We walked away together, the Captain of the Guard and I, and as we went I informed myself discreetly on sundry matters whereon I had some curiosity. The lean lank rascal—so I called him already—was named Mynheer Cosmo Volmar, a Spaniard on his mother’s side, president of the gild of locksmiths in the city, and keeper of the stores. He was known to be paying his court to Mistress Jacqueline, and had her father’s good will. The lady had, however, been betrothed aforetime to Jan Verhoeff, son of the late Burgomaster and of the widow lady, my hostess, and the match had been broken off by her father when it was discovered, on the death of Mynheer Verhoeff, that he had left but a paltry heritage. Of all the burgher families in Bargen, the Verhoeffs had suffered the most grievous loss during the war; yet the exceeding smallness of the late Burgomaster’s estate was a cause of wonderment in the city. The young lovers bore their parting very hardly; and though Mynheer Volmar’s suit was approved and furthered by her father Mynheer Warmond, the present Burgomaster, Mistress Jacqueline had as yet looked upon it but frostily. These particulars were pleasing to me, for I saw that I had come into a coil wherein affairs of state and domestic matters were close interwoven. I was never so well pleased as when I had a tangle to unravel; and the enterprise I had taken upon myself in merry sport bade fair to give me unlooked-for entertainment. *IV* On the afternoon of that day, the Spaniards made a very hot assault at a breach in the wall hard by the north gate of the city. From the commencement of the siege this had been the chief mark of their ordnance, the which had cast upon it as many as a thousand shot a day. But the burghers had diligently repaired by night the mischief wrought in daytime, so that the damage was but small; and the assaults which the besiegers had already made upon the breach had been repelled with no great difficulty.