street and with Maria
and Jakob and Piet close by--eavesdropping mayhap?

Gilda was obstinate and had always been allowed more latitude in the way
of thinking things out for herself than was good for any woman; but
Nicolaes knew that she would not take any momentous step in a hurry. She
would turn the whole of the circumstances over in her mind and as she
said do some praying too. What she would do afterwards he dared not even
conjecture.

For the moment he was forced to leave her alone, and primarily he
decided to let his friends know at once how the matter stood.

He found them waiting anxiously for his return. I doubt if they had
spoken much during his absence. A chorus of laconic inquiry greeted him
as soon as his firm step rang out upon the flagstones.

"Well?"

"She has heard everything," he said quietly, "but, she will not betray
us. To this I pledge ye my word."

CHAPTER VI

THE COUNSELS OF PRUDENCE

Neither Stoutenburg nor any of the others had made reply to Beresteyn's
firmly spoken oath. They were hard-headed Dutchmen, every one of them:
men of action rather than men of words: for good or ill the rest of the
world can judge them forever after by their deeds alone.

Therefore when the spectre of betrayal and of subsequent death appeared
so suddenly before them they neither murmured nor protested. They could
not in reason blame Beresteyn for his sister's presence in the cathedral
this night, nor yet that her thoughts and feelings in the matter of the
enmity between the Stadtholder and the Barneveld family did not coincide
with their own.

Silently they walked across the vast and lonely cathedral and filed one
by one out of the western door where Perk still held faithful watch.
Stoutenburg, their leader, had his lodgings in a small house situate at
the top of the Kleine Hout Straat, close to the well-known hostelry at
the sign of the "Lame Cow." This latter was an hostelry of unimpeachable
repute and thither did the six friends decide to go ere finally going
home for the night.

It had been decided between them some time ago that those who were able
to do so would show themselves in public as much as possible during the
next few days, so as to ward off any suspicion of intrigue which their
frequent consorting in secluded places might otherwise have aroused.

Out in the open they thought it best to disperse, electing to walk away
two and two rather than in a compact group which might call f