e might have spoken to my
father of what she knew, but she would not do so to a stranger, knowing
that with one word she can send me first and all of you afterwards to
the scaffold."

Stoutenburg with an exclamation of angry impatience brought his clenched
fist crashing down upon the table.

"Are you a child, Beresteyn," he cried hotly, "or are you wilfully blind
to your danger and to mine? I tell you that Gilda will never allow me to
kill the Prince of Orange without raising a finger to save him."

"But what can I do?"

"Send for Gilda at once, to-night," urged Stoutenburg, "convey her under
escort hither ... in all deference ... in all honour ... she would be
here under her brother's care."

"A woman in this place at such a moment," cried Beresteyn; "you are mad,
Stoutenburg."

"I shall go mad if she is not here," rejoined the other more calmly,
"the fear has entered into my soul, Nicolaes, that Gilda will yet betray
us at the eleventh hour. That fear is an obsession ... call it
premonition if you will, but it unmans me, friend."

Beresteyn was silent now. He drew his cloak closer round his shoulders,
for suddenly he felt a chill which seemed to have crept into his bones.

"But it is unpractical, man," he persisted with a kind of sullen
despair. "Gilda and another woman here ... to-morrow ... when not half a
league away...."

"Justice will be meted out to a tyrant and an assassin," broke in
Stoutenburg quietly. "Gilda is not a woman as other women are, though in
her soul now she may be shrinking at the thought of this summary
justice, she will be strong and brave when the hour comes. In any case,"
he added roughly, "we can keep her closely guarded, and in the miller's
hut, with the miller and his wife to look after her, she will be as safe
and as comfortable as circumstances will allow. We should have her then
under our own eyes and know that she cannot betray us."

As usual Beresteyn was already yielding to the stronger will, the more
powerful personality of his friend. His association with Stoutenburg had
gradually blunted his finer feelings; like a fly that is entangled in
the web of a spider, he tried to fight against the network of intrigue
and of cowardice which hemmed him in more and more closely with every
step that he took along the path of crime. He was filled with remorse at
thought of the wrong which he had done to Gilda, but he was no longer
his own master. He was being carried away by the tid