ted with a sculptured swan.

"Halfweg, *{Halfway.} boys," said Peter, "off with your skates."

"You see," explained Lambert to his companions, "the Y and the Haarlem
Lake meeting here make it rather troublesome. The river is five feet
higher than the land, so we must have everything strong in the way of
dikes and sluice gates, or there would be wet work at once. The sluice
arrangements are supposed to be something extra. We will walk over them
and you shall see enough to make you open your eyes. The spring water
of the lake, they say, has the most wonderful bleaching powers of any
in the world; all the great Haarlem bleacheries use it. I can't say
much upon that subject, but I can tell you ONE thing from personal
experience."

"What is that?"

"Why, the lake is full of the biggest eels you ever saw. I've caught
them here, often--perfectly prodigious! I tell you they're sometimes a
match for a fellow; they'd almost wriggle your arm from the socket
if you were not on your guard. But you're not interested in eels, I
perceive. The castle's a big affair, isn't it?"

"Yes. What do those swans mean? Anything?" asked Ben, looking up at the
stone gate towers.

"The swan is held almost in reverence by us Hollanders. These give the
building its name--Zwanenburg, swan castle. That is all I know. This is
a very important spot; for it is here that the wise ones hold council
with regard to dike matters. The castle was once the residence of the
celebrated Christian Brunings."

"What about HIM?" asked Ben.

"Peter could answer you better than I," said Lambert, "if you could
only understand each other, or were not such cowards about leaving your
mother tongues. But I have often heard my grandfather speak of Brunings.
He is never tired of telling us of the great engineer--how good he was
and how learned and how, when he died, the whole country seemed to mourn
as for a friend. He belonged to a great many learned societies and was
at the head of the State Department intrusted with the care of the dikes
and other defences against the sea. There's no counting the improvements
he made in dikes and sluices and water mills and all that kind of thing.
We Hollanders, you know, consider our great engineers as the highest of
public benefactors. Brunings died years ago; they've a monument to his
memory in the cathedral of Haarlem. I have seen his portrait, and I
tell you, Ben, he was right noble-looking. No wonder the castle looks so
stiff