p; he clanked his gilded spurs,
curled the ends of his moustache from time to time with a swaggering
grace, and looked round disdainfully on the rest of the crew. A
high-born damsel, with a falcon on her wrist, only spoke with her mother
or with a churchman of high rank, who was evidently a relation. All
these persons made a great deal of noise, and talked among themselves as
though there were no one else in the boat; yet close beside them sat
a man of great importance in the district, a stout burgher of Bruges,
wrapped about with a vast cloak. His servant, armed to the teeth, had
set down a couple of bags filled with gold at his side. Next to the
burgher came a man of learning, a doctor of the University of Louvain,
who was traveling with his clerk. This little group of folk, who looked
contemptuously at each other, was separated from the passengers in the
forward part of the boat by the bench of rowers.

The belated traveler glanced about him as he stepped on board, saw that
there was no room for him in the stern, and went to the bows in quest
of a seat. They were all poor people there. At first sight of the
bareheaded man in the brown camlet coat and trunk-hose, and plain stiff
linen collar, they noticed that he wore no ornaments, carried no cap nor
bonnet in his hand, and had neither sword nor purse at his girdle, and
one and all took him for a burgomaster sure of his authority, a worthy
and kindly burgomaster like so many a Fleming of old times, whose homely
features and characters have been immortalized by Flemish painters.
The poorer passengers, therefore, received him with demonstrations of
respect that provoked scornful tittering at the other end of the boat.
An old soldier, inured to toil and hardship, gave up his place on the
bench to the newcomer, and seated himself on the edge of the vessel,
keeping his balance by planting his feet against one of those traverse
beams, like the backbone of a fish, that hold the planks of a boat
together. A young mother, who bore her baby in her arms, and seemed to
belong to the working class in Ostend, moved aside to make room for the
stranger. There was neither servility nor scorn in her manner of doing
this; it was a simple sign of the goodwill by which the poor, who know
by long experience the value of a service and the warmth that fellowship
brings, give expression to the open-heartedness and the natural impulses
of their souls; so artlessly do they reveal their good qual