Clement was shocked and mortified at this contemptuous desertion.  He promised to sleep at the convent and preach whenever the prior should appoint, and then withdrew abruptly.  Shipwrecked with Jerome, and saved on the same fragment of the wreck; his pupil, and for four hundred miles his fellow traveller in Christ; and to be shaken off like dirt, the first opportunity.  “Why, worldly hearts are no colder nor less trusty than this,” said he.  “The only one that ever really loved me lies in a grave hard by at Sevenbergen, and I will go and pray over it.”

IV.—­Cloister and Hearth

Friar Clement, preaching in Rotterdam, saw Margaret in the church and recognised her.  Within a day or two he learnt from the sexton, who had been in the burgomaster’s service, the story of the trick that had been played upon him by his brothers, in league with Ghysbrecht.

That same night a Dominican friar, livid with rage, burst into the room when Eli and Catherine were collected with their family round the table at supper.

Standing in front of Cornelius and Sybrandt he cursed them by name, soul and body, in this world and the next.  Then he tore a letter out of his bosom, and flung it down before his father.

“Read that, thou hard old man, that didst imprison thy son, read, and see what monsters thou has brought into the world!  The memory of my wrongs, and hers dwell with you all for ever!  I will meet you again at the judgement day; on earth ye will never see me more!”

And in a moment, as he had come, so he was gone, leaving them stiff and cold, and white as statues, round the smoking board.

Eli drove Cornelis and Sybrandt out of doors at the point of a sword when he understood their infamy, and heavy silence reigned in his house that night.

And where was Clement?

Lying at full length upon the floor of the convent church, with his lips upon the lowest step of the altar, in an indescribable state of terror, misery, penitence, and self-abasement; through all of which struggled gleams of joy that Margaret was alive.

Then he suddenly remembered that he had committed another sin besides intemperate rage.  He had neglected a dying man.  He rose instantly, and set out to repair the omission.

The house he was called to was none other than the Stadthouse, and the dying man was his old enemy Ghysbrecht, the burgomaster.

Clement trembled a little as he entered, and said in a low voice “Pax vobiscum.”  Ghysbrecht did not recognise Gerard in the Dominican friar, and promised in his sickness to make full restitution to Margaret Brandt for the withholding of her property from her.

As soon as he was quite sure Margaret had her own, and was a rich woman, Friar Clement disappeared.

The hermit of Gouda had recently died, and Clement found his cell amidst the rocks, and appropriated it.  The news that he had been made vicar of Gouda never reached his ears to disturb him.