hought that it must burst. Weak
as he was, wicked as he was, he had never intended this, but now, oh
Heaven! his brother Foy and the man who had been his benefactor, whom
his mother loved more than her life, were through him given over to a
death worse than the mind could conceive. Somehow that night wore away,
and of this we may be sure, that it did not go half as heavily with
the victims in their dungeon as with the betrayer in his free comfort.
Thrice during its dark hours, indeed, Adrian was on the point of
destroying himself; once even he set the hilt of his sword upon the
floor and its edge against his breast, and then at the prick of steel
shrank back.

Better would it have been for him, perhaps, could he have kept his
courage; at least he would have been spared much added shame and misery.

So soon as Adrian had left her Lysbeth rose, robed herself, and took her
way to the house of her cousin, van de Werff, now a successful citizen
of middle age and the burgomaster-elect of Leyden.

"You have heard the news?" she said.

"Alas! cousin, I have," he answered, "and it is very terrible. Is it
true that this treasure of Hendrik Brant's is at the bottom of it all?"

She nodded, and answered, "I believe so."

"Then could they not bargain for their lives by surrendering its
secret?"

"Perhaps. That is, Foy and Martin might--Dirk does not know its
whereabouts--he refused to know, but they have sworn that they will die
first."

"Why, cousin?"

"Because they promised as much to Hendrik Brant, who believed that
if his gold could be kept from the Spaniards it would do some mighty
service to his country in time to come, and who has persuaded them all
that is so."

"Then God grant it may be true," said van de Werff with a sigh, "for
otherwise it is sad to think that more lives should be sacrificed for
the sake of a heap of pelf."

"I know it, cousin, but I come to you to save those lives."

"How?"

"How?" she answered fiercely. "Why, by raising the town; by attacking
the Gevangenhuis and rescuing them, by driving the Spaniards out of
Leyden----"

"And thereby bringing upon ourselves the fate of Mons. Would you see
this place also given over to sack by the soldiers of Noircarmes and Don
Frederic?"

"I care not what I see so long as I save my son and my husband," she
answered desperately.

"There speaks the woman, not the patriot. It is better that three men
should die than a whole city full."

"That