Now there was something in the Spaniard’s mien that bred a certain doubt in my mind. He had moved slowly, in the manner of a loiterer; and if this was the true measure of his interest, why, I questioned within myself, had he issued from the trenches at all, to observe the spot where a ball had fallen harmlessly, as one had fallen many a Sunday before? His demeanour was not that of a man truly curious. I sought in my mind for some likely explanation of his strange action, and the more I thought upon it, the more puzzled and suspicious I became. But there was nothing to be done on the instant, so I spoke to the sentinel on the parapet, bidding him acquaint me if he saw any further movement among the Spaniards, and then I found the Captain of the Guard, whom I asked to issue the same command to the men that should keep watch in turn for the rest of the day. At eventide, nothing having been reported to me, I resolved to go forth myself so soon as it became dark and examine the place where the shot had struck. It was an enterprise, I knew, that stood me in some danger, for I might be captured by the Spaniards, or by the burgher guard on my return, and this would bring me under suspicion, and was like to land me in the selfsame nobble as that wherein Jan Verhoeff already lay. I thought for a while of securing myself by acquainting the Captain of the Guard aforehand with my purpose, but seeing that I could have given him no reason for it save by making a clean breast of my suspicions, the which I was loth to do, I held my peace, resolving to take my risk. Jan Verhoeff had disclosed to me, when I spoke with him in the bailey, the means whereby he had left the city. In the repairs that had been made hastily in the wall battered by the enemy, timber had been employed, and at one place there were two massy logs with a narrow space between, through which he had squeezed himself, and so come within a few spans of the moat. Thither I made my way by a roundabout course as soon as it was dark, and, choosing a moment when no sentinel was within hearing, I slipped into the moat, having left my boots at the foot of the wall, and swam across as quietly as an otter might have done. On coming to the other side I bent my body low, and crept towards the Spanish lines, holding my dagger in my right hand. I had observed that the shot fell within a short space of the end of a garden wall which had been almost razed to the ground by the burghers’ shots in the first hot days of the leaguer. To the right of this stood the stump of a tree. These were my landmarks, for the shot had come to earth somewhere between the tree and the end of the wall. In the darkness I could not hope to see the pit that the shot had made, but must find it by the touch of my feet.