tt

"August 20th, 1672."

John, with tears in his eyes, wiped off a drop of the noble blood which
had soiled the leaf, and, after having handed the despatch to Craeke
with a last direction, returned to Cornelius, who seemed overcome by
intense pain, and near fainting.

"Now," said he, "when honest Craeke sounds his coxswain's whistle, it
will be a signal of his being clear of the crowd, and of his having
reached the other side of the pond. And then it will be our turn to
depart."

Five minutes had not elapsed, before a long and shrill whistle was heard
through the din and noise of the square of the Buytenhof.

John gratefully raised his eyes to heaven.

"And now," said he, "let us off, Cornelius."

Chapter 3. The Pupil of John de Witt

Whilst the clamour of the crowd in the square of Buytenhof, which grew
more and more menacing against the two brothers, determined John de
Witt to hasten the departure of his brother Cornelius, a deputation of
burghers had gone to the Town-hall to demand the withdrawal of Tilly's
horse.

It was not far from the Buytenhof to Hoogstraet (High Street); and a
stranger, who since the beginning of this scene had watched all its
incidents with intense interest, was seen to wend his way with, or
rather in the wake of, the others towards the Town-hall, to hear as soon
as possible the current news of the hour.

This stranger was a very young man, of scarcely twenty-two or three,
with nothing about him that bespoke any great energy. He evidently had
his good reasons for not making himself known, as he hid his face in a
handkerchief of fine Frisian linen, with which he incessantly wiped his
brow or his burning lips.

With an eye keen as that of a bird of prey,--with a long aquiline nose,
a finely cut mouth, which he generally kept open, or rather which was
gaping like the edges of a wound,--this man would have presented to
Lavater, if Lavater had lived at that time, a subject for physiognomical
observations which at the first blush would not have been very
favourable to the person in question.

"What difference is there between the figure of the conqueror and that
of the pirate?" said the ancients. The difference only between the eagle
and the vulture,--serenity or restlessness.

And indeed the sallow physiognomy, the thin and sickly body, and the
prowling ways of the stranger, were the very type of a suspecting
master, or an unquiet thief; and a police officer would certainl