, and there arose a shout of "To the
gates! To the Gevangenhuis! Free the prisoners!"

They surged round the hateful place, thousands of them. The drawbridge
was up, but they bridged the moat. Some shots were fired at them, then
the defence ceased. They battered in the massive doors, and, when these
fell, rushed to the dens and loosed those who remained alive within
them.

But they found no Spaniards, for by now Ramiro and his garrison had
vanished away, whither they knew not. A voice cried, "Dirk van Goorl,
seek for Dirk van Goorl," and they came to the chamber overlooking the
courtyard, shouting, "Van Goorl, we are here!"

They broke in the door, and there they found him, lying upon his pallet,
his hands clasped, his face upturned, smitten suddenly dead, not by man,
but by the poison of the plague.

Unfed and untended, the end had overtaken him very swiftly.

BOOK THE THIRD

THE HARVESTING

CHAPTER XXIII

FATHER AND SON

When Adrian left his mother's house in the Bree Straat he wandered away
at hazard, for so utterly miserable was he that he could form no plans
as to what he was to do or whither he should go. Presently he found
himself at the foot of that great mound which in Leyden is still known
as the Burg, a strange place with a circular wall upon the top of it,
said to have been constructed by the Romans. Up this mound he climbed,
and throwing himself upon the grass under an oak which grew in one of
the little recesses of those ancient walls, he buried his face in his
hands and tried to think.

Think! How could he think? Whenever he shut his eyes there arose before
them a vision of his mother's face, a face so fearful in its awesome and
unnatural calm that vaguely he wondered how he, the outcast son, upon
whom it had been turned like the stare of the Medusa's head, withering
his very soul, could have seen it and still live. Why did he live? Why
was he not dead, he who had a sword at his side? Was it because of
his innocence? He was not guilty of this dreadful crime. He had
never intended to hand over Dirk van Goorl and Foy and Martin to the
Inquisition. He had only talked about them to a man whom he believed
to be a professor of judicial astrology, and who said that he could
compound draughts which would bend the wills of women. Could he help
it if this fellow was really an officer of the Blood Council? Of course
not. But, oh! why had he talked so much? Oh! why had he signed that
paper, wh