One anxious hour followed another.

When Adrian began to feel better, she went to Bessie, who pale and inanimate, seemed to be gently fading away, and only now and then raised her little finger to play with her dry lips.

Oh, the pretty, withering human flower!  How closely the little girl had grown into her heart, how impossible it seemed to give her up!  With tearful eyes, she pressed her forehead on her clasped hands, which rested on the head-board of the little bed, and fervently implored God to spare and save this child.  Again and again she repeated the prayer, but when Bessie’s dim eyes no longer met hers and her hands fell into her lap, she could not help thinking of Peter, the assembly, the fate of the city, and the words:  “Leyden saved, Holland saved!  Leyden lost, all is lost!”

So the hours passed until the gloomy day were away into twilight, and twilight was followed by evening.  Trautchen brought in the lamp, and at last Peter’s step was heard on the stairs.

It must be he, and yet it was not, for he never came up with such slow and dragging feet.

Then the study door opened.

It was he!

What could have happened, what had the citizens determined?

With an anxious heart, she told Trautchen to stay with the child, and then went to her husband.

Peter sat at the writing-table in full official uniform, with his hat still on his head.  His face lay buried on his folded arms, beside the sconce.

He saw nothing, heard nothing, and when she at last called him, started, sprang up and flung his hat violently on the table.  His hair was dishevelled, his glance restless, and in the faint light of the glimmering candles his cheeks looked deadly pale.

“What do you want?” he asked curtly, in a harsh voice; but for a time Maria made no reply, fear paralyzed her tongue.

At last she found words, and deep anxiety was apparent in her question: 

“What has happened?”

“The beginning of the end,” he answered in a hollow tone.

“They have out-voted you?” cried the young wife.  “Baersdorp and the other cowards want to negotiate?”

Peter drew himself up to his full height, and exclaimed in a loud, threatening tone: 

“Guard your tongue!  He who remains steadfast until his children die and corpses bar the way in front of his own house, he who bears the responsibility of a thousand deaths, endures curses and imprecations through long weeks, and has vainly hoped for deliverance during more than a third of a year—­he who, wherever he looks, sees nothing save unprecedented, constantly increasing misery and then no longer repels the saving hand of the foe—­”

“Is a coward, a traitor, who breaks the sacred oath he has sworn.”

“Maria,” cried Peter angrily, approaching with a threatening gesture.

She drew her slender figure up to its full height and with quickened breath awaited him, pointing her finger at him, as she exclaimed with a sharp tone perceptible through the slight tremor in her voice: