“Oh!  Martin, do you forgive me?” said Elsa.  “Immediately after I had done it I knew how shameful it was, and that he would try to hunt you down, and that is why I have been afraid to tell you ever since.  But I pray you believe me; I only spoke because, between shame and fear, I did not know right from wrong.  Do you forgive me?”

“Lady,” answered the Frisian, smiling in his slow fashion, “if I had been there unknown to Ramiro, and you had offered him this head of mine on a dish as a bribe, not only would I have forgiven you but I would have said that you did right.  You are a maid, and you had to protect yourself from a very dreadful thing; therefore who can blame you?”

“I can,” said Martha.  “Ramiro might have torn me to pieces with red-hot pincers before I told him.”

“Yes,” said Martin, who felt that he had a debt to pay, “Ramiro might, but I doubt whether he would have gone to that trouble to persuade you to take a husband.  No, don’t be angry.  ’Frisian thick of head, Frisian free of speech,’ goes the saying.”

Not being able to think of any appropriate rejoinder, Martha turned again upon Elsa.

“Your father died for that treasure,” she said, “and Dirk van Goorl died for it, and your lover and his serving-man there went to the torture-den for it, and I—­well, I have done a thing or two.  But you, girl, why, at the first pinch, you betray the secret.  But, as Martin says, I was fool enough to tell you.”

“Oh! you are hard,” said Elsa, beginning to weep under Martha’s bitter reproaches; “but you forget that at least none of you were asked to marry—­oh!  I mustn’t say that.  I mean to become the wife of one man;” then her eyes fell upon Foy and an inspiration seized her; here, at least, was one of whom she could make a friend—­“when you happen to be very much in love with another.”

“Of course not,” said Foy, “there is no need for you to explain.”

“I think there is a great deal to explain,” went on Martha, “for you cannot fool me with pretty words.  But now, hark you, Foy van Goorl, what is to be done?  We have striven hard to save that treasure, all of us; is it to be lost at the last?”

“Aye,” echoed Martin, growing very serious, “is it to be lost at the last?  Remember what the worshipful Hendrik Brant said to us yonder on that night at The Hague—­that he believed that in a day to come thousands and tens of thousands of our people would bless the gold he entrusted to us.”

“I remember it all,” answered Foy, “and other things too; his will, for instance,” and he thought of his father and of those hours which Martin and he had spent in the Gevangenhuis.  Then he looked up at Martha and said briefly:  “Mother, though they call you mad, you are the wisest among us; what is your counsel?”

She pondered awhile and answered:  “This is certain, that so soon as Ramiro finds that we have escaped, having the key to it, he will take boat and sail to the place where the barrels are buried, knowing well that otherwise we shall be off with them.  Yes, I tell you that by dawn, or within an hour of it, he will be there,” and she stopped.