Softened by grief the old man was more than usually gracious to the artist.
"'Tis a bitter blow, my good Hals," he said dully.
"Please God, those devils have only an eye on your money, mynheer," said the artist consolingly. "They will look on the jongejuffrouw as a valuable hostage and treat her with the utmost deference in the hopes of getting a heavy ransom from you."
"May you be speaking truly," sighed Cornelius with a disconsolate shake of the head, "but think what she must be suffering now, while she is uncertain of her own fate, poor child!"
"Alas!"
"This delay is killing me, Hals," continued the old man, who in the midst of his more pompous friends seemed instinctively drawn to the simple nature of this humble painter of pictures. "The burgomaster means well but his methods are slow and ponderous. All my servants and dependents have joined the first expedition toward Groningen, but God knows how they will get on, now that Nicolaes no longer leads them. They have had no training in such matters, and will hardly know how to proceed."
"You really want some one who is daring and capable, mynheer, some one who will be as wary as those vervloekte sea-wolves and beat them at their own game. 'Tis not so much the numbers that you want as the one brain to direct and to act."
"True! true, my good Hals! But our best men are all at the war fighting for our religious and political liberties, while we—the older citizens of our beloved country with our wives and our daughters—are left a prey to the tyranny of malefactors and of pirates. The burgomaster hopes to raise an efficient corps of volunteers by to-morrow ... but I doubt me if he will succeed.... I have sent for help, I have spared no money to obtain assistance ... but I am an old man myself, and my son alas! has been rendered helpless at the outset, through no fault of his own...."
"But surely there are young men left in Haarlem whom wanton mischief such as this would cause to boil with indignation."
"There are few young men left in Haarlem, my friend," rejoined Beresteyn sadly, "the Stadtholder hath claimed the best of them. Those who are left behind are too much engrossed in their own affairs to care greatly about the grief of an old man, or a wrong done to an innocent girl."