“Oh no,” said the good woman with a laugh; “only let him come.  We will take excellent care of him.”

At another visit one Saturday, 20th March, (1621) Madame de Groot asked her friend why all the bells of Gorcum march were ringing.

“Because to-morrow begins our yearly fair,” replied Dame Daatselaer.

“Well, I suppose that all exiles and outlaws may come to Gorcum on this occasion,” said Madame de Groot.

“Such is the law, they say,” answered her friend.

“And my husband might come too?”

“No doubt,” said Madame Daatselaer with a merry laugh, rejoiced at finding the wife of Grotius able to speak so cheerfully of her husband in his perpetual and hopeless captivity.  “Send him hither.  He shall have, a warm welcome.”

“What a good woman you are!” said Madame de Groot with a sigh as she rose to take leave.  “But you know very well that if he were a bird he could never get out of the castle, so closely, he is caged there.”

Next morning a wild equinoctial storm was howling around the battlements of the castle.  Of a sudden Cornelia, daughter of the de Groots, nine years of age, said to her mother without any reason whatever,

“To-morrow Papa must be off to Gorcum, whatever the weather may be.”

De Groot, as well as his wife, was aghast at the child’s remark, and took it as a direct indication from Heaven.

For while Madame Daatselaer had considered the recent observations of her visitor from Loevestein as idle jests, and perhaps wondered that Madame de Groot could be frivolous and apparently lighthearted on so dismal a topic, there had been really a hidden meaning in her words.

For several weeks past the prisoner had been brooding over a means of escape.  His wife, whose every thought was devoted to him, had often cast her eyes on the great chest or trunk in which the books of Erpenius had been conveyed between Loevestein and Gorcum for the use of the prisoner.  At first the trunk had been carefully opened and its contents examined every time it entered or left the castle.  As nothing had ever been found in it save Hebrew, Greek, and Latin folios, uninviting enough to the Commandant, that warrior had gradually ceased to inspect the chest very closely, and had at last discontinued the practice altogether.

It had been kept for some weeks past in the prisoner’s study.  His wife thought—­although it was two finger breadths less than four feet in length, and not very broad or deep in proportion—­that it might be possible for him to get into it.  He was considerably above middle height, but found that by curling himself up very closely he could just manage to lie in it with the cover closed.  Very secretly they had many times rehearsed the scheme which had now taken possession of their minds, but had not breathed a word of it to any one.  He had lain in the chest with the lid fastened, and with his wife sitting upon the top of it, two hours at