate as a pig. That one in the--buff jerkin is the lieutenant,

as good a soul as ever lived: he was hanged alive. This one here, I

never could abide; no (not that one; that is Conrad, my bosom friend); I

mean this one right overhead in the chicken-toed shoon; you were always

carrying tales, ye thief, and making mischief; you know you were; and,

sirs, I am a man that would rather live united in a coppice than in a

forest with backbiters and tale-bearers: strangers, I drink to you.”

And so he went down the whole string, indicating with the neck of the

bottle, like a showman with his pole, and giving a neat description of

each, which though pithy was invariably false; for the showman had no

real eye for character, and had misunderstood every one of these people.

“Enough palaver!” cried Denys. “Marchons! Give me his axe: now tell him

he must help you along.”

The man's countenance fell, but he saw in Denys's eye that resistance

would be dangerous; he submitted. Gerard it was who objected. He said,

“Y pensez-vous? to put my hand on a thief, it maketh my flesh creep.”

“Childishness! all trades must live. Besides, I have my reasons. Be not

you wiser than your elder.”

“No. Only if I am to lean on him I must have my hand in my bosom, still

grasping the haft of my knife.”

“It is a new attitude to walk in; but please thyself.”

And in that strange and mixed attitude of tender offices and deadly

suspicion the trio did walk. I wish I could draw them--I would not trust

to the pen.

The light of the watch-tower at Dusseldorf was visible as soon as they

cleared the wood, and cheered Gerard. When, after an hour's march, the

black outline of the tower itself and other buildings stood out clear to

the eye, their companion halted and said gloomily, “You may as well slay

me out of hand as take me any nearer the gates of Dusseldorf town.”

On this being communicated to Denys, he said at once, “Let him go then,

for in sooth his neck will be in jeopardy if he wends much further with

us.” Gerard acquiesced as a matter of course. His horror of a criminal

did not in the least dispose him to active co-operation with the law.

But the fact is, that at this epoch no private citizen in any part

of Europe ever meddled with criminals but in self-defence, except,

by-the-by, in England, which, behind other nations in some things, was

centuries before them all in this.

The man's personal liberty being restored, he asked for his axe. It was

given him. To the friends' surprise he still lingered. Was he to have

nothing for coming so far out of his way with them?

“Here are two batzen, friend.

“Add the wine, the good Rhenish?”

“Did you give aught for it?”

“Ay! the peril of my life.”

“Hum! what say you, Denys?”

“I say it was worth its weight in gold. Here, lad, here be silver

groshen, one for every acorn on that gallows tree; and here is one more

for thee, who wilt doubtless be there in due season.”

The man took the coins, but still lingered.

“Well! what now?” cried Gerard, who thought him shamefully overpaid

already. “Dost seek the hide off our bones?”

“Nay, good sirs, but you have seen to-night how parlous a life is mine.

Ye be true men, and your prayers avail; give me then a small trifle of a

prayer, an't please you; for I know not one.”

Gerard's choler began to rise at the egotistical rogue; moreover, ever

since his wound he had felt gusts of irritability. However, he bit his

lip and said, “There go two words to that bargain; tell me first, is it

true what men say of you Rhenish thieves, that ye do murder innocent and

unresisting travellers as well as rob them?”

The other answered sulkily, “They you call thieves are not to blame for

that; the fault lies with the law.”

“Gramercy! so 'tis the law's fault that ill men break it?”

“I mean not so; but the law in this land slays an honest man an if he

do but steal. What follows? he would be pitiful, but is discouraged

herefrom; pity gains him no pity, and doubles his peril: an he but cut

a purse his life is forfeit; therefore cutteth he the throat to boot, to

save his own neck: dead men tell no tales. Pray then for the poor soul

who by bloody laws is driven to kill or else be slaughtered; were there

less of this unreasonable gibbeting on the highroad, there should be

less enforced cutting of throats in dark woods, my masters.”

“Fewer words had served,” replied Gerard coldly. “I asked a question, I

am answered,” and suddenly doffing his bonnet--

“'Obsecro Deum omnipotentem, ut, qua cruce jam pendent isti quindecim

latrones fures et homicidae, in ea homicida fur et latro tu pependeris

quam citissime, pro publica salute, in honorem justi Dei cui sit gloria,

in aeternum, Amen.'”

“And so good day.”

The greedy outlaw was satisfied last. “That is Latin,” he muttered, “and

more than I bargained for.” So indeed it was.

And he returned to his business with a mind at ease. The friends

pondered in silence the many events of the last few hours.

At last Gerard said thoughtfully, “That she-bear saved both our lives-by

God's will.”

“Like enough,” replied Denys; “and talking of that, it was lucky we did

not dawdle over our supper.”

“What mean you?”

“I mean they are not all hanged; I saw a refuse of seven or eight as

black as ink around our fire.”

“When? when?”

“Ere we had left it five minutes.”

“Good heavens! and you said not a word.”

“It would but have worried you, and had set our friend a looking back,

and mayhap tempted him to get his skull split. All other danger was

over; they could not see us, we were out of the moonshine, and indeed,

just turning a corner. Ah! there is the sun; and here are the gates of

Dusseldorf. Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort!”

“My head! my head!” was all poor Gerard could reply.

So many shocks, emotions, perils, horrors, added to the wound, his

first, had tried his youthful body and sensitive nature too severely.

It was noon of the same day.

In a bedroom of “The Silver Lion” the rugged Denys sat anxious, watching

his young friend.

And he lay raging with fever, delirious at intervals, and one word for

ever on his lips.

“Margaret!--Margaret Margaret!”

CHAPTER XXVI

It was the afternoon of the next day. Gerard was no longer lightheaded,

but very irritable and full of fancies; and in one of these he begged

Denys to get him a lemon to suck. Denys, who from a rough soldier had

been turned by tender friendship into a kind of grandfather, got up

hastily, and bidding him set his mind at ease, “lemons he should have in

the twinkling of a quart pot,” went and ransacked the shops for them.

They were not so common in the North as they are now, and he was absent

a long while, and Gerard getting very impatient, when at last the door

opened. But it was not Denys. Entered softly an imposing figure; an old

gentleman in a long sober gown trimmed with rich fur, cherry-coloured

hose, and pointed shoes, with a sword by his side in a morocco scabbard,

a ruff round his neck not only starched severely, but treacherously

stiffened in furrows by rebatoes, or a little hidden framework of wood;

and on his head a four-cornered cap with a fur border; on his chin and

bosom a majestic white beard. Gerard was in no doubt as to the vocation

of his visitor, for, the sword excepted, this was familiar to him as the

full dress of a physician. Moreover, a boy followed at his heels with

a basket, where phials, lint, and surgical tools rather courted than

shunned observation. The old gentleman came softly to the bedside, and

said mildly and sotto voce, “How is't with thee, my son?”

Gerard answered gratefully that his wound gave him little pain now; but

his throat was parched, and his head heavy.

“A wound! they told me not of that. Let me see it. Ay, ay, a good clean

bite. The mastiff had sound teeth that took this out, I warrant me;”

and the good doctor's sympathy seemed to run off to the quadruped he had

conjured, his jackal.

“This must be cauterized forthwith, or we shall have you starting back

from water, and turning somersaults in bed under our hands. 'Tis the

year for raving curs, and one hath done your business; but we will

baffle him yet. Urchin, go heat thine iron.”

“But, sir,” edged in Gerard, “'twas no dog, but a bear.”

“A bear! Young man,” remonstrated the senior severely, “think what you

say; 'tis ill jesting with the man of art who brings his grey hairs and

long study to heal you. A bear, quotha! Had you dissected as many bears

as I, or the tithe, and drawn their teeth to keep your hand in, you

would know that no bear's jaw ever made this foolish trifling wound. I

tell you 'twas a dog, and since you put me to it, I even deny that it

was a dog of magnitude, but neither more nor less than one of these

little furious curs that are so rife, and run devious, biting each manly

leg, and laying its wearer low, but for me and my learned brethren, who

still stay the mischief with knife and cautery.”

“Alas, sir! when said I 'twas a bear's jaw? I said, 'A bear:' it was his

paw, now.”

“And why didst not tell me that at once?”

“Because you kept telling me instead.”

“Never conceal aught from your leech, young man,” continued the senior,

who was a good talker, but one of the worst listeners in Europe. “Well,

it is an ill business. All the horny excrescences of animals, to wit,

claws of tigers, panthers, badgers, cats, bears, and the like, and

horn of deer, and nails of humans, especially children, are imbued with

direst poison. Y'had better have been bitten by a cur, whatever you may

say, than gored by bull or stag, or scratched by bear. However, shalt

have a good biting cataplasm for thy leg; meantime keep we the

body cool: put out thy tongue!-good!-fever. Let me feel thy pulse:

good!--fever. I ordain flebotomy, and on the instant.”

“Flebotomy! that is bloodletting: humph! Well, no matter, if 'tis sure

to cure me, for I will not lie idle here.” The doctor let him know that

flebotomy was infallible, especially in this case.

“Hans, go fetch the things needful, and I will entertain the patient

meantime with reasons.”

The man of art then explained to Gerard that in disease the blood

becomes hot and distempered and more or less poisonous; but a portion of

this unhealthy liquid removed, Nature is fain to create a purer fluid to

fill its place. Bleeding, therefore, being both a cooler and a purifier,

was a specific in all diseases, for all diseases were febrile, whatever

empirics might say.

“But think not,” said he warmly, “that it suffices to bleed; any paltry

barber can open a vein (though not all can close it again). The art is

to know what vein to empty for what disease. T'other day they brought me

one tormented with earache. I let him blood in the right thigh, and away

flew his earache. By-the-by, he has died since then. Another came with

the toothache. I bled him behind the ear, and relieved him in a jiffy.

He is also since dead as it happens. I bled our bailiff between the

thumb and forefinger for rheumatism. Presently he comes to me with

a headache and drumming in the ears, and holds out his hand over the

basin; but I smiled at his folly, and bled him in the left ankle sore

against his will, and made his head as light as a nut.”

Diverging then from the immediate theme after the manner of enthusiasts,

the reverend teacher proceeded thus:

“Know, young man, that two schools of art contend at this moment

throughout Europe. The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna,

Rhazes, Albucazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and

the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and

Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine's very

oracles, Phoebus, Chiron, Aesculapius, and his sons Podalinus and

Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Praxagoras, who invented the arteries,

and Dioctes, 'qui primus urinae animum dedit.' All these taught orally.

Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Aesculapius, and of him we

have manuscripts; to him we owe 'the vital principle.' He also invented

the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest; and above all he

dissected; yet only quadrupeds, for the brutal prejudices of the pagan

vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed

Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in the human

body.”

“Surely, sir, the Almighty gave us all that is in our bodies, and not

Aristotle, nor any Grecian man,” objected Gerard humbly.

“Child! of course He gave us the thing; but Aristotle did more, he gave

us the name of the thing. But young men will still be talking. The

next great light was Galen; he studied at Alexandria, then the home

of science. He, justly malcontent with quadrupeds, dissected apes, as

coming nearer to man, and bled like a Trojan. Then came Theophilus, who

gave us the nerves, the lacteal vessels, and the pia mater.”

This worried Gerard. “I cannot lie still and hear it said that mortal

man bestowed the parts which Adam our father took from Him, who made him

of the clay, and us his sons.”

“Was ever such perversity?” said the doctor, his colour rising. “Who is

the real donor of a thing to man? he who plants it secretly in the

dark recesses of man's body, or the learned wight who reveals it to

his intelligence, and so enriches his mind with the knowledge of it?

Comprehension is your only true possession. Are you answered?”

“I am put to silence, sir.”

“And that is better still; for garrulous patients are ill to cure,

especially in fever; I say, then, that Eristratus gave us the cerebral

nerves and the milk vessels; nay, more, he was the inventor of

lithotomy, whatever you may say. Then came another whom I forget; you do

somewhat perturb me with your petty exceptions. Then came Ammonius, the

author of lithotrity, and here comes Hans with the basin-to stay your

volubility. Blow thy chafer, boy, and hand me the basin; 'tis well.

Arabians, quotha! What are they but a sect of yesterday who about the

year 1000 did fall in with the writings of those very Greeks, and read

them awry, having no concurrent light of their own? for their demigod,

and camel-driver, Mahound, impostor in science as in religion, had

strictly forbidden them anatomy, even of the lower animals, the which he

who severeth from medicine, 'tollit solem e mundo,' as Tully quoth. Nay,

wonder not at my fervour, good youth; where the general weal stands in

jeopardy, a little warmth is civic, humane, and honourable. Now there is

settled of late in this town a pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric,

who, despising anatomy, and scarce knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet

spirited away half my patients; and I tremble for the rest. Put forth

thine ankle; and thou, Hans, breathe on the chafer.”

Whilst matters were in this posture, in came Denys with the lemons, and

stood surprised. “What sport is toward?” said he, raising his brows.

Gerard coloured a little, and told him the learned doctor was going to

flebotomize him and cauterize him; that was all.

“Ay! indeed; and yon imp, what bloweth he hot coals for?”

“What should it be for,” said the doctor to Gerard, “but to cauterize

the vein when opened and the poisonous blood let free? 'Tis the only

safe way. Avicenna indeed recommends a ligature of the vein; but how

'tis to be done he saith not, nor knew he himself I wot, nor any of the

spawn of Ishmael. For me, I have no faith in such tricksy expedients;

and take this with you for a safe principle: 'Whatever an Arab or

Arabist says is right, must be wrong.'”

“Oh, I see now what 'tis for,” said Denys; “and art thou so simple as

to let him put hot iron to thy living flesh? didst ever keep thy little

finger but ten moments in a candle? and this will be as many minutes.

Art not content to burn in purgatory after thy death? must thou needs

buy a foretaste on't here?”

“I never thought of that,” said Gerard gravely; “the good doctor spake

not of burning, but of cautery; to be sure 'tis all one, but cautery

sounds not so fearful as burning.”

“Imbecile! That is their art; to confound a plain man with dark words,

till his hissing flesh lets him know their meaning. Now listen to what

I have seen. When a soldier bleeds from a wound in battle, these leeches

say, 'Fever. Blood him!' and so they burn the wick at t'other end too.

They bleed the bled. Now at fever's heels comes desperate weakness; then

the man needs all his blood to live; but these prickers and burners,

having no forethought, recking nought of what is sure to come in a few

hours, and seeing like brute beasts only what is under their noses,

having meantime robbed him of the very blood his hurt had spared him to

battle that weakness withal; and so he dies exhausted. Hundreds have I

seen so scratched and pricked out of the world, Gerard, and tall fellows

too; but lo! if they have the luck to be wounded where no doctor can

be had, then they live; this too have I seen. Had I ever outlived that

field in Brabant but for my most lucky mischance, lack of chirurgery?

The frost chocked all my bleeding wounds, and so I lived. A chirurgeon

had pricked yet one more hole in this my body with his lance, and

drained my last drop out, and my spirit with it. Seeing them thus

distraught in bleeding of the bleeding soldier, I place no trust in

them; for what slays a veteran may well lay a milk-and-water bourgeois

low.”

“This sounds like common sense,” sighed Gerard languidly, “but no

need to raise your voice so; I was not born deaf, and just now I hear

acutely.”

“Common sense! very common sense indeed,” shouted the bad listener;

“why, this is a soldier; a brute whose business is to kill men, not cure

them.” He added in very tolerable French, “Woe be to you, unlearned

man, if you come between a physician and his patient; and woe be to you,

misguided youth, if you listen to that man of blood.”

“Much obliged,” said Denys, with mock politeness; “but I am a true man,

and would rob no man of his name. I do somewhat in the way of blood, but

not worth mention in this presence. For one I slay, you slay a score;

and for one spoonful of blood I draw, you spill a tubful. The world is

still gulled by shows. We soldiers vapour with long swords, and even in

war be-get two foes for every one we kill; but you smooth gownsmen, with

soft phrases and bare bodkins, 'tis you that thin mankind.”

“A sick chamber is no place for jesting,” cried the physician.

“No, doctor, nor for bawling,” said the patient peevishly.

“Come, young man,” said the senior kindly, “be reasonable. Cuilibet

in sua arte credendum est. My whole life has been given to this art. I

studied at Montpelier; the first school in France, and by consequence in

Europe. There learned I Dririmancy, Scatomancy, Pathology, Therapeusis,

and, greater than them all, Anatomy. For there we disciples of

Hippocrates and Galen had opportunities those great ancients never knew.

Goodbye, quadrupeds and apes, and paganism, and Mohammedanism; we bought

of the churchwardens, we shook the gallows; we undid the sexton's work

of dark nights, penetrated with love of science and our kind; all the

authorities had their orders from Paris to wink; and they winked. Gods

of Olympus, how they winked! The gracious king assisted us: he sent us

twice a year a living criminal condemned to die, and said, 'Deal ye with

him as science asks; dissect him alive, if ye think fit.'”

“By the liver of Herod, and Nero's bowels, he'll make me blush for the

land that bore me, an' if he praises it any more,” shouted Denys at the

top of his voice.

Gerard gave a little squawk, and put his fingers in his ears; but

speedily drew them out and shouted angrily, and as loudly, “you great

roaring, blaspheming bull of Basan, hold your noisy tongue!”

Denys summoned a contrite look.

“Tush, slight man,” said the doctor, with calm contempt, and vibrated

a hand over him as in this age men make a pointer dog down charge; then

flowed majestic on. “We seldom or never dissected the living criminal,

except in part. We mostly inoculated them with such diseases as the

barren time afforded, selecting of course the more interesting ones.”

“That means the foulest,” whispered Denys meekly.

“These we watched through all their stages to maturity.”

“Meaning the death of the poor rogue,” whispered Denys meekly.

“And now, my poor sufferer, who best merits your confidence, this

honest soldier with his youth, his ignorance, and his prejudices, or a

greybeard laden with the gathered wisdom of ages?”

“That is,” cried Denys impatiently, “will you believe what a jackdaw in

a long gown has heard from a starling in a long gown, who heard it from

a jay-pie, who heard it from a magpie, who heard it from a popinjay; or

will you believe what I, a man with nought to gain by looking awry, nor

speaking false, have seen; nor heard with the ears which are given us

to gull us, but seen with these sentinels mine eye, seen, seen; to wit,

that fevered and blooded men die, that fevered men not blooded live?

stay, who sent for this sang-sue? Did you?”

“Not I. I thought you had.”

“Nay,” explained the doctor, “the good landlord told me one was 'down'

in his house; so I said to myself, 'A stranger, and in need of my art,'

and came incontinently.”

“It was the act of a good Christian, sir.”

“Of a good bloodhound,” cried Denys contemptuously. “What, art thou so

green as not to know that all these landlords are in league with certain

of their fellow-citizens, who pay them toll on each booty? Whatever

you pay this ancient for stealing your life blood, of that the landlord

takes his third for betraying you to him. Nay, more, as soon as ever

your blood goes down the stair in that basin there, the landlord will

see it or smell it, and send swiftly to his undertaker and get his third

out of that job. For if he waited till the doctor got downstairs, the

doctor would be beforehand and bespeak his undertaker, and then he would

get the black thirds. Say I sooth, old Rouge et Noir? dites!”

“Denys, Denys, who taught you to think so ill of man?”

“Mine eyes, that are not to be gulled by what men say, seeing this many

a year what they do, in all the lands I travel.”

The doctor with some address made use of these last words to escape

the personal question. “I too have eyes as well as thou, and go not by

tradition only, but by what I have seen, and not only seen, but done.

I have healed as many men by bleeding as that interloping Arabist has

killed for want of it. 'Twas but t'other day I healed one threatened

with leprosy; I but bled him at the tip of the nose. I cured last year

a quartan ague: how? bled its forefinger. Our cure lost his memory. I

brought it him back on the point of my lance; I bled him behind the

ear. I bled a dolt of a boy, and now he is the only one who can tell his

right hand from his left in a whole family of idiots. When the plague

was here years ago, no sham plague, such as empyrics proclaim every six

years or so, but the good honest Byzantine pest, I blooded an alderman

freely, and cauterized the symptomatic buboes, and so pulled him out

of the grave; whereas our then chirurgeon, a most pernicious Arabist,

caught it himself, and died of it, aha, calling on Rhazes, Avicenna,

and Mahound, who, could they have come, had all perished as miserably as

himself.”

“Oh, my poor ears,” sighed Gerard.

“And am I fallen so low that one of your presence and speech rejects my

art and listens to a rude soldier, so far behind even his own miserable

trade as to bear an arbalest, a worn-out invention, that German

children shoot at pigeons with, but German soldiers mock at since ever

arquebusses came and put them down?”

“You foul-mouthed old charlatan,” cried Denys, “the arbalest is

shouldered by taller men than ever stood in Rhenish hose, and even now

it kills as many more than your noisy, stinking arquebus, as the lancet

does than all our toys together. Go to! He was no fool who first called

you 'leeches.' Sang-sues! va!”

Gerard groaned. “By the holy virgin, I wish you were both at Jericho,

bellowing.'

“Thank you comrade. Then I'll bark no more, but at need I'll bite. If

he has a lance, I have a sword; if he bleeds you, I'll bleed him. The

moment his lance pricks your skin, little one, my sword-hilt knocks

against his ribs; I have said it.”

And Denys turned pale, folded his arms, and looked gloomy and dangerous.

Gerard sighed wearily. “Now, as all this is about me, give me leave to

say a word.”

“Ay! let the young man choose life or death for himself.”

Gerard then indirectly rebuked his noisy counsellors by contrast and

example. He spoke with unparalleled calmness, sweetness, and gentleness.

And these were the words of Gerard the son of Eli. “I doubt not you both

mean me well; but you assassinate me between you. Calmness and quiet are

everything to me; but you are like two dogs growling over a bone. And

in sooth, bone I should be, did this uproar last long.”

There was a dead silence, broken only by the silvery voice of Gerard,

as he lay tranquil, and gazed calmly at the ceiling, and trickled into

words.

“First, venerable sir, I thank you for coming to see me, whether from

humanity, or in the way of honest gain; all trades must live.

“Your learning, reverend sir, seems great, to me at least, and for your

experience, your age voucheth it.

“You say you have bled many, and of these many, many have not died

thereafter, but lived, and done well. I must needs believe you.”

The physician bowed; Denys grunted.

“Others, you say, you have bled, and-they are dead. I must needs believe

you.

“Denys knows few things compared with you, but he knows them well. He is

a man not given to conjecture. This I myself have noted. He says he has

seen the fevered and blooded for the most part die; the fevered and not

blooded live. I must needs believe him.

“Here, then, all is doubt.

“But thus much is certain; if I be bled, I must pay you a fee, and be

burnt and excruciated with a hot iron, who am no felon.

“Pay a certain price in money and anguish for a doubtful remedy, that

will I never.

“Next to money and ease, peace and quiet are certain goods, above all in

a sick-room; but 'twould seem men cannot argue medicine without heat and

raised voices; therefore, sir, I will essay a little sleep, and Denys

will go forth and gaze on the females of the place, and I will keep

you no longer from those who can afford to lay out blood and money in

flebotomy and cautery.”

The old physician had naturally a hot temper; he had often during this

battle of words mastered it with difficulty, and now it mastered him.

The most dignified course was silence; he saw this, and drew himself up,

and made loftily for the door, followed close by his little boy and big

basket.

But at the door he choked, he swelled, he burst. He whirled and came

back open-mouthed, and the little boy and big basket had to

whisk semicircularly not to be run down, for de minimis non curat

Medicina-even when not in a rage.

“Ah! you reject my skill, you scorn my art. My revenge shall be to leave

you to yourself; lost idiot, take your last look at me, and at the sun.

Your blood be on your head!” And away he stamped.

But on reaching the door he whirled and came back; his wicker tail

twirling round after him like a cat's.

“In twelve hours at furthest you will be in the secondary stage of

fever. Your head will split. Your carotids will thump. Aha! And let but

a pin fall, you will jump to the ceiling. Then send for me; and I'll not

come.” He departed. But at the door-handle gathered fury, wheeled and

came flying, with pale, terror-stricken boy and wicker tail whisking

after him. “Next will come--CRAMPS of the STOMACH. Aha!

“Then--BILIOUS VOMIT. Aha!

“Then--COLD SWEAT, and DEADLY STUPOR.

“Then--CONFUSION OF ALL THE SENSES.

“Then--BLOODY VOMIT.

“And after that nothing can save you, not even I; and if I could I would

not, and so farewell!”

Even Denys changed colour at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard

only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard

bolster with kindling eye.

This added fuel to the fire, and brought the insulted ancient back from

the impassable door, with his whisking train.

“And after that--MADNESS!

“And after that--BLACK VOMIT

“And then--CONVULSIONS!

“And then--THAT CESSATION OF ALL VITAL FUNCTIONS THE VULGAR CALL

'DEATH,' for which thank your own Satanic folly and insolence.

Farewell.” He went. He came. He roared, “And think not to be buried in

any Christian church-yard; for the bailiff is my good friend, and I

shall tell him how and why you died: felo de se! felo de se! Farewell.”

Gerard sprang to his feet on the bed by some supernatural gymnastic

power excitement lent him, and seeing him so moved, the vindictive

orator came back at him fiercer than ever, to launch some master-threat

the world has unhappily lost; for as he came with his whisking train,

and shaking his fist, Gerard hurled the bolster furiously in his face

and knocked him down like a shot, the boy's head cracked under his

falling master's, and crash went the dumb-stricken orator into the

basket, and there sat wedged in an inverted angle, crushing phial

after phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar, but in a squatting

posture; so that they sat in a sequence, like graduated specimens, the

smaller howling. But soon the doctor's face filled with horror, and he

uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled

with wonderful agility for one of his age.

He was sitting on the hot coals.

They had singed the cloth and were now biting the man. Struggling wildly

but vainly to get out of the basket, he rolled yelling over with it

sideways, and lo! a great hissing; then the humane Gerard ran and

wrenched off the tight basket not without a struggle. The doctor lay on

his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked a

moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which, however, being

as various and even beautiful in colour as they were odious in taste,

had strangely diversified his grey robe, and painted it more gaudy than

neat.

Gerard and Denys raised him up and consoled him. “Courage, man, 'tis

but cautery; balm of Gilead, why, you recommend it but now to my comrade

here.”

The physician replied only by a look of concentrated spite, and went out

in dead silence, thrusting his stomach forth before him in the drollest

way. The boy followed him next moment but in that slight interval he

left off whining, burst into a grin, and conveyed to the culprits by an

unrefined gesture his accurate comprehension of, and rapturous though

compressed joy at, his master's disaster.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE worthy physician went home and told his housekeeper he was in agony

from “a bad burn.” Those were the words. For in phlogistic as in other

things, we cauterize our neighbour's digits, but burn our own fingers.

His housekeeper applied some old women's remedy mild as milk. He

submitted like a lamb to her experience: his sole object in the case

of this patient being cure: meantime he made out his bill for broken

phials, and took measures to have the travellers imprisoned at once. He

made oath before a magistrate that they, being strangers and indebted to

him, meditated instant flight from the township.

Alas! it was his unlucky day. His sincere desire and honest endeavour to

perjure himself were baffled by a circumstance he had never foreseen nor

indeed thought possible.

He had spoken the truth.

And IN AN AFFIDAVIT!

The officers, on reaching “The Silver Lion”, found the birds were flown.

They went down to the river, and from intelligence they received there,

started up the bank in hot pursuit.

This temporary escape the friends owed to Denys's good sense and

observation. After a peal of laughter, that it was a cordial to hear,

and after venting his watchword three times, he turned short grave, and

told Gerard Dusseldorf was no place for them. “That old fellow,” said

he, “went off unnaturally silent for such a babbler: we are strangers

here; the bailiff is his friend: in five minutes we shall lie in a

dungeon for assaulting a Dusseldorf dignity, are you strong enough to

hobble to the water's edge? it is hard by. Once there you have but to

lie down in a boat instead of a bed; and what is the odds?”

“The odds, Denys? untold, and all in favour of the boat. I pine for

Rome; for Rome is my road to Sevenbergen; and then we shall lie in the

boat, but ON the Rhine, the famous Rhine; the cool, refreshing Rhine.

I feel its breezes coming: the very sight will cure a little

hop-'o-my-thumb fever like mine; away! away!”

Finding his excitable friend in this mood, Denys settled hastily with

the landlord, and they hurried to the river. On inquiry they found to

their dismay that the public boat was gone this half hour, and no other

would start that day, being afternoon. By dint, however, of asking a

great many questions, and collecting a crowd, they obtained an offer of

a private boat from an old man and his two sons.

This was duly ridiculed by a bystander. “The current is too strong for

three oars.”

“Then my comrade and I will help row,” said the invalid.

“No need,” said the old man. “Bless your silly heart, he owns t'other

boat.”

There was a powerful breeze right astern; the boatmen set a broad sail,

and rowing also, went off at a spanking rate.

“Are ye better, lad, for the river breeze?”

“Much better. But indeed the doctor did me good.”

“The doctor? Why, you would none of his cures.”

“No, but I mean--you will say I am nought--but knocking the old fool

down--somehow--it soothed me.”

“Amiable dove! how thy little character opens more and more every day,

like a rosebud. I read thee all wrong at first.”

“Nay, Denys, mistake me not, neither. I trust I had borne with his idle

threats, though in sooth his voice went through my poor ears; but he was

an infidel, or next door to one, and such I have been taught to abhor.

Did he not as good as say, we owed our inward parts to men with long

Greek names, and not to Him, whose name is but a syllable, but whose

hand is over all the earth? Pagan!”

“So you knocked him down forthwith--like a good Christian.”

“Now, Denys, you will still be jesting. Take not an ill man's part. Had

it been a thunderbolt from Heaven, he had met but his due; yet he took

but a sorry bolster from this weak arm.”

“What weak arm?” inquired Denys, with twinkling eyes. “I have lived

among arms, and by Samson's hairy pow never saw I one more like a

catapult. The bolster wrapped round his nose and the two ends kissed

behind his head, and his forehead resounded, and had he been Goliath,

or Julius Caesar, instead of an old quacksalver, down he had gone. St.

Denys guard me from such feeble opposites as thou! and above all from

their weak arms--thou diabolical young hypocrite.”

The river took many turns, and this sometimes brought the wind on their

side instead of right astern. Then they all moved to the weather side

to prevent the boat heeling over too much all but a child of about five

years old, the grandson of the boatman, and his darling; this urchin

had slipped on board at the moment of starting, and being too light

to affect the boat's trim, was above, or rather below, the laws of

navigation.

They sailed merrily on, little conscious that they were pursued by a

whole posse of constables armed with the bailiff's writ, and that their

pursuers were coming up with them; for if the wind was strong, so was

the current.

And now Gerard suddenly remembered that this was a very good way to

Rome, but not to Burgundy. “Oh, Denys,” said he, with an almost alarmed

look, “this is not your road.”

“I know it,” said Denys quietly; “but what can I do? I cannot leave thee

till the fever leaves thee; and it is on thee still, for thou art

both red and white by turns; I have watched thee. I must e'en go on to

Cologne, I doubt, and then strike across.”

“Thank Heaven,” said Gerard joyfully. He added eagerly, with a little

touch of self-deception, “'Twere a sin to be so near Cologne and not see

it. Oh, man, it is a vast and ancient city such as I have often dreamed

of, but ne'er had the good luck to see. Me miserable, by what hard

fortune do I come to it now? Well then, Denys,” continued the young man

less warmly, “it is old enough to have been founded by a Roman lady

in the first century of grace, and sacked by Attila the barbarous, and

afterwards sore defaced by the Norman Lothaire. And it has a church

for every week in the year forbye chapels and churches innumerable

of convents and nunneries, and above all, the stupendous minster yet

unfinished, and therein, but in their own chapel, lie the three kings

that brought gifts to our Lord, Melchior gold, and Gaspar frankincense,

and Balthazar the black king, he brought myrrh; and over their bones

stands the shrine the wonder of the world; it is of ever-shining brass

brighter than gold, studded with images fairly wrought, and inlaid with

exquisite devices, and brave with colours; and two broad stripes run to

and fro, of jewels so great, so rare, each might adorn a crown or

ransom its wearer at need; and upon it stand the three kings curiously

counterfeited, two in solid silver, richly gilt; these be bareheaded;

but he of Aethiop ebony, and beareth a golden crown; and in the midst

our blessed Lady, in virgin silver, with Christ in her arms; and at the

corners, in golden branches, four goodly waxen tapers do burn night and

day. Holy eyes have watched and renewed that light unceasingly for

ages, and holy eyes shall watch them in saecula. I tell thee, Denys, the

oldest song, the oldest Flemish or German legend, found them burning,

and they shall light the earth to its grave. And there is St. Ursel's

church, a British saint's, where lie her bones and all the other virgins

her fellows; eleven thousand were they who died for the faith, being put

to the sword by barbarous Moors, on the twenty-third day of October, two

hundred and thirty-eight. Their bones are piled in the vaults, and many

of their skulls are in the church. St. Ursel's is in a thin golden case,

and stands on the high altar, but shown to humble Christians only on

solemn days.”

“Eleven thousand virgins!” cried Denys. “What babies German men must

have been in days of yore. Well, would all their bones might turn flesh

again, and their skulls sweet faces, as we pass through the gates. 'Tis

odds but some of them are wearied of their estate by this time.”

“Tush, Denys!” said Gerard; “why wilt thou, being good, still make

thyself seem evil? If thy wishing-cap be on, pray that we may meet the

meanest she of all those wise virgins in the next world, and to that

end let us reverence their holy dust in this one. And then there is the

church of the Maccabees, and the cauldron in which they and their

mother Solomona were boiled by a wicked king for refusing to eat swine's

flesh.”

“Oh, peremptory king! and pig-headed Maccabees! I had eaten bacon with

my pork liever than change places at the fire with my meat.”

“What scurvy words are these? it was their faith.”

“Nay, bridle thy choler, and tell me, are there nought but churches

in this thy so vaunted city? for I affect rather Sir Knight than Sir

Priest.”

“Ay, marry, there is an university near a hundred years old; and there

is a market-place, no fairer in the world, and at the four sides of

it houses great as palaces; and there is a stupendous senate-house all

covered with images, and at the head of them stands one of stout Herman

Gryn, a soldier like thyself, lad.”

“Ay. Tell me of him! what feat of arms earned him his niche?”

“A rare one. He slew a lion in fair combat, with nought but his cloak

and a short sword. He thrust the cloak in the brute's mouth, and cut

his spine in twain, and there is the man's effigy and eke the lion's to

prove it. The like was never done but by three more, I ween; Samson

was one, and Lysimachus of Macedon another, and Benaiah, a captain of

David's host.”

“Marry! three tall fellows. I would like well to sup with them all

to-night.”

“So would not I,” said Gerard drily.

“But tell me,” said Denys, with some surprise, “when wast thou in

Cologne?”

“Never but in the spirit. I prattle with the good monks by the way, and

they tell me all the notable things both old and new.

“Ay, ay, have not I seen your nose under their very cowls? But when I

speak of matters that are out of sight, my words they are small, and the

thing it was big; now thy words be as big or bigger than the things; art

a good limner with thy tongue; I have said it; and for a saint, as ready

with hand, or steel, or bolster--as any poor sinner living; and so,

shall I tell thee which of all these things thou hast described draws me

to Cologne?”

“Ay, Denys.”

“Thou, and thou only; no dead saint, but my living friend and comrade

true; 'tis thou alone draws Denys of Burgundy to Cologne?”

Gerard hung his head.

At this juncture one of the younger boatmen suddenly inquired what was

amiss with “little turnip-face?”

His young nephew thus described had just come aft grave as a judge, and

burst out crying in the midst without more ado. On this phenomenon,

so sharply defined, he was subjected to many interrogatories, some

coaxingly uttered, some not. Had he hurt himself? had he over-ate

himself? was he frightened? was he cold? was he sick? was he an idiot?

To all and each he uttered the same reply, which English writers render

thus, oh! oh! oh! and French writers thus, hi! hi! hi! So fixed are

Fiction's phonetics.

“Who can tell what ails the peevish brat?” snarled the young boatman

impatiently. “Rather look this way and tell me whom be these after!”

The old man and his other son looked, and saw four men walking along

the east bank of the river; at the sight they left rowing awhile, and

gathered mysteriously in the stern, whispering and casting glances

alternately at their passengers and the pedestrians.

The sequel may show they would have employed speculation better in

trying to fathom the turnip-face mystery; I beg pardon of my age: I mean

the deep mind of dauntless infancy.

“If 'tis as I doubt,” whispered one of the young men, “why not give them

a squeak for their lives; let us make for the west bank.”

The old man objected stoutly. “What,” said he, “run our heads into

trouble for strangers! are ye mad? Nay, let us rather cross to the east

side; still side with the strong arm! that is my rede. What say you,

Werter?”

“I say, please yourselves.”

What age and youth could not decide upon, a puff of wind settled most

impartially. Came a squall, and the little vessel heeled over; the men

jumped to windward to trim her; but to their horror they saw in the very

boat from stem to stern a ditch of water rushing to leeward, and the

next moment they saw nothing, but felt the Rhine, the cold and rushing

Rhine.

“Turnip-face” had drawn the plug.

The officers unwound the cords from their waists.

Gerard could swim like a duck; but the best swimmer, canted out of a

boat capsized, must sink ere he can swim. The dark water bubbled loudly

over his head, and then he came up almost blind and deaf for a moment;

the next, he saw the black boat bottom uppermost, and figures clinging

to it; he shook his head like a water-dog, and made for it by a sort of

unthinking imitation; but ere he reached it he heard a voice behind him

cry not loud but with deep manly distress, “Adieu, comrade, adieu!”

He looked, and there was poor Denys sinking, sinking, weighed down by

his wretched arbalest. His face was pale, and his eyes staring wide,

and turned despairingly on his dear friend. Gerard uttered a wild cry

of love and terror, and made for him, cleaving the water madly; but the

next moment Denys was under water.

The next, Gerard was after him.

The officers knotted a rope and threw the end in.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Things good and evil balance themselves in a remarkable manner and

almost universally. The steel bow attached to the arbalestrier's back,

and carried above his head, had sunk him. That very steel bow, owing

to that very position, could not escape Gerard's hands, one of which

grasped it, and the other went between the bow and the cord, which was

as good. The next moment, Denys, by means of his crossbow, was hoisted

with so eager a jerk that half his body bobbed up out of water.

“Now, grip me not! grip me not!” cried Gerard, in mortal terror of that

fatal mistake.

“Pas si bete,” gurgled Denys.

Seeing the sort of stuff he had to deal with, Gerard was hopeful and

calm directly. “On thy back,” said he sharply, and seizing the arbalest,

and taking a stroke forward, he aided the desired movement. “Hand on

my shoulder! slap the water with the other hand! No--with a downward

motion; so. Do nothing more than I bid thee.” Gerard had got hold of

Denys's long hair, and twisting it hard, caught the end between his side

teeth, and with the strong muscles of his youthful neck easily kept up

the soldier's head, and struck out lustily across the current. A moment

he had hesitated which side to make for, little knowing the awful

importance of that simple decision; then seeing the west bank a trifle

nearest, he made towards it, instead of swimming to jail like a good

boy, and so furnishing one a novel incident. Owing to the force of the

current they slanted considerably, and when they had covered near a

hundred yards, Denys murmured uneasily, “How much more of it?”

“Courage,” mumbled Gerard. “Whatever a duck knows, a Dutchman knows; art

safe as in bed.”

The next moment, to their surprise, they found themselves in shallow

water, and so waded ashore. Once on terra firma, they looked at one

another from head to foot as if eyes could devour, then by one impulse

flung each an arm round the other's neck, and panted there with hearts

too full to speak. And at this sacred moment life was sweet as heaven to

both; sweetest perhaps to the poor exiled lover, who had just saved his

friend. Oh, joy to whose height what poet has yet soared, or ever tried

to soar? To save a human life; and that life a loved one. Such moments

are worth living for, ay, three score years and ten. And then, calmer,

they took hands, and so walked along the bank hand in hand like a pair

of sweethearts, scarce knowing or caring whither they went.

The boat people were all safe on the late concave, now convex craft,

Herr Turnip-face, the “Inverter of things,” being in the middle. All

this fracas seemed not to have essentially deranged his habits. At least