in two sides. The tap-room itself
looked like the cabin of a ship. Ceiling and floor, chairs and tables,
were made of the same dark-brown wood that covered the walls, along which
beds were ranged like berths.

The host, with many bows, came forward to receive the aristocratic
guests, and led them to the fire-place, where huge pieces of peat were
glimmering. The heat they sent forth answered several purposes at the
same time. It warmed the air, lighted a portion of the room, which was
very dark in rainy weather, and served to cook three fowl that, suspended
from a thin iron bar over the fire, were already beginning to brown.

As the new guests approached the hearth, an old woman, who had been
turning the spit, pushed a white cat from her lap and rose.

The landlord tossed on a bench several garments spread over the backs of
two chairs to dry, and hung in their place the dripping cloaks of the
baron and his son.

While the elder Wibisma was ordering something hot to drink for himself
and servants, Nicolas led the black page to the fire.

The shivering boy crouched on the floor beside the ashes, and stretched
now his soaked feet, shod in red morocco, and now his stiffened fingers
to the blaze.

The father and son took their seats at a table, over which the
maid-servant had spread a cloth. The baron was inclined to enter into
conversation about the decorated tree with the landlord, an over-civil,
pock-marked dwarf, whose clothes were precisely the same shade of brown
as the wood in his tap-room; but refrained from doing so because two
citizens of Leyden, one of whom was well known to him, sat at a short
distance from his table, and he did not wish to be drawn into a quarrel
in a place like this.

After Nicolas had also glanced around the tap-room, he touched his
father, saying in a low tone:

"Did you notice the men yonder? The younger one--he's lifting the cover
of the tankard now--is the organist who released me from the boys and
gave me his cloak yesterday."

"The one yonder?" asked the nobleman. "A handsome young fellow. He might
be taken for an artist or something of that kind. Here, landlord, who is
the gentleman with brown hair and large eyes, talking to Allertssohn, the
fencing-master?"

"It's Herr Wilhelm, younger son of old Herr Cornelius, Receiver General,
a player or musician, as they call them."

"Eh, eh," cried the baron. "His father is one of my old Leyden
acquaintances. He was a worthy, excell