g, found the drink and victuals, and handed
them round to the rowers, who ate and drank as best they might with a
thankful heart, but without ceasing from their task. To men who have
starved for months the taste of wholesome provender and sound wine is a
delight that cannot be written in words.

When at length they had filled themselves, Adrian spoke.

"If it is your good will, brother," he said, addressing Foy, "as we do
not know what lies in front, nor how long any of us have to live, I, who
am an outcast and a scorn among you, wish to tell you a story."

"Speak on," said Foy.

So Adrian began from the beginning, and told them all his tale. He told
them how at the first he had been led astray by superstitions, vanity,
and love; how his foolish confidences had been written down by spies;
how he had been startled and terrified into signing them with results
of which they knew. Then he told them how he was hunted like a mad dog
through the streets of Leyden after his mother had turned him from her
door; how he took refuge in the den of Hague Simon, and there had fought
with Ramiro and been conquered by the man's address and his own horror
of shedding a father's blood. He told them of his admission into
the Roman faith, of the dreadful scene in the church when Martha had
denounced him, of their flight to the Red Mill. He told them of the
kidnapping of Elsa, and how he had been quite innocent of it although
he loved her dearly; of how at last he was driven into marrying her,
meaning her no harm, to save her from the grip of Ramiro, and knowing at
heart that it was no marriage; of how, when the flood burst upon them,
he had been hustled from the mill where, since she could no longer be of
service to him and might work him injury, as he discovered afterwards,
Ramiro had left Elsa to her fate. Lastly, in a broken voice, he told
them of his life during the long siege which, so he said, was as the
life of a damned spirit, and of how, when death thinned the ranks of the
Spaniards, he had been made an officer among them, and by the special
malice of Ramiro forced to conduct the executions and murders of such
Hollanders as they took.

Then at last his chance had come. Ramiro, thinking that now he could
never turn against him, had given him Elsa, and left him with her while
he went about his duties and to secure a share of the plunder, meaning
to deal with his prisoners on the morrow. So he, Adrian, a man in
authority, had pro