great deal of moisture without

THE BURGOMASTER'S WIFE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 2.

CHAPTER VII.

A second and third rainy day followed the first one. White mists and grey
fog hung over the meadows. The cold, damp north-west wind drove heavy
clouds together and darkened the sky. Rivulets dashed into the streets
from the gutters on the steep roofs of Leyden; the water in the canals
and ditches grew turbid and rose towards the edges of the banks.
Dripping, freezing men and women hurried past each other without any form
of greeting, while the pair of storks pressed closer to each other in
their nest, and thought of the warm south, lamenting their premature
return to the cold, damp, Netherland plain.

In thoughtful minds the dread of what must inevitably come was
increasing. The rain made anxiety grow as rapidly in the hearts of many
citizens, as the young blades of grain in the fields. Conversations, that
sounded anything but hopeful, took place in many tap-rooms--in others men
were even heard declaring resistance folly, or loudly demanding the
desertion of the cause of the Prince of Orange and liberty.

Whoever in these days desired to see a happy face in Leyden might have
searched long in vain, and would probably have least expected to find it
in the house of Burgomaster Van der Werff.

Three days had now elapsed since Peter's departure, nay the fourth was
drawing towards noon, yet the burgomaster had not returned, and no
message, no word of explanation, had reached his family.

Maria had put on her light-blue cloth dress with Mechlin lace in the
square neck, for her husband particularly liked to see her in this gown
and he must surely return to-day.

The spray of yellow wall-flowers on her breast had been cut from the
blooming plant in the window of her room, and Barbara had helped arrange
her thick hair.

It lacked only an hour of noon, when the young wife's delicate, slender
figure, carrying a white duster in her hand, entered the burgomaster's
study. Here she stationed herself at the window, from which the pouring
rain streamed in numerous crooked serpentine lines, pressed her forehead
against the panes, and gazed down into the quiet street.

The water was standing between the smooth red tiles of the pavement. A
porter clattered by in heavy wooden shoes, a maid-servant, with a shawl
wrapped around her head, hurried swiftly past, a shoemaker's boy, with a
pair of boots hanging on his back, j