e, man, in Heaven's name. The jongejuffrouw is
unconscious, her woman daft with fear. When the lady regains
consciousness let her brother's face be the first sight to comfort her.
Into the sledge, man," he added impatiently, "or by Heaven I'll give the
order to start."

And without more ado, he hustled Nicolaes into the sledge. The latter
bewildered, really not clear with himself as to what he ought to do,
peeped tentatively beneath the cover of the vehicle. He saw his sister
lying there prone upon the wooden floor of the sledge, her head rested
against a bundle of rugs hastily put together for her comfort. Maria was
squatting beside her, her head and ears muffled in a cloak, her hands up
to her eyes; she was moaning incoherently to herself.

Gilda's eyes were closed, and her face looked very pale: Beresteyn's
heart ached at the pitiful sight. She looked so wan and so forlorn that
a sharp pang of remorse for all his cruelty to her shot right through
his dormant sensibilities.

There was just room for him under the low cover of the sledge; he
hesitated no longer now, he felt indeed as if nothing would tear him
away from Gilda's side until she was safely home again in their father's
arms.

A peremptory order: "En avant," struck upon his ear, a shout from the
driver to his horses, the harness rattled, the sledge creaked upon its
framework and then slowly began to move: Beresteyn lifted the flap of
the hood at the rear of the vehicle and looked out for the last time
upon the molens and the hut, where such a tragic act in his life's drama
had just been enacted.

He saw Diogenes still standing there, waving his hat in farewell: for a
few moments longer his splendid figure stood out clearly against the
flat grey landscape beyond, then slowly the veil of mist began to
envelop him, at first only blurring the outline of his mantle or his
sash, then it grew more dense and the sledge moved away more rapidly.

The next moment the Laughing Cavalier had disappeared from view.

CHAPTER XLIII

LEYDEN ONCE MORE

After that Gilda had lived as in a dream: only vaguely conscious that
good horses and a smoothly gliding vehicle were conveying her back to
her home. Of this fact she was sure Nicolaes was sitting quite close
under the hood of the sledge and when first she became fully aware of
the reality of his presence, he had raised her hand to his lips and had
said in response to a mute appeal from her eyes:

"We are goi