found St. Bavon an admirable saint
to implore in such cases, but this I fear me you are not like to
understand. So you see, mejuffrouw, that whatever I said I could not
prove to you that I am less of a blackguard than I seem."

"You could at least prove it to this extent," she retorted, "by keeping
silence over what you may have guessed."

"You mean that I must not sell the secret which you so nearly
betrayed ... have no fear, mejuffrouw, my knowledge of it is so scanty
that the Stadtholder would not give me five guilders for it."

"Will you swear...."

"Such a miserable cur as I am, mejuffrouw," he said lightly, "is surely
an oath-breaker as well as a liar and a thief--what were the good of
swearing?... But I'll swear an you wish ..." he added gaily.

"Surely you ..." she began.

But with a quick gesture he interrupted her.

"Dondersteen, mejuffrouw," he said more firmly than he had yet spoken
before, "if beauty in you is tempered with pity, I entreat you to spare
me now: even knaves remember become men sometimes and my patron Saint
Bavon threatens to leave me in the lurch."

He held open the door for her to pass through, and gravely held out one
of the pewter candles to her. She could not help but take it, though
indeed she felt that the last word between that rogue and herself had
not by any means been spoken yet. But she hardly looked at him as she
sailed past him out of the room, her heavy skirt trailing behind her
with a soft hissing sound.

As soon as she heard the door shut to behind her, she ran up the stairs
back to her own room with all speed, like a frightened hare.

Had she remained in the passage one instant longer she would have heard
a sound which would have terrified her; it was the sound of a prolonged
and ringing laugh which roused the echoes of this sleeping house, but
which had neither mirth nor joy in its tone, and had she then peeped
through a keyhole she would have seen a strange sight. A man who in the
flickering candle-light looked tall and massive as a giant took up one
of the wooden chairs in the room, and after holding it out at arm's
length for a few seconds, he proceeded to smash it viciously bit by bit
until it lay a mass of broken debris at his feet.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MOLENS

Less than half a league to the southeast of Ryswyk--there where the
Schie makes a sharp curve up toward the north--there is a solitary
windmill--strange in this, that it has no companions n