r that
everything is easy enough. The waverers hang back until success is
assured. But our secret adherents in Holland can be counted by the
score, in Zealand and Utrecht by the hundred. When Maurice of Orange has
paid with his own blood the penalty which his crimes have incurred, when
I can proclaim myself over his dead body Stadtholder of the Northern
Provinces, Captain and Admiral General of the State, thousands will
rally round us and flock to our banner. Thousands feel as we do, think
as we do, and know what we know, that John of Barneveld will not rest in
his grave till I, his last surviving son, have avenged him. Who made
this Republic what she is? My father. Who gave the Stadtholder the might
which he possesses? My father. My father whose name was revered and
honoured throughout the length and breadth of Europe and whom an
ingrate's hand hath branded with the mark of traitor. The Stadtholder
brought my father to the scaffold, heaping upon him accusations of
treachery which he himself must have known were groundless. When the
Stadtholder sent John of Barneveld to the scaffold he committed a crime
which can only be atoned for by his own blood. Last year we failed. The
mercenaries whom we employed betrayed us. My brother, our friends went
the way my father led, victims all of them of the rapacious ambition,
the vengeful spite of the Stadtholder. But I escaped as by a miracle!--a
miracle I say it was, my friends, a miracle wrought by the God of
vengeance, who hath said: 'I will repay!' He hath also said that
whosoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed! I am
the instrument of his vengeance. Vengeance is mine! 'tis I who will
repay!"

He had never raised his voice during this long peroration, but his
diction had been none the less impressive because it was spoken under
his breath. The others had listened in silence, awed, no doubt, by the
bitter flood of hate which coursed through every vein of this man's body
and poured in profusion from his lips. The death of father and brother
and of many friends, countless wrongs, years of misery, loss of caste,
of money and of home had numbed him against every feeling save that of
revenge.

"This time I'll let no man do the work for me," he said after a moment's
silence, "if you will all stand by me, I will smite the Stadtholder with
mine own hand."

This time he had raised his voice, just enough to wake the echo that
slept in the deserted edifice.

"Hu