as announced with a shriek of triumph by whichever of them was the
fortunate discoverer.

Catherine gossiped with Joan, and learned that she was the wife of
Jorian Ketel of Tergou, who had been servant to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten,
but fallen out of favour, and come back to Rotterdam, his native place.
His friends had got him the place of sexton to the parish, and what with
that and carpentering, he did pretty well.

Catherine told Joan in return whose child it was she had nursed, and all
about Margaret and Gerard, and the deep anxiety his silence had plunged
them in. "Ay," said Joan, "the world is full of trouble." One day she
said to Catherine, "It's my belief my man knows more about your Gerard
than anybody in these parts; but he has got to be closer than ever of
late. Drop in some day just afore sunset, and set him talking. And for
our Lady's sake say not I set you on. The only hiding he ever gave me
was for babbling his business; and I do not want another. Gramercy! I
married a man for the comfort of the thing, not to be hided."

Catherine dropped in. Jorian was ready enough to tell her how he had
befriended her son and perhaps saved his life. But this was no news to
Catherine; and the moment she began to cross-question him as to whether
he could guess why her lost boy neither came nor wrote, he cast a grim
look at his wife, who received it with a calm air of stolid candour and
innocent unconsciousness; and his answers became short and sullen.

"What should he know more than another?" and so on. He added, after a
pause, "Think you the burgomaster takes such as me into his secrets?"

"Oh, then the burgomaster knows something?" said Catherine sharply.

"Likely. Who else should?"

"I'll ask him."

"I would."

"And tell him you say he knows."

"That is right, dame. Go make him mine enemy. That is what a poor fellow
always gets if he says a word to you women."

And Jorian from that moment shrunk in and became impenetrable as a
hedgehog, and almost as prickly.

His conduct caused both the poor women agonies of mind, alarm, and
irritated curiosity. Ghysbrecht was for some cause Gerard's mortal
enemy; had stopped his marriage, imprisoned him, hunted him. And here
was his late servant, who when off his guard had hinted that this enemy
had the clue to Gerard's silence. After sifting Jorian's every word and
look, all remained dark and mysterious. Then Catherine told Margaret to
go herself to him. "You are young, yo