The sight of that long, sandy beach stretching for more than seventy miles in an unbroken, melancholy line, without cove, curve, or indentation to break its cruel monotony, and with the wild waves of the German Ocean, lashed by a wintry storm, breaking into white foam as far as the eye could reach, appalled the fugitive criminal.  With the certainty of an ignominious death behind him, he shrank abjectly from the terrors of the sea, and, despite the honest fisherman’s entreaties, refused to enter the boat and face the storm.  He wandered feebly along the coast, still accompanied by his humble friend, to another little village, where the fisherman procured a waggon, which took them as far as Sandvoort.  Thence he made his way through Egmond and Petten and across the Marsdiep to Tegel, where not deeming himself safe he had himself ferried over to the neighbouring island of Vlieland.  Here amongst the quicksands, whirlpools, and shallows which mark the last verge of habitable Holland, the unhappy fugitive stood at bay.

Meantime information had come to the authorities that a suspicious stranger had been seen at Scheveningen.  The fisherman’s wife was arrested.  Threatened with torture she at last confessed with whom her husband had fled and whither.  Information was sent to the bailiff of Vlieland, who with a party of followers made a strict search through his narrow precincts.  A group of seamen seated on the sands was soon discovered, among whom, dressed in shaggy pea jacket with long fisherman’s boots, was the Seigneur de Groeneveld, who, easily recognized through his disguise, submitted to his captors without a struggle.  The Scheveningen fisherman, who had been so faithful to him, making a sudden spring, eluded his pursuers and disappeared; thus escaping the gibbet which would probably have been his doom instead of the reward of 4000 golden guilders which he might have had for betraying him.  Thus a sum more than double the amount originally furnished by Groeneveld, as the capital of the assassination company, had been rejected by the Rotterdam boatman who saved Stoutenburg, and by the Scheveningen fisherman who was ready to save Groeneveld.  On the 19th February, within less than a fortnight from the explosion of the conspiracy, the eldest son of Barneveld was lodged in the Gevangen Poort or state prison of the Hague.

The awful news of the 6th February had struck the widow of Barneveld as with a thunderbolt.  Both her sons were proclaimed as murderers and suborners of assassins, and a price put upon their heads.  She remained for days neither speaking nor weeping; scarcely eating, drinking, or sleeping.  She seemed frozen to stone.  Her daughters and friends could not tell whether she were dying or had lost her reason.  At length the escape of Stoutenburg and the capture of Groeneveld seemed to rouse her from her trance.  She then stooped to do what she had sternly refused to do when her husband was in the hands of the authorities.  Accompanied by the wife and infant son of Groeneveld she obtained an audience of the stern Stadholder, fell on her knees before him, and implored mercy and pardon for her son.