their servant, are alive to-night. This man
and his Spaniards overtook us on the lake, and there we conquered him
by the help of Martha the Mare, Martha whom they made to carry her own
husband to the fire. We conquered him, but she--she died in the fray;
they stabbed her to death in the water as men stab an otter. Well, that
son, the Heer Adrian, he was murdered in the boat with a knife-blow
given by his own father from behind, and he lies here in this house dead
or dying.

"My master and I, we brought this man, who to-day is called Ramiro, to
be judged by the woman whose husband and son he slew. But she would not
judge him; she said, 'Take him to the people, let them judge.' So judge
now, ye people," and with an effort of his mighty strength Martin swung
the struggling body of Ramiro over the parapet of the balcony and let
him hang there above their heads.

They yelled, they screamed in their ravenous hate and rage; they leapt
up as hounds leap at a wolf upon a wall.

"Give him to us, give him to us!" that was their cry.

Martin laughed aloud. "Take him then," he said; "take him, ye people,
and judge him as you will," and with one great heave he hurled the thing
that writhed between his hands far out into the centre of the street.

The crowd below gathered themselves into a heap like water above a boat
sinking in the heart of a whirlpool. For a minute or more they snarled
and surged and twisted. Then they broke up and went away, talking in
short, eager sentences. And there, small and dreadful on the stones, lay
something that once had been a man.

Thus did the burghers of Leyden pass judgment and execute it upon that
noble Spaniard, the Count Juan de Montalvo.

CHAPTER XXX

TWO SCENES

_Scene the First_

Some months had gone by, and Alkmaar, that heroic little city of the
north, had turned the flood of Spanish victory. Full of shame and
rage, the armies of Philip and of Valdez marched upon Leyden, and from
November, 1573, to the end of March, 1574, the town was besieged. Then
the soldiers were called away to fight Louis of Nassau, and the leaguer
was raised till, on the fatal field of Mook Heath, the gallant Louis,
with his brother Henry and four thousand of their soldiers, perished,
defeated by D'Avila. Now once more the victorious Spaniards threatened
Leyden.

In a large bare room of the Stadthuis of that city, at the beginning of
the month of May, a man of middle-age might have been seen one