old man. "A fig for invention. What need we
invention at this time of day? Everything has been said that is to be
said, and done that ever will be done. I shall tell you how a Florentine
knight was shut up in a tower higher than Gerard's; yet did his faithful
squire stand at the tower foot and get him out, with no other engine
than that in your hand, Martin, and certain kickshaws I shall buy for a
crown."

Martin looked at his bow, and turned it round in his hand, and seemed to
interrogate it. But the examination left him as incredulous as before.

Then Peter told them his story, how the faithful squire got the knight
out of a high tower at Brescia. The manoeuvre, like most things that
are really scientific, was so simple, that now their wonder was they had
taken for impossible what was not even difficult.

The letter never went to Rotterdam. They trusted to Peter's learning and
their own dexterity.

It was nine o'clock on a clear moonlight night; Gerard, senior, was
still away; the rest of his little family had been some time abed.

A figure stood by the dwarf's bed. It was white, and the moonlight shone
on it.

With an unearthly noise, between a yell and a snarl, the gymnast rolled
off his bed and under it by a single unbroken movement. A soft voice
followed him in his retreat.

"Why, Giles, are you afeard of me?"

At this, Giles's head peeped cautiously up, and he saw it was only his
sister Kate.

She put her finger to her lips. "Hush! lest the wicked Cornelis or the
wicked Sybrandt hear us." Giles's claws seized the side of the bed, and
he returned to his place by one undivided gymnastic.

Kate then revealed to Giles that she had heard Cornelis and Sybrandt
mention Gerard's name; and being herself in great anxiety at his not
coming home all day, had listened at their door, and had made a fearful
discovery. Gerard was in prison, in the haunted tower of the Stadthouse.
He was there, it seemed, by their father's authority. But here must be
some treachery; for how could their father have ordered this cruel act?
He was at Rotterdam. She ended by entreating Giles to bear her company
to the foot of the haunted tower, to say a word of comfort to poor
Gerard, and let him know their father was absent, and would be sure to
release him on his return.

"Dear Giles, I would go alone, but I am afeard of the spirits that men
say do haunt the tower; but with you I shall not be afeard."

"Nor I with you," said Giles. "