rogram
before it was too late, otherwise I am sure he would have denied us the
Prinzenhof, and we should have had to sneak back by ourselves to-morrow.
As it was we were allowed to have our own way, practically for the first
time since we came to Holland.

Robert rang a bell, and a man appeared, who let us into the courtyard,
more like the courtyard of a monastery than a palace; and among the
historical dust-motes which clung to Cousin Robert's memory was the fact
that the place actually had been a monastery, sacred to St. Agatha.

We crossed the courtyard, and just inside another door found ourselves
on the scene of the great tragedy.

I knew it by instinct, before anybody told me; for suddenly the whole
story came back just as I heard it from my father, not as I've read it
in books of history. So vividly did he paint each detail, that I used to
grow hysterical in my infantine way, and he was scolded by mother for
"filling the child's mind with horrors."

Yes, there was the stairway, with the pale light coming from the low
window; there was the white wall which had been spattered with the
hero's life blood; there was the open door of the dining-hall where he
had been carried back to die; there the white pillar behind which the
murderer crouched, and there the dark archway through which Gerard had
run, his heart beating thickly with the hope of escape, and the thought
of the horse waiting beyond the ramparts and the moat.

I fancied I could see the prince, handsome still, in the fashion of
dress he affected, since the days of the Water Beggars' fame. A stately
figure in his rough and wide-brimmed hat, with the silk cord of the
Beggars round the felt crown; and I could almost smell the smoke from
the murderer's pistol, bought with the money William's generosity had
given. There were the holes in the wall made by the poisoned bullets.
How real it all seemed, how the centuries between slipped away! Let me
see, what had the date been? I ought to remember. July----

"Phil, what day of the month is this?" I demanded with a start.

Phil turned at the open door of the dining-hall, which I could see had
been made into a museum.

"July tenth," she answered promptly; for you can never catch Phil
tripping as to a date, or a day of the week, even if you should shake
her out of her first sleep to ask.

"Then it's the anniversary of his death!" I exclaimed. "July 10, 1584,
it was. How strange we should have come on the very