th to the traitors!
To the gallows with Cornelius de Witt!" poured in, only to find the
prisoner had escaped. But the escape was but from the prison, for the
city gate was locked when the carriage of the De Witts drove up, locked
by order of the deputies of the Town Hall, and a certain young man--who
was none other than William, Prince of Orange--held the key.

Before another gate could be reached the mob, streaming from the
Buytenhof, had overtaken the carriage, and the De Witts were at its
mercy.

The two men, whose lives had been spent in the welfare of their country,
were massacred with unspeakable savagery, and their bodies, stripped,
and hacked almost beyond recognition, were then strung up on a hastily
erected gibbet in the market-place.

When the worst had been done, the young man, who had secretly watched
the proceedings from the window of a neighbouring house, returned the
key to the gatekeeper.

Then the prince mounted a horse which an equerry held in waiting for
him, and galloped off to camp to await the message of the States. He
galloped proudly, for the burghers of The Hague had made of the corpses
of the De Witts a stepping stone to power for William of Orange.

_II.--Betrayed for his Bulbs_

Doctor Cornelius van Baerle, the godson of Cornelius de Witt, was in his
twenty-eighth year, an orphan, but nevertheless, a really happy man. His
father had amassed a fortune of 400,000 guilders in trade with the
Indies, and an estate brought him in 10,000 guilders a year. He was
blessed with the love of a peaceful life with good nerves, ample wealth,
and a philosophic mind.

Left alone in the big house at Dordrecht, he steadily resisted all
temptations to public life. He took up the study of botany, and then,
not knowing what to do with his time and money, decided to go in for one
of the most extravagant hobbies of the time--the cultivation of his
favourite flower, the tulip. The fame of Mynheer van Baerle's tulips
soon spread in the district, and while Cornelius de Witt had roused
deadly hatred by sowing the seeds of political passion, Van Baerle with
his tulips won general goodwill. Yet, all unknowingly, Van Baerle had
made an enemy, an implacable, relentless enemy. This was his neighbour,
Isaac Boxtel, who lived next door to him in Dordrecht.

Boxtel, from childhood, had been a passionate tulip-grower. He had even
produced a tulip of his own, and the Boxtel had won wide admiration. One
day, to his h