his deep
voice, strange and amusing tales of his travels by sea and land, Colonel
Mulder often interrupted him, and at every somewhat incredible story,
smilingly told a similar, but perfectly impossible adventure of his own.
Captain Van Duivenvoorde soothingly interposed, when Van der Laen, who
was conscious of never deviating far from the truth, angrily repelled the
old man's jesting insinuations. Captain Cromwell, a grave man with a
round head and smooth long hair, who had come to Holland to fight for the
faith, rarely mingled in the conversation, and then only with a few words
of scarcely intelligible Dutch. Georg, leaning far back in his chair,
stretched his feet out before him and stared silently into vacancy.

Herr Aquanus, the host, walked from one table to another, and when he at
last reached the one where the officers sat, paused opposite to the
Thuringian, saying:

"Where are your thoughts, Junker? One would scarcely know you during the
last few days. What has come over you?"

Georg hastily sat erect, stretched himself like a person roused from
sleep, and answered pleasantly:

"Dreams come in idleness."

"The cage is getting too narrow for him," said Captain Van der Laen. "If
this state of things lasts long, we shall all get dizzy like the sheep."

"And as stiff as the brazen Pagan god on the shelf yonder," added Colonel
Mulder.

"There was the same complaint during the first siege," replied the host,
"but Herr von Noyelles drowned his discontent and emptied many a cask of
my best liquor."

"Tell the gentlemen how he paid you," cried Colonel Mulder.

"There hangs the paper framed," laughed Aquarius. "Instead of sending
money, he wrote this:

'Full many a favor, dear friend, hast thou done me,
For which good hard coin glad wouldst thou be to see
There's none in my pockets; so for the debt
In place of dirty coin,
This written sheet so fine;
Paper money in Leyden is easy to get.'"

"Excellent!" cried Junker von Warmond, "and besides you made the die for
the pasteboard coins yourself."

"Of course! Herr von Noyelles' sitting still, cost me dear. You have
already made two expeditions."

"Hush, hush, for God's sake say nothing about the first sally!" cried the
captain. "A well-planned enterprise, which was shamefully frustrated,
because the leader lay down like a mole to sleep! Where has such a thing
happened a second time?"

"But the other ended more fortunat