at the Hague were roasting the bleeding shreds of
flesh torn from the corpses of Cornelius and John de Witt.

But, whether from a feeling of shame or from craven weakness, Isaac
Boxtel did not venture that day to point his telescope either at the
garden, or at the laboratory, or at the dry-room.

He knew too well what was about to happen in the house of the poor
doctor to feel any desire to look into it. He did not even get up when
his only servant--who envied the lot of the servants of Cornelius just
as bitterly as Boxtel did that of their master--entered his bedroom. He
said to the man,--

"I shall not get up to-day, I am ill."

About nine o'clock he heard a great noise in the street which made him
tremble, at this moment he was paler than a real invalid, and shook more
violently than a man in the height of fever.

His servant entered the room; Boxtel hid himself under the counterpane.

"Oh, sir!" cried the servant, not without some inkling that, whilst
deploring the mishap which had befallen Van Baerle, he was announcing
agreeable news to his master,--"oh, sir! you do not know, then, what is
happening at this moment?"

"How can I know it?" answered Boxtel, with an almost unintelligible
voice.

"Well, Mynheer Boxtel, at this moment your neighbour Cornelius van
Baerle is arrested for high treason."

"Nonsense!" Boxtel muttered, with a faltering voice; "the thing is
impossible."

"Faith, sir, at any rate that's what people say; and, besides, I have
seen Judge van Spennen with the archers entering the house."

"Well, if you have seen it with your own eyes, that's a different case
altogether."

"At all events," said the servant, "I shall go and inquire once more. Be
you quiet, sir, I shall let you know all about it."

Boxtel contented himself with signifying his approval of the zeal of his
servant by dumb show.

The man went out, and returned in half an hour.

"Oh, sir, all that I told you is indeed quite true."

"How so?"

"Mynheer van Baerle is arrested, and has been put into a carriage, and
they are driving him to the Hague."

"To the Hague!"

"Yes, to the Hague, and if what people say is true, it won't do him much
good."

"And what do they say?" Boxtel asked.

"Faith, sir, they say--but it is not quite sure--that by this hour the
burghers must be murdering Mynheer Cornelius and Mynheer John de Witt."

"Oh," muttered, or rather growled Boxtel, closing his eyes from the
dreadful picture whi