"Where there is smoke there is fire! No boat without a boatman!" cried the Prince; and leaping from his horse, which he gave me to hold, and renewing his vociferations, he was about to enter the ferry-house, when, just as he reached the wooden porch, a young girl, holding her finger to her lips in token of silence, appeared on the threshold!" "She of the turkois eyes and flaxen ringlets, for a hundred pistoles!"--cried Gonzaga. "Such then was the bird's nest that made him so mad a truant!" "As she retreated into the house," resumed Nignio, without noticing the interruption, "his highness followed, hat in hand, with the deference due to a gouvernante of Flanders. But as the house was little better than a shed of boards, by drawing a trifle nearer the porch, not a syllable of their mutual explanation escaped me. "'Are you a follower of Don John?'--was the first demand of the damsel. 'Do you belong to the party of the States?'--the next; to both which questions, a negative was easily returned. After listening to the plea, fluently set forth by the prince, that he was simply a Zealand burgess, travelling on his own errand, and sorely in fear of falling in (God wot) with either Protestants or Papists, the damsel appeared to hail the arrival of so congenial an ally as a blessing; acquainted him with a rash frankness of speech worthy of his own, that she was journeying from the Ardennes towards the frontier of Brabant, where her father was in high command; that the duenna her companion, outwearied by the exercise, was taking her siesta within; for that her pacing nag, having cast a shoe on reaching the wood, the ferryman had undertaken to conduct to the nearest smithy the venerable chaplain and serving-man constituting her escort. "'Half a league from hence,' said she, 'my father's people are in waiting to escort me during the rest of my journey.' "'Yet surely, gentle lady,' observed the prince, 'considering the military occupation of the province, your present protection is somewhat of the weakest?'-- "'It was expressly so devised by my father,' replied the open-hearted girl. 'The Spanish cavaliers are men of honour, who war not against women and almoners. A more powerful attendance were more likely to provoke animosity. Feebleness is sometimes the best security.' "'_Home_ is a woman's only security in times like these!'--cried the prince with animation. "'And therefore to my home am I recalled,' rejoined the young girl, with a heavy sigh. 'Since my mother's death, I have been residing with her sister in the Ardennes. But my good aunt having had the weakness to give way to my instances, and carry me to Namur last summer, to take part in the entertainments offered to the Queen of Navarre, my father has taken offence at both of us; and I am sent for home to be submitted to sterner keeping.'