“Where are your thoughts, Junker? One would scarcely know you during the last few days. What has come over you?”
Georg hastily sat erect, stretched himself like a person roused from sleep, and answered pleasantly:
“Dreams come in idleness.”
“The cage is getting too narrow for him,” said Captain Van der Laen. “If this state of things lasts long, we shall all get dizzy like the sheep.”
“And as stiff as the brazen Pagan god on the shelf yonder,” added Colonel Mulder.
“There was the same complaint during the first siege,” replied the host, “but Herr von Noyelles drowned his discontent and emptied many a cask of my best liquor.”
“Tell the gentlemen how he paid you,” cried Colonel Mulder.
“There hangs the paper framed,” laughed Aquarius. “Instead of sending money, he wrote this:
‘Full many a favor, dear friend, hast thou done me,
For which good hard coin glad wouldst thou be to see
There’s none in my pockets; so for the debt
In place of dirty coin,
This written sheet so fine;
Paper money in Leyden is easy to get.’”
“Excellent!” cried Junker von Warmond, “and besides you made the die for the pasteboard coins yourself.”