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CHAPTER XL

THE LOSER PAYS

Nicolaes Beresteyn had not gone far when Lucas of Sparendam came running
with the news. He heard it all, he saw the confusion, the first signs of
_sauve qui peut_.

At first he was like one paralyzed with horror and with fear; he could
not move, his limbs refused him service. Then he thought of his
friends--some up in the molens, others at various posts on the road and
by the bridge--they might not hear the confusion and the tumult, they
might not see the coming _sauve qui peut_; they might not hear that the
Stadtholder's spies are on the alert, and that his bodyguard might be
here at any time.

Just then the disbanding began. Nicolaes Beresteyn pushed his way
through the fighting, quarrelling crowd to where Lucas of Sparendam,
still exhausted and weak, was leaning up against a beam.

"Their lordships up in the molens," he said in a voice still choked with
fear, "and the Lord of Stoutenburg in the hut with the jongejuffrouw....
Come and tell them at once all that you know."

And he dragged Lucas of Sparendam in his wake.

The Lord of Stoutenburg was at Gilda's feet when Beresteyn ran in with
Lucas to tell him the news.

After he had given Jan the orders to prepare the gallows for the summary
execution of the prisoner he had resumed his wild, restless pacing up
and down the room. There was no remorse in him for his inhuman and
cowardly act, but his nerves were all on the jar, and that perpetual
hammering which went on in the distance drove him to frantic
exasperation.

A picture of the happenings in the basement down below would obtrude
itself upon his mental vision; he saw the prisoner--careless,
contemptuous, ready for death; Jan sullen but obedient; the men
murmuring and disaffected. He felt as if the hammering was now directed
against his own head, he could have screamed aloud with the agony of
this weary, expectant hour.

Then he thought of Gilda. Slowly the dawn was breaking, the hammering
had ceased momentarily; silence reigned in the basement after the
turbulence of the past hour. The Lord of Stoutenburg did not dare
conjecture what this silence meant.

The thought of Gilda became more insistent. He snatched up a cloak and
wrapping it closely round him, he ran out into the mist. Quickly
descending the steps, he at once turned his back on the basement where
the last act of the supreme tragedy would be enacted presently. He felt
like a man pursued, with the an