As a child, she always had transformed him into a splendid fairy-prince, but she now divested him of all magnificence, seeing him attired in plain burgher dress, appear humbly before his father and stand beside him at the forge.  She dreamed that she was by his side, and before her stood the table she covered with food for him, and the water she gave him after his work.  She heard the house shake under the mighty blows of his hammer, and in imagination beheld him lay his curly head in her lap, and say he had found love and peace with her.

The cannonade from the citadel stopped the citizens’ work.  Open hostilities had begun.

On the morning of November 4th, under the cover of a thick fog, the treacherous Spaniards, commanded by Romero, Vargas and Valdez entered the fortress.  The citizens, among them Adam, learned this fact with rage and terror, but the mutineers of Aalst had not yet collie.

“He is keeping them back,” Ruth had said the day before.  “Antwerp, our home, is sacred to him!”

The cannon roared, culverins crashed, muskets and arquebuses rattled; the boding notes of the alarm-bells and the fierce shouts of soldiers and citizens hurrying to battle mingled with the deafening thunder of the artillery.

Every hand seized a weapon, every shop was closed; hearts stood still with fear, or throbbed wildly with rage and emotion.  Ruth remained calm.  She detained the smith in the house, repeating her former words:  “The men from Aalst are not coming; he is keeping diem back.”  Just at that moment the young apprentice, whose parents lived on the Scheldt, rushed with dishevelled hair into the workshop, gasping: 

“The men from Aalst are here.  They crossed in peatboats and a galley.  They wear green twigs in their helmets, and the Eletto is marching in the van, bearing the standard.  I saw them; terrible—­horrible—­sheathed in iron from top to toe.”

He said no more, for Adam, with a savage imprecation, interrupted him, seized his huge hammer, and rushed out of the house.

Ruth staggered back into the workshop.

Adam hurried straight to the rampart.  Here stood six thousand Walloons, to defend the half-finished wall, and behind them large bodies of armed citizens.

“The men from Aalst have come!” echoed from lip to lip.

Curses, wails of grief, yells of savage fury, blended with the thunder of the artillery and the ringing of the alarm bells.

A fugitive now dashed from the counterscarp towards the Walloons, shouting: 

“They are here, they are here!  The blood-hound, Navarrete, is leading them.  They will neither eat nor drink, they say, till they dine in Paradise or Antwerp.  Hark, hark! there they are!”

And they were there, coming nearer and nearer; foremost of all marched the Eletto, holding the standard in his upraised hand.