“You do not fear any public tumult, surely?” Rupert said.

“I do not anticipate it, and yet I regard it as possible,” Van Duyk said.  “The people in our town have been given to bursts of frenzy, in which some of our best men have been slain.”

“Why don’t you go down to the Hague again till this madness has passed by?”

“I cannot do that.  My enemies would take advantage of it, and might sack my house and warehouses.”

“But there is the burgher guard; and all the respectable citizens are with you.”

“That is true enough,” the merchant said; “but they are always slow to take action, and I might be killed, and my place burnt before they came on to the ground.  I will send Maria with you down to the Hague to her aunt’s.  If this be the work of the man we wot of, it may be that he will then cease his efforts, and the bad feeling he has raised will die away; but in truth, I shall never feel that Maria is safe until I hear that his evil course has come to an end.”

“If I come across him, I will bring it to an end, and that quickly,” Rupert said, wrathfully.  “At any rate, I think that the burgomaster ought to take steps to protect the house.”

“The council laugh at the idea of danger,” Van Duyk said.  “To them the idea that I should be charged with dealing with the enemy is so supremely ridiculous that they make light of it, and are inclined to think that the state of things I describe is purely a matter of my own imagination.  If I were attacked they would come as quickly as they could to my aid; but they may be all too late.

“There is one thing, Rupert.  This enemy hates you, and desires your death as much as he wishes to carry off my daughter, and through her to become possessed of my money bags.  If, then, this work is his doing, assuredly he will bring it to a head while you are here, so as to gratify both his hate and his greed at once.”

“It is a pity that you cannot make some public statement, that unless your daughter marries a man of whom you approve you will give her no fortune whatever.”

“I might do that,” Van Duyk said; “but he knows that if he forced her to marry him, I should still give her my money.  In the second place, she has a large fortune of her own, that came to her through her mother.  And lastly, I believe that it is not marriage he wishes now, for he must be sure that Maria would die rather than accept him, but to carry her off, and then place some enormous sum as a ransom on condition of her being restored safe and unharmed to me.  He knows that I would give all that I possess to save her from his hands.”

“The only way out of it that I see,” Rupert said, “is for me to find him, and put an end to him.”

“You will oblige me, Rupert, if, during the time you remain here, you would wear this fine mail shirt under your waistcoat.  You do not wear your cuirass here; and your enemy might get a dagger planted between your shoulders as you walk the streets.  It is light, and very strong.  It was worn by a Spanish general who fell, in the days of Alva, in an attack upon Dort.  My great-grandfather shot him through the head, and kept his mail shirt as a trophy.”