you are my flesh and blood, but for
this world and the next I renounce you, Adrian. Bastard, I know you not.
Murderer, get you gone."

Adrian fell upon the ground; he grovelled before his mother trying to
kiss the hem of her dress, while Elsa sobbed aloud hysterically. But
Lysbeth spurned him in the face with her foot, saying,

"Get you gone before I call up such servants as are left to me to thrust
you to the street."

Then Adrian rose and with great gasps of agony, like some sore-wounded
thing, crept from that awful and majestic presence of outraged
motherhood, crept down the stairs and away into the city.

When he had gone Lysbeth took pen and paper and wrote in large letters
these words:--

"Notice to all the good citizens of Leyden. Adrian, called van Goorl,
upon whose written evidence his stepfather, Dirk van Goorl, his
half-brother, Foy van Goorl, and the serving-man, Martin Roos, have been
condemned to death in the Gevangenhuis by torment, starvation, water,
fire, and sword, is known here no longer. Lysbeth van Goorl."

Then she called a servant and gave orders that this paper should be
nailed upon the front door of the house where every passer-by might read
it.

"It is done," she said. "Cease weeping, Elsa, and lead me to my bed,
whence I pray God that I may never rise again."

Two days went by, and a fugitive rode into the city, a worn and wounded
man of Leyden, with horror stamped upon his face.

"What news?" cried the people in the market-place, recognising him.

"Mechlin! Mechlin!" he gasped. "I come from Mechlin."

"What of Mechlin and its citizens?" asked Pieter van de Werff, stepping
forward.

"Don Frederic has taken it; the Spaniards have butchered them; everyone,
old and young, men, women, and children, they are all butchered.
I escaped, but for two leagues and more I heard the sound of the
death-wail of Mechlin. Give me wine."

They gave him wine, and by slow degrees, in broken sentences, he told
the tale of one of the most awful crimes ever committed in the name
of Christ by cruel man against God and his own fellows. It was written
large in history: we need not repeat it here.

Then, when they knew the truth, up from that multitude of the men
of Leyden went a roar of wrath, and a cry to vengeance for their
slaughtered kin. They took arms, each what he had, the burgher his
sword, the fisherman his fish-spear, the boor his ox-goad or his pick;
leaders sprang up to command them