possessions he had brought with him to Belfry Lane. He was as pleased as the others with the good report.
“Listen to this!” he remarked. “I ’ve just been reading it in the Good Book. I think the Lord must have had the siege of Leyden in mind when He caused this to be written—‘Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence!’—Is n’t that just what happened to Vrouw Voorhaas and myself? I call it nothing less than miraculous! And here’s some more!—‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day’—Does n’t that just describe the Spanish army out beyond?—‘nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness’—that’s the plague—‘nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.’—That’s starvation!
“‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee!’ Have n’t more than five thousand died of starvation and the pes-
