“Yes. What do those swans mean? Anything?” asked Ben, looking up at the stone gate towers. “The swan is held almost in reverence by us Hollanders. These give the building its name--Zwanenburg, swan castle. That is all I know. This is a very important spot; for it is here that the wise ones hold council with regard to dike matters. The castle was once the residence of the celebrated Christian Brunings.” “What about HIM?” asked Ben. “Peter could answer you better than I,” said Lambert, “if you could only understand each other, or were not such cowards about leaving your mother tongues. But I have often heard my grandfather speak of Brunings. He is never tired of telling us of the great engineer--how good he was and how learned and how, when he died, the whole country seemed to mourn as for a friend. He belonged to a great many learned societies and was at the head of the State Department intrusted with the care of the dikes and other defences against the sea. There’s no counting the improvements he made in dikes and sluices and water mills and all that kind of thing. We Hollanders, you know, consider our great engineers as the highest of public benefactors. Brunings died years ago; they’ve a monument to his memory in the cathedral of Haarlem. I have seen his portrait, and I tell you, Ben, he was right noble-looking. No wonder the castle looks so stiff and proud. It is something to have given shelter to such a man!” “Yes, indeed,” said Ben. “I wonder, Van Mounen, whether you or I will ever give any old building a right to feel so proud. Heigh-ho! There’s a great deal to be done yet in this world and some of us, who are boys now, will have to do it. Look to your shoe latchet, Van. It’s unfastened.” A Catastrophe It was nearly one o’clock when Captain van Holp and his command entered the grand old city of Haarlem. They had skated nearly seventeen miles since morning and were still as fresh as young eagles. From the youngest (Ludwig van Holp, who was just fourteen) to the eldest, no less a personage than the captain himself, a veteran of seventeen, there was but one opinion--that this was the greatest frolic of their lives. To be sure, Jacob Poot had become rather short of breath during the last mile of two, and perhaps he felt ready for another nap, but there was enough jollity in him yet for a dozen. Even Carl Schummel, who had become very intimate with Ludwig during the excursion, forgot to be ill-natured. As for Peter, he was the happiest of the happy and had sung and whistled so joyously while skating that the staidest passersby had smiled as they listened. “Come, boys! It’s nearly tiffin hour,” he said as they neared a coffeehouse on the main street. “We must have something more solid than the pretty maiden’s gingerbread”--and the captain plunged his hands into his pockets as if to say, “There’s money enough here to feed an army!” “Halloo!” cried Lambert. “What ails the man?”