woollen, torn
and stained as though with long use and journeys, while on her feet she
wore wooden clogs, to which were strapped skates that were not fellows,
one being much longer than the other.

Opposite to Lysbeth this strange, gaunt person stopped, contemplating
her with a dreamy eye. Presently she seemed to recognise her, for she
said in a quick, low voice, the voice of one who lives in terror of
being overheard:--

"That's a pretty dress of yours, Van Hout's daughter. Oh, yes, I know
you; your father used to play with me when I was a child, and once he
kissed me on the ice at just such a fete as this. Think of it! Kissed
me, Martha the Mare," and she laughed hoarsely, and went on: "Yes,
well-warmed and well-fed, and, without doubt, waiting for a gallant to
kiss you"; here she turned and waved her hand towards the people--"all
well-warmed and well-fed, and all with lovers and husbands and children
to kiss. But I tell you, Van Hout's daughter, as I have dared to creep
from my hiding hole in the great lake to tell all of them who will
listen, that unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard, a day shall come
when the folk of Leyden must perish by thousands of hunger behind
those walls. Yes, yes, unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard and his
Inquisition. Oh, I know him, I know him, for did they not make me carry
my own husband to the stake upon my back? And have you heard why, Van
Hout's daughter? Because what I had suffered in their torture-dens had
made my face--yes, mine that once was so beautiful--like the face of a
horse, and they said that 'a horse ought to be ridden.'"

Now, while this poor excited creature, one of a whole class of such
people who in those sad days might be found wandering about the
Netherlands crazy with their griefs and sufferings, and living only for
revenge, poured out these broken sentences, Lysbeth, terrified, shrank
back before her. As she shrank the other followed, till presently
Lysbeth saw her expression of rage and hate change to one of terror. In
another instant, muttering something about a request for alms which she
did not wait to receive, the woman had wheeled round and fled away as
fast as her skates would carry her--which was very fast indeed.

Turning about to find what had frightened her, Lysbeth saw standing on
the bank of the mere, so close that she must have overheard every word,
but behind the screen of a leafless bush, a tall, forbidding-looking
woman, who held in h