of course, to be immediately hanged. On
the contrary, Alexander gave orders that he should be conducted over
every part of the encampment. The forts, the palisades, the bridge, were
all to be carefully exhibited and explained to him as if he had been a
friendly visitor entitled to every information. He was requested to count
the pieces of artillery in the forts, on the bridge, in the armada. After
thoroughly studying the scene he was then dismissed with a safe-conduct
to the city.

"Go back to those who sent you," said the Prince. "Convey to them the
information in quest of which you came. Apprize them of every thing which
you have inspected, counted, heard explained. Tell them further, that the
siege will never be abandoned, and that this bridge will be my sepulcher
or my pathway into Antwerp."

And now the aspect of the scene was indeed portentous. The chimera had
become a very visible bristling reality. There stood the bridge which the
citizens had ridiculed while it was growing before their faces. There
scowled the Kowenstyn--black with cannon, covered all over with
fortresses which the butchers had so sedulously preserved. From Parma's
camp at Beveren and Kalloo a great fortified road led across the river
and along the fatal dyke all the way to the entrenchments at Stabroek,
where Mansfeld's army lay. Grim Mondragon held the "holy cross" and the
whole Kowenstyn in his own iron grasp. A chain of forts, built and
occupied by the contending hosts of the patriots and the Spaniards, were
closely packed together along both banks of the Scheldt, nine miles long
from Antwerp to Lillo, and interchanged perpetual cannonades. The country
all around, once fertile as a garden, had been changed into a wild and
wintry sea where swarms of gun-boats and other armed vessels manoeuvred
and contended with each other over submerged villages and orchards, and
among half-drowned turrets and steeples. Yet there rose the great
bulwark--whose early destruction would have made all this desolation a
blessing--unbroken and obstinate; a perpetual obstacle to communication
between Antwerp and Zeeland. The very spirit of the murdered Prince of
Orange seemed to rise sadly and reproachfully out of the waste of waters,
as if to rebuke the men who had been so deaf to his solemn warnings.

Brussels, too, wearied and worn, its heart sick with hope deferred, now
fell into despair as the futile result of the French negotiation became
apparent. The sta