“Do I not know? Can I not understand?” Into Jeanne’s voice crept a note of love and longing akin to Alaine’s. “We have been sorely afflicted. The waves and the billows have gone over us both. It is a wonderful thing this love of woman for man. None knows how wonderful or how great but those who have felt it. And none but they can tell how much a human soul can suffer. I will speak to M. Verplanck, and I think he will understand and will be patient also. It is very hard for youth to be patient,” she continued, half to herself. “One must think of the things for which one must be thankful, then it will not be so hard. You have been wonderfully delivered more than once, and surely you should believe that you will be again.”
“I will believe that, dear Jeanne.” Alaine’s arm around Jeanne’s waist gave her a gentle pressure, and they rode on silently till the twinkling lights ahead of them showed that they were approaching a small settlement. In a few minutes a stockade was reached, this enclosed the fort and blockhouse where dwelt Joachim van der Deen and his tenant farmers. To the query, “Who goes there?” Trynje answered, “I, Trynje van der Deen, with friends.” And an immediate admittance was vouchsafed.
Trynje, helped from her horse by Lendert, went at once toward the door which was flung wide open in answer to her summons. “Whom have we here?” asked a stout, red-faced Dutchman. “What is my daughter doing travelling about this time of night, and who are these in her company?”
“Lendert Verplanck, whom you know, Mademoiselle Hervieu, whom you do not know, and Jeanne Crepin.”
“They are French?” Joachim van der Deen looked suspicious, and pulled the door together a little.
“We are Huguenots and refugees, good sir,” interposed Alaine, “and as your generous Holland has sheltered so many of our faith, we hope we do not ask in vain for shelter here. I have travelled in this dress for some months past that I might the more readily escape detection of my enemies.”
Joachim van der Deen smiled, and, taking Alaine’s hand, he led her to an inner room where sat his buxom wife. “We have visitors, Johanna,” he said. “Trynje returns with them. Let her tell her tale while I see to this gentleman. It is past bedtime and we will retire at once, my friends, unless you have good reason to remain without a good night’s rest.”
Trynje poured forth her story into her mother’s ears. The goede vrow listened attentively, and at the close remarked, triumphantly, “I always said you would find Madam De Vries a hard mother, and you are well awake to it now. We shall have no more objections to Adriaen Vrooman hereafter.”
Trynje blushed and snuggled up to her mother’s side. It was very clear that she agreed with her, and that when Adriaen returned from his journey into the distant forests he would receive a smiling reception from Trynje.