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Mynheer's testimony was principally to the effect that such a thing as a robber at the Red Lion had been unheard of until last night, and as for the Red Lion, it was a most respectable inn, as respectable as any house in Leyden. Each boy, in turn, told all that he knew of the affair and identified the prisoner in the box as the same man who entered their room in the dead of night.

Many an inn owes its survival to a square of canvas the head of a child, a copper pot, or stretch of dune; and more than one collector now boasts of a masterpiece which had hung for years on some taproom wall, a sure but silent witness of the poverty of a Franz Hals, Wouverman or Van der Helst. Each year had brought new additions to the impecunious group about Mynheer's table.

We landed on the island of South Beeveland, where we remained about three weeks, playing at soldiers, smoking mynheer's long clay pipes, and drinking his vrow's butter-milk, for which I paid liberally with my precious blood to their infernal musquitos; not to mention that I had all the extra valour shaken out of me by a horrible ague, which commenced a campaign on my carcass, and compelled me to retire upon Scotland, for the aid of my native air, by virtue of which it was ultimately routed.

Upon the whole, there was something about Anger peculiarly pleasing to me; whether that it had been the "first of Eastern lands" I had trodden upon, or there could have been any thing conducive to the "dolce-far-niente" feeling in its atmosphere, but I felt as if I could have laid back and smoked segars in Mynheer's porch for the remainder of my days "The world forgetting, by the world forgot."

Incurring the displeasure of the governor for his godless views, this Frenchman was sent to the pillory, or whipping post, and his neighbors were about to cast out the devil of irreverence in good old-fashioned manner, when one of Mynheer's daughters interceded, carried off the handsome miscreant, and such was her imperious way! married him!

As Mynheer's time drew near he sent for his attorney and commanded him to look up the life, deeds and character of Edward Mauville. "This I did," said the lawyer, "and here it is." Waving a roll of papers before his interested listener. "A nauseating mess, no doubt," carelessly remarked the land baron. "Oh, sir!" deprecated the lawyer, opening the roll.

To show his own spirit, I suppose, or having some reasonable doubt about mine, whenever Will and I have met at Mynheer's house and he is for ever going there he has shown such downright rudeness to me, that I have required more than ordinary patience to keep my temper. He has contradicted me once, twice, thrice in the presence of the family, and out of sheer spite and rage, as it appeared to me.

He spoke French, and he explained that he had been sent for about an hour ago, and no sooner had he detected smallpox than Mynheer's valet had fled from his master's room and spread the panic throughout the household, so that every servant, except one scullion and this old woman, had deserted it.

At the last, little Huygens, taking advantage of the increasing loudness of mynheer's tones, had ventured a blast on his new trumpet, and Wolfert had hastily attempted an accompaniment on the drum. This had brought matters to a crisis, and it was good for the little creatures that it had. The saint had left no ticket for them to attend a lecture on Jakob Cats.

On the centre table was spread a substantial breakfast, from which the various members of the family had risen on the arrival of the horsemen. Considine was introduced to Mynheer Marais' vrouw, a good-looking, fat, and motherly woman verging on forty, and his daughter Bertha, a pretty little girl of eight or nine. "What is Mynheer's name?" was the matron's first question.