th a blow of his clenched
fist.

Another showed to him his bloody hands; for this fellow had ripped open
Cornelius and disembowelled him, and was now hastening to the spot in
order not to lose the opportunity of serving the Grand Pensionary in the
same manner, whilst they were dragging the dead body of Cornelius to the
gibbet.

John uttered a cry of agony and grief, and put one of his hands before
his eyes.

"Oh, you close your eyes, do you?" said one of the soldiers of the
burgher guard; "well, I shall open them for you."

And saying this he stabbed him with his pike in the face, and the blood
spurted forth.

"My brother!" cried John de Witt, trying to see through the stream of
blood which blinded him, what had become of Cornelius; "my brother, my
brother!"

"Go and run after him!" bellowed another murderer, putting his musket to
his temples and pulling the trigger.

But the gun did not go off.

The fellow then turned his musket round, and, taking it by the barrel
with both hands, struck John de Witt down with the butt-end. John
staggered and fell down at his feet, but, raising himself with a last
effort, he once more called out,--

"My brother!" with a voice so full of anguish that the young man
opposite closed the shutter.

There remained little more to see; a third murderer fired a pistol with
the muzzle to his face; and this time the shot took effect, blowing out
his brains. John de Witt fell to rise no more.

On this, every one of the miscreants, emboldened by his fall, wanted to
fire his gun at him, or strike him with blows of the sledge-hammer,
or stab him with a knife or swords, every one wanted to draw a drop of
blood from the fallen hero, and tear off a shred from his garments.

And after having mangled, and torn, and completely stripped the
two brothers, the mob dragged their naked and bloody bodies to an
extemporised gibbet, where amateur executioners hung them up by the
feet.

Then came the most dastardly scoundrels of all, who not having dared to
strike the living flesh, cut the dead in pieces, and then went about
the town selling small slices of the bodies of John and Cornelius at ten
sous a piece.

We cannot take upon ourselves to say whether, through the almost
imperceptible chink of the shutter, the young man witnessed the
conclusion of this shocking scene; but at the very moment when they were
hanging the two martyrs on the gibbet he passed through the terrible
mob, which was too