ander of a splendid
ship.

Handsome, strong, superior to other men, he had always appeared. Now she
found him following evil courses, on the path to ruin; yet even here
he was peerless among his comrades; whatever stain rested upon him, he
certainly was not base and mean.

As a child, she always had transformed him into a splendid fairy-prince,
but she now divested him of all magnificence, seeing him attired in
plain burgher dress, appear humbly before his father and stand beside
him at the forge. She dreamed that she was by his side, and before her
stood the table she covered with food for him, and the water she gave
him after his work. She heard the house shake under the mighty blows of
his hammer, and in imagination beheld him lay his curly head in her lap,
and say he had found love and peace with her.

The cannonade from the citadel stopped the citizens' work. Open
hostilities had begun.

On the morning of November 4th, under the cover of a thick fog, the
treacherous Spaniards, commanded by Romero, Vargas and Valdez entered
the fortress. The citizens, among them Adam, learned this fact with rage
and terror, but the mutineers of Aalst had not yet collie.

"He is keeping them back," Ruth had said the day before. "Antwerp, our
home, is sacred to him!"

The cannon roared, culverins crashed, muskets and arquebuses rattled;
the boding notes of the alarm-bells and the fierce shouts of soldiers
and citizens hurrying to battle mingled with the deafening thunder of
the artillery.

Every hand seized a weapon, every shop was closed; hearts stood still
with fear, or throbbed wildly with rage and emotion. Ruth remained calm.
She detained the smith in the house, repeating her former words: "The
men from Aalst are not coming; he is keeping diem back." Just at that
moment the young apprentice, whose parents lived on the Scheldt, rushed
with dishevelled hair into the workshop, gasping:

"The men from Aalst are here. They crossed in peatboats and a galley.
They wear green twigs in their helmets, and the Eletto is marching in
the van, bearing the standard. I saw them; terrible--horrible--sheathed
in iron from top to toe."

He said no more, for Adam, with a savage imprecation, interrupted him,
seized his huge hammer, and rushed out of the house.

Ruth staggered back into the workshop.

Adam hurried straight to the rampart. Here stood six thousand Walloons,
to defend the half-finished wall, and behind them large bodies of a