"No; but I know where they are: and, by God and St. Bavon I swear you shall have them to-morrow. Come to me for them when you will, but come alone."
"I were mad, else. What! share the hundred crowns with Dirk Brower? And now may my bones rot in my skin if I let a soul know the poor boy is here."
He then ran off, lest by staying longer he should excite suspicion, and have them all after him. And Margaret knelt, quivering from head to foot, and prayed beside Gerard, and for Gerard.
"What is to do?" replied Jorian, to Dierich Brower's query; "why we have scared the girl out of her wits. She was in a kind of fit."
"We had better all go and doctor her, then."
"Oh yes! and frighten her into the churchyard. Her father is a doctor, and I have roused him, and set him to bring her round. Let us see the fire, will ye?"
His off-hand way disarmed all suspicion. And soon after the party agreed that the kitchen of the "Three Kings" was much warmer than Peter's house, and they departed, having first untied Martin.
"Take note, mate, that I was right, and the burgomaster wrong," said Dierich Brower, at the door: "I said we should be too late to catch him, and we were too late."
Thus Gerard, in one terrible night, grazed the prison and the grave.
And how did he get clear at last? Not by his cunningly contrived hiding-place, nor by Margaret's ready wit; but by a good impulse in one of his captors, by the bit of humanity left in a somewhat reckless fellow's heart, aided by his desire of gain. So mixed and seemingly incongruous are human motives, so short sighted our shrewdest counsels.