d turn pale as death,
and sit motionless like a bereaved creature, with the pieces in his
hands, and his eyes fixed on them till tears came and blinded them. Then
she was terrified at what she had done; and next her heart smote her
bitterly; and she wept sore apart; but, being what she was, dared not
own it, but said to herself, "I'll not say a word, but I'll make it up
to him." And her bowels yearned over her son, and her feeble violence
died a natural death, and she was transferring her fatal alliance to
Gerard when the two black sheep came in. Gerard knew nothing of the
immediate cause; on the contrary, inexperienced as he was in the ins
and outs of females, her kindness made him ashamed of a suspicion he
had entertained that she was the depredator, and he kissed her again
and again, and went to bed happy as a prince to think his mother was his
mother once more at the very crisis of his fate.

The next morning, at ten o'clock, Gerard and Margaret were in the church
at Sevenbergen, he radiant with joy, she with blushes. Peter was
also there, and Martin Wittenhaagen, but no other friend. Secrecy was
everything. Margaret had declined Italy. She could not leave her father;
he was too learned and too helpless. But it was settled they should
retire into Flanders for a few weeks until the storm should be blown
over at Tergou. The cure did not keep them waiting long, though it
seemed an age. Presently he stood at the altar, and called them to him.
They went hand in hand, the happiest in Holland. The cure opened his
book.

But ere he uttered a single word of the sacred rite, a harsh voice cried
"Forbear!" And the constables of Tergou came up the aisle and seized
Gerard in the name of the law. Martin's long knife flashed out directly.

"Forbear, man!" cried the priest. "What! draw your weapon in a church,
and ye who interrupt this holy sacrament, what means this impiety?"

"There is no impiety, father," said the burgomaster's servant
respectfully. "This young man would marry against his father's will, and
his father has prayed our burgomaster to deal with him according to the
law. Let him deny it if he can."

"Is this so, young man?"

Gerard hung his head.

"We take him to Rotterdam to abide the sentence of the Duke."

At this Margaret uttered a cry of despair, and the young creatures, who
were so happy a moment ago, fell to sobbing in one another's arms so
piteously, that the instruments of oppression drew back a ste