The First Sir Percy, Baroness Orczy [most important books to read TXT] 📗

from a native whether that particular molen upon the Veluwe was doing work or was inhabited, he would of a certainty have been told that the only possible inhabitants of the molen were gnomes and sprites, and that if any corn was ground there it could only be in order to bake bread for the devil’s dinner.

The mill was disused and uninhabited, had been for many years⁠—a quarter of a century or more probably⁠—so any and every native of Gelderland and Utrecht would have emphatically averred. Nevertheless, on this same memorable night in March, 1624, there were evident signs of life⁠—human life⁠—about that solitary and archaic molen on the Veluwe. Tiny slits of light showed clearly from certain angles through the chinks of the wooden structure; there were vague sounds of life and movement in and about the place; the weatherworn boards creaked and the timber groaned under more tangible pressure than that of the winds. Nay, what’s more two horses were tethered down below, under the shelter afforded by the overhanging platform. These horses were saddled; they had nosebags attached to their bridles, and blankets thrown across their withers; all of which signs denoted clearly, methinks, that for once the mill was inhabited by something more material than ghosts.

More ponderous, too, than ghoulish footsteps were the sounds of slow pacing up and down the floor of the millhouse, and of two voices, now raised to loud argument, now sunk to a mere cautious whisper.

Two men were, in effect, inside the millhouse at this hour. One of them⁠—tall, lean, dark in well-worn, almost ragged, black doublet and cloak, his feet and legs encased in huge boots of untanned leather which reached midway up his long thighs, his black bonnet pushed back from his tall, narrow forehead and grizzled hair⁠—was sitting upon the steps of the steep, ladder-like stairs which led to the floor above; the other⁠—shorter, substantially, even richly clad, and wearing a plumed hat and fur-lined cloak, was the one who paced up and down the dust-covered floor. He was younger than his friend, had fair, curly hair, and a silken, fair moustache, which hid the somewhat weak lines of his mouth.

An old, battered lantern, hanging to a nail in the wall, threw a weird, flickering light upon the scene, vaguely illumined the gaunt figure of the man upon the steps, his large hooked nose and ill-shaven chin, and long thin hands that looked like the talons of some bird of prey.

“You cannot stay on here forever, my good Stoutenburg,” the younger of the two men said, with some impatience. “Sooner or later you will be discovered, and⁠—”

He paused, and the other gave a grim laugh.

“And there is a price of two thousand guilders upon my head, you mean, my dear Heemskerk?” he said dryly.

“Well, I did mean that,” rejoined Heemskerk, with a shrug of the shoulders. “The people round about here are very poor. They might hold your father’s memory in veneration, but there is not one who would not sell you to the Stadtholder if he found you out.”

Again Stoutenburg laughed. He seemed addicted to the habit of this mirthless, almost impish laugh.

“I was not under the impression, believe me, my friend,” he said, “that Christian charity or loyalty to my father’s memory would actuate a worthy Dutch peasant into respecting my sanctuary. But I am not satisfied with what I have learned. I must know more. I have promised De Berg,” he concluded firmly.

“And De Berg counts on you,” Heemskerk rejoined. “But,” he added, with a shrug of the shoulders, “you know what he is. One of those men who, so long as they gain their ambitious ends, count every life cheap but their own.”

“Well,” answered Stoutenburg, “ ’tis not I, in truth, who would place a high price on mine.”

“Easy, easy, my good man,” quoth the other, with a smile. “Hath it, perchance, not occurred to you that your obstinacy in leading this owl-like life here is putting a severe strain on the devotion of your friends?”

“I make no appeal to the devotion of my friends,” answered Stoutenburg curtly. “They had best leave me alone.”

“We cannot leave you to suffer cold and hunger, mayhap to perish of want in this Godforsaken eyrie.”

“I’m not starving,” was Stoutenburg’s ungracious answer to the young man’s kindly solicitude; “and have plenty of inner fire to keep me warm.”

He paused, and a dark scowl contracted his gaunt features, gave him an expression that in the dim and flickering light appeared almost diabolical.

“I know,” said Heemskerk, with a comprehending not. “Still those thoughts of revenge?”

“Always!” replied the other, with sombre calm.

“Twice you have failed.”

“The third time I shall succeed,” Stoutenburg affirmed with fierce emphasis. “Maurice of Nassau sent my father to the scaffold⁠—my father, to whom he owed everything: money, power, success. The day that Olden Barneveldt died at the hands of that accursed ingrate I, his son, swore that the Stadtholder should perish by mine. As you say, I have twice failed in my attempt.

“My brother Groeneveld has gone the way of my father. I am an outlaw with a price upon my head, and my poor mother has three of us to weep for now, instead of one. But I have not forgotten mine oath, nor yet my revenge. I’ll be even with Maurice of Nassau yet. All this fighting is but foolery. He is firmly established as Stadtholder of the United Provinces⁠—the sort of man who sees others die for him. He may lose a town here, gain a city there, but he is the sovereign lord of an independent State, and his sacred person is better guarded than was that of his worthier father.

“But it is his life that I want,” Stoutenburg went on fiercely, and his thin, claw-like hand clutched in imaginary dagger and struck out through the air as if against the breast of the hated foe. “For this I’ll scheme and strive. Nay, I’ll never rest until I have