Black Meg put her hand into the bosom of her dress and produced another letter dated not more than three months ago.  It was, or purported to be, written by the priest of the village where the lady lived, and was addressed to the Captain the Count Juan de Montalvo at Leyden.  In substance this epistle was an earnest appeal to the noble count from one who had a right to speak, as the man who had christened him, taught him, and married him to his wife, either to return to her or to forward her the means to join him.  “A dreadful rumour,” the letter ended, “has reached us here in Spain that you have taken to wife a Dutch lady at Leyden named Van Hout, but this I do not believe, since never could you have committed such a crime before God and man.  Write, write at once, my son, and disperse this black cloud of scandal which is gathering on your honoured and ancient name.”

“How did you come by these, woman?” asked Brant.

“The last I had from a priest who brought it from Spain.  I met him at The Hague, and offered to deliver the letter, as he had no safe means of sending it to Leyden.  The others and the pictures I stole out of Montalvo’s room.”

“Indeed, most honest merchant, and what might you have been doing in his Excellency’s room?”

“I will tell you,” she answered, “for, as he never gave me my pay, my tongue is loosed.  He wished for evidence that the Heer Dirk van Goorl was a heretic, and employed me to find it.”

Brant’s face hardened, and he became more watchful.

“Why did he wish such evidence?”

“To use it to prevent the marriage of Jufvrouw Lysbeth with the Heer Dirk van Goorl.”

“How?”

Meg shrugged her shoulders.  “By telling his secret to her so that she might dismiss him, I suppose, or more likely by threatening that, if she did not, he would hand her lover over to the Inquisitors.”

“I see.  And did you get the evidence?”

“Well, I hid in the Heer Dirk’s bedroom one night, and looking through a door saw him and another young man, whom I do not know, reading the Bible, and praying together.”

“Indeed; what a terrible risk you must have run, for had those young men, or either of them, chanced to catch you, it is quite certain that you would not have left that room alive.  You know these heretics think that they are justified in killing a spy at sight, and, upon my word, I do not blame them.  In fact, my good woman,” and he leaned forward and looked her straight in the eyes, “were I in the same position I would have knocked you on the head as readily as though you had been a rat.”

Black Meg shrank back, and turned a little blue about the lips.

“Of course, Mynheer, of course, it is a rough game, and the poor agents of God must take their risks.  Not that the other young man had any cause to fear.  I wasn’t paid to watch him, and—­as I have said—­I neither know nor care who he is.”