eads them. They
have had no training in such matters, and will hardly know how to
proceed."

"You really want some one who is daring and capable, mynheer, some one
who will be as wary as those vervloekte sea-wolves and beat them at
their own game. 'Tis not so much the numbers that you want as the one
brain to direct and to act."

"True! true, my good Hals! But our best men are all at the war fighting
for our religious and political liberties, while we--the older citizens
of our beloved country with our wives and our daughters--are left a prey
to the tyranny of malefactors and of pirates. The burgomaster hopes to
raise an efficient corps of volunteers by to-morrow ... but I doubt me
if he will succeed.... I have sent for help, I have spared no money to
obtain assistance ... but I am an old man myself, and my son alas! has
been rendered helpless at the outset, through no fault of his own...."

"But surely there are young men left in Haarlem whom wanton mischief
such as this would cause to boil with indignation."

"There are few young men left in Haarlem, my friend," rejoined Beresteyn
sadly, "the Stadtholder hath claimed the best of them. Those who are
left behind are too much engrossed in their own affairs to care greatly
about the grief of an old man, or a wrong done to an innocent girl."

"I'll not believe it," said Hals hotly.

"Alas, 'tis only too true! Men nowadays--those at any rate who are left
in our cities--no longer possess that spirit of chivalry or of adventure
which caused our forebears to give their life's blood for justice and
for liberty."

"You wrong them, mynheer," protested the artist.

"I think not. Think on it, Hals. You know Haarlem well; you know most
people who live in the city. Can you name me one man who would stand up
before me to-day and say boldly: 'Mynheer, you have lost your daughter:
evil-doers have taken her from her home. Here am I ready to do you
service, and by God do I swear that I will bring your daughter back to
you!' So would our fathers have spoken, my good Hals, before commerce
and prosperity had dulled the edge of reckless gallantry. By God! they
were fine men in those days--we are mere pompous, obese, self-satisfied
shopkeepers now."

There was a great deal of bitter truth in what Cornelius Beresteyn had
said: Hals--the artist--who had listened to the complacent talk that had
filled this room awhile ago--who knew of the commercial transactions
that nowadays went by t