"Herrgott!" swore the German captain. "Is this a riddle? What is the
difference?"

Feeling himself secure, that very foolish burgher ventured to be mildly
insolent.

"It is a riddle that the meanest of your clerks there can read for you,"
said he.

The Governor's blue eyes gleamed like steel as they, fastened upon
Danvelt, his heavy jaw seemed to thrust itself forward, and a dull flush
crept into his cheeks. Then he swore.

"Beim blute Gottes!" quoth he, "do you whet your trader's wit upon me,
scum?"

And to the waiting men-at-arms:

"Take him back to his dungeon," he commanded, "that in its quiet he may
study a proper carriage before he is next brought before us."

Danvelt was haled away to gaol again, to repent him of his pertness and
to reflect that, under the governorship of Claudius von Rhynsault, it
was not only the guilty who had need to go warily.

The Governor sat back in his chair with a grunt. His secretary, on his
immediate right, leaned towards him.

"It were easy to test the truth of the man's assertion," said he. "Let
his servants and his wife attend and be questioned as to when he was in
Flushing and when married."

"Aye," growled von Rhynsault. "Let it be done. I don't doubt we shall
discover that the dog was lying."

But no such discovery was made when, on the morrow, Danvelt's household
and his wife stood before the Governor to answer his questions. Their
replies most fully bore out the tale Danvelt had told, and appeared in
other ways to place it beyond all doubt that he had taken no part, in
deed or even in thought, in the rebellion against the Duke of Burgundy.
His wife protested it solemnly and piteously.

"To this I can swear, my lord," she concluded. "I am sure no evidence
can be brought against him, who was ever loyal and ever concerned with
his affairs and with me at the time in question. My lord"--she held
out her hands towards the grim German, and her lovely eyes gleamed
with unshed tears of supplication--"I implore you to believe me, and in
default of witnesses against him to restore my husband to me."

Rhynsault's blue eyes kindled now as they considered her, and his full
red lips slowly parted in the faintest and most inscrutable of smiles.
She was very fair to look upon--of middle height and most exquisite
shape. Her gown, of palest saffron, edged with fur, high-waisted
according to the mode, and fitted closely to the gently swelling bust,
was cut low to display the whi