s suffered many modifications of successive
generations of architects, some sombre weather-beaten pile, the delight
of a poet, the story would drive the commentator and the industrious
winnower of words, facts, and dates to despair. The narrator believes in
it, as all superstitious minds in Flanders likewise believe; and is not
a whit wiser nor more credulous than his audience. But as it would be
impossible to make a harmony of all the different renderings, here
are the outlines of the story; stripped, it may be, of its picturesque
quaintness, but with all its bold disregard of historical truth, and its
moral teachings approved by religion--a myth, the blossom of imaginative
fancy; an allegory that the wise may interpret to suit themselves. To
each his own pasturage, and the task of separating the tares from the
wheat.

The boat that served to carry passengers from the Island of Cadzand to
Ostend was upon the point of departure; but before the skipper loosed
the chain that secured the shallop to the little jetty, where people
embarked, he blew a horn several times, to warn late lingerers, this
being his last journey that day. Night was falling. It was scarcely
possible to see the coast of Flanders by the dying fires of the sunset,
or to make out upon the hither shore any forms of belated passengers
hurrying along the wall of the dykes that surrounded the open country,
or among the tall reeds of the marshes. The boat was full.

"What are you waiting for? Let us put off!" they cried.

Just at that moment a man appeared a few paces from the jetty, to
the surprise of the skipper, who had heard no sound of footsteps. The
traveler seemed to have sprung up from the earth, like a peasant who had
laid himself down on the ground to wait till the boat should start, and
had slept till the sound of the horn awakened him. Was he a thief? or
some one belonging to the custom-house or the police?

As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which the boat was moored,
seven persons who were standing in the stern of the shallop hastened to
sit down on the benches, so as to leave no room for the newcomer. It was
the swift and instinctive working of the aristocratic spirit, an impulse
of exclusiveness that comes from the rich man's heart. Four of the seven
personages belonged to the most aristocratic families in Flanders. First
among them was a young knight with two beautiful greyhounds; his long
hair flowed from beneath a jeweled ca