THREE PAWNS Three English gentlemen were walking slowly round the Vyverburg on the side where stand the spacious courts of the Buitenhof; the ground beneath their feet was thickly covered with dry yellow leaves, and the trees above their heads almost bare, but the sun shone as strong as summer on the placid surface of the water, and gleamed with a red fire in the rows of long windows of the Government buildings; the sky was a great luminous space of blue gold, against which the trees and houses the other side of the lake showed with a tender clarity, like the pictures of that great artist, Ver Meer of Delft. There were swans and ducks on the lake; they, like the water on which they swam, were touched with this universal hue of gold, and seemed to be cleaving a way through glimmering mists of sunshine. The three gentlemen paused by one of the posts protecting the edge of the water; it was near evening, and under the calm was the sense of a little rising wind, salt from the sea. Not a word was spoken between these three who had fallen from much talk to idleness; all had the same subject in their minds, though each coloured it with his own temperament; all of them were remarkable-looking men, and typical of some aspect of the great movement of which they formed a part. The eldest was a man still in his prime, red-haired and tanned to an unnatural darkness, with something stern, sad, and passionate in his face, and an abruptness in his movements; he wore the splendid appointments of a soldier; across his shoulder was twisted a rich oriental scarf of coloured silk and gold threads; his name was Fletcher of Saltoun, a noble Scot, who had returned from the Turkish war to assist in the enterprise of the Stadtholder. The second was a youth of singular sweetness of expression and delicacy of feature, plainly dressed in grey; the charm of his appearance was marred solely by a black silk patch which he wore over his left eye; he was staring at the water with a melancholy air, and now and then sighed; this was Charles Talbot, eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, dismissed last year from the army and the Lord-Lieutenancy of Staffordshire for refusing to abjure his religion; he had mortgaged his estates for £40,000, which was now at the Bank of Amsterdam at the service of the Prince. He was for the moment but one of the many refugees at The Hague. The third was by far the most remarkable, and bore most signs of greatness: young, though a little older than the Earl, he was not, perhaps, half the height, being hunch-shouldered to a deformity, and thin and meagre in body; his face, livid and lined with disease, wore a sparkling expression of energy, his eyes, large, noble, and ever changing in expression with a kind of restless animation, scorn, impatience, and dare-devilry; even now, when standing still, he thrummed with his fingers on the railing and whistled ’Lillibulero’ under his breath.