I arrest you."

Arrests were not as yet made in the name of William of Orange; he had
not been Stadtholder long enough for that.

"Arrest me!" cried Cornelius; "but what have I done?"

"That's no affair of mine, Doctor; you will explain all that before your
judges."

"Where?"

"At the Hague."

Cornelius, in mute stupefaction, embraced his old nurse, who was in
a swoon; shook hands with his servants, who were bathed in tears, and
followed the magistrate, who put him in a coach as a prisoner of state
and had him driven at full gallop to the Hague.

Chapter 8. An Invasion

The incident just related was, as the reader has guessed before this,
the diabolical work of Mynheer Isaac Boxtel.

It will be remembered that, with the help of his telescope, not even the
least detail of the private meeting between Cornelius de Witt and Van
Baerle had escaped him. He had, indeed, heard nothing, but he had seen
everything, and had rightly concluded that the papers intrusted by the
Warden to the Doctor must have been of great importance, as he saw Van
Baerle so carefully secreting the parcel in the drawer where he used to
keep his most precious bulbs.

The upshot of all this was that when Boxtel, who watched the course of
political events much more attentively than his neighbour Cornelius was
used to do, heard the news of the brothers De Witt being arrested on a
charge of high treason against the States, he thought within his heart
that very likely he needed only to say one word, and the godson would be
arrested as well as the godfather.

Yet, full of happiness as was Boxtel's heart at the chance, he at first
shrank with horror from the idea of informing against a man whom this
information might lead to the scaffold.

But there is this terrible thing in evil thoughts, that evil minds soon
grow familiar with them.

Besides this, Mynheer Isaac Boxtel encouraged himself with the following
sophism:--

"Cornelius de Witt is a bad citizen, as he is charged with high treason,
and arrested.

"I, on the contrary, am a good citizen, as I am not charged with
anything in the world, as I am as free as the air of heaven."

"If, therefore, Cornelius de Witt is a bad citizen,--of which there
can be no doubt, as he is charged with high treason, and arrested,--his
accomplice, Cornelius van Baerle, is no less a bad citizen than himself.

"And, as I am a good citizen, and as it is the duty of every good
citizen to inform agains