“I am indeed glad to have an opportunity of thanking you.

“Hasten home, Maria, and prepare a room.  I will go and have this good friend brought to our house.”

Chapter 11:  A Death Trap.

Never did a patient receive more unremitting care than that which was lavished upon Rupert Holliday in the stately old house at Dort.  The old housekeeper, in the stiffest of dresses and starched caps, and with the rosiest although most wrinkled of faces, waited upon him; while Maria von Duyk herself was in and out of his room, brought him flowers, read to him, and told him the news; and her father frequently came in to see that he lacked nothing.  As for Hugh, he grumbled, and said that there was nothing for him to do for his master; but he nevertheless got through the days pleasantly enough, having struck up a flirtation with Maria’s plump and pretty waiting maid, who essayed to improve his Dutch, of which he had by this time picked up a slight smattering.  Then, too, he made himself useful, and became a great favourite in the servants’ hall, went out marketing, told them stories of the war in broken Dutch, and made himself generally at home.  Greatly astonished was he at the stories that he heard as to the land around him; how not infrequently great subsidences, extending over very many square miles, took place; and where towns and villages stood when the sun went down, there spread in the morning a sea very many fathoms deep.  Hugh could hardly believe these tales, which he repeated to Rupert, who in turn questioned Maria von Duyk, who answered him that the stories were strictly true, and that many such great and sudden catastrophes had happened.

“I can’t understand it,” Rupert said.  “Of course one could imagine a sea or river breaking through a dyke and covering low lands, but that the whole country should sink, and there be deep water over the spot, appears unaccountable.”

“The learned believe,” Maria said, “that deep down below the surface of the land lies a sort of soil like a quicksand, and that when the river deepens its bed so that its waters do enter this soil it melts away, leaving a great void, into which the land above does sink, and is altogether swallowed up.”

“It is a marvellously uncomfortable feeling,” Rupert said, “to think that one may any night be awoke with a sudden crash, only to be swallowed up.”

“Such things do not happen often,” Maria said; “and the districts that suffer are after all but small in comparison to Holland.  So I read that in Italy the people do build their towns on the slopes of Vesuvius, although history says that now and again the mountain bubbles out in irruption, and the lava destroys many villages, and even towns.  In other countries there are earthquakes, but the people forget all about them until the shock comes, and the houses begin to topple over their heads.”

“You are right, no doubt,” Rupert said.  “But to a stranger the feeling, at first, of living over a great quicksand, is not altogether pleasant.