red was the
ultimate end: an exciting experience to go through, a goodly competence
to earn, a promise to fulfil.

Up above, the waning moon seemed to smile upon his enterprise; she lay
radiant and serene on her star-studded canopy of mysterious ethereal
indigo. Diogenes looked back on the little hostelry, which lay some
little distance up the street at right angles to the river bank. Was it
his fancy or one of those many mysterious reflections thrown by the
moon? but it certainly seemed to him as if a light still burned in one
of the upper windows.

The unpleasant interview with the jongejuffrouw had evidently not
weighed his spirits down, for to that distant light he now sent a loud
and merry farewell.

Then deliberately facing the bitter blast he struck out boldly along the
ice and started on his way.

CHAPTER XIX

IN THE KINGDOM OF THE NIGHT

Heigh-ho! for that run along the ice--a matter of half a dozen leagues
or so--at dead of night with a keen north-easterly wind whipping up the
blood, and motion--smooth gliding motion--to cause it to glow in every
vein.

Heigh-ho! for the joy of living, for the joy in the white, ice-covered
world, the joy in the night, and in the moon, and in those distant
lights of Leyden which gradually recede and diminish--tiny atoms now in
the infinite and mysterious distance!

What ho! a dark and heavy bank of clouds! whence come ye, ye disturbers
of the moon's serenity? Nay! but we are in a hurry, the wind drives us
at breathless speed, we cannot stay to explain whence we have come.

Moon, kind moon, come out again! ah, there she is, pallid through the
frosty mist, blinking at this white world scarce less brilliant than
she.

On, on! silently and swiftly, in the stillness of the night, the cruel
skates make deep gashes on the smooth skin of the ice, long even strokes
now, for the Meer is smooth and straight, and the moon--kind
moon!--marks an even silvery track, there where the capricious wind has
swept it free of snow.

Hat in hand, for the wind is cool and good, and tames the hot young
blood which a woman's biting tongue has whipped into passion.

"The young vixen," shouts a laughing voice through the night, "was she
aware of her danger? how I could have tamed her, and cowed her and
terrified her! Did she play a cat and mouse game with me I wonder....
Dondersteen! if I thought that...."

But why think of a vixen now, of blue eyes and biting tongues, when the
n