Opposite to Lysbeth this strange, gaunt person stopped, contemplating her with a dreamy eye.  Presently she seemed to recognise her, for she said in a quick, low voice, the voice of one who lives in terror of being overheard:—­

“That’s a pretty dress of yours, Van Hout’s daughter.  Oh, yes, I know you; your father used to play with me when I was a child, and once he kissed me on the ice at just such a fete as this.  Think of it!  Kissed me, Martha the Mare,” and she laughed hoarsely, and went on:  “Yes, well-warmed and well-fed, and, without doubt, waiting for a gallant to kiss you”; here she turned and waved her hand towards the people—­“all well-warmed and well-fed, and all with lovers and husbands and children to kiss.  But I tell you, Van Hout’s daughter, as I have dared to creep from my hiding hole in the great lake to tell all of them who will listen, that unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard, a day shall come when the folk of Leyden must perish by thousands of hunger behind those walls.  Yes, yes, unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard and his Inquisition.  Oh, I know him, I know him, for did they not make me carry my own husband to the stake upon my back?  And have you heard why, Van Hout’s daughter?  Because what I had suffered in their torture-dens had made my face—­yes, mine that once was so beautiful—­like the face of a horse, and they said that ‘a horse ought to be ridden.’”

Now, while this poor excited creature, one of a whole class of such people who in those sad days might be found wandering about the Netherlands crazy with their griefs and sufferings, and living only for revenge, poured out these broken sentences, Lysbeth, terrified, shrank back before her.  As she shrank the other followed, till presently Lysbeth saw her expression of rage and hate change to one of terror.  In another instant, muttering something about a request for alms which she did not wait to receive, the woman had wheeled round and fled away as fast as her skates would carry her—­which was very fast indeed.

Turning about to find what had frightened her, Lysbeth saw standing on the bank of the mere, so close that she must have overheard every word, but behind the screen of a leafless bush, a tall, forbidding-looking woman, who held in her hand some broidered caps which apparently she was offering for sale.  These caps she began to slowly fold up and place one by one in a hide satchel that was hung about her shoulders.  All this while she was watching Lysbeth with her keen black eyes, except when from time to time she took them off her to follow the flight of that person who had called herself the Mare.

“You keep ill company, lady,” said the cap-seller in a harsh voice.

“It was none of my seeking,” answered Lysbeth, astonished into making a reply.