ure, even if
it were but eating and drinking. When he had finished he told his
story, or so much of it as he wished to tell, and afterwards went to bed
wondering whether his hosts would murder him in his sleep for the purse
of gold he carried, half hoping that they might indeed, and slept for
twelve hours without stirring.

All that day and until the evening of the next Adrian sat in the home
of his spy hosts recovering his strength and brooding over his fearful
fall. Black Meg brought in news of what passed without; thus he learned
that his mother had sickened with the plague, and that the sentence of
starvation was being carried out upon the body of her husband, Dirk
van Goorl. He learned also the details of the escape of Foy and Martin,
which were the talk of all the city. In the eyes of the common people
they had become heroes, and some local poet had made a song about them
which men were singing in the streets. Two verses of that song were
devoted to him, Adrian; indeed, Black Meg repeated them to him word
by word with a suppressed but malignant joy. Yes, this was what had
happened; his brother had become a popular hero and he, Adrian, who
in every way was so infinitely that brother's superior, an object of
popular execration. And of all this the man, Ramiro, was the cause.

Well, he was waiting for Ramiro. That was why he risked his life by
staying in Leyden. Sooner or later Ramiro would be bound to visit this
haunt of his, and then--here Adrian drew his rapier and lunged and
parried, and finally with hissing breath drove it down into the wood of
the flooring, picturing, in a kind of luxury of the imagination, that
the throat of Ramiro was between its point and the ground. Of course
in the struggle that must come, the said Ramiro, who doubtless was a
skilful swordsman, might get the upper hand; it might be his, Adrian's
throat, which was between the point and the ground. Well, if so, it
scarcely mattered; he did not care. At any rate, for this once he would
play the man and then let the devil take his own; himself, or Ramiro, or
both of them.

On the afternoon of the second day Adrian heard shouting in the streets,
and Hague Simon came in and told him that a man had arrived with bad
news from Mechlin; what it was he could not say, he was going to find
out. A couple of hours went by and there was more shouting, this time
of a determined and ordered nature. Then Black Meg appeared and informed
him that the news f