marshes, and roads that were no roads at all, but only sloughs. And there was a great stone house, old and ruinous, with tall poplars shivering in the rain and mist. Into this house there threw themselves a band of Dutch and English, and hard on their heels came two hundred Spaniards. All day they besieged that house, — smoke and flame and thunder and shouting and the crash of masonry, — and when eventide was come we, the Dutch and the English, thought that Death was not an hour behind.”

He paused, and made a gesture of raising a tankard to his lips. His eyes were bright, his voice was firm. The memory of that old day and its mortal strife had wrought upon him like wine.

“There was one amongst us,” he said, “he was our captain, and it’s of him I