men of no note do great
deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure
heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, the greater part will never be known
till that hour, when many that are great shall be small, and the small
great; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep: their
lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record
them. The general reader cannot feel them, they are presented so curtly
and coldly: they are not like breathing stories appealing to his heart,
but little historic hail-stones striking him but to glance off his
bosom: nor can he understand them; for epitomes are not narratives, as
skeletons are not human figures.

Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk: the
writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so
rare a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the
public--as an interpreter.

There is a musty chronicle, written in intolerable Latin, and in it
a chapter where every sentence holds a fact. Here is told, with harsh
brevity, the strange history of a pair, who lived untrumpeted, and died
unsung, four hundred years ago; and lie now, as unpitied, in that stern
page, as fossils in a rock. Thus, living or dead, Fate is still unjust
to them. For if I can but show you what lies below that dry chronicler's
words, methinks you will correct the indifference of centuries, and give
those two sore-tried souls a place in your heart--for a day.

It was past the middle of the fifteenth century; Louis XI was sovereign
of France; Edward IV was wrongful king of England; and Philip "the
Good," having by force and cunning dispossessed his cousin Jacqueline,
and broken her heart, reigned undisturbed this many years in Holland,
where our tale begins.

Elias, and Catherine his wife, lived in the little town of Tergou. He
traded, wholesale and retail, in cloth, silk, brown holland, and,
above all, in curried leather, a material highly valued by the middling
people, because it would stand twenty years' wear, and turn an ordinary
knife, no small virtue in a jerkin of that century, in which folk were
so liberal of their steel; even at dinner a man would leave his meat
awhile, and carve you his neighbour, on a very moderate difference of
opinion.

The couple were well to do, and would have been free from all earthly
care, but for nine children. When these were coming into the world, one
per annum, each was hai