"S-stut! What wonder, poor man," sighed the dame, stroking his hand. "If ye had not head enough for a dozen, the wit would never have come to ye again. Well, the lad caught ye by the arm, and said ye looked honest (well he might!). What then? Was it noon-time?" "Nay; before daylight--long before early chimes." "It was the same day you were hurt," said the dame. "I know it seemed you went to your work in the middle of the night. You left off, where he caught your arm, Raff." "Yes," resumed her husband--"and I can see his face this minute--so white and wild looking. 'Take me down the river a way,' says he. I was working then, you'll remember, far down on the line, across from Amsterdam. I told him I was no boatman. 'It's an affair of life and death,' says he; 'take me on a few miles--yonder skiff is not locked, but it may be a poor man's boat and I'd be loath to rob him!' (The words might differ some, vrouw, for it's all like a dream.) Well, I took him down; it might be six or eight miles, and then he said he could run the rest of the way on shore. I was in haste to get the boat back. Before he jumped out, he says, sobbing-like, 'I can trust you. I've done a thing--God knows I never intended it--but the man is dead. I must fly from Holland.'" "What was it, did he say, Raff? Had he been shooting at a comrade, like they do down at the University at Gottingen?" "I can't recall that. Mayhap he told me; but it's all like a dream. I said it wasn't for me, a good Hollander, to cheat the laws of my country by helping him off that way; but he kept saying, 'God knows I am innocent!' and looked at me in the starlight as fair, now, and clear-eyed as our little Hans might--and I just pulled away faster." "It must have been Jan Kamphuisen's boat," remarked Dame Brinker, dryly; "none other would have left his oars out that careless." "Aye--it was Jan's boat sure enough. The man will be coming in to see me Sunday, likely, if he's heard; and young Hoogsvliet too. Where was I?" [It was lucky the dame restrained herself. To have spoken at all of Jan after the last night's cruel disappointment would have been to have let out more sorrow and suspicion than Raff could bear.] "Where were you? Why not very far, forsooth--the lad hadn't yet given ye the watch--alack I misgive whether he came by it honestly!" "Why, vrouw," exclaimed Raff in an injured tone, "he was dressed soft and fine as the prince himself. The watch was his own, clear enough." "How came he to give it up?" asked the dame, looking uneasily at the fire, for it needed another block of peat. "I told ye just now," he answered with a puzzled air. "Tell me again," said Dame Brinker, wisely warding off another digression.