r was before thee, and in my day a young man of spirit chose his
wife where he would. My own parents made objections to my being married
to your father without some payment to them in goods or money, to
compensate for the expense of my upbringing. But Abel Van Bu, thy
father, came to our house one June morning and bade me make ready to
marry him that very day, a clerk in holy orders being come to Urk to
mate together those islanders who were willing to be wed according to
the rites of the Church, and Abel's manner was so masterful that
neither I nor my parents dared say him nay. This is how I came to marry
your father, my son, and were I a man such as thou, art, I would take
the girl of my choosing, in the same manner as thy father did."

But although I laughingly agreed with my mother, I knew that such a way
of proceeding would not answer with Anna Holstein. Anna was rich. It
would have shamed me to go to her, a penniless husband. Still, love is
blind, and that Anna and I loved each other was not to be denied; so,
one evening, by the Zuider Zee, we once more plighted our troth.

It was then that Anna confided to me a trouble of which she had kept
the knowledge secret, fearing it might vex me, to the neglect of my
work at Amsterdam. I had become so absorbed in my love for her, that I
had given no thought to the question of others paying their court. Yet
that such should be the case was but natural. Anna was young,
beautiful, and wealthy, the only child of a proud noble, so that when
Count Hendrick Luitken proposed for her, Anna's father regarded his
suit with approval, and recommended him to his daughter's good graces.
But Anna, whose heart was wholly mine, had evaded the Count's
attentions, although she dared not openly reject him, lest the
clandestine love we bore each other might become known by reason of too
close questioning, so she had been compelled to play the part of a
wilful maid who did not know her own mind, and could not be made to see
how advantageous the alliance proposed for her would be.

"I could never marry anyone but you, Peter," she whispered to me, as we
sat together on the terrace of the palace by the Zuider Zee, after she
had confided to me her anxieties, "but I find it hard to keep up the
deception that I am heart-whole and fancy-free, and yet indifferent to
Count Hendrick's attentions. Indeed, my father openly upbraids me with
being fickle, inconstant, unmaidenly, and I know not what besides,