The end may be guessed.  The treasure was at hand and enormous, whereas the wrath of a Heavenly or an earthly king was problematical and far away.  So greed, outstripping caution and superstitious fear, won the race, and Ramiro threw himself into the adventure with a resource and energy which in their way were splendid.

Now, as always, he was a man who hated violence for its own sake.  It was no wish of his that the worthy Heer Brant should be unnecessarily burnt or tortured.  Therefore through his intermediaries, as Brant had narrated in his letter, he approached him with a proposal which, under the circumstances, was liberal enough—­that Brant should hand over two-thirds of his fortune to him and his confederates, on condition that he was assisted to escape with the remaining third.  To his disgust, however, this obstinate Dutchman refused to buy his safety at the price of a single stiver.  Indeed, he answered with rude energy that now as always he was in the hands of God, and if it pleased God that his life should be sacrificed and his great wealth divided amongst thieves, well, it must be so, but he, at least, would be no party to the arrangement.

The details of the plots and counter-plots, the attack of the Ramiro company, the defences of Brant, the internecine struggles between the members of the company and the agents of the Government, if set out at length, would fill a considerable book.  Of these we already know something, and the rest may be divined.

In the course of the affair Ramiro had made but one mistake, and that sprang from what he was wont to consider the weakness of his nature.  Needless to say, it was that he had winked at the escape of Brant’s daughter, Elsa.  It may have been superstition that prompted him, or it may have been pity, or perhaps it was a certain oath of mercy which he had taken in an hour of need; at any rate, he was content that the girl should not share the doom which overshadowed her father.  He did not think it at all likely that she would take with her any documents of importance, and the treasure, of course, she could not take; still, to provide against accidents he arranged for her to be searched upon the road.

As we know this search was a failure, and when on the morrow Black Meg arrived to make report and to warn him that Dirk van Goorl’s son and his great serving-man, whose strength was known throughout the Netherlands, were on their road to The Hague, he was sure that after all the girl had carried with her some paper or message.

By this time the whereabouts of Brant’s treasure had been practically solved.  It was believed to lie in the string of vessels, although it was not known that one of these was laden with powder as well as gold.  The plan of the Government agents was to search the vessels as they passed out to sea and seize the treasure as contraband, which would save much legal trouble, since under the law or the edicts wealth might not be shipped abroad by heretics.  The plan of Ramiro and his friends was to facilitate the escape of the treasure to the open sea, where they proposed to swoop down upon it and convey it to more peaceful shores.