Pieter van de Werff still lived, however, and though regarded with suspicion by the authorities, was a man of weight and honour in the town, but to-night he was not present there.  The food, too, if ample was plain, not on account of the poverty of the household, for Dirk had prospered in his worldly affairs, being hard-working and skilful, and the head of the brass foundry to which in those early days he was apprenticed, but because in such times people thought little of the refinements of eating.  When life itself is so doubtful, its pleasures and amusements become of small importance.  The ample waiting service of the maid Greta, who long ago had vanished none knew where, and her fellow domestics was now carried on by the man, Martin, and one old woman, since, as every menial might be a spy, even the richest employed few of them.  In short all the lighter and more cheerful parts of life were in abeyance.

“Where is Adrian?” asked Dirk.

“I do not know,” answered Lysbeth.  “I thought that perhaps——­”

“No,” replied her husband hastily; “he did not accompany us; he rarely does.”

“Brother Adrian likes to look underneath the spoon before he licks it,” said Foy with his mouth full.

The remark was enigmatic, but his parents seemed to understand what Foy meant; at least it was followed by an uncomfortable and acquiescent silence.  Just then Adrian came in, and as we have not seen him since, some four and twenty years ago, he made his entry into the world on the secret island in the Haarlemer Meer, here it may be as well to describe his appearance.

He was a handsome young man, but of quite a different stamp from his half-brother, Foy, being tall, slight, and very graceful in figure; advantages which he had inherited from his mother Lysbeth.  In countenance, however, he differed from her so much that none would have guessed him to be her son.  Indeed, Adrian’s face was pure Spanish, there was nothing of a Netherlander about his dark beauty.  Spanish were the eyes of velvet black, set rather close together, Spanish also the finely chiselled features and the thin, spreading nostrils, Spanish the cold, yet somewhat sensual mouth, more apt to sneer than smile; the straight, black hair, the clear, olive skin, and that indifferent, half-wearied mien which became its wearer well enough, but in a man of his years of Northern blood would have seemed unnatural or affected.

He took his seat without speaking, nor did the others speak to him till his stepfather Dirk said: 

“You were not at the works to-day, Adrian, although we should have been glad of your help in founding the culverin.”

“No, father”—­he called him father—­answered the young man in a measured and rather melodious voice.  “You see we don’t quite know who is going to pay for that piece.  Or at any rate I don’t quite know, as nobody seems to take me into confidence, and if it should chance to be the losing side, well, it might be enough to hang me.”