Kate stood at her favorite window, looking down upon five little boys playing barley break in a solemn plantigrade Dutch fashion in the dust of Zaandpoort Street by the canal. Opposite her stood Barra. He was dressed in his customary close-fitting suit of black velvet, and his slim waist was belted by the orange sash of a high councillor, while by his side swung a splendid sword in a scabbard of gold. A light cape of black velvet was about his shoulders, and its orange lining of fine silk drooped gracefully over his arm.
"Listen to me, dear lady," he was saying. "I am a soldier, and not a courtier. I have not glozing words to woo you with. No more than a plain man's honest words. I love you, and from that I shall never change. At present I can offer you but a share of the exile's bitter bread. But when the prince comes to his own, there shall be none in broad Scotland able to count either men or money with Murdo, Earl of Barra and of the Small Isles."
"My Lord Barra," said Kate, "I thank you for your exceeding courtesy. I feel your surpassing condescension. But I cannot marry you now nor yet again. If I loved you at all I should be proud and glad to take you by the hand and walk out of the door with you into the wide world—for you renouncing friends, fame, wealth, all, as if they were so many dead leaves of the autumn. But since I do not and cannot love you, believe that theproffer of great honor and rank can never alter my decision. This, indeed, I have told you before."
"Well do I know," answered the high councillor, "that you have spoken, concerning me, words hard and cruel to be borne. But that was before either of us understood the depth of my devotion—before you knew that I desired, as I seek for salvation, to make you scarcely less in honor than the queen herself, among those isles of the sea, where true hearts abide. The cause of our religion is great. Help me to make of our Scotland a land of faith and freedom. Love me for the sake of the cause, Kate, if not for mine own most unworthy sake."
"The cause is indeed still great and precious to me. I have been honored to suffer the least things for it. Nevertheless the cause is not to be served by one doing wrong, but by many doing right. You are—I believe it—an honorable man, my Lord Barra. You will serve your master faithfully till that good day comes when Scotland shall again have freedom to worship under kirk-rigging or roof-tree, or an it liketh her under the broad span of the sky."
"But you carry in your heart the image of a traitor," said Barra, a little more fiercely—"a double traitor, one whom I have seen false both to his country and to you. Know you that only my bare word stands between your lover and death?"
"I know not whether Walter Gordon be dead or alive," replied Kate, gently. "I say not that I love him, nor yet that he loves me. I do not know. But I say that if he does love me, in the only way I care to be loved, he would rather die a thousand deaths than that, in order to preserve his life, his true love should wed a man whom she cares not for either as lover or as husband."
"Then you will not love me?" said he, bending his head towards her as if to look into her soul.
"I cannot, my Lord Barra," she made him answer; "love comes not like a careful man-servant. It runs not like a well-trained dog at the sounding of a whistle. One cannot draw back the arras of the heart and say to love, 'Hither and speedily!' The wind bloweth, say the preachers, where it listeth. And so love also comes not with observation. Rather, like a thunderstorm, it bears victoriously up against the wind. For just when the will is most set against love, then it takes completest possession of the heart."
"Could you have loved me," he asked, more calmly, "if you had known no other? If the other existed not?"
"That I know not," said Kate. "All my life long I have never loved man or woman where I wanted to love, or was bid to love. Whether, therefore, in this case or that one could have loved serves no purpose in the asking. Nor, indeed, can it be answered. For the only issue is, that of a surety I love you not. And do you, my lord, of your most gentle courtesy, take that answer as one frankly given by an honest maid, and so depart content. There are in this land and in our own country a thousand fairer, a thousand worthier than I."
"Kate," said Barra, more intently and tenderly than he had yet spoken, "some day, and in some isle of quiet bliss where all evil and untoward things are put behind us, I will yet make you love me. For never have I thus set all my fancy on any woman before. And by the word of Murdo, Lord of Barra, none but you will I wed, and, by the honor of my clan, no other shall have you but I!"
He held out his hand. Kate, desiring him to go, gave him hers a little reluctantly. He bent to it and kissed it fervently.
"On this hand I swear," he said, slowly and solemnly, "that while I live it shall be given in marriage to none other, but shall be mine alone. By the graves thatare green on the Isle of Ashes and by the honor of the thirty chieftains of Barra—I swear it."
Kate took her hand quickly again to her.
"Ye have taken a vain oath, my lord," she said, "for marriage and the giving of a hand are not within the compulsion of one, but are the agreement of two. And if this hand is ever given to a man my heart shall go with it, or else Kate McGhie's marriage-bed shall be her resting-grave!"
*****
It was but two years since the Little Marie had carried her first basket of flowers to the streets of Brussels. From an ancient farm nigh to the city she had come, bringing with her her fresh complexion, her beauty, her light, swift, confident, easily influenced spirit.
Then, while yet a child, she had been hunted down, petted, betrayed, and forsaken by the man who, being on a visit to Brussels, had first been attracted by her childish simplicity. It chanced that in the dark days of her despair she had found her way to Amersfort, and finally to the Hostel of the Coronation. She had been there but a bare week when Wat came into her life, and his words to the girl were the first of genuine, unselfish kindness she had listened to in that abode of smiling misery and radiant despair.
As a trampled flower raises its head after a gentle rain, so her scarcely dulled childish purity reawakened within her, and with it—all the more fiercely that it came too late—the love that suffereth all things and upbraideth not. Marie was suddenly struck to the heart by the agony of her position. She might love, but none could give her back true love in return. Her soul abode in blank distress after the fray had been quelled and Walter led away to prison. Without speech to any at the inn of the Coronation, Marie fled to the house of a decent woman of her own country, who undertook the washingand dressing of fine linen—dainty cobweb frilleries for the ladies of the city, and stiffer garmentry for the severe and sober court of the Princess of Orange.
For love had been a plant of swift growth in the lush and ill-tended garden of the girl's heart. Constantly after this both dawn and dusk found her beneath Wat's window. Marie contrived a little basket attached to a rope, which he let down from the window in the swell of the tower. She it was who instructed Wat how to make the first cord of sufficient length and strength by ravelling a stocking and replaiting the yarn. In this fashion Marie brought to Wat's prison-cell such fruits as the warehouses of the Nederlandish companies afforded—strange-smelling delicacies of the utmost Indies, and early dainties from gardens nearer home. Linen, too, fresh and clean, she brought him, and flowers—at all of which, for the consideration of a dole of gold, the jailer winked, so that Wat's heart was abundantly touched by the pathetic devotion of the girl. Scarce could she be induced to accept the money which Wat put into her basket when he let it down again. And even then Marie took the gold only that she might have the means of obtaining other delicacies for Wat—such as were beyond the reach of purchase out of the meagre stipend she received from the laundress of fine linen with whom her working-days were spent.
More seldom did Marie come to the Street of the Prison in the evening after the work of the day was done. For there were many who knew her moving to and fro in these early summer twilights, so that she feared that her mission might be observed and Wat moved to another cell, out of reach of the Street of the Prison.
But one afternoon of sullen clouds and murky weather, when few people were abroad upon the streets of Amersfort, Marie sickened of the hot steamy atmosphere of the laundry and the chatter of the maids of the quarter,in which she was allowed to have no part. She finished her work earlier than the others—perhaps for that reason—and stole quietly away to the tower of Wat's prison, where it jutted out over the cobble-stones of the pavement.
Wat was at his post, looking out, as usual, upon the slackening traffic and quickening pleasure-seeking of the street. He was truly glad to see the girl, and greeted her appearance with a kind smile.
"I had not expected you till the morning," he said. "But I have lived on the freshness of your flowers all day. I have also had my cell washed. Black Peter, my jailer, was inclined to be complaisant to me this morning. It is his birthday, he says."
Wat smiled as he said it. For he had bestowed one of his few remaining coins upon Peter; which, ever since, that worthy had been swallowing to his good health in the shape of pure Hollands. Indeed, at this moment there came from below the rollicking voice of jolly Black Peter, singing a song which ran through a catalogue of camp pleasures and soldierly delights, such as certainly could not all have been enjoyed within the grim precincts of the prison of Amersfort.
"You are sure that there is no friend I can take a message to?" asked the Little Marie, for the fiftieth time; "no beloved mistress to whom I can carry a letter?"
"None," said Wat, smiling sadly. "But there," he continued, pointing quickly across the Street of the Prison at a man hurrying out of sight, "is one whom, an it please you, you may take note of. I am not able to show you a friend. But yonder goes my heart's enemy. There at the corner—the dark man in the suit of velvet, with the orange-lined cloak and the sword hilted with gold."
The Little Marie darted across the street in a moment,and threaded her way deftly among the boisterous traffic of the huxters' stalls. Presently she came back. There was a new and dangerous excitement in her eye.
"I know him," she said; "it is my Lord Barra, the provost-marshal. He is your enemy, you say. It is well. But he was my enemy before he was yours. Sleep sound," she continued, looking up at him with an eye as clear and peaceful as a cloistered nun's. "Take no thought for your enemy, but only, ere you sleep, say a prayer to your Scottish God for the sinful soul of the Little Marie that loves you better than her life."
In the street of Zaandpoort, upon a certain evening, it had grown early dark. The sullen, sultry day had broken down at the gloaming into a black and gurly night of rain, which came in fierce dashes, alternating with fickle, veering flaws and yet stranger lulls and stillnesses. Anon, when the rain slackened, the hurl of the storm overhead could be heard, while up aloft every chimney in Amersfort seemed to shriek aloud in a different key. Maisie had gone down an hour ago and barred the outer door with a stout oaken bolt, hasping the crossbar into its place as an additional precaution. She would sit up, she said, till William returned from duty, and then she would be sure to hear him approach. On a still night she could distinguish his footsteps turning out of the wide spaces of the Dam into the echoing narrows of the street of Zaandpoort.
She and Kate sat between the newly lighted lamp and the fire of wood which Maisie had insisted on making in order to keep out the gusty chills of the night. A cosier little upper-room there was not to be found in all Amersfort.
But there had fallen a long silence between the two. Maisie, as usual, was thinking of William. It troubled her that her husband had that day gone abroad without his blue military overcoat, and she declared over and over that he would certainly come home wet from head to foot. Kate's needle paused, lagged, and finallystopped altogether. Her dark eyes gazed long and steadily into the fire. She saw a black and gloomy prison-cell with the wind shrieking into the glassless windows. She heard it come whistling and hooting through the bars as though they were infernal harp-strings. And she thought, at once bitterly and tenderly, of one who might be even then lying upon the floor without either cloak or covering.
A sharp, hard sob broke into Maisie's pleasant revery. She went quickly over to the girl, and sat down beside her.
"Be patient, Kate," she said; "it will all come right if you bide a little. They cannot kill him, for none of the men who were wounded are dead—though for their own purposes his enemies have tried to make the prince believe so."
Kate lifted her head and looked piteously at Maisie.
"But even if he comes from prison, he will never forgive me. It was my fault—my fault," she said, and let her head fall again on Maisie's shoulder.
"Nay," said Maisie; "but I will go to him and own to him that the fault was mine—tell him that he was not gone a moment before I was sorry and ran after him to bring him back. He may be angry with me if he likes; but, at least, he shall understand that you were free from blame."
But this consolation, perhaps because it was now repeated for the fiftieth time, somehow failed to bring relief to Kate's troubled heart.
"He will never come back, I know," she said; "for I sent him away! Oh, how I wish I had not sent him away! Why—why did you let me?"
Maisie's mouth dropped to a pathetic pout of despair. It was so much easier comforting a man, she thought, than a girl. Now, if it had beenWilliam—
But at that moment a loud and continuous knockingwas heard at the outer door, which had been so carefully barred against the storm.
"It is my dear!" cried Maisie, jumping eagerly to her feet, "and I had not heard his footstep turn into the street."
And she looked reproachfully at Kate, as though in this instance she had been entirely to blame.
"It is the first time that I ever missed hearing that," she said, and ran quickly down the stairs. As she threw open the fastenings a noisy gust of wind rioted in, and slammed all the doors with claps like thunder.
"William!" she cried, "dear lad, forgive me; I could not hear your foot for the noise of the wind, though I was listening. Believe me that—"
But it was the face of an unknown man which confronted her. He was clad in a blue military mantle, under which a uniform was indistinctly seen.
"Your pardon, madam," he said, looking down upon her, "are you not Mistress Gordon, the wife of Captain William Gordon, of the regiment of the Covenant?"
"I am indeed his wife," said Maisie, with just pride; "what of him?"
"I am bidden to say that he urgently requires your presence at the guard-house."
Maisie felt all the warm blood ebb from about her heart. But she only bit her lip, and set her hand hard over her breast.
"He is ill—he is dead!" she panted, scarcely knowing what she said.
"Nay," said the man, "not ill, and not dead. But he sends you word that he needs you urgently."
"You swear to me that he is not dead?" she said, seizing him fiercely by the wet cuff of his coat. For the man had laid his hand upon the edge of the wind-blown door to keep it steady as he talked, or perhaps in fearlest it should be shut in his face before his errand was accomplished.
Without waiting for another word besides the man's reiterated assurance, Maisie fled up-stairs, and telling Kate briefly that her husband needed her and had sent for her to the guard-room, she thrust a sheathed dagger into her bosom, and ran back down to the outer door.
"Bide a moment, and I will come with you!" cried Kate, after her.
"No, no," answered Maisie, "stay you and keep the house. I shall not be long away. Keep the water hot against William's return."
So saying, she shut the outer door carefully behind her, and hurried into the night.
Maisie had expected that the man who had brought the message would be waiting to guide her, but he had vanished. The long street of Zaandpoort was bare and dark from end to end, lit only by the lights within the storm-beaten houses where the douce burghers of Amersfort were sitting at supper or warming their toes at an early and unwonted fire.
Then for the first time it occurred to Maisie that she did not know whether her husband would be found at the guard-house of the palace, or at that by the city port, where was the main entrance to the camp. She decided to try the palace first.
With throbbing heart the young wife ran along the rain-swept streets. She had thrown her husband's cloak over her arm as she came out, with the idea of making him put it on when she found him. But she was glad enough, before she had ventured a hundred paces into the dark, roaring night, to drawn it closely over her own head and wrap herself from head to foot in it.
As she turned out upon the wide spaces of the Dam of Amersfort, into which Zaandpoort Street opened, she almostran into the arms of the watch. An officer, who went first with a lantern, stopped her.
"Whither away so fast and so late, maiden?" he said; "an thou give not a fitting answer we must have thee to the spinning-house."
"I am the wife of a Scottish officer," said Maisie, nothing daunted. "And he being, as I think, taken suddenly ill, has sent for me by a messenger, whom in the darkness I have missed."
"Your husband's name and regiment?" demanded the leader of the watch, abruptly, yet not unkindly.
"He is called William Gordon," she said, "and commands to-night at the guard-house. He is a captain in the Scots regiment, called that of the Covenant."
The officer turned to his band.
"What regiments are on guard to-night?"
"The Scots psalm-singers at the palace—Van Marck's Frisians at the port of the camp," said a voice out of the dark. "And if it please you, I know the lady. She is a main brave one, and her husband is a good man. He carried the banner at Ayrsmoss, a battle in Scotland where many were slain, and after which he was the only man of the hill folk left alive."
"Go with her, thou, then," commanded the officer, "and bring her in safety to her husband. It is not fitting, madam, that you should be on the streets of the city at midnight and alone. Good-night and good speed to you, lady. Men of the city guard, forward!"
And with that the watch swung briskly up the street, the light of their leader's lantern flashing this way and that across the darkling road, as it dangled in his hand or was swayed by the fitful wind.
It seemed but a few minutes before Maisie's companion was challenging the soldiers of the guard at the palace.
"Captain William Gordon? Yea, he bides within,"said a stern-visaged sergeant, in the gusty outer port. "Who might want him at this time of night?"
"His wife," said the soldier of the watch, indicating Maisie with his hand.
The sergeant bent his brows, as if he thought within him that this was neither hour nor place for the domesticities. Nevertheless, he opened an inner door, saluted upon the threshold, spoke a few words, and waited.
Will Gordon himself came out almost instantly in full uniform. One cheek was somewhat ruddy with sitting before the great fire, which cast pleasant gleams through the doorway into the outer hall of the guard.
"Why, Maisie!" he cried, "what do you here, lassie?"
He spoke in the kindly Scots of their Galloway Hills.
Maisie started back in apprehensive astonishment.
"Did you not send for me, William? A messenger brought me word an hour ago, or it may be less, that you needed me most urgently. I thought you had been sick, or wounded, at the least. So I spared not, but hasted hither alone, running all the way. But I came on the watch, and the officer sent this good man with me."
Will Gordon laughed.
"Some one hath been playing April-fool overly late in the day. If I catch him I will swinge him tightly therefor. He might have put thee in great peril, little one."
"I had a dagger, William," said Maisie, determinedly, putting her hand on her breast; "and had I a mind I could speak bad words also, if any had dared to meddle with me."
"Well, in a trice I shall be relieved," he said. "Come in by the fire. 'Tis not exactly according to the general's regulations. But I will risk the prince coming on such a night—or what would be worse, Mr. Michael Shields, who is our regimental chaplain and preceptor-general in righteousness."
Presently they issued forth, Maisie and her husbandwalking close together. His arm was about her, and the one blue military cloak proved great enough for two. They walked along, talking right merrily, to the street of Zaandpoort. At the foot of the stair they stopped with a gasp of astonishment. The door stood open to the wall.
"It hath been blown open by the wind," said Will Gordon.
They went up-stairs, Maisie first, and her husband standing a moment to shake the drops of rain from the cloak.
"Kate, Kate, where are you?" cried Maisie, as she reached the landing-place a little out of breath, as at this time was her wont.
But she recoiled from what she saw in the sitting-room. The lamp burned calmly and steadily upon its ledge. But the chairs were mostly overturned. The curtain was torn down, and flapped in the gusts through the window, which stood open towards the canal. Kate's Bible lay fluttering its leaves on the tiles of the fireplace. The floor was stained with the mud of many confused footmarks. A scrap of lace from Kate's sleeve hung on a nail by the window. But in all the rooms of the house in the street of Zaandpoort there was no sign of the girl herself. She had completely vanished.
Pale to the lips, and scarce knowing what they did, Will Gordon and his wife sat down at opposite sides of the table, and stared blankly at each other without speech or understanding.
I will now tell the thing which happened to Kate in the house in Zaandpoort Street that stormy night when for an hour she was left alone.
When Maisie went out, Kate heard the outer door shut with a crash as the wind rushed in. The flames swirled up the wide chimney in the sitting-room, whereupon she rose and drew the curtain across the inner door. Then she went to the wood-box and piled fresh fagots about the great back-log, which had grown red and smouldering. For a long time after she had finished she knelt looking at the cheerful blaze. She sighed deeply, as if her thoughts had not been of the same complexion. Then she rose and went to the window which looked out upon the canal. It was her favorite musing-place. She leaned her brow against the half-drawn dimity curtain, and watched the rain thresh the waters till they gleamed gray-white in the sparkle of the lights along the canal bank. A vague unrest and uncertainty filled her soul.
"Wat, Wat!" she whispered, half to herself. "What would I not give if I might speak to you to-night—only tell you that I would never be hasty or angry with you again!"
And she set her hand upon her side as though she had been suddenly stricken by a pain of some grievous sort. Yet not a pang of sharp agony, but only a dull, empty ache, lonely and hungry, was abiding there.
"How he must hate me!" she said. "It was my faultthat he went away in anger. He would never have gone to that place had we not first been cruel to him here."
And in his cell, listening dully, to the tramp of the sparse passers-by coming up to his window through the tumultuous blowing of all the horns of the tempest, Wat was saying to himself the same thing: "How she must hate me—thus to walk with him and let him point a scornful hand at my prison window."
But in the street of Zaandpoort, the lonely girl's uneasiness was fast deepening into terror.
Suddenly Kate lifted her head. There was surely a slight noise at the outer door. She had a vague feeling that a foot was coming up the stair. She listened intently, but heard nothing save the creaking of doors within and the hurl of the tempest without. A thought came sharply to her, and her heart leaped palpably in her breast. Could it possibly be that Wat, released from prison, had come directly back to her? Her lips parted, and a very lovely light came into her eyes, as of late was used to do when one spoke well of Wat Gordon.
She stood gazing fixedly at the door, but the sound was not repeated. Then she looked at the place where he had stood on the threshold that first night when he came bursting in upon them—the time when he saw her lie with her head low in Maisie's lap.
"Dear Wat!" she said softly, over and over to herself—"dear, dear Wat!"
But alas! Wat Gordon was lying stretched on his pallet in the round tower of the prison of Amersfort; while without another maid called to him in the drenching rain, which love did not permit her to feel. He could neither hear the tender thrill in his true love's voice, nor yet respond to the pleading of her once proud heart, which love had now made gentle. He heard nothing but the roar of the wind which whirled away towards theNorth Sea, yelling with demon laughter as it shook his window bar, and shouted mocking words over the sill.
But all suddenly, as Kate looked again through the window, she became aware that certain of the lights on the canal edge were being blotted out. Something black seemed to rise up suddenly before the window. The girl started back, and even as she stood motionless, stricken with sudden fear, the window was forcibly opened, and a man in a long cloak, and wearing a black mask, stepped into the room. Kate was too much astonished to cry out. She turned quickly towards the door with intent to flee. But before she could reach it two men entered by it, masked and equipped like the first. None of the three uttered a word of threatening or explanation; they only advanced and seized her arms. In a moment they had wrapped Kate in a great cloak, slipped a soft elastic gag into her mouth, and carried her towards the window. The single wild cry which she had time to utter before her mouth was stopped was whirled away by a gust yet fiercer than any of those which all night had ramped and torn their way to the sea betwixt the irregular gables and twisted chimney-stalks of the ancient street of Zaandpoort.
The man who had entered first through the window now received her in his arms. He clambered down by a ladder which was set on the canal bank, and held in its position by two men. Yet another man stood ready to assist, and so in a few moments Kate found herself upon a horse, while the man who had come first through the window mounted behind her and kept about her waist an arm of iron strength. By this time Kate was half unconscious with the terror of her position. She knew not whither she was being taken, and could make no guess at the identity of her captors.
She could, indeed, hear them talking together, but in a language which she could not understand and whichshe had never before heard. The gag in her mouth did not greatly hurt her, but her arms were tightly fastened to her sides, and her cramped position on the saddle in front of her captor became, as the miles stretched themselves out behind them, an exquisitely painful one.
With the beating of the horses' hoofs the cloak gradually dropped from her eyes, so that Kate could discern dark hedge-rows and occasional trees drifting like smoke behind them as they rode. The lightning played about in front, dividing land and sky with its vivid pale-blue line. Then the thunder went roaring and galloping athwart the universe, and lo! on the back of that, the black and starless canopy shut down blacker than ever. Once through the folds of the cloak Kate saw a field of flowers, all growing neatly together in squares, lit up by the lightning. Every parallelogram stood clear as on a chess-board. But the color was wholly gone out of them, all being subdued to a ghastly pallor by the fierce brilliance of the zigzag flame.
To the dazed and terrified girl hours seemed to pass, and still the horses did not stop. At last Kate could feel, by the uneven falling of the hoofs and by the slower pace of the beasts, that they had reached rougher country, where the roads were less densely compacted than in the neighborhood of the traffic of a city.
Then, after a little, the iron of the horseshoes grated sharply on the pebbles of the sea-shore. Men's voices cried harshly back and forth, lanterns flashed, snorting horses checked themselves, spraying the pebbles every way from their forefeet—and presently Kate felt herself being lifted down from the saddle. So stiff was she with the constraint of her position that, but for the support of the man who helped her down, she would have fallen among the stones.
The lightning still gleamed fitfully along the horizon. The wind was blowing off shore, but steadily and witha level persistence which one might lean against. The wild gustiness of the first burst of the storm had passed away, and as the pale lightning flared up along the rough edges of the sea, which appeared to rise above her like a wall, Kate could momentarily see the slanting masts of a small vessel lying-to just outside the bar, her bowsprit pointing this way and that, as she heaved and labored in the swell.
"You are monstrously late!" a voice exclaimed, in English, and a dark figure stood between them and the white tops of the nearer waves.
Kate's conductor grunted surlily, but made no audible reply. The man in whose arms she had travelled, as in bands of iron, now dismounted and began to swear at the speaker in strange, guttural, unintelligible oaths.
"We are here to wait for my lord!" cried the man who had lifted Kate from the saddle. He stood by her, still holding her arm securely.
His voice had a curious metallic ring in it, and an odd upward intonation at the close of a sentence which remained in the memory.
"Indeed!" replied the voice which had first spoken; "then we, for our part, can stop neither for my lord nor any other lord in heaven or on earth. For Captain Smith of Poole has weighed his anchor, and waits now only the boat's return to run for Branksea, with the wind and the white horses at his tail. Nor is he the man to play pitch-and-toss out there very long, even for his own long-boat and shipmates, with such a spanking blow astern of theSea Unicorn."
"My lord will doubtless be here directly. His horse was at the door ere we left," again answered the metallic voice with the quirk in the tail of it.
"We will e'en give him other ten minutes," quoth the sailor, imperturbably.
"THE MAN CARRIED HER EASILY THROUGH THE SURF"
"THE MAN CARRIED HER EASILY THROUGH THE SURF"
And he stood with his ship's watch in his hand, swinginghis lantern up and down in answer to some signal from the ship, too faint for ordinary eyes to catch across the whip and swirl of the uneasy waves.
But he was spared any long time of waiting; for a man in uniform rode up, whose horse, even in the faint light, showed evident signs of fatigue.
"You are to proceed on board at once with your charge. My lord has been stricken down by an assassin. He lies in the palace of Amersfort, dangerously but not fatally hurt. Nevertheless, you are to carry out his directions to the letter, and at the end of your journeying he or his steward will meet you, and you shall receive the reward."
"That will not do for Captain Smith," cried the sailor, emphatically. "He must have the doubloons in hand ere a soul of you quit the coast."
The man who had held Kate in his arms during her night-ride turned sharply about.
"Quit your huxtering! I have it here!" cried he, indignantly, slapping his pocket as he spoke.
"Run out the boat!" shouted the man, promptly, and half a dozen sailors squattered mid-thigh in the foam and swelter of the sea.
"Now, on board with you this instant!" he cried, as one accustomed to command where boats and water were in question.
Then the man with the money took Kate again in his arms and carried her easily through the surf to where the men held the leaping craft. One by one the dripping crew and passengers scrambled in, and presently, with four stout fellows bending at the long oars, the boat gathered way through the cold gray waves of the bar towards the masts of the ship which tossed and heaved in the offing.
Black Peter Hals stood grumbling and snarling at the door of the prison of Amersfort. It was almost sundown, and the outer city ports were closed at that hour. A crowd of merrymakers had just passed on their way to sup at a dancing-tavern. They had cried tauntingly to him as they went by, and the laughing, loose-haired girls had beckoned tantalizingly with their hands.
"Come, thou grizzled old bunch of keys," cried one of them, in a voice that tinkled like a bell, "learn to be young again for an hour. So shalt thou cheat both Father Time, and eke Jack Ketch, thy near kinsman."
"I am waxing old, indeed, when Bonnibel taunts me unscathed," muttered Peter Hals, grimly, to himself, as he watched them out of sight; "it is true there are gray hairs in my poll. But, Lord knows, I have yet in me the fire of youth. My natural strength is noneways abated. I can stand on my feet and swig down the sturdy Hollands with any man—aye, even with a city councillor at a feast of the corporation. But I rust here and mildew in this God-forsaken prison. 'Tis six o'clock of a morning, open the doors! Seven o'clock, take about the breakfast! Ten o'clock, comes a jackanapes spick-and-span officer for inspection! Two o'clock, a dozen new prisoners, and no cells to put them in! Six o'clock, supper and complaints! Then click the bolts and rattle the keys—to bed, sleep, and begin all the pother over again on the morrow! Pshaw!—a dog's life werelivelier, a-scratching for fleas. They at least bite not twice on the same spot."
Thus Black Peter Hals, discontentedly ruffling his gray badger's cockscomb on the steps of the prison of Amersfort.
As he watched, a dainty slip of a maid came up the street with a pitcher of coarse blue delft on her shoulder. In the by-going she raised her eyes to those of Peter Hals. It was but a single long glance, yet it sent his ideas every way in a fine scatter, and eke Peter's hand to his mustache that he might feel whether it were in order.
At this moment a dog ran against the girl, and the pitcher clattered to the ground, where it broke into a thousand pieces.
The maid stopped, clasped her hands pitifully, and burst into tears.
"It is all your fault," she cried, looking up at the keeper of the prison.
Peter ran down the steps and took her by the hand.
"Do not weep, sweet maid," he said, "I will buy thee a pitcher ten times better, and fill it with the best of white wine or the choicest oil, only do not cry your pretty eyes all red."
The girl stole a shy glance at Black Peter.
"Are you of the servants of the prince?" said she, bashfully looking at the orange facing of his tunic.
Black Peter erected himself a little and squared out his chest. It was the first time that his grim prison uniform had been so distinguished.
"I am indeed the keeper of this castle of the prince," he said, with dignity.
"It is a fine castle, in truth," said the maid, looking at it up and down and crossways, with blue, wide-open, most ingenuous eyes.
"You come from the country, perhaps?" asked Peter.For such innocence was wellnigh impossible to any maid of the city.
"Aye," said the girl, "I have come from La Haye Sainte in the Flemish country of the West, where they speak French. So, therefore, I do not know your customs nor yet your speech very well. I bide with my aunt in the street but one to the right. I was sent to bring home a gallon of white wine in a new pitcher. And now it is spilled—all with looking up at you, Sir Officer, standing at the gate of your tower."
And she sped another glance at the castle-keeper from under the dark, seductive lashes of her almond eyes.
Black Peter stroked his mustache. It was certainly a risk, but, after all, there was no likelihood that the new provost-marshal would make that night the first of his visitations. Indeed, it was by no means so certain that there had been as yet any provost appointed, after the sad accident which had happened to my Lord of Barra—"whom," said Black Peter, "may Abraham take to his bosom. For he had no mercy on poor men, who could not get their sleep for his surprises and inspections. A meddlesome Scots crow, all in his rusty black, ever croaking of duty and penalties, as if he were the hangman of Amersfort calling a poor hussy's crimes at the cart-tail."
"Come thou in by, my girl," said Black Peter, "and in a trice, if so be you can tell me the name of the shop, I will get thee a new pitcher full of wine, better far than the first. Deign to wait with me but a moment here in the castle-hall, where there is a fine fire of sea-coal and none save ourselves to sit by it."
"I know not if my aunt would approve," said the maid, uncertainly. "But, after all, you are most wondrously like my brother, who is a baker of bread at La Haye Sainte. Ah," she continued, clasping her hands, innocently, "at this time o' night he will be unharnessingHerminius (that is our market-dog) and bringing in the white flour and the brown flour and the little parcel of salt."
So poignant was the recollection that the maid was compelled to put her hands to her eyes and begin to sob.
"Weep not," said Black Peter, coming down and putting one hand on her shoulder, and with the other drawing gently her fingers from her face, "I will be as your brother. Deign but to step within my castle, and I will send a servant for the jar of wine. You shall only bide with me a matter of ten short minutes, sufficient to tell me of the good brother and of Herminius, your market-dog."
The pretty country girl let her eyes slowly rise to his face, and again the bewitching innocence of the appeal sent Peter's hand complacently to his beard. He stroked it as he regarded her.
"This is what it is to have a way with women. It hath been like this all my life," he confided to himself, with a sigh.
"Then I will come with you," she said, suddenly, "and that gladly, for you are wonderfully like my brother John. His beard also is handsome and of the fine tissue. It is the very moral of yours."
Peter led the way up the steps.
Then he inquired from his new acquaintance the name of the wine-shop and the brand of the wine.
He put his hand to his side and rattled a little alarm shaped like a triangle. In a trice a young beardless youth appeared, all whose body incessantly wriggled and squirmed, like a puppy's which fears the rod or desires the milk-pail.
"Here, restless one!" cried Black Peter Hals, "go swiftly to the Inn of the Gouda Cheese, and bring from thence a jar of the wine of Hochheim. And, hark ye, also a couple of bottles of Hollands of the best brands. Here is money for thee to pay for all."
He went to the door with the wriggler.
"Now, do you understand?" he said, in a loud tone. And then, under his breath, he added, "Come not too soon back. An you so much as show your ugly face here for an hour and a half, with the buckle of a belly-band I will thrash the soul out of your miserable, whimpering body."
"I would as lief stop by the fire and watch," said the object, casting a sheep's-glance at the country-maid, who stood warming her toes, one pretty foot held up to the blaze; "if, perchance, it might be Mynheer Peter's desire to refresh himself at the sign of the Gouda Cheese for an hour, as is his custom of a night."
"Out with thee, wastrel!" cried Peter, angrily, kicking him down the steps; "and mind, come not back for an hour on the peril of your life, and the flaying off of thy skin in handbreadths."
So saying, Peter went back into the wide stone hall. He found his dainty new friend sweeping up the fireplace and setting the sticks for kindling in order at the back.
"We always do it so in our village," she said, simply, "but the men in cities and in great castles like this have, of course, no time for such trifles."
"What is your name, pretty maiden?" asked Peter, standing up beside her as she knelt and swept vigorously, raising a rare dust—and, to any eyes but those of a man, doing the work most awkwardly.
"I am called 'the Little Marie,'" said the girl, demurely, "but, of course, among those who are not my friends I am called by another name."
"Then I will call you 'the Little Marie'!" said Black Peter, in high delight, "and never so much as ask that other name, which is but for strangers."
He went to a cupboard in the wall which was labelled in large letters "Holy Bibles and Catechisms for the Use of the Prisoners." The jailer opened this most respectableand necessary receptacle, and took from it a square black bottle, short-necked and square-shouldered, a few hard biscuits such as seamen use, and two large, wide-mouthed glasses of twisted Venetian glass.
He came back with all these in his arms, and set them down together on the table. "Now," he said, coaxingly, "sit you down, Little Marie, and I will bring some water from the pitcher behind the door there. A glass of fine Hollands will keep out the chills of this night, for the wind is both shrewd and snell."
"Let me bring the water!" cried the Little Marie, gayly, clapping her hands ingenuously. "This is just like keeping house to John, my brother. Did I tell you his beard was like yours? See, I will stroke it. Even so does it fall so gracefully on brother John's breast!"
And as she tripped away with the tall jug in her hand to the pail behind the door, the jailer devoutly hoped that it would be much more than an hour and a half before his deputy should return.
The Little Marie was a long time in finding the proper water-pail, and it was not till Peter was half across the floor on his way to assist her that she appeared, carrying the beaker of water in one hand and a small earthenware cup in the other.