gg. Two horses are already standing under the shed, and
Quatgelat's beer isn't bad." The baron glanced inquiringly at his son.

"Let us go in," replied Nicolas; "we shall get to the Hague early
enough. See how poor Balthasar is shivering! Henrica says he's a white
boy painted; but if she could see how well he keeps his color in this
weather, she would take it back."

Herr Van Wibisma turned his dripping, smoking steed, frightened by
the hail-stones, towards the house, and in a few minutes crossed the
threshold of the inn with his son.

CHAPTER VI.

A current of warm air, redolent of beer and food, met the travellers
as they entered the large, low room, dimly lighted by the tiny windows,
scarcely more than loop-holes, pierced in two sides. The tap-room itself
looked like the cabin of a ship. Ceiling and floor, chairs and tables,
were made of the same dark-brown wood that covered the walls, along
which beds were ranged like berths.

The host, with many bows, came forward to receive the aristocratic
guests, and led them to the fire-place, where huge pieces of peat were
glimmering. The heat they sent forth answered several purposes at the
same time. It warmed the air, lighted a portion of the room, which
was very dark in rainy weather, and served to cook three fowl that,
suspended from a thin iron bar over the fire, were already beginning to
brown.

As the new guests approached the hearth, an old woman, who had been
turning the spit, pushed a white cat from her lap and rose.

The landlord tossed on a bench several garments spread over the backs
of two chairs to dry, and hung in their place the dripping cloaks of the
baron and his son.

While the elder Wibisma was ordering something hot to drink for himself
and servants, Nicolas led the black page to the fire.

The shivering boy crouched on the floor beside the ashes, and stretched
now his soaked feet, shod in red morocco, and now his stiffened fingers
to the blaze.

The father and son took their seats at a table, over which the
maid-servant had spread a cloth. The baron was inclined to enter into
conversation about the decorated tree with the landlord, an over-civil,
pock-marked dwarf, whose clothes were precisely the same shade of brown
as the wood in his tap-room; but refrained from doing so because two
citizens of Leyden, one of whom was well known to him, sat at a short
distance from his table, and he did not wish to be drawn into a quarrel
in a place