“Friends seem to rise around me, due to no merit of mine,” he said.  “Willet has always watched over me.  Tayoga is my brother.  Jacobus Huysman has treated me almost as his own son, and Master Benjamin Hardy has received me with great warmth of heart.  And now you deliver to me a warning that I cannot but believe is given with the best intent.  But again I ask you, why should I fear Adrian Van Zoon?”

“That, lad, I will not tell you, but once more I bid you beware of him.  Think you, I’d have taken such a risk to prepare you for a danger, if it were not real?”

“I do not.  I feel, Chevalier de St. Luc, that you are a friend in truth.  Shall I speak of this to Mr. Willet?  He will not blame me for hiding the knowledge of your presence here.”

“No.  Keep it to yourself, but once more I tell you beware of Adrian Van Zoon.  Now you will not see me again for a long time, and perhaps it will be on the field of battle.  Have no fears for my safety.  I can leave this solid town of yours as easily as I entered it.  Farewell!”

“Farewell!” said Robert, with a real wrench at the heart.  St. Luc left him and walked swiftly in the direction of St. George’s Chapel.  The snow increased so much and was driving so hard that in forty or fifty paces he disappeared entirely and Robert, wishing shelter, went back to the house of Benjamin Hardy, moved by many and varied emotions.

He could not doubt that St. Luc’s warning was earnest and important, but why should he have incurred such great risks to give it?  What was he to Adrian Van Zoon? and what was Adrian Van Zoon to him?  And what did the talk at night between Willet and Hardy mean?  He, seemed to be the center of a singular circle of complications, of which other people might know much, but of which he knew nothing.

Mr. Hardy’s house was very solid, very warm and very comfortable.  He was still at the Royal Exchange, but Mr. Pillsbury had come home, and was standing with his back to a great fire, his coattails drawn under either arm in front of him.  A gleam of warmth appeared in his solemn eyes at the sight of Robert.

“A fierce day, Master Robert,” he said. “’Tis good at such a time to stand before a red fire like this, and have stout walls between one and the storm.”

“Spoken truly, Master Jonathan,” said Robert, as he joined him before the fire, and imitated his position.

“You have been to our new city library?  We are quite proud of it.”

“Yes, I was there, but I have also been thinking a little.”

“Thought never hurts one.  We should all be better if we took more thought upon ourselves.”

“I was thinking of a man whom we saw at the play last night, the merchant, Adrian Van Zoon.”

Master Jonathan let his coattails fall from under his arms, and then he deliberately gathered them up again.

“A wealthy and powerful merchant.  He has ships on many seas.”