ace of the
earth with a price put upon his head.

Gilda Beresteyn could not endure the thought of it all. All the memories
of her childhood were linked with the Barnevelds. Stoutenburg had been
her brother Nicolaes' most intimate friend, and had been the first man
to whisper words of love in her ears, ere his boundless ambition and his
unscrupulous egoism drove him into another more profitable marriage.

Gilda's face flamed up with shame even now at recollection of his
treachery, and the deep humiliation which she had felt when she saw the
first budding blossom of her girlish love so carelessly tossed aside by
the man whom she had trusted.

A sense of oppression weighed her spirits down to-night. It almost
seemed as if the tragedy which had encompassed the entire Barneveld
family was even now hovering over the peaceful house of Mynheer
Beresteyn, deputy burgomaster and chief civic magistrate of the town of
Haarlem. The air itself felt heavy as if with the weight of impending
doom.

The little city lay quiet and at peace; a soft breeze from the south
lightly fanned the girl's cheeks. She leaned her elbows on the
window-sill and rested her chin in her hands. The moon was not up and
yet it was not dark; a mysterious light still lingered on the horizon
far away where earth and sea met in a haze of purple and indigo.

From the little garden down below there rose the subtle fragrance of
early spring--of wet earth and budding trees, and the dim veiled
distance was full of strange sweet sounds, the call of night-birds, the
shriek of sea-gulls astray from their usual haunts.

Gilda looked out and listened--unable to understand this vague sense of
oppression and of foreboding: when she put her finger up to her eyes,
she found them wet with tears.

Memories rose from out the past, sad phantoms that hovered in the scent
of the spring. Gilda had never wholly forgotten the man who had once
filled her heart with his personality, much less could she chase away
his image from her mind now that a future of misery and disgrace was all
that was left to him.

She did not know what had become of him, and dared not ask for news.
Mynheer Beresteyn, loyal to the House of Nassau and to its prince, had
cast out of his heart the sons of John of Barneveld whom he had once
loved. Assassins and traitors, he would with his own lips have condemned
them to the block, or denounced them to the vengeance of the Stadtholder
for their treachery aga