smeared with melancholy whitewash. Could
they look backward through the centuries and behold with the mind's eye
certain scenes that have taken place within these very temples and
about their walls, they would marvel no longer. Here we are beginning
to forget the smart at the price of which we bought deliverance from
the bitter yoke of priest and king, but yonder the sword bit deeper
and smote more often. Perhaps that is why in Holland they still love
whitewash, which to them may be a symbol, a perpetual protest; and
remembering stories that have been handed down as heirlooms to this day,
frown at the sight of even the most modest sacerdotal vestment. Those
who are acquainted with the facts of their history and deliverance will
scarcely wonder at the prejudice.

LYSBETH

A TALE OF THE DUTCH

BOOK THE FIRST

THE SOWING

CHAPTER I

THE WOLF AND THE BADGER

The time was in or about the year 1544, when the Emperor Charles V.
ruled the Netherlands, and our scene the city of Leyden.

Any one who has visited this pleasant town knows that it lies in the
midst of wide, flat meadows, and is intersected by many canals filled
with Rhine water. But now, as it was winter, near to Christmas indeed,
the meadows and the quaint gabled roofs of the city lay buried beneath
a dazzling sheet of snow, while, instead of boats and barges, skaters
glided up and down the frozen surface of the canals, which were swept
for their convenience. Outside the walls of the town, not far from the
Morsch poort, or gate, the surface of the broad moat which surrounded
them presented a sight as gay as it was charming. Just here one of
the branches of the Rhine ran into this moat, and down it came the
pleasure-seekers in sledges, on skates, or afoot. They were dressed,
most of them, in their best attire, for the day was a holiday set apart
for a kind of skating carnival, with sleighing matches, such games as
curling, and other amusements.

Among these merry folk might have been seen a young lady of two or three
and twenty years of age, dressed in a coat of dark green cloth trimmed
with fur, and close-fitting at the waist. This coat opened in front,
showing a broidered woollen skirt, but over the bust it was tightly
buttoned and surmounted by a stiff ruff of Brussels lace. Upon her head
she wore a high-crowned beaver hat, to which the nodding ostrich feather
was fastened by a jewelled ornament of sufficient value to show that she