| [Jacqueline and her carrier pigeons in the procession] |
| [Gysbert draws the portrait of Alonzo De Rova] |
| [Dirk Willumhoog seizes Jacqueline] |
[ON HENGIST HILL]
CHAPTER I
ON HENGIST HILL
The hush of a golden May afternoon lay on the peaceful, watery streets of Leyden. Just enough breeze circulated to rustle the leaves of the poplars, limes and willows that arched the shaded canals. The city drowsed in its afternoon siesta, and few were about to notice the boy and girl making their way rapidly toward the middle of the town. Directly before them, the canal-interlaced streets and stone bridges gave place to a steep incline of ground rising to a considerable height. Its sides were clothed with groves of fruit trees, and from its summit frowned the mouldering walls of some long-forsaken fortress. So old and deserted was this tower that a great clump of oak trees had grown up inside of it, and overtopped its walls.
"Art thou tired, Gysbert?" asked the girl, a slim, golden-haired lass of seventeen, of her younger brother, a boy of little over fourteen years.
"No, Jacqueline, I am strong! A burden of this sort does not weary me!" answered the boy, and he stoutly took a fresh grip on some large, box-like object wrapped in a dark shawl, that they carried between them.