Dirk flushed up, but made no answer, only Foy remarked: 

“That’s right, Adrian, look after your own skin.”

“Just now I find it more interesting,” went on Adrian loftily and disregardful of his brother, “to study those whom the cannon may shoot than to make the cannon which is to shoot them.”

“Hope you won’t be one of them,” interrupted Foy again.

“Where have you been this evening, son?” asked Lysbeth hastily, fearing a quarrel.

“I have been mixing with the people, mother, at the scene on the market-place yonder.”

“Not the martyrdom of our good friend, Jansen, surely?”

“Yes, mother, why not?  It is terrible, it is a crime, no doubt, but the observer of life should study these things.  There is nothing more fascinating to the philosopher than the play of human passions.  The emotions of the brutal crowd, the stolid indifference of the guard, the grief of the sympathisers, the stoical endurance of the victims animated by religious exaltation——­”

“And the beautiful logic of the philosopher, with his nose in the air, while he watches his friend and brother in the Faith being slowly burnt to death,” broke out Foy with passion.

“Hush! hush!” said Dirk, striking his fist upon the table with a blow that caused the glasses to ring, “this is no subject for word-chopping.  Adrian, you would have been better with us than down below at that butchery, even though you were less safe,” he added, with meaning.  “But I wish to run none into danger, and you are of an age to judge for yourself.  I beg you, however, to spare us your light talk about scenes that we think dreadful, however interesting you may have found them.”

Adrian shrugged his shoulders and called to Martin to bring him some more meat.  As the great man approached him he spread out his fine-drawn nostrils and sniffed.

“You smell, Martin,” he said, “and no wonder.  Look, there is blood upon your jerkin.  Have you been killing pigs and forgotten to change it?”

Martin’s round blue eyes flashed, then went pale and dead again.

“Yes, master,” he answered, in his thick voice, “I have been killing pigs.  But your dress also smells of blood and fire; perhaps you went too near the stake.”  At that moment, to put an end to the conversation, Dirk rose and said grace.  Then he went out of the room accompanied by his wife and Foy, leaving Adrian to finish his meal alone, which he did reflectively and at leisure.

When he left the eating chamber Foy followed Martin across the courtyard to the walled-in stables, and up a ladder to the room where the serving man slept.  It was a queer place, and filled with an extraordinary collection of odds and ends; the skins of birds, otters, and wolves; weapons of different makes, notably a very large two-handed sword, plain and old-fashioned, but of excellent steel; bits of harness and other things.

There was no bed in this room for the reason that Martin disdained a bed, a few skins upon the floor being all that he needed to lie on.  Nor did he ask for much covering, since so hardy was he by nature, that except in the very bitterest weather his woollen vest was enough for him.  Indeed, he had been known to sleep out in it when the frost was so sharp that he rose with his hair and beard covered with icicles.