It is for your own shafety, sare lieutenant, dat we are obliged to do
dis. You have noting to fear--we are too much in want of good friends
like you, to lose them, but we must be safe and shure; now you are von
of us--you cannot tell but we can tell too--we profit togeder, and I
vill hope dat we do run no risk to be hang togeder. Fader Abraham! we
must not think of that, but of de good cause, and of de monish. I am a
Jew, and I care not whether de Papist or de Protestant have de best of
it--but I call it all de good cause, because every cause is good which
brings de monish."

So thought Vanslyperken, who was in heart a Jew.

"And now, sare, you vill please to take great care of de packet, and
deliver it to our friend at Amsterdam, and you vill of course come to me
ven you return here."

Vanslyperken took his leave, with the packet in his pocket, not very
well pleased; but as he put the packet in, he felt the yellow bag, and
that to a certain degree consoled him. The old Jew escorted him to the
door, with his little keen gray eyes fixed upon him, and Vanslyperken
quailed before it, and was glad when he was once more in the street. He
hastened back to the widow's house, full of thought--he certainly had
never intended to have so committed himself as he had done, or to have
positively enrolled himself among the partisans of the exiled king; but
the money had entrapped him--he had twice taken their wages, and he had
now been obliged to give them security for his fidelity, by enabling
them to prove his guilt whenever they pleased. All this made Mr
Vanslyperken rather melancholy--but his meditations were put an end to
by his arrival in the presence of the charming widow. She asked him what
had passed, and he narrated it, but with a little variation, for he
would not tell that he had signed through a fear of violence, but, at
the same time, he observed, that he did not much like signing a receipt.

"But that is necessary," replied she; "and besides, why not? I know you
are on our side, and you will prove most valuable to us. Indeed, I
believe it was your readiness to meet my wishes that made me so fond of
you, for I am devotedly attached to the rightful king, and I never would
marry any man who would not risk life and soul for him, as you have
done now."

The expression "life and soul," made Vanslyperken shudder, and his flesh
crept all over his body.

"Besides," continued the widow, "it will be no small help to us, for