As the bolts were shot home behind the man Dirk clasped his hands and almost laughed aloud with joy.  So Martin was free and Foy was free, and until they could be taken again the secret of the treasure remained safe.  Montalvo would never have it, of that he was sure.  And as for his own fate?  Well, he cared little about it, especially as the Inquisitor had decreed that, being a man of so much importance, he was not to be put to the “question.”  This order, however, was prompted, not by mercy, but by discretion, since the fellow knew that, like other of the Holland towns, Leyden was on the verge of open revolt, and feared lest, should it leak out that one of the wealthiest and most respected of its burghers was actually being tormented for his faith’s sake, the populace might step over the boundary line.

When Adrian had seen the wounded Spanish soldiers and their bearers torn to pieces by the rabble, and had heard the great door of the Gevangenhuis close upon Foy and Martin, he turned to go home with his evil news.  But for a long while the mob would not go home, and had it not been that the drawbridge over the moat in front of the prison was up, and that they had no means of crossing it, probably they would have attacked the building then and there.  Presently, however, rain began to fall and they melted away, wondering, not too happily, whether, in that time of daily slaughter, the Duke of Alva would think a few common soldiers worth while making a stir about.

Adrian entered the upper room to tell his tidings, since they must be told, and found it occupied by his mother alone.  She was sitting straight upright in her chair, her hands resting upon her knees, staring out of the window with a face like marble.

“I cannot find him,” he began, “but Foy and Martin are taken after a great fight in which Foy was wounded.  They are in the Gevangenhuis.”

“I know all,” interrupted Lysbeth in a cold, heavy voice.  “My husband is taken also.  Someone must have betrayed them.  May God reward him!  Leave me, Adrian.”

Then Adrian turned and crept away to his own chamber, his heart so full of remorse and shame that at times he thought that it must burst.  Weak as he was, wicked as he was, he had never intended this, but now, oh Heaven! his brother Foy and the man who had been his benefactor, whom his mother loved more than her life, were through him given over to a death worse than the mind could conceive.  Somehow that night wore away, and of this we may be sure, that it did not go half as heavily with the victims in their dungeon as with the betrayer in his free comfort.  Thrice during its dark hours, indeed, Adrian was on the point of destroying himself; once even he set the hilt of his sword upon the floor and its edge against his breast, and then at the prick of steel shrank back.

Better would it have been for him, perhaps, could he have kept his courage; at least he would have been spared much added shame and misery.