r--grateful to him for the part which he had played in re-uniting
her to the man whom she had always loved, she too supreme in power as
the proud wife of the new Stadtholder. And he saw himself as the Lord
High Advocate of the Netherlands standing in the very shoes of that same
John of Barneveld whose death he would have helped to avenge.

These and other thoughts had stirred Nicolaes Beresteyn's fancy while he
lay awake during these the first hours of the New Year, and it was
during those self-same hours that a nameless stranger whom his compeers
called Diogenes had tramped up and down the snow-covered streets of
Haarlem trying to keep himself warm.

I am very sorry to have to put it on record that during that time he
swore more than once at his own softheartedness which had caused him to
give up his hard but sheltered paillasse to a pair of Papists who were
nothing to him and whom probably he would never see again.

"I begin to agree with that bloated puff-ball Pythagoras," he mused
dejectedly once, when an icy wind, blowing straight from the North Sea,
drove the falling snow into his boots, and under his collar, and up his
sleeves, and nearly froze the marrow in his bones, "it is but sorry
pleasure to play at being a gentleman. And I had not many hours of it
either," he added ruefully.

Even the most leaden-footed hours do come to an end however. At one half
after six Diogenes turned his steps toward the Peuselaarsteeg where
dwelt his friend Frans Hals, the painter of pictures. Fortunately
Mevrouw Hals was in a fairly good temper, the last portrait group of the
officers of St. Joris' Shooting Guild had just been paid for, and there
was practically a new commission to paint yet another group of these
gentlemen.

And Mynheer van Zeller the deputy bailiff had brought the fancy picture
too, for which that knave Diogenes had sat last year, so Mevrouw Hals
was willing to provide the young man with a savoury and hot breakfast if
he were willing once again to allow Frans to make a picture of his
pleasant face.

Mevrouw Hals being in rare good humour, the breakfast was both
substantial and savoury. Diogenes, who was starved with cold as well as
with hunger, did great honour to all that was laid before him: he ate
heartily while recounting his adventures of the past night to his
friend.

"All that trouble for a Papist wench," said the painter as
contemptuously as Pythagoras himself would have done, "and maybe a
Spania