the course of years, it has become a habit to swear by him.  Folly, you will think, but I know what I know, and now I must go.  We will have another talk this evening, but about other matters.  Yes, everybody in this world is a little crackbrained, but at least I don’t bore other people.  I only show my craze to intimate friends, and strangers who ask me once about the fore man Roland rarely do so a second time.  The score, bar-maid—­There it is again.  We must see whether the towers are properly garrisoned, and charge the sentinels to keep their eyes open.  If you come prepared for battle, you may save yourself a walk, I’ll answer for nothing to-day.  You will probably pass the new Rhine.  Just step into my house, and tell my wife she needn’t wait supper for me.  Or, no, I’ll attend to that myself; there’s something in the air, you’ll see it, for I have the Roncesvalles throat again.”

CHAPTER XVII.

In the big watch-house that had been erected beside the citadel, during the siege of the city, raised ten months before, city-guards and volunteers sat together in groups after sunset, talking over their beer or passing the time in playing cards by the feeble light of thin tallow candles.

The embrasure where the officers’ table stood was somewhat better lighted.  Wilhelm, who, according to his friend’s advice, appeared in the uniform of an ensign of the city-guards, seated himself at the empty board just after the clock in the steeple had struck ten.  While ordering the waiter to bring him a mug of beer, Captain Allertssohn appeared with Junker von Warmond, who had taken part in the consultation at Peter Van der Werff’s, and bravely earned his captain’s sash two years before at the capture of Brill.  As this son of one of the richest and most aristocratic families in Holland, a youth whose mother had borne the name of Egmont, entered, he drew his hand, encased in a fencing glove, from the captain’s arm and said, countermanding the musician’s order: 

“Nothing of that sort, waiter!  The little keg from the Wurzburger Stein can’t be empty yet.  We’ll find the bottom of it this evening.  What do you say, Captain?”

“Such an arrangement will lighten the keg and not specially burden us,” replied the other.  “Good-evening, Herr Wilhelm, punctuality adorns the soldier.  People are beginning to understand how much depends upon it.  I have posted the men, so that they can overlook the country in every direction.  I shall have them relieved from time to time, and at intervals look after them myself.  This is good liquor, Junker.  All honor to the man who melts his gold into such a fluid.  The first glass must be a toast to the Prince.”

The three men touched their glasses, and soon after drank to the liberty of Holland and the prosperity of the good city of Leyden.  Then the conversation took a lively turn, but duty was not forgotten, for at the end of half an hour the captain rose to survey the horizon himself and urge the sentinels to vigilant watchfulness.