VII + 

It was Nicolaes who first remembered the blind man. + 

During the last momentous half-hour he had been totally forgotten. Stoutenburg during that time had been in close confabulation with Jan, discussing plans, making arrangements for the morrow’s momentous expedition. Neither of them seemed to feel the slightest fatigue. They were men of iron, whom their passions kept alive. But Nicolaes was a man of straw. He had been racked by one emotion after the other all day, and now he was so tired that he could hardly stand. He envied the blind man every time that a lusty snore escaped the latter’s lips, and tried to keep himself awake by going to the fire from time to time and throwing a log or two upon it. But he stood in too great an awe of his friend to dare own to fatigue when the future of his native land was under discussion. + 

It was really in order to divert Stoutenburg’s attention from these interminable discussions on what to do and what not to do on the morrow, that presently, during a pause, he pointed to Diogenes. + 

“What is to happen to this drunken loon?” he asked abruptly. + 

Stoutenburg grinned maliciously. + 

“Have no fear, friend Nicolaes,” he said. “The fate of our valued informer will be my special care. I have not forgotten him. Jan knows. While you were nodding, he and I arranged it all. You did not hear?” + 

Nicolaes shook his head. + 

“No,” he said. “What did you decide?” + 

“You shall see, my good Klaas,” Stoutenburg replied with grim satisfaction. “I doubt not but what you’ll be pleased. And since we have now finished the discussion of our plans, Jan will at once go and bid the Heer Burgomaster rise from his bed and attend upon our pleasure.” + 

“My father?” Nicolaes exclaimed in surprise. “Why? What hath he⁠—” + 

“You will see, my good Klaas,” the other broke in quietly. “You will see. I think that you will be satisfied.” + 

Jan, at his word, had already gone. Nicolaes, really puzzled, tried to ask questions, but Stoutenburg was obviously determined to keep the secret of his intentions awhile longer to himself. + 

It was long past one o’clock now, and bitterly cold. Even the huge blazing logs in the monumental hearth failed to keep the large room at a pleasing temperature. Nicolaes, shivering and yawning, crouched beside the blaze, knocked his half-frozen hands one against the other. He would at this moment have bartered most of his ambitions for the immediate prospect of a good bed. But Stoutenburg was as wide awake as ever, and evidently some kind of inward fever kept the cold out of his bones. + 

After Jan’s departure he resumed that restless pacing of his up and down the long room. Up and down, until Nicolaes, exasperated beyond endurance, could have screamed with choler. + 

Less than a quarter of an hour later, the burgomaster arrived, ushered in by Jan. He had apparently not taken off his clothes since he had been upstairs. It was indeed more that likely that he had spent the time in prayer, for Mynheer Beresteyn was a pious man, and the will of God in fortune or adversity was a very real thing to him. With the same dignified submission which he had displayed throughout, he had immediately followed Jan when curtly ordered to do so. But he came down to face the arrogant tyrant for the third time tonight with as heavy a heart as before, not knowing what fresh indignity, what new cruel measure, would be put upon him. Grace or clemency he knew that he could not expect. + 

The look of malignant triumph wherewith Stoutenburg greeted him appeared to justify his worst forebodings. The presence, too, of Diogenes, fettered and asleep, filled his anxious heart with additional dread. As he stepped out into the room he took no notice of his son, but only strove to face his arch-enemy with as serene a countenance as he could command. + 

“Your lordship desired that I should come,” he said quietly. “What is your lordship’s pleasure?” + 

But Stoutenburg was all suavity. A kind of feline gentleness was in his tone as he replied: + 

“Firstly, to beg your forgiveness, mynheer, for having disturbed you again⁠—and at this hour. But will you not sit? Jan,” he commanded, “draw a chair nearer to the hearth for the Heer Burgomaster.” + 

“I was not asleep, my lord,” Beresteyn rejoined coldly. “And by your leave, will take your commands standing.” + 

“Oh, commands, mynheer!” Stoutenburg rejoined blandly. “ ’Tis no commands I would venture to give you. It was my duty⁠—my painful duty⁠—not to keep you in ignorance of certain matters which have just come to my knowledge, and which will have a momentous bearing upon all my future plans. Will you not sit?” he added, with insidious urbanity. “No? Ah, well, just as you wish. But you will forgive me if I⁠—” + 

He sat down in his favourite chair, with his back to the table and the candlelight and facing the fire, which threw ruddy gleams on his gaunt face and grizzled hair. His deepset eyes were inscrutable in the shadow, but they were fixed upon the burgomaster who stood before him dignified and calm, half-turned away from the pitiful spectacle which the blind man presented in somnolent helplessness. + 

“Since last I had the pleasure of addressing you, mynheer,” Stoutenburg began slowly, after awhile, “it hath come to my knowledge that the Stadtholder, far from abandoning all hope of reconquering Gelderland from our advancing forces, did in truth not only devise a plan whereby he intended to deliver Ede and Amersfoort from our hands, but his far-reaching project also embraced the possibility of seizing my person, and once for all ridding himself of an enemy⁠—a justiciary, shall we say?⁠—who is becoming might inconvenient.” + 

“A project, my lord,” the burgomaster riposted earnestly, “which I pray God may fully succeed.” + 

Stoutenburg gave a derisive laugh. + 

“So it would have done, mynheer,” he said with a sardonic grin. “It would have succeeded admirably, and by this hour tomorrow I should no doubt be dangling on a gibbet, for Maurice of Nassau hath sworn that he would treat me as a knave and as a traitor unworthy of the scaffold.” + 

“And the world would have been rid of a murderous miscreant,” the burgomaster put in coldly, “had God so willed it.” + 

“Ah, but God⁠—your God, mynheer,” Stoutenburg retorted with a sneer, “did not will it, it seems. And forewarned is forearmed, you know.” + 

Instinctively, as the full meaning of Stoutenburg’s words reached his perceptions the Burgomaster’s eyes had sought those of his son, whilst a ghastly pallor overspread his face even to his lips. + 

“The Stadtholder’s schemes have been revealed to you,” he murmured slowly. “By whom?” + 

Then, as Stoutenburg made no reply, only regarded him with a mocking and quizzical gaze, he added more vehemently: + 

“Who is the craven informer who hath sold his master to you?” + 

“What would you do to him if you knew?” Stoutenburg retorted coolly. + 

“Slay him with mine own hand,” the burgomaster replied calmly, “were he my only son!” + 

“ ’Twas not I!” Nicolaes cried involuntarily. + 

Stoutenburg appeared vastly amused. + 

“No,” he said. “It was not your son Klaas, whose merits, by the way, you have not yet learned to appreciate. Nicolaes hath rendered me and the Archduchess immense services, which I hope soon to repay adequately. But,” he added with mocking emphasis, “the most signal service of all, which will deliver the Stadtholder into my hands and reestablish thereby the dominion of Spain over the Netherlands, was rendered to me by the varlet whom, but for me, you would have acclaimed as your son.” + 

And with a wide flourish of the arm, Stoutenburg turned in his chair and pointed to Diogenes, who, sublimely unconscious of what went on around him, was even in the act of emitting a loud and prolonged snore. Instinctively the burgomaster looked at him, his glance, vague and puzzled, wandered over the powerful figure of the blind man, the nodding head, the pinioned shoulders, and from him back to Stoutenburg, who continued to regard him⁠—Beresteyn⁠—with a malicious leer. + 

“I fear me,” the latter murmured after awhile, “That your lordship will think me over-dull; but⁠—I don’t quite understand⁠—” + 

“Yet, ’tis simple enough,” Stoutenburg rejoined; rose from his chair, and approached the burgomaster, as he spoke with a sudden fierce tone of triumph. “This miserable cur on whom Gilda once bestowed her love, seeing the gallows dangling before his bleary eyes, hath sold me the secrets which the Stadtholder did entrust him⁠—sold them to me in exchange for his worthless life! I entered into a bargain with him, and I will keep my pledge. In very truth, he hath saved my life by his revelations, and jeopardized that of the Stadtholder⁠—my most bitter enemy. Maurice of Nassau had thought to trap me in the lonely molen on the Veluwe which is my secret camp. Now ’tis I who will close the trap on him there, and hold his life, his honour, these provinces, at my mercy. And all,” he concluded with a ringing shout, “thanks to the brilliant adventurer, the chosen of Gilda’s heart, her English milor, mynheer!⁠—the gay and dashing Laughing Cavalier!” + 

He had the satisfaction of seeing that the blow had gone home. The burgomaster literally staggered under it, as if he had actually been struck in the face with a whip. Certain it is that he stepped back and clutched the table for support with one hand, whilst he passed the other once or twice across his brow. + 

“My God!” he murmured under his breath. + 

Stoutenburg laughed as a demon might, when gazing on a tortured soul. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went on airily: + 

“You are surprised, mynheer Burgomaster? Frankly, I was not. You believed this fortune-hunter’s tales of noble parentage and English ancestry. I did not. You doubted his treachery when he went on a message to Marquet, and sold that message to de Berg. I knew it to be a fact. My love for Gilda made me clear-sighted, whilst yours left you blind. Now you see him at last in his true colours⁠—base, servile, without honour and without faith. You are bewildered, incredulous, mayhap? Ask Jan. He was here and heard him. Ask my captains at the gate, my master of the camp. The Stadtholder is heading straight for the trap which he had set up for me, because the cullion who sits there did sell his onetime master to me.” + 

The burgomaster, overcome with horror and with shame, had sunk into a chair and buried his face in his hands. The echo of Stoutenburg’s rasping voice seemed to linger in the noble panelled hall, its mocking accents to be still tearing at the stricken father’s aching heart, still deriding his overwhelming sorrow. Gilda! His proud, loving, loyal Gilda! If she were to know! A great sob, manfully repressed, broke from his throat and threatened to choke him. + 

And for the first time in this day of crime and of treachery, Nicolaes felt a twinge of remorse knocking at the gates of his heart. He could not bear to look on his father’s grief, and not feel the vague stirrings of an affection which had once been genuine, even though it was dormant now. His father had been perhaps more just toward him than indulgent. Gilda had been the apple of his eyes, and he⁠—Nicolaes⁠—had been brought up in that stern school of self-sacrifice and self-repression which had made heroes of those of his race in their stubborn and glorious fight for liberty. + 

No doubt it was that rigid bringing-up which had primarily driven an ambitious and discontented youth like Nicolaes into the insidious net spread out for him by the wily Stoutenburg. Smarting under the discipline imposed upon his self-indulgence by the burgomaster, he had lent a willing ear to the treacherous promises of his masterful friend, who held out dazzling visions before him of independence and of aggrandisement. Even at this moment Nicolaes felt no remorse for his treachery to his country and kindred. He was only sentimentally sorry to see his father so utterly broken down by sorrow. + 

And then there was Gilda. Already, when Stoutenburg had placed that cruel “either⁠—or” before her, Nicolaes had felt an uncomfortable pain in his heart at the sight of her misery. Stoutenburg would have called it weakness, and despised him for it. But Stoutenburg’s was an entirely warped and evil nature, which revelled in crime and cruelty as a solace to past humiliation and disappointment, whereas Nicolaes was just a craven timeserver, who had not altogether succeeded in freeing himself from past teachings and past sentiments. + 

And Gilda’s pale, tear-stained face seemed to stare at him through the gloom, reproachful and threatening, whilst his father’s heartrending sob tore at his vitals and shook him to the soul with a kind of superstitious awe. The commandment of Heaven, not wholly forgotten, not absolutely ignored, seemed to ring the death-knell of all that he had striven for, as if the Great Judge of All had already weighed his deeds in the balance, and decreed that his punishment be swift and sure. + 

But Stoutenburg, in this the hour of his greatest triumph, had none of these weaknesses. Nor indeed did he care whether the burgomaster was stricken with sorrow or no. What he did do now was to go up to Jan, and from the latter’s belt take out a pistol. This he examined carefully, then he put it down upon the table close to where the burgomaster was sitting. + 