the molens of Mynheer Patz, and there to keep guard over her until
his own return.

Patz looked well after his belated guest's material comfort. There was
some bread and cheese and a large mug of ale waiting for him in the
wheel-house and a clean straw paillasse in a corner. The place smelt
sweetly of freshly ground corn, of flour and of dry barley and maize,
and a thin white coating of flour--soft to the touch as velvet--lay over
everything.

Diogenes ate and drank and asked news of the jongejuffrouw. She was well
but seemed over sad, the miller explained; but his wife had prepared a
comfortable bed for her in the room next to the tiny kitchen. It was
quite warm there and Mevrouw Patz had spread her one pair of linen
sheets over the bed. The jongejuffrouw's serving woman was asleep on the
kitchen floor; she declared herself greatly ill-used, and had gone to
sleep vowing that she was so uncomfortable she would never be able to
close an eye.

As for the two varlets who had accompanied the noble lady, they were
stretched out on a freshly made bed of straw in the weighing-room.

Patz and his wife seemed to have felt great sympathy for the
jongejuffrouw, and Diogenes had reason to congratulate himself that she
was moneyless, else she would have found it easy enough to bribe the
over-willing pair into helping her to regain her home.

He dreamt of her all night; her voice rang in his ear right through the
soughing of the wind which beat against the ill-fitting windows of the
wheel-house. Alternately in his dream she reviled him, pleaded with him,
heaped insults upon him, but he was securely bound and gagged and could
not reply to her insults or repulse her pleadings. He made frantic
efforts to tear the gag from his mouth, for he wished to tell her that
he had not lost his heart to her and cared nothing for the misery which
she felt.

CHAPTER XXVII

THENCE TO ROTTERDAM

He only caught sight of the jongejuffrouw later on in the morning when
she came out of the molens and stepped into the sledge which stood
waiting for her at the door.

The thaw had not been sufficiently heavy, nor had it lasted a sufficient
number of hours to make a deep impression on the thick covering of snow
which still lay over the roads. The best and quickest mode of
travelling--at any rate for the next few hours--would still be by
sledge, the intervening half-dozen leagues that lay between Houdekerk
and Rotterdam could be easily covere