"Don't you think, Mynheer, 'twould be well to make enquiry before it is dark? I am strangely uneasy about Sherry."
The merchant consented to accompany Harry into the streets. Everybody knew him and answered his questions readily enough; but none of the porters of the neighbouring houses, or the watchmen who patrolled the streets, had seen Sherebiah or the boy, though some of them owned that they knew the former well by sight. By and by, however, they came upon an old soldier smoking his evening pipe outside his cottage—the lodge to one of the larger houses in Gedempte Spui. Grootz put the usual question.
"Did you see an Englishman—stout, with a beard, and his hat on one side, pass by a few hours ago with a boy of twelve or thereabouts?"
The soldier removed his long pipe, spat, and appeared to meditate before replying.
"Yes—now I think of it; I believe I did see a man of that cut, though I would not be sure. He might not have been an Englishman. He was stout, certainly, and had a beard; as for his hat, I didn't notice it, for the truth is, I had been looking at some other Englishmen, a party of Coy's Horse; my old corps served side by side with them in '97. Yes, and there was a man among them I knew too; a paymaster—Robins, I mind, was his name—donder! what a temper he had! It was a curse and a blow with him. Ay, it is a hard life, the soldier's. They halted at the inn over by there, and I was just going over to drink a glass with them for old times' sake when the Baron's coach came up and I had to open the gates. A lodge-keeper, see you, is a sentry with no change of guard."
"Ja, ja! But the Englishman and the boy—which way did they go?"
"Which way? Let me see. They might have gone down the road: no, now I bethink me, I believe they went up the road; but there, I can't be sure. The sight of the English horse, men I fought side by side with in '97, before I got my wound——"
"Ja, ja! Thank you!"
They escaped his further reminiscences by walking on, past the inn, past a row of cottages with the inevitable bright green shutters, until they came to the watch-house at the cross-roads. Grootz put the same question to the watchman.
"No," he replied. "I saw no Englishman with a boy. But I saw a party of English horse; they had come in from Rotterdam, and I heard afterwards at the inn they were on the track of a deserter."