thin boots. M. Havard has an amusing passage on this topic, in which
he says that the ancient fifteenth-century punishment for marital
infidelity, a sin forbidden by the municipal laws no less than by
Heaven, was the supply by the offending man of a certain number of
paving stones. After such an explanation, the genial Frenchman adds,
we must not complain:--

Nos peres ont peches, nos peres ne sont plus,
Et c'est nous qui portons la peine de leurs crimes.

The island of Walcheren is quickly learned. From Middelburg one
can drive in a day to the chief points of interest--Westcapelle and
Domburg, Veere and Arnemuiden. Of these Veere is the jewel--Veere,
once Middelburg's dreaded rival, and in its possession of a clear
sea-way and harbour her superior, but now forlorn. For in the
seventeenth century Holland's ancient enemy overflowed its barriers,
and the greater part of Veere was blotted out in a night. What remains
is a mere symbol of the past; but there is enough to loiter in with
perfect content, for Veere is unique. Certainly no little town is so
good to approach--with the friendliness of its red roofs before one
all the way, the unearthly hugeness of its church and the magic of
its stadhuis tower against the blue.

The church, which is visible from all parts of the island, is immense,
in itself an indication of what a city Veere must have been. It
rises like a mammoth from the flat. Only the east end is now used for
services; the vast remainder, white and naked, is given up to bats
and the handful of workmen that the slender restoration funds make it
possible to employ. For there is some idea of Veere's church being one
day again in perfect repair; but that day will not be in our time. The
ravages of the sea only emptied it: the sea does not desecrate. It
was Napoleon who disgraced the church by converting it into barracks.

Other relics of Veere's past are the tower at the harbour mouth (its
fellow-tower is beneath the sea) and the beautifully grave Scotch house
on the quay, once the centre of the Scottish wool trade of these parts.

The stadhuis also remains, a dainty distinguished structure which might
be the infant daughter of the stadhuis at Middelburg. Its spire has a
slender aerial grace; on its facade are statues of the Lords of Veere
and their Ladies, Within is a little museum of antiquities, one of
whose most interesting possessions is the entry in the Veere register,
under the date July