It was not until they had this apology well in their heads that I ushered them into the bare, red-brick courtyard so full of memories for me, and here I buckled on my armor of defense.

"Our universities have produced great men, though they've given them no Gothic buildings or fairy gardens. Where will you find more illustrious names than Scaliger, Grotius, and Oliver Goldsmith?—lots of others, too. Why, Niebuhr said of our old hall that no place is so memorable in the history of science."

Trying to appear impressed, the three ladies, followed by Starr, trailed into the building, deserted at this hour; and it was the artist's quick eye that first caught the eccentric merit of the famous caricatures lining the staircase.

Then came the chamber of torture, the "Sweating Room," that bare, whitewashed cell remembered by all Leideners with anguish. There I (and thousands before and thousands after) had sat to wait my dreaded turn with the professors behind the green-baize table in the room next door. There I—among those other nerve-shattered ones—had scribbled my name and scrawled a sketch or two. "Here sweated Rudolph Brederode," read out Miss Rivers, with a sweet look, as if she pitied me now for what I suffered then. But Miss Van Buren showed sublime indifference. She wished, she said, to pick out names that were really interesting.

Even she, however, was roused to compassion for the tortured ones, when in the adjoining room she heard that the examinations were conducted publicly, and that there was no reason why any stranger should not walk in from the street to hear the victims put to the question.

"It's good for us," I said. "Helps us to pluck and self-control." But nobody agreed with me, and it was Miss Van Buren's opinion that none save Dutchmen would stand it.

The Senate Room, which Niebuhr wrote of, found favor in her eyes; but after that there was nothing more to do in the University, and it was only six o'clock. There were two hours before the surprise dinner; so, without giving my secret away, I said that, if we put off dining until eight, we could see the Laeckenhalle, and go up to the Burg at sunset.

The Laeckenhalle and the Burg were mere names to them, as few scraps are thrown to either place by the guide-books; but so delighted were they with the carvings on the house of the Cloth Spinner's Guild and the marbles in the courtyard that I could hardly get them inside. Once within, Starr made Miss Van Buren laugh at the things she ought to have respected and linger before the things I hadn't intended to point out.

But I was not shocked at her flippant delight in a quaint representation of tortures in hell, nor was I stirred by her scorn of the stiff siege-pictures, with van der Werf offering his arm as food for the starving people, rather than surrender to the Spaniards. In spite of her distaste for the painting, however, she would not hear me decry van der Werf in favor of an obscure engineer, lately discovered as the true hero of the siege. Van der Werf should not be snatched from her by a man she chose to detest, so she argued and abused my treachery during the whole time spent among the relics of the siege. She glared at the saucepan retrieved from the Spanish camp as if she would have thrown it at my head. She thought me capable of denying authenticity to the blocks of taret-gnawed wood torn from the dykes when a worm made Holland tremble as Philip of Spain could never do; nor would she forgive me van der Werf, though I did my best with the tale of that time of fear when men, women, and children worked their fingers to the bone in restoring what the worm had destroyed, and keeping the sea from their doors.

I never yielded her a point, all the way up to the Burg, for at least I was cheating Starr of her. But in the fortress, on the ancient mound heaped up by Hengist, I and my opinions were forgotten. She wanted to be let alone, and pretend she was a woman of Leiden, looking out across the red roofs of the city, through the pitiless red of the sunset, for the fleet of rescuing barges.

Nevertheless, she did deign to ask how, if the way had been opened for the sea to flood the land, the people coaxed it to go back again. And she looked at me as she had looked at Starr, while I told how the thing had been done; how the water that floated William's fleet for the relief of the town was but two feet in depth; how only a gale from the south at the right time sent the waters flowing from the broken dykes above Schiedam north as far as Leiden; and how no sooner was the city saved than the wind changed, calling back the waters.

From the walls of the fortress we saw the sun go down; and then, with Starr in the ascendant again, we strolled through quiet streets, crossing bridges over canals spread with soft green carpets of moss. But we were not going to the hotel; and without a word about dinner, I asked if they would care to see a student's "diggings." I had only to add as a bribe that Oliver Goldsmith had visited there and carved his initials in a heart on the wainscotting, to make them eager to climb the steep stairs which led to my Surprise.

It began by my opening the door at the top with a key—instead of knocking. This set them to wondering; but I laughed, evading questions, and lured them into an oak-walled room, dim with twilight.

According to instructions, no lamp or candle had been lighted, but a glance showed me a large screen wrapped round something in a corner, and I knew that I hadn't trusted good old Mevrow Hoogeboom in vain.

Now I struck a match from my own match-box, and as the flame flared up, success number one was scored. It was the old-fashioned Dutch lamp-lighter of brass, to which I touched the match, that called out the first note of admiration from the strangers; and as I woke up candle after candle, in its quaint brass stick, the first notes rose to a chorus. What a lovely room! What walls, what dear old blue-and-white china beasts, what a wonderful fireplace, with handles to hold on by as you stood and warmed yourself! What chairs, what chests of drawers, what pewter tankards! If this were a typical room of a Leiden undergraduate, the Leiden undergraduates were lucky men.

I had to explain that it was hardly fair to call it typical; that only a man with money and a love for picking up old things would have quarters like these; still, the lodgings were typical of Leiden.

When the ladies had exhausted their adjectives, they grew curious concerning their host. I told them that the man was absent, because this happened to be the night of his Promotie dinner, but that I was free to do the honors.

"Well, I'm sick with envy of the fellow," said Starr, "and I for one daren't trust myself any longer, especially on an empty stomach, among his pewters and blue beasts and brasses. We'd better go away and have dinner."

"You needn't go away," said I, jerking an old-fashioned bell-rope, and drawing the screen aside. Behind it, was what I had hoped would be there—a table laid for five, with plenty of nice glass and silver, and banked with pink and white roses. As everybody exclaimed at the sight, an inner door opened and two waiters from the Levedag, who had been biding their time for my signal, appeared in answer to the bell.

"It's black magic," said Aunt Fay. "I believe these men are genii, and you've got the lamp in your pocket. How I wish I hadn't left Tibe at the hotel. He would have loved this, poor darling."



"Dinner is served, sir," announced one of the genii; and laughing, I offered the Chaperon my arm.

"But it can't be for us," objected Miss Rivers.

"It's for no one else," said I.

"How can we eat the man's things, when he's never seen us, and we've never seen him?" Miss Van Buren appealed to Starr. But it was I who answered.

"You see him now," I confessed. "These are my rooms. I lend them to my cousin, but I've kept the right to use them. As for the dinner, it's my dinner, and it will be a humiliation to me if you refuse to eat it."

These words were meant for her, and I looked straight at her as I spoke, so there could be no mistake. Red sprang to her cheeks. She bit her lip, and what she would have answered or done if left to herself I shall never know, for Miss Rivers slipped one arm coaxingly within the arm of her stepsister, and said, with a laugh, to make it seem that all three were jesting——

"Why, of course she won't refuse. None of us would forgive her for spoiling our pleasure. Come along, Nell."

So Nell did "come along," like the sweet and sensible girl she really is, when she has not been driven to defiance by blundering young men; and we sat down to eat the best dinner that Leiden could provide at short notice. Nothing that was truly Dutch had been forgotten, but the most brilliant success was not the plat on which the chef would have staked his reputation. It was nothing more nor less than the dish with which all Leiden invariably occupies itself on the 3rd of October, anniversary of blessed memory. On that day it was, three hundred and thirty odd years ago, that a little boy ran joyously home from a flying visit to the deserted Spanish camp, with a pot of carrots and potatoes mixed together in a hotch-potch; therefore, with hotch-potch does Leiden to this hour celebrate the Great Relief, eating with thanksgiving.

And my guests ate with compliments, enjoying the idea if not the food, as if they had been Leideners. Last of all, we had grilled herrings with mustard, on toasted bread, a quaint conceit which I had to explain by telling how, on the 3rd of October, bread and herrings are still distributed to the poor, because it was with herrings and bread that the Dutch boats, coming to the relief of Leiden, were loaded.

I managed to keep the party long at the table, and when the Chaperon proposed going, I looked at my watch, counseling patience for half an hour.

"If you'll wait," I said, "I'll show you something rather special on the way home—something that can't be seen by every one."

Then I told about my cousin; how this was his great day, and how, without being invited, we could share the fun. I told how, early this morning, Jan's Paranymphs had donned evening dress, according to old custom, and driven in smart carriages (the horses' heads nodding with plumes) to the railway station to meet their principal's father, mother, sisters, and pretty cousins; how the party had then come to these rooms, where Jan had received them, half shamefaced in his "swallow-tail"; how, not long before we arrived at the University, Jan had gone through his torture in the "sweating-room," and before the examiners with his relatives present; how the ladies, after seeing the town, had been ungallantly packed off home, before the best fun began. How Jan had returned, to cast away his evening things at the time when most people think of putting them on, and rush to the Students' Club in morning dress. How his Paranymphs and friends had met him, and at a big round table—soon to be covered with glasses—the Professors' servant (called "Pedel" of the University) had handed the new Doctor his official appointment, in return for a fee of ten gulden. How the dinner had begun in speech-making and music, with an adjournment after the first part, to the garden for coffee, liqueurs, and cigars; how, when the table had been cleared and rearranged, everybody had marched back to risk their lives by eating lobster and quantities of indigestible things. How Jan would then have had to make his "palaver," thanking his friends for their speeches in his honor; and how, while he was speaking, the waiters would be placing a large napkin at the plate of each man—a mere napkin, but destined for an outlandish purpose. "By this time," I went on mysteriously, "those napkins are fulfilling their destiny, and if you would like to see what it is, you've only to follow me."

They were on their feet in an instant. We scrambled down the narrow stairs, and out into the starlit night. Leiden was a city of the dead. Not even a dog played sentinel for the sleeping townsfolk; not a cat sprang out of the shadows as I led my band through a labyrinth of canal-streets, floored as if with jet nailed down with stars. But suddenly the spell of silence was broken by an explosion of sound which crashed into it like breaking glass. A brassy blare of music that could not drown young men's laughter, burst on us so unexpectedly that the three ladies gave starts, and stifled cries. I stopped them at a corner, and we huddled into the shadow, flattened against a wall.

"The Napkins are coming!" I said, and I had not got the words out before the blue darkness was aflame with the red light of streaming torches, a wild light which matched the band music. There was a trampling of feet, and in the midst of smoke and ruddy flare sequined with flying sparks, came torch-bearers and musicians, led by one man of solemn countenance, holding in both hands a noble Nougat Tart—the historic, the indispensable Nougat Tart. Then, with a measured trot that swung and balanced with the music, followed the Napkins, wound turban-fashion round the heads of their wearers, and floating like white banners with the breeze of motion. First came a Paranymph thus adorned, then the learned Doctor holding fast to the leader's coat-tails; behind him the second Paranymph, and clinging to his coat the hero's father, with the whole procession of turbaned friends tailing after.

They swept by us as a comet sweeps down the sky, and concerned themselves with our group against the wall no more than a comet does with such humble stars, dusting the outskirts of the Milky Way, as shrink from his fiery path.

"A vision of goblins," said the Mariner, when he had got his breath.

"What fun! But why do they do it?" asked Miss Rivers.

"Why? I'm sure I don't know," I laughed, "except because they always have, and I suppose always will, while there's a university at Leiden. That's all we'll see, but it isn't all there is to see. By-and-by the procession will go prancing back to the Club, where the next thing will be to get over the big reading-table, then over the buffet of the bar, without once breaking the chain of coat-tails, through passages and kitchens to the club-room once more, where the chain will be split up, but where the chairs in which the men will sit to drink champagne and eat the Nougat Tart, must be on the tables and not round them."

"And will that be the end?" inquired the Chaperon, who ever thirsts with ardor for information.

"Not nearly," said I. "The third part of dinner will be due, and every one's bound to eat it, even those whose chairs have fallen off from the pyramids of small tables, and whose heads or bones have suffered. They'll have dessert; and at dawn the best men will be taking a country drive."

"I begin to understand," said Starr, "how your people exhausted the Spaniards. Good heavens, you could wear out the Rock of Gibraltar! And I see why, though you can eat all day and all night too, you don't put on fat like your German cousins."

"When we begin a thing, we Dutchmen see it through," I replied modestly.

"So do we Americans," remarked Miss Van Buren.

"I wonder which would win if the two interests were opposed?" I hazarded, a propos of nothing—or of much.

"I should bet on America," said she.

"I don't bet," I returned, with all the emphasis I dared give; though perhaps it was not enough to tear up a deep-rooted impression; albeit the seed had been sown for but four-and-twenty hours.

So ended the lesson for the first day.

It was not an easy lesson for me. But I regret nothing.



XIII

"Look here," said the Mariner next morning, rapping on my door at the hotel, "how soon could we start for Katwyk?"

"I thought the expedition was given up," I answered, "as nobody spoke of it last night."

"Not in your presence, but my worthy aunt rejoices in a sitting-room, and we met there—some of us—to discuss the expedition. The girls think they're keen to go, but it's a case of hypnotism. She wants a thing, and in some curious way, known only to herself, she gives others the impression that they are wanting it frantically."

"I've noticed that," said I.

"Oh, you have? Well, she's a wonderful woman. I daren't dwell upon the things she's got out of me already, or ask myself what she'll get before the play's finished. That sitting-room, for instance, I suppose it will end in her always having one. Did you observe Tibe's collar? It cost twenty-five dollars, and the queer part is that I offered it to her. I thought at the time I wanted him to have it. Now, I ask you, as man to man, is it canny? And she has a traveling-bag with gold fittings. I presented it under the delusion that I owed it to her as my—temporary relative. Heavens, where is this to end? Not at Katwyk, with the Rhine. But we've got to go there. Anything to please her."

Strange to say, the hypnotic influence must have stolen up from her ladyship's room on the floor below, and along the corridor to mine, for I found myself thinking: "She rather likes me, and can be useful, if she dominates the two girls in this way. I must do my best to keep her on my side."

No doubt this was the form the influence took, but I made no struggle against it. On the contrary, I assured Starr that the expedition to Katwyk would be a good expedition; that I would be dressed in ten minutes; that I didn't mind about breakfast, but would have a cup of coffee with Hendrik; that if the party came on board "Lorelei" in half an hour, they would find her ready.

"All right, I'll tell them," said he. "I did want to stop and see a few pictures, for it seems a burning shame to leave the town where Gerard Douw, and Steen, and lots of other splendid chaps were born, without worshiping at their shrines, but——"

"They're rather bare shrines at Leiden," I consoled him. "You've seen much better specimens of their work elsewhere. You'd be disappointed."

"Just as well to think so. I'll give your message; but as there are three ladies and one dog, you'd better expect us when you see us."

In spite of this fact I had little time to spare, though it appeared that en route to the boat a delay was caused by Tibe jumping into a cab with two elderly ladies from Boston, who, so far from reciprocating his overtures, nearly swooned with terror, and had to be soothed and sustained by the entire party.

The canal that leads from Leiden to Katwyk-aan-Zee passes the houses of Descartes and Spinoza; and altogether the short journey by water did not lack interest, for Katwyk has become a colony of artists. Once there, we walked to the sluice where the Rhine seeks its grave in the North Sea; and as it happened that the tide was high, with a strong shore wind, I could show the Cyclopean defenses of our coast at their best. With the secret pleasure which I believe all men take in pointing out things to women, I explained the great series of gates through which the river passes to its death. All were closed against the raging waves, which leaped and bellowed, demanding entrance, rearing their fierce heads twelve feet or more above the level where the Rhine lay dying. When the tide should turn, and the wild water retreat, the sluice-gates would be opened, and the river would pour sea-ward, sweeping away the masses of sand piled up in fury by the cheated waves.

We lunched on board the "Lorelei," I munching abjectly on deck, on duty at the wheel, while from the cabin below came to my ears the tinkling of girls' laughter, and the merry popping of corks. In theory I was better off than Tantalus, for Tantalus had no beer or sandwiches; but, on the other hand Tantalus was not in love with a girl whose voice he could hear mingling with his rival's; so practically there was not much to choose.

Luckily I had not to bear the strain for long. I did my best yesterday, in talking of Haarlem, to awaken interest in the huge Haarlemmer-meer Polder, and its importance in the modern scheme of the Netherlands. Now my eloquence was rewarded, for they hurried through their luncheon, not that they might cheer the skipper's loneliness, but that they might miss no feature in the landscape.

We were skirting one side of the green plain which has been reclaimed from the water, converting the meer into a "polder." Our canal flowed many feet above the level of the surrounding land, so that we looked down upon men tilling, upon white-sailed boats cutting through miniature waterways as if they navigated meadows, and upon cows grazing knee-deep in mist, which rose like blowing silver spray, over the pale-green waves of grass.

These black-and-white cattle, according to Miss Van Buren, form the upper circles of the cow-world in Holland. Not only do they live up to their traditions by being cleaner and sleeker than the cows of other countries, but they know themselves to be better connected than the mere red-and-white creatures with whom they are occasionally forced to share a meadow. To show that they understand what is due to their dignity, they refuse to talk with the common herd, and stand with their backs to any red-and-white nonentity that may presume to graze near, conversing among themselves in refined monotones with the air of saying, "Who was she?"

There's little in the history of the Netherlands which Miss Van Buren does not know, for she is proud of her Dutch blood, though she won't say so before me. The others are frankly ignorant; but the Chaperon has read a book of Rider Haggard's called "Lysbeth," and was deeply interested in the Haarlemmer-meer, where the "treasure" of that story lay hid; but it was news to her that the great inland sea had once sent a destructive flood to the gates of Amsterdam, and that as punishment it had been drained away. Miss Van Buren—whom I think of as "Nell"—knew all this, including the very day in 1840 when the work was begun, and how many months the pumps had taken to drink the monstrous cup dry; but the mysterious little lady who rules us all, and is ruled by Tibe, expected to find the Haarlemmer-meer still a lake, and was disappointed to learn the meaning of "polder." She thought thirty-nine months too long for draining it, and was sure that in America (where she quickly added that she had "once been") they would have done the work in half the time.

Every one fell in love with the outskirts of Haarlem, as "Lorelei" swam into the River Spaarne. Though the glory of the tulips was extinguished (like fairy-lamps at dawn) three months ago, the flowers of summer blazed in their stead, a brilliant mosaic of jewels.

"The Dutch don't seem a nation to have gone mad over a tulip; but perhaps they were different in the seventeenth century," said Miss Rivers, looking at me, as if I stood to represent my people.

"And the English don't seem the kind to have lost their heads over a South Sea Bubble, but they did," retorted Nell, as if she were defending us.

They liked the houses along the river-side, houses big and little, which look as if the front and back walls of their lower stories had been knocked out, and the space filled in with glass. They were amused by the rounded awnings over the balconies, which Nell likened to the covers of giant babies' perambulators; and they laughed at the black-painted doors picked out with lines of pale green, which contrasted with a whitewashed facade.

At Haarlem I had another surprise for them, which I arranged before leaving Rotterdam. It was one which would cost nothing in trouble, little enough in money, and would give pleasure to everybody—except to my chauffeur, who is in love with my mother's French maid, and no doubt was reveling in the thought of a long holiday at Liliendaal.

When I'd brought "Lorelei" through the bridge, and hove her to by the broad quay, there stood close at hand a handsome, dark-blue motor-car.

"What a beauty!" exclaimed Nell. "That's much grander than Robert's." Then she glanced at me. "I beg your pardon," said she, demurely. "I'm afraid the car my cousin has is yours."

"So is this," said I.

"Dear me, what is It doing here?" she demanded, sorry to have praised a possession of the enemy's.

"It's waiting to take you round Haarlem," I replied. "I thought it would be a nice way for you to see the place, as the suburbs are its speciality, so to speak, and motoring saves time."

"You're a queer chap, Alb," remarked the Mariner. "You have such a way of keeping things up your sleeve, and springing them on one. You ought to be called 'William the Silent.'"

"Why, that's what he is called, didn't you know? Mr. van Buren told us," exclaimed Phyllis, and ended up her sentence with a stifled shriek which could have meant nothing but a surreptitious pinch.

I would not have glanced at either of the girls for anything; but I would have given something to know how Nell was looking.

"Have you any more belongings here?" asked the Chaperon, gaily. "Such as an ancestral castle, where you could give us another surprise feast?"

I laughed. "As a matter of fact, I have an ancestral castle in the neighborhood. It isn't mine, but it was my ancestors', and if I can't exactly entertain you in it, I can give you tea close by at a country inn. Perhaps you've read about the Chateau of Brederode, within a drive of Haarlem?"

I saw by Nell's face that she had, but she was the only one who did not answer, and the others hadn't informed themselves of its existence.

Hendrik, helped by my chauffeur, got out the small luggage which is kept ready for shore duty—the Chaperon's splendidly-fitted dressing-bag making everything else look shabby—and the five of us (six with Tibe) got into the car, I taking the driver's seat.

The streets of Haarlem being too good to slight, I drove leisurely toward the heart of the old town, meaning to engage rooms and leave all belongings at the quaint Hotel Funckler, which I thought they would like better than any other; but passing the cathedral, Miss Phyllis begged to stop, and I slowed down the car. After Gouda's wonderful glass, they would have found the Haarlem church disappointing, had it not been for the two or three redeeming features left in the cold, bare structure; the beautiful screen of open brass-work, with its base of dark wood, on which brightly-painted, mystic beasts disport themselves among the coats-of-arms of divers ancient towns; and the carved choir-stalls.

Nell and the Mariner were so fascinated by a wooden gentleman wearing his head upside down, and a curiously mixed animal carrying its offspring in a cloak, that I found time to send secretly for the organist; and before my friends knew what was happening, the cold white cathedral was warmed and lighted too, by such thrilling music as few organs and few organists can make.

When it was over, and only fleeting echoes left, Miss Rivers came and thanked me.

"That was your thought, of course," said she. "None of us will ever forget."

My chauffeur had kept Tibe, and when we reappeared, was surprised in the act of fitting a pair of spare goggles on to the dog. Aunt Fay was delighted with the effect, and a photograph was taken before we were allowed to start, though time was beginning to be an object. But, as the Chaperon cheerfully remarked, "Tibe and tide wait for no man."

"What does 'groote oppruiming' mean, written up everywhere in the shops?" she inquired eagerly, as the car flashed through street after street.

I told her that in a Dutch town it was equivalent to the "summer sales" in London, and she seemed satisfied, though I doubt if she knows more of London than of Rotterdam. But she and the girls wanted everything that they saw in the show windows, and I found that, before we left Haarlem, the Mariner's purse would again be opened wide by the hypnotic spell of Aunt Fay.

In a thirty horse-power car we were not long on the way out to Brederode, though I took her slowly through the charming Bloemendaal district, giving the strangers plenty of time to admire the quaintly built, flower-draped country houses half drowned in the splendid forest where Druids worshiped once, and to find out for themselves that the dark yellow billows in the background were dunes hiding the sea.

We left the car in front of the shady inn, and ordered coffee to be ready when we should come back—coffee, with plenty of cream, and a kind of sugared cake, which has been loved by Haarlemers since the days when the poor, deluded ladies of the town baked their best dainties for the Spaniards who planned their murder.

It was natural to play guide on the way to the dear old copper and purple and green-gold ruin, ivy-curtained from the tower roofs to the mossy moat.

This was my first visit to the place for a year or two, and I longed to take the One Girl apart, to tell her of my fantastic ancestor, the Water Beggar, of whom I am proud despite his faults and eccentricities; to recall stories of the past; the origin of our name "Brede Rode," broad rood; how it, and the lands, were given as a reward, and many other things. But instead, I made myself agreeable to the Chaperon, and saved Tibe on three separate occasions from joining the bright reflections and the water-lilies in the pond.

I sat by Nell at a table afterwards, however, and she had to pour coffee for me, because she was doing that kind office for the rest; and as the sugar tongs had been forgotten, she popped me in a lump of sugar with her own fingers before she stopped to think. Then, she looked as if she would have liked to fish it out again, but, being softer than her heart, it had melted, and I got it in spite of her.

We drove back through the forest in a green, translucent glimmer, like light under the sea, and there was little time to dress for dinner when I brought them to anchor for the night. The nice old hotel, with its Delft plates half covering the walls, its alcoves and unexpected stairways with green balusters, and its old dining-room looking on a prim garden, pleased the eyes which find all things in Hollow Land interesting.

It was a long dinner, with many courses, such as Dutchmen love; still, when we finished, daylight lingered. In the fantastic square with its crowding varieties of capricious Dutch architecture, the cathedral was cut black and sharp out of a sky of beaten gold, and Coster's statue wore a glittering halo. Under their archways of green, the canals were on fire with sunset, their flames quenched in the thick moss which clothed their walls; the red-brown color of paved streets, and the houses with their pointed facades in many steps, burned also, as if they were made of rose-and-purple porphyry instead of common bricks, while each pane of each window blazed like a separate gem.

It was a good ending to a good day, and though I had accomplished nothing definite, I was happy.

Next morning I had the car ready early, and took every one for a spin through the Hout, which reminded them of the Bois, or what the Bois would be if pretty houses were scattered over it like fallen leaves.

We stopped in Haarlem after that last spin only long enough to do reverence to Franz Hals, and the collection of his work which is the immediate jewel of the city's soul.



It was pretty to watch Nell scraping acquaintance with the bold, good-humored officers and archers, and bland municipal magnates whom Hals has made to live on canvas. She looked the big, stalwart fellows in the eye, but half shyly, as a girl regards a man to whom she thinks, yet is not quite sure, she ought to bow.

"Why, their faces are familiar. I seem to have known them," I heard her murmur, and ventured an explanation of the mystery, over her shoulder.

"You do know them," I said. "Their eyes are using the eyes of their descendants for windows, every day in the streets. Holland isn't making new types."

She turned to look me up and down, with a flicker of long lashes. Then she sighed——

"What a pity!"

Perhaps I deserved it, for I had brought it on myself. Nevertheless, sweet Phyllis pitied me.

"What surprise have you got for us next, Sir Skipper?" she asked brightly. "Mr. Starr says that no day will be complete without a surprise from you; and we depend upon you for our route as part of the surprise."

"I thought Mr. Starr was making out our route," remarked Nell to a tall archer of Franz Hals.

"If I've contrived to create that impression, I've been clever," said the Mariner. "In fact, I would have preferred you to think me responsible, as long as the route proved satisfactory. Of course, whenever anything went wrong, I should have casually let drop that it was Alb's idea. But, as you mention the subject in his presence, I must admit that he has made several suggestions, and I've humored him by adopting them, subject to your approval."

"Does the name of Aalsmeer convey anything to your minds?" I asked. But all shook their heads except Nell, who appeared absorbed in making a spy-glass of her hand, through which to gaze at her jolly archer.

"Then it shall be this day's surprise," I said. "I won't tell you anything; but you needn't be ashamed of ignorance, for all the world is in the same boat, and you won't find Aalsmeer in guide-books. Yet there isn't a place in the Netherlands prettier or more Dutch."

"Good-by, Franz Hals, perhaps forever. We leave you to seek pastures new," said Starr. "Come along, Miss Van Buren."

So she came, and I drove them in the car to the quay, where I directed my chauffeur to go on to Amsterdam, and be ready to report for order at the harbor of the Sailing and Rowing Club.



XIV

There is nothing remarkable in the broad canal that connects Haarlem with Amsterdam, and when we had started, Miss Van Buren read aloud to the assembled party. Her book was Motley, and the subject that siege which, though it ended in tragic failure, makes as fine music in history as the siege of Leiden. Meanwhile, as she read, we skimmed through the bright water, which tinkled like shattered crystals as we broke its clear mirror with our prow.

There were few houses along shore, but far in the distance, seen across wide, flat expanses, shadow villages and tapering spires were painted in violet on the horizon—such a shimmering horizon as we of the lowlands love, and yearn for when we sojourn in mountain lands. At Halfweg, a little cluster of humble dwellings, I turned out of the main canal, skirting the side of the Haarlemmer-meer Polder, opposite to that which we had followed yesterday.

"When is the surprise coming?" asked Phyllis at last, her curiosity piqued by the slowness of progress in this small canal.

"Now," said I, smiling, as I stopped at an insignificant landing-place; "this is where we go on shore to find it."

"Methinks, Alb, you are playing us false," said the Mariner. "You're about to lead us into a trap of dulness."

"I've a mind to stop on board and finish the chapter," said Nell.

"You'll repent it if you do," I ventured. Yet I think she would have stayed if her stepsister had not urged.

We walked along an ordinary village street for some distance; it was dusty and unbeautiful. Even Miss Rivers had begun to look doubtful, when suddenly we came in sight of a toy fairyland—a Dutch fairyland, yet a place to excite the wonder even of a Dutchman used to living half in, half out of water.

From where the party stopped, arrested by the curious vision, stretched away, as far as eyes could follow, an earthern dyke, bordered on either hand by a lily-fringed toy canal, just wide enough for a toy rowboat to pass. Beyond the twin, toy canals—again on either hand—was set a row of toy houses, each standing in a little square of radiant garden, which was repeated upside down in the sky-blue water, not only of the twin canals, but of the still more tiny, subsidiary canals which flowed round the flowery squares, cutting each off from its fellow.

Tibe, delighted with Aalsmeer and a dog he saw in the distance, darted along the straight, level stretch of dyke, which every now and then heaved itself up into a camel-backed bridge, under which toy boats could pass from the right-hand water-street to the left-hand water-street. We followed, but on the first bridge Nell stopped impulsively.

"Do you know we've all been in this place before? It's Willow-pattern-land. Don't you recognize it?"

"Of course," the Mariner assured her. "You and I used to play here together when we were children. You remember that blue boat of ours? And see, there's our house—the pink one, with the green-and-white-lozenge shutters, and the thicket of hydrangeas reflected in the water. Isn't it good to come back to our own?"

Thus he snatched her from me, just as my surprise was succeeding, and made a place for himself with her, in my toy fairyland.

"It's true! One does feel like one of the little blue people that live in a willow-pattern plate," said Phyllis, as Nell and Starr sauntered on ahead. "It's perfectly Chinese here, but so cozy; I believe you had the place made a few minutes ago, to please us, and as soon as we turn our backs it will disappear. It can't be real."

"Those men think it's real," said I. There were several, rowing along the canals in brightly painted boats, with brass milk cans, and knife-grinding apparatus, calmly unaware that they or their surroundings were out of the common. Each house on its square island having its own swing-bridge of planks, the men on the water had to push each bridge out of the way as they reached it; but the trick was done with the nose of the boat, and cost no trouble. Most of the toy bridges swung back into place when the boats passed, but the one nearest us remained open, and as we looked, walking on slowly, two tiny children returning from school, clattered toward us in wooden sabots, along the narrow dyke. Opposite the disarranged bridge they stopped, looking wistfully across at a green-and-blue house, standing in a grove of pink-and-yellow roses, shaded with ruddy copper beeches, and delicate white trees like young girls trooping to their first communion.

Evidently this was the children's home, but they found themselves shut off from it; and standing hand-in-hand, with their book-bags tossed over their shoulders, they uttered a short, wailing cry. As if in answer to an accustomed signal, a pink-cheeked girl who, of course, had been cleaning something, came to the rescue, mop in hand. She touched the bridge with her foot; the bridge swung into place; without a word the dolls crossed, and were swallowed up in a narrow, sky-blue corridor.

We wandered on, turning our heads from one side to the other, I reveling in the delight of the others. Though Aalsmeer is but a stone's throw from Amsterdam, it seems as far out of the world as if, to get to it, you had jumped off the earth into some obscurely twinkling star, where people, things, and customs were completely different from those on our planet.

If there had been only one of the queer island-houses to see, it would have been worth a journey; but each one we came to, in its double street of glass, seemed more quaint than that we left behind. Some were painted green or blue, with white rosettes, like the sugar ornaments on children's birthday cakes. Some were so curtained with roses, wistaria, or purple clematis, that it was difficult to spy out the color underneath. Some were half hidden behind tall hedges of double hollyhocks, like crisp bunches of pink and golden crepe; others had triumphal arches of crimson fuchsias; but best of all the island shows were the dwarf box-trees, cut in every imaginable shape. There were thrones, and chairs, and giant vases; harps and violins; and a menagerie of animals which seemed to have come under a spell and been turned into leafage in the act of jumping, flying, and hopping. There were lions, swans, dragons, giraffes, parrots, eagles, cats, together in a happy family of foliage; and when I told the Chaperon that the people of Aalsmeer were garden-artists, as well as market-gardeners, she insisted on stopping. Nothing would satisfy her but the Mariner must cross the bridge, knock at the door of a little red house, and buy a box-tree baby elephant, which she thought would be enchanting in a pot, as a kind of figurehead on board "Waterspin."

Nor was I allowed to remain idle. When I had helped him bargain for the leafy beast, I had to go down on my knees, roll up my sleeves, and claw water-lilies out from the canal, which they fringed in luscious clusters. This I did while men and maids in painted boats heaped with rubies piled on emeralds (which were strawberries in beds of their own leaves) laughed at me. Boat peddlers came and went, too, with stores of shining tin, or blue, brown, and green pottery that glittered in the afternoon sun. Some of them helped me, some jeered in Dutch at "these foreigners with their childish ways."

In the end I was luckier than Starr, for he had to march under the weight of his green elephant, half hidden behind it, as behind a screen, while my lilies were so popular with the ladies that not even as a favor would I have been allowed to carry one. All three, if left to themselves, would have lingered for hours, choosing which house they would live in, or watching families of ducks, or counting strewn flowers floating down the blue water as stars float down the sky.

"I believe, Nephew, that I must ask you to buy me a house in Aalsmeer to come and play dolls in," announced Aunt Fay. "Don't you suppose, Jonkheer, that one could be got cheap?—not that that need be a consideration to dear Ronny!"

"I'll find out—later," I assured her, answering a despairing look of Starr's from between the green tusks of his elephant.

"Oh, please, now," urged the gentle voice which every one but Tibe obeys; "because, you know, I'm not strong, and when I set my heart on a thing, and suffer disappointment, it makes me ill. If I were ill I should have to go home, and those darling girls couldn't finish the trip."

"You haven't had time to set your heart upon a house here," said Starr. "You only thought of it a minute ago."

"We Scotch have so much heart, dearest, that it goes out to things—and people—in less than a minute. I'm a victim to mine. It would be a pity——"

"Oh, do go to the head fairy at once, Alb, and demand a cheap house for my aunt to play dolls in," groaned Starr. "If he hasn't got one, he must build it."

"He could easily do that," said I. "Every now and then a new island is formed in this water-world, and the nearest householder seizes it, claiming it as his own, on much the same basis that Napoleon claimed the Netherlands. Then he digs it into an extra garden or strawberry bed. But he would sacrifice his vegetables if he saw a prospect of making money. It might amuse Lady MacNairne to do a little amateur market gardening, though they say slugs are unusually fat and juicy in Aalsmeer."

"Oh! Maybe I'd better wait and see a few more places before I decide, then," exclaimed the lady. "Not that I'm afraid of slugs myself, only I'm sure they wouldn't agree with Tibe. And besides, it would be dull for him in winter."

"Not at all," said I, having discovered that the one possible way of detaching the lady from a pet scheme is by advising her to cling to it. "Everybody skates then, instead of going about in boats, and no one has really seen Aalsmeer who hasn't seen it on a winter evening. Then, in front of each island, on a low square post, is set a lighted lantern. Imagine the effect of a double line of such lights all the way down the long, long canal, each calling up a ghost-light from under the blue ice."

The tyrant shivered. "It sounds lovely," she said; "but I think I will wait. Come, girls, we'd better be getting back to the boat."

"Sweet are the uses of an Albatross," I heard Starr murmur.

We turned our backs on the water fairies' domain, and went into the world again. In the long commonplace street of shops through which we had passed in coming, Aunt Fay stopped. She had torn a silk flounce on her petticoat, and would thank me to act as interpreter in buying a box of safety-pins. I made the demand, and could not see why the two girls and their chaperon had to stifle laughter when an earnest, flaxen-haired maiden began industriously to count the pins in the box.

"She says she has to do that, because they are sold by the piece," I explained; but they laughed a great deal more.

It was a pity they could not see the meer which rings in their fairyland—a meer dotted with high-standing, prim little islands, which, though made by nature, not man, have much the same effect, on a larger scale, as the clipped box-trees on show in the gardens. But to have taken "Lorelei" that way would have made it too late for a visit to Zaandam; and I thought Zaandam, despite its miles of windmills and the boasted hut of Peter the Great, not worth a separate expedition. So I turned back to Halfweg, and from there slid into a side canal which bore us toward that immense waterway cut for great ships—the North Sea Canal. There was a smell of salt in the air, and a heavy perfume from slow-going peat-boats. Gulls wheeled over "Lorelei" so low that we could have reached up and caught their dangling coral feet. A passing cloud veiled the sun with gray tissue which streaked the water with purple shadow, and freckled it with rain. Passengers on Amsterdam-bound ships that loomed above us like leviathans, stared down at our little craft and the bluff-browed barge we towed. Here we were in the full stream of sea-going traffic and commerce; and afar off a mass of towers showed where Amsterdam toiled and made merry.

But we were not yet bound for Amsterdam. Twisting northward as the details of the city were sketched upon the sky, we turned into the canal which leads to Zaandam of the self-satisfied, painted houses. There was just time for a swift run down the river, and a call at one of that famous battalion of windmills whose whirling sails fill the air with a ceaseless whirr, like the flight of birds at sunset; then a walk to the hovel where Peter the Great lived and learned to be a shipwright. But when they had seen it, the ladies would not allow it to be called by so mean a name.

"What a shame they found out who he was so soon!" said Nell. "And he had to leave this dear little bandbox to go back to a mere every-day palace. I wouldn't have been driven away by a curious crowd. I should just have marched through with my nose in the air."

"His nose wasn't of that kind," said I. "I suppose he's the earliest martyr to notoriety on record. But perhaps he had learned all he wanted to know; and I'm not sure he was sorry to go back to his palace, which, judging by all accounts, wasn't a grand one in those days. You'll see finer houses even in Amsterdam."

And an hour later she was seeing them.



XV

Amsterdam was in full glory that evening, in the strange radiance that shines for her, as for Venice, when red wine of sunset and purple wine of night mingle together in the gold cup of the west.

At such a time she is a second Venice, not because she is built upon piles and stands upon many islands linked by intricate bridges, but because of her glow and dazzle, her myriad lights breaking suddenly through falling dusk, to splash the rose and violet of the clouds with gilded flecks, and drop silver into glimmering canals, as if there were some festive illumination; because of her huge, colorful buildings, and her old, old houses bowing and bending backward and forward to whisper into each other's windows across the darkness of narrow streets and burning lines of water.

The fierce traffic of the day was over, but the dam roared and rumbled, in vast confusion, with its enormous structures black against the moldering ashes of sunset.

"A cathedral without a tower; a palace without a king; a bishop's house without a bishop; a girl without a lover," is the saying that Amsterdammers have about the dam; and I repeated it as we drove through, while my friends searched the verification of the saw. All was plain enough, except the "girl without a lover"; but when they learned that she was a stone girl on a pedestal too constricted for two figures they pronounced her part of the distich far-fetched.

Undaunted by all they had done that day, they would go out again after dinner, when Amsterdam was blue and silver and shining steel in the quiet streets, with a flare of yellow light in the lively ones, where people crowded the roadways, listening to the crash of huge hand-organs, or shopping until ten o'clock.

We supped at the biggest cafe in Europe; and then for contrast, since we were in a city of contrasts, I took them to the quaintest inn of Amsterdam—a queer little pointed-roofed house hiding the painted "Wilderman" over his low-roofed door, behind a big archway, in the midst of all that is most modern, but with an interior of a rich gold-brown gloom, lit by glints of brass and gleams of pewter which would have delighted Rembrandt.

Next day it was to his house, in the strange, teeming Jewish quarter that we went first of all; but Nell and Phyllis were heartsick to find the rooms, once rich in treasures, piled untidily with "curiosities" of no great beauty or value.

Then, by way of a change after the Old Town, and the harbor with its queer houses, like drunken men trying to prop each other up, I chose the Heerengracht, all the city has of the richest and most exclusive. But the tall mansions, with their air of reserve and their selfishly hidden gardens, struck the eye coldly; and not even my tales of tapestry, lace, old silver, and, above all, Persian carpets, to be seen behind the veiled windows, could arouse the ladies' curiosity. It was well enough to have built Amsterdam in concentric crescents, with the Heerengracht in the center, and to say arbitrarily that the further you went outwards, the further you descended in the social scale. That distinction might do for the townspeople; as for them, they would rather live in a black and brown house in the Keizergracht, with a crane and pulley in one of the gables, and white frames on the windows, than in this dull street of wealth and fashion.

"Even half a house, with a whole door of my own, like most middle-class Dutch houses, would be nicer," said Nell. "Yes, I could be happy in 'a boven huis,' with my little stairway and hall quite to myself."

But when I had shown her my favorite bit of Amsterdam, she became unfaithful to the Keizergracht, and its picturesque fellows.

To reach this bit, we turned from the roar of a noisy street, and were at once in the calm of a monastic cloister.

It was like opening a door in the twentieth century, and falling down a step into the seventeenth, to find Time lying enchanted in a spell of magic sleep.

What we saw was a spacious quadrangle with an old-fashioned, flowery garden in the midst, and ranged round it pretty little houses, each one a gem of individuality. There was a church, too, a charming, forgotten-looking church; and in the quadrangle nothing stirred but gleams of light on polished windows and birds which hopped about on the pavement as if it had been made for them.

"I believe they're the inhabitants of the place, who've hurriedly changed into birds just while we are here, but will change back into little, trim old ladies and old gentlemen," whispered Nell; for it seemed sacrilege to break the silence.

With that, a house door opened, and just such an old lady as she described came out.

"Oh, she didn't know we were here. She won't have time to get into her birdhood now," chuckled Nell, "so she's making the best of it. But see, she's turned to warn her husband."

"She hasn't any husband," said I.

"How can you tell?" asked the girl.

"If she had, she couldn't live here," I explained, "because this is the Begynenhof, half almshouse, half nunnery, which has been kept up since our great year, 1574. But oddly enough the chapel of the sisterhood who established it, has been turned into an English church. Queer, in the little Catholic village hidden away from the great city; but so it is. And isn't it a serene spot?"

"Almost nicer than Aalsmeer," murmured the Chaperon. "I wonder if——"

But Starr was at the door of the exit before she could finish wondering.

The palace, more suitable for a magnificent town hall than a regal dwelling, was the next violent contrast in my bag of colors; but, royal though it was, there was nothing in it they cared for much except the throne-room, which they had to admit was not to be surpassed. There were a few mantel-pieces too, which the Chaperon thought she would accept from the Queen as presents; but as for the carpets, they were no less than tragic, and it would be better to go about opening bridges, or laying dull cornerstones, then stay at home and look at them.

My way of showing Amsterdam was to work slowly up to a grand crescendo effect; and the crescendo was the Ryks Museum. We had two days of Amsterdam (the second was mostly spent at the diamond cutters') before I suggested the museum.

Aunt Fay said, when I did, that she hated such places. They gave her a headache, a heartache, and a bad cold. But she did not hate the Ryks Museum, and delighted the Mariner by picking out the best Rembrandts. After our first day at the museum (which we gave to the pictures) she could have had anything she asked from her dearest Ronny.

Then there were the Dutch rooms, and the rooms where the wax people live. I did not speak of the wax people until the ladies were tired, therefore they were cold to the idea of wax figures, even when they heard that the Queen had been five or six times to see them.

"Perhaps she never saw Madame Tussaud's," remarked Miss Rivers, in a superior, British way; but the magic word was spoken when I said that the wax people wore every variety of costume to be found in Holland, and I was ordered to conduct the party to them at once.

Instantly they felt the alarming fascination of the wax faces, whose hard eyes say, "At night we live, and walk about as you are doing now": and at the closing hour Aunt Fay and the two girls had to be forcibly torn away.

"Is it possible that some day we shall see live people dressed as those wax people are?" she exclaimed.

"You will see them by the hundred," I answered.

She paused a moment. "Miss Van Buren wants to know if one can buy any special costume to which one takes a fancy."

"Yes, if one doesn't mind what one pays," I answered; but I was nettled that the girl could not have asked so simple a question herself. This is not the first time she has employed a go-between, to find out something which I alone know, and doubtless there will be more occasions, if I let things go on as they are going now. But I don't mean to let them go on. What I shall do, I haven't made up my mind; yet some step must be taken, if I am to reap anything from this trip except a harvest of snubbings.

It was only a little thing that she should question me through her chaperon, regarding the costumes; but it was one more straw in a rapidly growing bundle. And on the way back to the hotel from the museum she pretended not to hear when I spoke. She discussed with Starr, and not with me, the splendors and the crudities of Amsterdam, and asked if he didn't detect here and there a likeness to some old bit of New York—"New Amsterdam." Of course he agreed; and they talked of the "Dutchness" of Poughkeepsie and Albany, and Hudson, and many other places which I never heard of. No wonder that there was triumph in the glance he threw me. Alb (he was thinking, no doubt) was not getting much fun for his money. And it was true. Nevertheless, Alb was not discouraged. He was making up his mind that the time for quiet patience was over, as the skipper of "Lorelei" had engaged for something better.



XVI

"By Jove, here's a lark!" exclaimed Starr, at the breakfast table, looking up from the Paris Herald.

It was at the Amstel Hotel, on our fourth morning, and he and I were taking coffee together, as an Ancient Mariner and his Albatross should. The ladies had not yet appeared, for they were breakfasting in their rooms.

"What's up?" I asked.

"It's under the latest news of your Queen's doings," said he, and began to read aloud: "'Jonkheer Brederode, who is equally popular in English and Dutch society and sporting circles, has taken for the season a large motor-boat, in which he is touring the waterways of Holland, with a party of invited friends, among whom is Lady MacNairne. It was her portrait, as everybody knows, painted by the clever American artist, Mr. R. L. Starr, which was so much admired at the Paris Salon this spring.' Funny, how they strung that story together, isn't it? But it's a bore—er—in the circumstances, their having got hold of my aunt's name."

"People who weave tangled webs mustn't be surprised if they get caught in them sometimes," said I.

"I wonder how Miss Van Buren will like this? She's sure to see it," Starr went on, reflectively.

How she liked it mattered more to me than to anybody else, because if she disliked it, I was the person upon whom her vexation would be visited. But there was a still more important point which apparently hadn't come under the Mariner's consideration. How would Lady MacNairne's husband like it?

Evidently Starr doesn't know that there has been an upset of some sort between Sir Alec and the charming Fleda; and as Fleda is his aunt, but has not confided in her nephew (while she has in me) no matter what trouble the newspaper paragraph may cause for the entire party, it would be a breach of confidence for me to enlighten him.

"By Jove," I said to myself, "what will MacNairne do if he sees in the paper that his wife, who has run away from home without telling him where she's staying, is the principal guest on board a boat of mine? I ought to warn Starr that there may be a crash, but I can't."

The only thing I could do was to pump him, in the hope that he knew more of his aunt's affairs than I supposed.

"My stock's pretty far down in the market with Miss Van Buren already," said I. "It can't go lower. I wonder how these asses think of such nonsense? But I suppose it came of registering 'Lorelei' in my name, which I had to do, to use the flag of the Sailing and Rowing Club of Rotterdam. Somebody heard of the boat's being registered by Rudolph Brederode, and voila the consequences. But where is Lady MacNairne?"

"Heavens, don't yell at the top of your voice," groaned Starr, in a dreadful whisper. "There may be some one at the next table who can speak English. I've had an awful lesson, as nobody knows better than you, to behave in a restaurant as if I were at church. The real Lady McN., who is not up-stairs at the present moment breakfasting with Tibe, may be in Kamschatka for all I know, though I think it probable she's not. All I do know is that she's never answered two frantic telegrams of mine. She's not at home. She may be anywhere else—except in Holland, where she's wanted."

"It would be awkward if she should turn up now," I remarked.

"Was wanted, I ought to have said. But she's such a good pal, I should fix things up with her somehow."

"I doubt if you would with her husband," I thought, though aloud I said nothing. I was sure now that he was in ignorance of the situation, blissful ignorance, since he could not guess what developments it might lead to for him, and for the Chaperon whom he had provided at such cost.

"If anything happens, I shall have to help him through it somehow," I decided, "as it's more than half my fault, registering 'Lorelei' in my name. Besides, I can't let the party be broken up, until I've had a fair chance to raise Brederode stock in the market."

To know that at any moment Sir Alec MacNairne might pounce upon us, denounce the Chaperon as a fraud, disgust the girls with Starr, and put a sudden end to the adventure as far as the two men in it were concerned, was not conducive to appetite. I forgot whether I had just begun my breakfast, or just finished it, but in either case it interested me no more than eggs and toast would have interested Damocles at the moment of discovering the sword.

"The principal thing is not to let the girls see the Herald," said Starr.

I wished it were the principal thing; still, I said nothing, and getting up, we went into the hall.

"Miss Van Buren would think it cool of you, perhaps, if she knew you'd registered her boat in your name," said Starr, taking up the subject again. "She wouldn't understand——"

"What would Miss Van Buren think cool?" asked Miss Van Buren's voice behind us, and the Mariner started as if we were conspirators.

"Oh, nothing particular," he answered limply.

"Please tell me."

"I'll tell you," I said, with a sudden determination that she should know the worst, and do her worst, and be conquered by something stronger than her prejudice. The tug-of-war was coming between us now, that tug-of-war I had been expecting and almost desiring.

"I registered your boat in my name," I said calmly, "and Starr thinks you wouldn't understand."

She threw up her head, flushing. "I don't understand."

"It gives us the right to use the flag of my club."

"We could have got on without it."

"Often with grave inconvenience."

"I would have risked that."

"Forgive me, but amateurs are always ready to take risks."

(At this moment I became aware that Starr had slipped away.)

"Isn't it rather late," she flashed at me, "to ask my forgiveness for—anything?"

"It was a mere civility," I answered with equal insolence. "I've done nothing for which I've felt the need of your forgiveness, Miss Van Buren; but if you think I have, pray tell me once for all what it was, that I may defend myself."

"You don't feel," she echoed, "that you've done anything for which you need my forgiveness? Oh, then you're more hardened than I thought. I hoped that by this time you were repenting."

"Repenting of what?"

"Of everything. Of—putting yourself in your present position, among other things."

"You mean in the position of your skipper? I may say, that if I haven't repented, it isn't your fault. But, really, I've been so busy trying to make myself useful to the party in more ways than one, that I've had no time for repentance."

"Oh, you have made yourself useful," she had the grace to admit. "If—it hadn't been for the beginning, I—I should have been grateful. You know things which none of the rest of us know. You've shown us sights which without you we should never have seen or heard of. But as it is, how can I, why should I, be grateful? It's only for the sake of the others, and their pleasure, that I——"

"So you said before," I broke in. "But now I refuse to accept toleration from you—we won't say consideration, for that's too warm a word—for the sake of others. The boat is yours. I am your skipper. If, after serving you as well as I could for a week, you wish me to go, I will go."

She stood and stared at me from under lashes meant only for sweet looks.

"You will go?"

"Certainly. This moment. I only wait your word." I heard myself saying it; and in a way I was sincere, though I was the same man who, only a few minutes since, had vowed to do anything rather than let the trip end. Of course I would have to go now, if she told me to go. But I knew that I should not go. As skipper, I was her servant, if she chose to give me the name; but as a man I felt myself her master.

"I—I—" she faltered, and I saw her throat flutter. "You're putting me in a horrid position. We—I thought we'd settled this matter, things being as they are."

"Not at all," said I. "Nothing was settled."

"You're Mr. Starr's friend, and I can't send you away."

"You can, easily," I replied. "And since that appears to be your only reason for not doing so, I'll not wait for your orders to go. Good-by, Miss Van Buren, I'll do my best to get you another skipper, a professional this time."

I moved a step away, and my blood was beating fast. Everything depended on the next instant.

"Stop! Please stop," she said.

I stopped, and looked at her coldly.

For a moment we stood regarding each other in silence, for it seemed that, having detained me, she could think of nothing more to say. But suddenly she broke out, with a fierce little stamp of the foot.

"Oh! Sometimes I can understand why it was that Philip liked to torture the Dutch."

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. But it would have spoiled everything for me if I had laughed.

"You have tortured the Dutch," said I. "But now it's finished. The Dutch have tired of the torture."

"Oh, you're tired? Then you had better go, I suppose. Why are you waiting?"

"You stopped me for something. What was it?"

"I—hardly know. It was only—I was going to propose——"

"You were going to propose?"

"That—you stayed a little longer. You were to take us—them, I mean—on an excursion to-day in your motor-car. They're getting ready now. They'll be—so disappointed."

"I'll lend you—them—my car and my chauffeur."

"No, it would be horrid without y—It would be too ungracious. I—they—couldn't accept."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't you think maybe you'd better stay a little longer?"

"No, Miss Van Buren, I go now, or I—go with you to the end." I wonder if she guessed just what I meant by those words? "I'll not stop, after what's passed between us, for a day longer, except on two conditions."

"Conditions? You make conditions with me?"

"Certainly, I have the right."

"You are extraordinary."

"I am a Dutchman."

"Oh, here comes Lady MacNairne—in her motor-coat and hood. She bought them yesterday—because they're Tibe-color. What excuse can I make? Oh, what are your conditions?"

"First, that you tell me you want me to stay."

"I do—on their account."

"That's not the way."

"Well, then, I ask you to stay. I hope your next condition isn't as hard."

"You must be the judge. It is, that you'll be civil to me, and friendly—at least in appearance. I have done, and will do my best for you and 'Lorelei.' In return, I'll have no more snubs."

"But if they've been deserved? No! I won't be brow-beaten."

"Nor will I. Good-by, again, Miss Van Buren."

"Here comes Phil now, in her motoring things. Oh dear! Have it as you like. I will—be nice to you."

She smiled in spite of herself, or else to encourage me with a sample of future treatment; and giving way to impulse at last, I held out my hand.

"Shake hands on the bargain, then, and it's signed and sealed," I said.

She laid her fingers delicately in mine, and dared not look resentful when I gently pressed them.

For all I cared, she might see the Paris Herald now. For all I cared, the sky might fall.



XVII

Never was man in better mood for the rush and thrill of the motor than I, after the conquering of Miss Van Buren. It was but a shadow victory, a tempest in a tea-pot, yet it was so good an augury of a further triumph for which I hoped in future, that the joy of it went fizzily to my head, and I could have shouted, if I had been alone in some desert place with nobody by to know that it was a Dutchman who made a fool of himself.

It was the first time I had had the car out in Amsterdam; for the city, with its network of electric trams and tremendous traffic, is far from ideal for motoring, and I wanted to keep the nerves of my people cool for sight-seeing. Therefore the automobile had been eating her head off in a garage, while we pottered about in cabs, driven by preposterously respectable-looking old gentlemen, bearded as to their chins, and white as to the seams of their coats.

To take "Lorelei" to all the places I meant to see to-day would have occupied half a week, though none were at a great distance from Amsterdam but the waterways there do not in all places connect conveniently for a boat of "Lorelei's" size, though we might have left "Waterspin" behind. So I proposed the car, and everybody caught at the idea.

There was not one of the party who by this time had not studied guide-books enough to know something of Muiden, Laren, Baarn, Hilversum, and Amersfoort; but they might have searched Baedeker and all his rivals from end to end without finding even the name of Spaakenberg; and little quaint, hidden Spaakenberg was to be the clou of our expedition. It was ten o'clock when I got them all—including Tibe—into the car; indeed, it always seems to be exactly ten o'clock when we start on any excursion, even when it has been decided over night that we should set off promptly at nine. But Starr, who pretends to knowledge of women's ways, says we are lucky to get away anywhere before eleven, seeing that at the last moment one of the ladies remembers that she must write and post an important letter, which will take only five minutes; or she finds she has forgotten her purse in a drawer at the hotel, and must go back; or she thinks she will be too cool or too hot, and must make some change in her costume; or if nothing of this sort happens, Tibe is lost sight of for a second, and disappears in pursuit of new friendships, canine or human. He has then not only to be retrieved, which is usually an affair of twenty minutes, but has to be caressed for an extra five by his mistress, who never fails to abandon hope of seeing him again the moment he is out of sight.

To test the quality of Miss Van Buren's resolutions, I asked her to take the seat beside the driver, expecting some excuse; but she came like a lamb; and the taste of conquest was sweet in my mouth.

In Haarlem all had proved such good motorists that, despite the ferocity of Amsterdam trams, I was scarcely prepared for the emotions which began to seethe in the tonneau the moment the car was started and the chauffeur had sprung to his place at my feet. According to my idea, there's no courage in reckless driving, but selfishness and other less agreeable qualities; still, we did not exactly dawdle as we left the Amstel, to swing out into the tide of city life.

"Heavens, he's going to kill us!" I heard the Chaperon groan. "Ronald, tell him to stop."

Miss Rivers was also giving vent to despairing murmurs. Tibe was "wuffing" full-noted threats at each tram which loomed toward us, and Starr was attempting to advise me over my shoulder that the ladies would wish to be driven less furiously.

To my joy, Nell looked back and laughed. "Why, we're not going more than seven miles an hour," said she.

"Then, for goodness' sake, let's go one," implored her chaperon. "I never dreamed of anything so awful."

I slackened pace. "Are you an old motorist?" I inquired of my companion, as if I were used to asking her friendly, commonplace questions.

"I never was in a car until the other day with my cousin," said she, in the same carefully unconscious tone. "And I'm afraid in my feet and hands now; but the rest of me is enjoying it awfully. Yes, that's the word, I think, for it is rather awful. I shouldn't have dreamed that trams could look so big, or bridges so narrow, except in nightmares. And—and you can't make your horn heard much, can you, over the noise on the stones? Oh, there was a close shave with that wagon, wasn't it? I felt bristling like a fretful porcupine—oh, but a stark, staring mad, blithering, driveling porcupine!"

It was delicious to have her talk to me, and to feel that because she trusted my skill, she was not really afraid, but only excited enough to forget her stiffness.

"Perhaps Amsterdam wouldn't be a pleasant place to learn 'chauffeuring' in," I said; "but it's all right when you have learned."

"It's a good thing," she went on, "that motoring wasn't invented by some grand seignor in the Middle Ages, when the rich thought no more of the poor than we do of flies, or they'd have run over every one who didn't get out of their way on the instant. They'd have had a sort of cow-catcher fitted on to their cars, to keep themselves from coming to harm, and they'd have dashed people aside, anyhow. In these days, no matter how hard your heart may be, you have to sacrifice your inclinations more or less to decency. I dare say the Car of Juggernaut was a motor. Oh, what a huge town! Shall we ever get out of Pandemonium into the country?"

We did get out at last, and suddenly, for in Hollow Land the line between town and country is abrupt, with no fading of city into suburb and meadow. One moment we were in the bustle of Amsterdam; the next, we were running along a klinker road, straight as a ruler, beside a quiet canal. Such horses as we met, being accustomed to the traffic of Amsterdam, had no fear of the motor, which was well; for on so narrow a road, with the canal on one side, and a deep drop into meadows on the other, an adventure would be disagreeable. But it was not all straight sailing ahead. Outside the traffic, I put on speed to make up for lost time, and the car quickly ate up the distance between Amsterdam and Muiden.

My passengers broke into admiration of the medieval fortress with its paraphernalia of moats, bastions, and drawbridges, which give an air of historic romance to the country round; but their emotion would have been of a different kind had they guessed the risk we must take in running through the winding fortifications. It was not so great a risk that it was foolish to take it, and thirty or forty cars must do the same thing every day; but the fact was, that we had to run through these tunnels on tram-lines, with no room to turn out in case of meeting a steam monster from Hilversum. I had chosen my time, knowing the hours for trams; still, had there been a delay, there was a chance of a crash, for our horn could not be heard by the tram driver, nor could he see us in time to put on his brakes and prevent a collision.

With the girl I love beside me, and three other passengers, not to mention the chauffeur, it was with a tenseness of the nerves that I drove through the labyrinth, and I was glad to clear Muiden. Next came Naarden—that tragic Naarden whose capture and sack by the Spaniards encouraged Alva to attack Haarlem; and then, without one of the party having dreamed of danger, we swung out on the road to Laren, a road set in pineland and heather, which would have reminded the real Lady MacNairne of her Scottish home. There was actually something like a hill here and there, which the strangers were astonished to find in Holland, and would hardly believe when I said that, on reaching Gelderland, I would be able to show them a Dutch mountain two hundred feet high, among a colony of smaller eminences to which half the Netherlands rush in summer.

Meanwhile they were satisfied with what they saw; and it is a pretty enough road, this way between Amsterdam and Laren. At first we had had the canal, with its sleepy barges, peopled with large families, and towed by children harnessed in tandem at the end of long ropes; its little shady, red-and-green wayside houses, with "Melk Salon" printed attractively over their doors. We had had avenues of trees, knotted here and there into groves; we had passed pretty farmhouses with bright milk-cans and pans hanging on the red walls, like placks in a drawing-room; we had seen gardens flooded with roses, and long stretches of water carpeted with lilies white and yellow; then we had come to pine forests and heather, and always we had had the good klinker which, though not as velvety for motoring as asphalt, is free from dust even in dry weather. We had run almost continuously on our fourth speed; and even in Laren I came down to the second only long enough to let them all see the beauty of the Mauve country.

Starr knows Anton Mauve's pictures, and his history; but the ladies had seen only a few delicious landscapes in the Ryks Museum. Still, they liked to hear that at Laren Corot's great disciple had found inspiration. Nowhere in the Netherlands are there such beautiful barns, each one of which is a background for a Nativity picture; and it was Laren peasants, Laren cows, and the sunlit and cloud-shadowed meadows of Laren which kept Mauve's brush busy for years.

After the charm of Haarlem's suburbs, Hilversum, where merchants of Amsterdam play at being in the country, was disappointing; but having lunched in open air, and spun on toward Amersfoort, we ran into a district which holds some delightful houses, set among plane trees, varied with flowering acacias and plantations of oak. Everywhere our eyes followed long avenues cut in the forest, avenues stretching out like the rays of a star, and full of a tremulous green light, shot with gold.

In the midst of this forest we came upon Soestdyk, where the Queen-Mother lives, that pleasant palace with its romance of a mysterious, secret room; then by-and-by we ran into Amersfoort, ringed by its park, and Nell was so entranced with the Gothic church tower, that she rejoiced to hear it was the finest in the northern Netherlands.

I had chosen market-day in Amersfoort for our drive, and as we sailed into the spacious square of the town, my passengers saw in one moment more Dutch costumes than in all their previous days in Hollow Land.

It was too late for the best of the picture; still, the market-place glittered with gold and silver helmets, and delicate spiral head-ornaments. Ear-rings flashed in the sun, and massive gold brooches and buckles. There was a moving rainbow of color and a clatter of sabots, as the market women packed up their wares; but there was no time to linger, if we were to reach Spaakenberg before the shadows grew long. We sped on, until the next toll-gate (we had come to so many that Nell said our progress was made by tolling, rather than tooling along the roads) where a nice apple-cheeked old lady shook her white cap at the motor, while accepting my pennies. It was her opinion, though she was not sure, that the road—oh, a very bad road!—to Spaakenberg, was now forbidden to automobiles.

To tell the truth, I had never motored to Spaakenberg, but I had bicycled, and thought there ought to be room on the narrow road for two vehicles, even if one were a motor and the other a hay-cart.

I was not surprised that the old lady had no certainty with which to back up her opinion. It was more surprising that she should know of the existence of Spaakenberg, of which many Dutch bicyclists who pride themselves on their knowledge, have never heard.

Naturally we determined to persevere, more than ever eager for a sight of the strange fishing-village, and a glimpse of the Zuider Zee.

"But what shall we do if we find the road forbidden, and we're too far off to walk?" Nell asked. "It would be dreadful to turn back."

"We shan't turn back," said I. "We'll hire a wagon and go on, or—we'll pass the sign which forbids us to proceed, too quickly to see it. Such things happen; and the road's too narrow to turn or even to reverse."

"I am glad you're a Dutchman," said she.

"Why? Because I know the ropes?"

"No. Because you'd die rather than give up anything you've set out to do."

It was now as if the apple-cheeked old prophetess had bewitched the country. The monarchs of the forest fled away and left us in the open, with a narrow strip of road between a canal loaded with water-lilies and low-lying meadows of yellow grain.

The landscape was charming, and the air balmy with summer; but with the first horse we met all peace was over.

Here were no longer the blase beasts of a sophisticated world. Animals of this region had never seen a town larger than Amersfoort. A motor-car was to them as horrifying an object as a lion escaping from his cage at a circus.

Horses reared, hay-carts swayed, peasants shrieked maledictions or shook fists; but always, crawling at snail's pace, we managed to scrape past without accident. Sometimes we frightened cows; and a couple of great yellow dogs, drawing a cart which contained two peasant girls in costume, swore canine oaths against the car.



"Oh, mercy, we've just passed a sign in Dutch, 'Motors forbidden'!" cried Nell.

"Well, we've passed it," said I. "Perhaps it meant that side road; it's narrower than ours. Let's think it did."

So we gave it the benefit of the doubt and fled on, until in less than an hour we flashed into a fishing-village. They all cried, "Spaakenberg and the Zuider Zee!" But as it was not Spaakenberg, I gave them only a flashing glimpse of masts and dark blue water.

Half a mile's drive along a canal, and we came to our destination. And of Spaakenberg the first thing we saw was a forest of masts, with nets like sails, brown, yet transparent as spider-webs. Fifty sturdy fishing-boats were grouped together in a basin of quiet water within sight of the Zuider Zee, which calls to men on every clear night, "the fish are waiting."

I stopped; and as we counted the boats, the whole able-bodied population of Spaakenberg issued from small, peak-roofed houses to see what monster made so odd a noise. By twenties and by thirties they came, wonderful figures, and the air rang with the music of sabots on klinker.

There were young women carrying tiny round babies; there were old women who had all they could do to carry themselves; there were little girls gravely knitting their brothers' stockings; and toddling creatures so infinitesimal that one could not guess whether they would grow up male or female. There were men, too, but not many young ones; and there were plenty of chubby-faced boys.

As for the women and girls, they wore Heaven knows how many petticoats—seven or eight at the minimum—and their figures went out at the places where they should have gone in, and went in at the places where they should have gone out. They were like the old-fashioned ladies with panniers on each side; and those who could not afford enough petticoats had padded out their own and their children's hips to supply the right effect.

Some had black hoods with furry rolls round their rose-and-snow faces; some heightened the brilliancy of their complexion by close-fitting caps of white lace, according to their religion—whether they were of the Catholic or Protestant faith; and the babies, in black hoods, neck-handkerchiefs, and balloon-like black skirts reaching to their feet, were the quaintest figures of all. The men and boys, in their indigo blouses, were not living pictures like their female relatives, save when, with bright blue yokes over their shoulders (from which swung green, scarlet-lined pails, foaming with yellow cream), they returned from milking blue-coated, black and white cows.

Unspoiled by the influx of strangers, the simple people thronged round us, not for what they might get, but for what they could see. We were quainter to them than they to us, and Tibe was as rare as a dragon. His mistress was of opinion that they believed the noise of the motor (now stilled) to have issued from his black velvet muzzle; and when we all, including the tragic-faced, happy-hearted bulldog, got out to wander past the rows of tiny houses in the village, they swarmed round him, buzzed round him, whirled round him, to his confusion.

Escape seemed hopeless, when Nell and Phyllis had an inspiration. They rushed in at the door of a miniature shop, with a few picture postcards and sweets in glass jars displayed in a dark window. Three minutes later they fought their way out through the crowd of strange dolls "come alive," and, like a farmer sowing seed, strewed pink and white lozenges over the heads of girls and boys.

Instantly the "clang of the wooden shoon" ceased. Down squatted the children with the suddenness of collapsed umbrellas. There was a scramble, and we seized the opportunity for flight. We had seen the Zuider Zee; we had seen the cows in blue coats; we had seen Spaakenberg; and Spaakenberg had seen us.



XVIII

Returning by way of wooded Baarn, we spun back to Amsterdam when violet shadows lengthened over golden meadows, and gauzy mist-clouds floated above the canal, burnished to silver by the sunset.

It was too late to do anything but dine and plan for to-morrow, which I had mapped out in my mind, subject to approval. But I let them all talk, as I often do, without saying anything until they turn to me with a question.

"There's an island which people say is wonderful, and you mustn't miss it," remarked the Chaperon. "But I've forgotten the name."

"Why is it wonderful?" asked Miss Rivers.

"I can't remember. But there was something different about it from what you can see anywhere else."

"Dear me, how awkward. How are you to find it?" sighed Phyllis.

"Ask Alb to rapidly mention all islands in Holland, and perhaps it will come back to you," suggested the Mariner. "Begin with A, Alb."

"Not worth while wasting the letters of the alphabet," said I. "Lady MacNairne (the name invariably sticks in my throat) means Marken."

"That's it!" exclaimed the Chaperon. "How could you guess?"

"There's only one island that people talk about like that," I replied. "It's the great show place; and it's like going to the theater. The curtain rings up when the audience arrives, and rings down when it departs. You'll see to-morrow."

"To-morrow?"

"My idea was to take you there to-morrow, unless you prefer another place."

I looked at the mistress of the boat, and no hardness came into her eyes. The contrast between her manner yesterday and her manner since this morning was so marked that, instead of being wholly pleased, I was half alarmed. It seemed too good to be true that her feelings should have changed, and that the sun should continue to shine.

"Why, certainly, let's go to Marken," she said. "I was thinking of Broek-in-Waterland, as I read it was near, and the sweetest place in Holland; however, we can go by-and-by, if——"

"But my plan includes Broek-in-Waterland, gives you a glimpse of Monnikendam, takes you to Marken, and winds up at Volendam, beloved of artists," said I. "I don't believe we'll find it easy to tear Starr from Volendam."

So it was settled, and every one agreed to be ready at ten o'clock next morning. But ten o'clock came, and no Nell, no Phyllis, no Chaperon.

My car was at the door, as I intended to save time by motoring to the Club harbor, where the yacht was lying; and when Starr and I had waited in the hall for some minutes, Aunt Fay appeared.

"Haven't the girls come in yet with Tibe?" she asked. There was a note of anxiety in her voice, though, owing to the fact that the blue spectacles are very large, the wings of gray hair droop very low, a perky bow of white gauzy stuff worn under the chin comes up very high, and the face is very small, it is difficult to tell by the lady's expression what she may be feeling; indeed, there is remarkably little room for an expression to be revealed; which adds to the mystery of the Chaperon's personality.

"Are they out?" asked Starr.

"Yes. But they promised to be back at a quarter to ten, without fail, or I shouldn't have let them go. Tibe's had no breakfast, and he must have his teeth brushed before we start. Oh dear, I'm afraid something's happened."

"For goodness' sake, don't be excited. You get such an American accent when you're excited," whispered the Mariner, fiercely. "Be brave. Remember you're a Scotswoman."

"If I lose Tibe, I shall be a madwoman," she retorted.

"You won't lose him. Alb and I care at least as much for the girls as you do for your dog, and we're not worrying——"

"That's different. The girls don't belong to you," almost wept the tiny creature. "You haven't fed them, and brushed them, and washed their feet every day of their lives since they were a few months old, as I have with Tibe, and if you're not very nice to me, you never will."

"We never dared hope for quite as much as that," said Starr, "but we are being nice to you. What do you want us to do? They're half an hour behind time. Shall we give an order for the Town Crier? I dare say there's one in use still, as this is Holland."

"If you're sarcastic, Ronald, I'll leave you the moment I have my darling Tibe again," replied the Chaperon, and the threat reduced Ronald to crushed silence.

"What took them out so early in the morning?" I asked.

"Oh, Tibe escaped from my room for a minute, and was eating a boot which he found at somebody's door—a horrid, elastic-sided boot: I'm sure it couldn't have been good for him—and the two girls brought him back. They were going out for one last glimpse of that quaint, hidden square you call 'the village,' which they longed to see again, and they asked if they should take Tibe, so I said yes, as he's fond of driving.

"Oh, they were driving?" said I.

"Yes. They could easily have been in long ago. There must have been an accident. Miss Rivers is always so depressingly prompt. Such a strange girl! She considers it quite a sin to break a promise, even to a man, and she seems actually to like telling the truth."

We soothed the Chaperon's fears as well as we could; but when half-past ten came, and there were still no signs of the missing ones, we both began to be troubled.

"If they don't appear in ten minutes, I'll drive slowly in the direction by which they should return," I said; but the words had hardly left my lips when the girls walked into the hall, with Tibe. Both charming faces were flushed, and it was evident that something exciting had happened. But whatever it was, nobody was the worse for it. Tibe flew to his mistress, knocking down a child, and almost upsetting an old gentleman by darting unexpectedly between his legs, while the girls rushed into explanations.

"We're so sorry to have kept you waiting, but we've had such an adventure!" cried Nell. "We were driving back from the 'village,' when Tibe gave a leap and jumped out of the cab before we could hold him."

"We were terrified," broke in Phyllis.

"And he disappeared in the most horribly mysterious way," finished Nell.

"We thought some one in the crowd must have stolen him, so we stopped the cab——"

"And began tearing about looking for him, asking every human being in every known language except Dutch, if they'd seen a dog, or a chien, or a hund——"

"But nobody understood, so we went into a lot of shops, and he wasn't in any of them——"

"And we were in despair. We shouldn't have dared come back without him——"

"I should think not!" cut in the Chaperon.

"And we were on the way to the nearest police-station, with a dear old gentleman who could speak English, and a whole procession of extraneous creatures who couldn't, when we saw Tibe, calmly driving in a carriage with——"

"A strange man, and——"

"He never so much as looked at us, but we were sure we couldn't be mistaken, at least Nell was; so we deserted our old gentleman, and began running after Tibe's carriage, shrieking for it to stop."

"Naturally, every one thought we were mad; but we didn't care, and at last the man in the carriage realized we were after him. If he hadn't stopped, we should have known that he'd deliberately stolen Tibe; but he did stop, and we said, both together, it was our dog."

"The man took off his hat, and answered in English, such a nice man, and quite good-looking, with a big mustache, and quick-tempered blue eyes. He said that the first thing he knew, Tibe had jumped into his cab, and he had no idea where he came from, as he'd been reading in a guide-book; but the strangest thing was, he felt certain Tibe had belonged to him when a puppy; only his dog wasn't named Tibe, but John Bull—Bully for short, and he sold him to an American, because it turned out his wife didn't like bulldogs in the house, she thought them too ugly."

"What a cat!" interpolated the Chaperon.

"Could it be possible that Tibe ever was his?" asked Nell. "He sold his dog just a year ago, when he was six months old——"

"I bought Tibe ten months ago, poor lamb, for a song, because he was ill—he'd been seasick on a long voyage, so I nursed him up, and see what he is now," said Tibe's mistress. "It may be he'd belonged to this man, for it's always the strangest things that are true. Tibe has a wonderful memory for faces; but I'm sure if I'd been with him, he wouldn't have run away from me for twenty old masters."

"The second queerest thing in the adventure is, that this 'old master' must be some relation of yours, Lady MacNairne," said Nell. "He gave us his card. See, here it is." She handed it to the Chaperon, who gazed at it through her blue spectacles for a moment without speaking; then passed it to Starr. "Merely—a relation by marriage," said she. "Quite a distant relation. I never saw this gentleman myself; but I believe you've met him, haven't you, dear Ronny?"

There is plenty of room on the Mariner's face for expression. He grew red, and his eyebrows were eloquent as he looked at the card. "Oh—er—yes, I've seen him, I think," he mumbled, "when I was in Scotland last. Odd he happens to be here."

"He only arrived this morning, on important business," Nell explained. "If it weren't for that, he would have asked to bring us back to our hotel, but it was something that had to be attended to without a moment's delay, so he was obliged to leave us at once. He was on the way to the Hotel de l'Europe, where he hoped to find the people he'd come to seek."

No need for me to see that card. I knew well who was the hero of the girls' adventure, and would have guessed without the aid of Starr's expression. He saw that I guessed, and turned to me with a look of appeal.

"Well, at all events, Tibe is safe," I said, "and we ought to start, if we're to get through our program to-day. Ladies, is your luggage ready? I'll see that Tibe has a nice bone instead of breakfast. He can eat it in the car, going to the boat; and as it's dusty, you had better put on your motor-veils when you leave the hotel. Starr and I are going to wear goggles."

"Alb," said Starr, as the ladies moved away, "you may have a bad heart, but you have a good head. Disguise and flight are our only hope. If Sir Alec should recognize me——"

("If he should recognize me," I echoed inwardly.)

"The game would be up."

"Speed, veils, and goggles may do the trick," said I.

"But afterwards? By Jove, what we're let in for!"

"We must set our wits to work. Change 'Lorelei's' name and disappear into space."

Five minutes later we were off, unrecognizable by our best friends, and Tibe well hidden, deeply interested in his bone at the bottom of the tonneau. But hardly were we away when Miss Rivers cried out——

"Oh, look, Nell; there's Sir Alec MacNairne. Oughtn't we to stop a minute, so that Lady MacNairne——"

"I'm afraid we haven't time," I said hastily, and put on speed, as much as I dared in traffic. We whizzed by a cab, and might have passed the gloomy-faced man who sat in it with his traveling-bag (hastily packed, I'll warrant) had not the two girls bowed.

Their faces were not to be recognized behind the small, triangular tale windows of the silk and lace motor-veils they bought in Haarlem; but their bow attracted Sir Alec MacNairne's attention, and those "quick-tempered blue eyes" of his looked the whole party over as he lifted his hat from his crisply curling auburn hair. He probably divined that the two veiled figures must be the girls of his late adventure; and as he was now acquainted with them and with Tibe, there would be one less chance of our boat slipping away from under his nose, in case he got upon our track.

I realized that Sir Alec could not have been in Scotland when the fatal paragraph appeared, which reached our eyes only yesterday. If he had been, he could not have arrived in Amsterdam to-day. My idea now is that he must have come abroad in search of his wife, have seen the Paris Herald at some Continental resort, and have rushed off post-haste to Holland, expecting to find her.