res, no bloody Philips, no priestly courts of cruelty; and, in
God's name, we will have none!"

He was standing on the river-bank; and the meadows over it were green
and fair to see, and the fresh wind blew into his soul a thought of its
own untrammelled liberty. He looked up and down the river, and lifted
his face to the clear sky, and said aloud, "Beautiful land! To be thy
children we should not deserve, if one inch of thy soil we yielded to a
tyrant. Truly a vaderland to me and to mine thou hast been. Truly do I
love thee." And then, his soul being moved to its highest mark, he
answered it tenderly, in the strong-syllabled mother-tongue that it knew
so well,--

"Indien ik u vergeet, o Vaderland! zoo vergete mijne regter-hand zich
zelve!"

Such communion he held with himself until the night came on, and the dew
began to fall; and Lysbet said to herself, "I will walk down the garden:
perhaps there is something I can say to him." As she rose, Joris
entered, and they met in the centre of the room. He put his large hands
upon her shoulders, and, looking solemnly in her face, said, "My Lysbet,
I will go with the people; I will give myself willingly to the cause of
freedom. A long battle is it. Two hundred years ago, a Joris Van
Heemskirk was fighting in it. Not less of man than he was, am I, I
hope."

There was a mist of tears over his eyes--a mist that was no dishonour;
it only showed that the cost had been fully counted, and his allegiance
given with a clear estimate of the value and sweetness of all that he
might have to give with it. Lysbet was a little awed by the solemnity of
his manner. She had not before understood the grandeur of such a
complete surrender of self as her husband had just consummated. But
never had she been so proud of him. Everything commonplace had slipped
away: he looked taller, younger, handsomer.

[Illustration: "We have closed his Majesty's custom-house forever"]

She dropped her knitting to her feet, she put her arms around his
neck, and, laying her head upon his breast, said softly, "My good Joris!
I will love thee forever."

In a few minutes Elder Semple came in. He looked exceedingly worried;
and, although Joris and he avoided politics by a kind of tacit
agreement, he could not keep to kirk and commercial matters, but
constantly returned to one subject,--a vessel lying at Murray's Wharf,
which had sold her cargo of molasses and rum to the "Committee of
Safety."

"And we'll be ha