“Because I bring you a guest,” replied Adrian pointing to Elsa and her companions. “It did not occur to me that you would wish guests to be smuggled in by a back door as though—as though they were ministers of our New Religion.”
The bow had been drawn at a venture but the shaft went home, for Dirk started and whispered: “Be silent, fool.” Then he added aloud, “Guest! What guest?”
“It is I, cousin Dirk, I, Elsa, Hendrik Brant’s daughter,” she said, sliding from her mule.
“Elsa Brant!” ejaculated Dirk. “Why, how came you here?”
“I will tell you presently,” she answered; “I cannot talk in the street,” and she touched her lips with her finger. “These are my friends, the van Broekhovens, under whose escort I have travelled from The Hague. They wish to go on to the house of their relations, the other Broekhovens, if some one will show them the way.”
Then followed greetings and brief explanations. After these the Broekhovens departed to the house of their relatives, under the care of Martin, while, its saddle having been removed and carried into the house at Elsa’s express request, Adrian led the mule round to the stable.
When Dirk had kissed and welcomed his young cousin he ushered her, still accompanied by the saddle, into the room where his wife and Foy were at supper, and with them the Pastor Arentz, that clergyman who had preached to them on the previous night. Here he found Lysbeth, who had risen from the table anxiously awaiting his return. So dreadful were the times that a knocking on the door at an unaccustomed hour was enough to throw those within into a paroxysm of fear, especially if at the moment they chanced to be harbouring a pastor of the New Faith, a crime punishable with death. That sound might mean nothing more than a visit from a neighbour, or it might be the trump of doom to every soul within the house, signifying the approach of the familiars of the Inquisition and of a martyr’s crown. Therefore Lysbeth uttered a sigh of joy when her husband appeared, followed only by a girl.
“Wife,” he said, “here is our cousin, Elsa Brant, come to visit us from The Hague, though why I know not as yet. You remember Elsa, the little Elsa, with whom we used to play so many years ago.”