“That’s good, my boy!” said my father, as he patted me approvingly on the shoulder. “Do your best to make it so, for your mother deserves it.”
Since the old churchyard had been mentioned, I was eager to find out if my father knew anything about my hero. Therefore I asked, with as careless an air as I could assume—
“Say, father, who used to be buried in that place round the church?”
“Why, my boy, I don’t know. It must be at least fifty years since that burying-ground was used. When I came to live here the new cemetery was already opened, and I really do not know who was buried in the old place.”
“But, father, did you never hear of any one that was buried there?”
“No,” said my father; but, after thinking a little, he went on: “Yes, I do, though! they buried Kees Van Assen there. I heard so the other day from Notary Van Tefelen.”
Could that be my hero? It might well be, why else should the old burying-ground have been mentioned at the notary’s?
Surely, then, he must have been a great-uncle or distant cousin of that odious Alfred, whom we always called “the Muff,” because he never would join our games for fear of getting bruised and scratched, or soiling his clothes and hands.
“Was Van Assen a hero, father?” I uttered the words with difficulty.
“A hero, my boy? No, certainly not. No, quite the contrary!”