at Deventer, but hastened on to Zutphen with my thoughts
straying all the time to the grey walls of Penshurst castle in Kent
and its long galleries filled with memories of Sir Philip Sidney--the
gentle knight who was a boy there, and who died at Arnheim of a
wound which he received in the siege of Zutphen three and a quarter
centuries ago.

At Naarden we have seen how terrible was the destroying power of the
Spaniards. It was at Zutphen that they had first given rein to their
lust for blood. When Zutphen was taken by Don Frederic in 1572, at the
beginning of the war, Motley tells us that "Alva sent orders to his son
to leave _not a single man alive in the city_, and to burn every house
to the ground. The Duke's command was almost literally obeyed. Don
Frederic entered Zutphen, and without a moment's warning put the whole
garrison to the sword. The citizens next fell a defenceless prey; some
being stabbed in the streets, some hanged on the trees which decorated
the city, some stripped stark naked, and turned out into the fields
to freeze to death in the wintry night. As the work of death became
too fatiguing for the butchers, five hundred innocent burghers were
tied two and two, back to back, and drowned like dogs in the river
Yssel. A few stragglers who had contrived to elude pursuit at first,
were afterwards taken from their hiding-places, and hung upon the
_gallows by the feet_, some of which victims suffered four days and
nights of agony before death came to their relief."

On the day that I was in Zutphen it was the quietest town I had
found in all Holland--not excepting Monnickendam between the arrival
of the steam-trams. The clean bright streets were empty and still:
another massacre almost might just have occurred. I had Zutphen to
myself. I could not even find the koster to show me the church;
and it was in trying door after door as I walked round it that I
came upon the only sign of life in the place. For one handle at last
yielding I found myself instantly in a small chapel filled with many
young women engaged in a scripture class. The sudden irruption of an
embarrassed and I imagine somewhat grotesque foreigner seems to have
been exactly what every member of this little congregation was most
desiring, and I never heard a merrier or more spontaneous burst of
laughter. I stood not upon the order of my going.

The church is vast and very quiet and restful, with a large plain
window of green glass that increas