?" replied Elsa with a flash of spirit.

"Perhaps, then, you would explain?"

"What is there to explain? I thought that you knew. They dragged me
away, and last night, just before the flood burst, I was gagged and
married by force."

"Oh! Adrian, my friend," groaned Foy, "wait till I catch you, my friend
Adrian."

"To be just," explained Elsa, "I don't think Adrian wanted to marry me
much, but he had to choose between marrying me himself or seeing his
father Ramiro marry me."

"So he sacrificed himself--the good, kind-hearted man," interrupted Foy,
grinding his teeth.

"Yes," said Elsa.

"And where is your self-denying--oh! I can't say the word."

"I don't know. I suppose that he and Ramiro escaped in the boat, or
perhaps he was drowned."

"In which case you are a widow sooner than you could have expected,"
said Foy more cheerfully, edging himself towards her.

But Elsa moved a little away and Foy saw with a sinking of the heart
that, however distasteful it might be to her, clearly she attached some
weight to this marriage.

"I do not know," she answered, "how can I tell? I suppose that we shall
hear sometime, and then, if he is still alive, I must set to work to get
free of him. But, till then, Foy," she added, warningly, "I suppose that
I am his wife in law, although I will never speak to him again. Where
are we going?"

"To Haarlem. The Spaniards are closing in upon the city, and we dare not
try to break through their lines. Those are Spanish boats behind us. But
eat and drink a little, Elsa, then tell us your story."

"One question first, Foy. How did you find me?"

"We heard a woman scream twice, once far away and once near at hand,
and rowing to the sound, saw someone hanging to the arm of an overturned
windmill only three or four feet above the water. Of course we knew that
you had been taken to the mill; that man there told us. Do you remember
him? But at first we could not find it in the darkness and the flood."

Then, after she had swallowed something, Elsa told her story, while the
three of them clustered round her forward of the sail, and Marsh Jan
managed the helm. When she had finished it, Martin whispered to Foy,
and as though by a common impulse all four of them kneeled down upon the
boards in the bottom of the boat, and returned thanks to the Almighty
that this maiden, quite unharmed, had been delivered out of such
manifold and terrible dangers, and this by the hands of her own friend