of fish.  One thing I do know, however, that he is over head and ears in debt; indeed, there was trouble about it down at The Hague.  So, cousin, don’t you play with him more than you can help, and don’t reckon on that thousand florins to pay your bills with.  It is a mystery to me how the man gets on, but I am told that a foolish old vrouw in Amsterdam lent him a lot till she discovered—­but there, I don’t talk scandal.  And now,” he added, changing his voice, “is this place private?”

“Let’s see,” said Dirk, “they have cleared the things away, and the old housekeeper has tidied up my bedroom.  Yes, I think so.  Nobody ever comes up here after ten o’clock.  What is it?”

Brant touched his arm, and, understanding the truth, Dirk led the way into the window-place.  There, standing with his back to the room, and his hands crossed in a peculiar fashion, he uttered the word, “Jesus,” and paused.  Brant also crossed his hands and answered, or, rather, continued, “wept.”  It was the password of those of the New Religion.

“You are one of us, cousin?” said Dirk.

“I and all my house, my father, my mother, my sister, and the maiden whom I am to marry.  They told me at The Hague that I must seek of you or the young Heer Pieter van de Werff, knowledge of those things which we of the Faith need to know; who are to be trusted, and who are not to be trusted; where prayer is held, and where we may partake of the pure Sacrament of God the Son.”

Dirk took his cousin’s hand and pressed it.  The pressure was returned, and thenceforward brother could not have trusted brother more completely, for now between them was the bond of a common and burning faith.

Such bonds the reader may say, tie ninety out of every hundred people to each other in the present year of grace, but it is not to be observed that a like mutual confidence results.  No, because the circumstances have changed.  Thanks very largely to Dirk van Goorl and his fellows of that day, especially to one William of Orange, it is no longer necessary for devout and God-fearing people to creep into holes and corners, like felons hiding from the law, that they may worship the Almighty after some fashion as pure as it is simple, knowing the while that if they are found so doing their lot and the lot of their wives and children will be the torment and the stake.  Now the thumbscrew and the rack as instruments for the discomfiture of heretics are relegated to the dusty cases of museums.  But some short generations since all this was different, for then a man who dared to disagree with certain doctrines was treated with far less mercy than is shown to a dog on the vivisector’s table.