found--on the corners of the tables and on the window sill and many sat
on the floor who could not find room elsewhere. The women sat on the
men's knees, and many of them had children in their arms as well. For
indeed, on watch-night, room had to be found for every one who wanted to
come in; no one who wanted to drink and to make merry must be left to
wander out in the cold.

A veritable babel of tongues made the white-washed walls echo from end
to end, for Haarlem now was a mightily prosperous city, and there were a
great many foreign traders inside her walls, and some of these had
thought to make merry this night in the famed tap-room of the "Lame
Cow." French merchants with their silks, English ones with fine cloths
and paper, then there were the Jew dealers from Frankfurt and Amsterdam,
and the Walloon cattle drovers from Flanders.

Here and there the splendid uniform of a member of one of the shooting
guilds struck a note of splendour among the drabs and russets of worsted
doublets and the brilliant crimson or purple sashes gleamed in the
feeble light of the tallow candles which spluttered and flickered in
their sconces.

Then amongst them all were the foreign mercenaries, from Italy or
Brabant or Germany, or from God knows where, loud of speech, aggressive
in appearance, carrying swords and wearing spurs, filling the place with
their swagger and their ribaldry.

They had come to the Netherlands at the expiration of the truce with

Spain, offering to sell their sword and their skin to the highest
bidder. They seemed all to be friends and boon companions together,
called each other queer, fantastic names and shouted their rough jests
to one another across the width of the room. Homeless, shiftless,
thriftless, they knew no other names save those which chance or the
coarse buffoonery of their friends had endowed them with. There was a
man here to-night who was called Wry-face and another who went by the
name of Gutter-rat. Not one amongst them mayhap could have told you who
his father was or who his mother, nor where he himself had first seen
the light of day; but they all knew of one another's career, of one
another's prowess in the field at Prague or Ghent or Magdeburg, and they
formed a band of brothers--offensive and defensive--which was the
despair of the town-guard whenever the law had to be enforced against
anyone of them.

It was at the hour when Mynheer Beek was beginning to hope that his
guests woul