First a hearty dinner--then the game. With pins as long as their arms and balls as big as their heads, plenty of strength left for rolling, and a clean sweep of sixty yards for the strokes--no wonder they were happy. That night Captain Peter and his men slept soundly. No prowling robber came to disturb them, and, as they were distributed in separate rooms, they did not even have a bolster battle in the morning. Such a breakfast as they ate! The landlord looked frightened. When he had asked them where they “belonged,” he made up his mind that the Broek people starved their children. It was a shame. “Such fine young gentlemen too!” Fortunately the wind had tired itself out and fallen asleep in the great sea cradle beyond the dunes. There were signs of snow; otherwise the weather was fine. It was mere child’s play for the well-rested boys to skate to Leyden. Here they halted awhile, for Peter had an errand at the Golden Eagle. He left the city with a lightened heart; Dr. Boekman had been at the hotel, read the note containing Hans’s message, and departed for Broek. “I cannot say that it was your letter sent him off so soon,” explained the landlord. “Some rich lady in Broek was taken bad very sudden, and he was sent for in haste.” Peter turned pale. “What was the name?” he asked. “Indeed, it went in one ear and out of the other, for all I hindered it. Plague on people who can’t see a traveler in comfortable lodgings, but they must whisk him off before one can breathe.” “A lady in Broek, did you say?” “Yes.” Very gruffly. “Any other business, young master?” “No, mine host, except that I and my comrades here would like a bite of something and a drink of hot coffee.” “Ah,” said the landlord sweetly, “a bite you shall have, and coffee, too, the finest in Leyden. Walk up to the stove, my masters--now I think again--that was a widow lady from Rotterdam, I think they said, visiting at one Van Stoepel’s if I mistake not.” “Ah!” said Peter, greatly relieved. “They live in the white house by the Schlossen Mill. Now, mynheer, the coffee, please!” What a goose I was, thought he, as the party left the Golden Eagle, to feel so sure that it was my mother. But she may be somebody’s mother, poor woman, for all that. Who can she be? I wonder. There were not many upon the canal that day, between Leyden and Haarlem. However, as the boys neared Amsterdam, they found themselves once more in the midst of a moving throng. The big ysbreeker *{Icebreaker. A heavy machine armed with iron spikes for breaking the ice as it is dragged along. Some of the small ones are worked by men, but the large ones are drawn by horses, sixty or seventy of which are sometimes attached to one ysbreeker.} had been at work for the first time that season, but there was any amount of skating ground left yet. “Three cheers for home!” cried Van Mounen as they came in sight of the great Western Dock (Westelijk Dok). “Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted one and all. “Hurrah! Hurrah!”