bay.

Meantime information had come to the authorities that a suspicious
stranger had been seen at Scheveningen. The fisherman's wife was
arrested. Threatened with torture she at last confessed with whom her
husband had fled and whither. Information was sent to the bailiff of
Vlieland, who with a party of followers made a strict search through his
narrow precincts. A group of seamen seated on the sands was soon
discovered, among whom, dressed in shaggy pea jacket with long
fisherman's boots, was the Seigneur de Groeneveld, who, easily recognized
through his disguise, submitted to his captors without a struggle. The
Scheveningen fisherman, who had been so faithful to him, making a sudden
spring, eluded his pursuers and disappeared; thus escaping the gibbet
which would probably have been his doom instead of the reward of 4000
golden guilders which he might have had for betraying him. Thus a sum
more than double the amount originally furnished by Groeneveld, as the
capital of the assassination company, had been rejected by the Rotterdam
boatman who saved Stoutenburg, and by the Scheveningen fisherman who was
ready to save Groeneveld. On the 19th February, within less than a
fortnight from the explosion of the conspiracy, the eldest son of
Barneveld was lodged in the Gevangen Poort or state prison of the Hague.

The awful news of the 6th February had struck the widow of Barneveld as
with a thunderbolt. Both her sons were proclaimed as murderers and
suborners of assassins, and a price put upon their heads. She remained
for days neither speaking nor weeping; scarcely eating, drinking, or
sleeping. She seemed frozen to stone. Her daughters and friends could not
tell whether she were dying or had lost her reason. At length the escape
of Stoutenburg and the capture of Groeneveld seemed to rouse her from her
trance. She then stooped to do what she had sternly refused to do when
her husband was in the hands of the authorities. Accompanied by the wife
and infant son of Groeneveld she obtained an audience of the stern
Stadholder, fell on her knees before him, and implored mercy and pardon
for her son.

Maurice received her calmly and not discourteously, but held out no hopes
of pardon. The criminal was in the hands of justice, he said, and he had
no power to interfere. But there can scarcely be a doubt that he had
power after the sentence to forgive or to commute, and it will be
remembered that when Barneveld himself was about to