ot understand. The key was never out of
my hands; I clinched it as if I were afraid it would take wings."

"But how did it happen, then?"

"That's what I cannot make out. I had given the letter to my messenger;
he started before I left his house; I came home, and my door was locked,
everything in my room was as I had left it, except the tulip,--that was
gone. Some one must have had a key for my room, or have got a false one
made on purpose."

She was nearly choking with sobs, and was unable to continue.

Cornelius, immovable and full of consternation, heard almost without
understanding, and only muttered,--

"Stolen, stolen, and I am lost!"

"O Cornelius, forgive me, forgive me, it will kill me!"

Seeing Rosa's distress, Cornelius seized the iron bars of the grating,
and furiously shaking them, called out,--

"Rosa, Rosa, we have been robbed, it is true, but shall we allow
ourselves to be dejected for all that? No, no; the misfortune is great,
but it may perhaps be remedied. Rosa, we know the thief!"

"Alas! what can I say about it?"

"But I say that it is no one else but that infamous Jacob. Shall we
allow him to carry to Haarlem the fruit of our labour, the fruit of our
sleepless nights, the child of our love? Rosa, we must pursue, we must
overtake him!"

"But how can we do all this, my friend, without letting my father know
we were in communication with each other? How should I, a poor girl,
with so little knowledge of the world and its ways, be able to attain
this end, which perhaps you could not attain yourself?"

"Rosa, Rosa, open this door to me, and you will see whether I will not
find the thief,--whether I will not make him confess his crime and beg
for mercy."

"Alas!" cried Rosa, sobbing, "can I open the door for you? have I the
keys? If I had had them, would not you have been free long ago?"

"Your father has them,--your wicked father, who has already crushed the
first bulb of my tulip. Oh, the wretch! he is an accomplice of Jacob!"

"Don't speak so loud, for Heaven's sake!"

"Oh, Rosa, if you don't open the door to me," Cornelius cried in his
rage, "I shall force these bars, and kill everything I find in the
prison."

"Be merciful, be merciful, my friend!"

"I tell you, Rosa, that I shall demolish this prison, stone for stone!"
and the unfortunate man, whose strength was increased tenfold by his
rage, began to shake the door with a great noise, little heeding that
the thunder of his v