Finally, after a little questioning, and cross-questioning from the public Prosecutor the witnesses were dismissed, and the robber was handed over to the consideration of the Criminal Court. "The scoundrel!" said Carl, savagely, when the boys reached the street. "He ought to be sent to jail at once. If I had been in your place, Peter, I certainly should have killed him outright!" "He was fortunate, then, in falling into gentler hands," was Peter's quiet reply; "it appears he has been arrested before under a charge of house-breaking. He did not succeed in robbing this time, but he broke the door-fastenings, and that I believe makes a burglary in the eye of the law. He was armed with a knife, too, and that makes it worse for him, poor fellow!" "Poor fellow!" mimicked Carl; "one would think he was your brother!" "So he is my brother, and yours, too, Carl Schummel, for that matter," answered Peter, looking into Carl's eye. "We cannot say what we might have become under other circumstances. _We_ have been bolstered up from evil, since the hour we were born. A happy home and good parents might have made that man a fine fellow instead of what he is. God grant that the law may cure and not crush him!" "Amen to that!" said Lambert, heartily, while Ludwig van Holp looked at his brother in such a bright, proud way that Jacob Poot, who was an only son, wished from his heart that the little form buried in the old church at home had lived to grow up beside him. "Humph!" said Carl, "it's very well to be saintly and forgiving, and all that sort of thing, but I'm naturally hard. All these fine ideas seem to rattle off of me like hailstones--and it's nobody's business, either, if they do." Peter recognized a touch of good feeling in this clumsy concession; holding out his hand, he said in a frank, hearty tone: "Come, lad, shake hands, and let us be good friends even if we don't exactly agree on all questions." "We do agree better than you think," sulked Carl, as he returned Peter's grasp. "All right," responded Peter briskly. "Now Van Mounen, we await Benjamin's wishes. Where would he like to go?" "To the Egyptian Museum," answered Lambert, after holding a brief consultation with Ben. "That is on the Breede Straat. To the Museum let it be. Come, boys!" XXIV THE BELEAGUERED CITIES "This open square before us," said Lambert, as he and Ben walked on together, "is pretty in summer, with its shady trees. They call it the Ruine. Years ago it was covered with houses, and the Rapenburg canal, here, ran through the street. Well, one day a barge loaded with forty thousand pounds of gunpowder, bound for Delft, was lying alongside, and the bargemen took a notion to cook their dinner on the deck; and before any one knew it, sir, the whole thing blew up, killing lots of persons and scattering about three hundred houses to the winds." "What!" exclaimed Ben, "did the explosion destroy three hundred houses!"