"The Burgomaster is come to a reasonable frame of mind. To-morrow the Englishman will be arrested; on the next day in the Council I shall declare that our scarcity of victuals and munition forbids a longer resistance; and a trusty friend will make formal proposition that we yield the city."
Having now the game in my hands, I ate my meagre dinner with a good relish, and immediately thereafter set forth to visit Mynheer Cosmo Volmar. He had just risen from his meal, very comfortably replete, for notwithstanding the general shortness of provisions he had contrived to procure himself a sufficiency of good food and wine. Secure in his approaching triumph, he smiled in his beard when I was ushered in, and bade me seat myself with a courtesy that he had never shown me heretofore.
"Mynheer," I said gravely, "the city is in parlous case. The Prince is tardy in coming to our succour, and I fear we can scarce hold out another week."
"Why, sir," said he, "are you become chicken-hearted?—you that came hither expressly to encourage and sustain us! Little you know the spirit of our burghers if you suppose that, even in this darksome hour, they will yield up the city."
"Truly the spirit of the most of them is undaunted," I said; "and I could well believe that, but for the malign presence and pestilent contriving of traitors, they would endure even yet."
"Ah! Traitors!" said he. "Well, we hang a traitor to-morrow, and his fate will teach a wholesome lesson to any that be like-minded."
"It may be that others will hang with him," said I, fixing my eyes upon him. "Will you lend me your ear while I relate a story? It chanced that some few weeks ago, being set upon in the country yonder by a troop of Spaniards, I and my little company were only saved by the timely help of certain peasants, whereby we put the enemy to rout. But a man of my party, pursuing them, overtook and slew one of them, and possessed himself of a paper that he carried in his doublet."
Here I made a pause.
"Proceed, sir," said he, smiling. "I protest the beginning is very well."
"That paper," I continued, with measured gravity, "I hold now in my pocket, together with two others, the which have come into my possession in strange wise since I entered your city; and most strange, they are writ in the selfsame hand as the first. Moreover, they are one and all of the same tenor, to wit, dwelling on the dire straits whereinto this city has fallen, and furnishing hints concerning a party within the walls—a party of one or mayhap two or three—that is plotting to render up the city into the hands of the enemy." While I spoke I fastened my eyes intently upon him, and I saw the fashion of his countenance suffer a change, and in his eyes a look of hate and terror commingled. I went on:—"Sir, they are simple souls that believe the stars order our lives and destinies, and it were easy to persuade such that a shot, whether it be of silver or of iron, fired under planetary influence, should cast as it were a spell even upon a ruthless foe. Yet methinks their simplicity would suffer a rude shock did they know that a round shot may carry a message, not from the heavens, mystically, but——"