“YOU may be able to get another ten-guilder piece,” said Carl, “but the rest of us will not find it so easy. If we go home, we stay home, you may depend.” Our captain, whose good nature had not yet forsaken him for a moment, grew indignant. “Do you think that I will let you suffer for my carelessness?” he exclaimed. “I have three times sixty guilders in my strong box at home!” “Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Carl hastily, adding in a surlier tone, “Well, I see no better way than to go back hungry.” “I see a better plan than that,” said the captain. “What is it?” cried all the boys. “Why, to make the best of a bad business and go back pleasantly and like men,” said Peter, looking so gallant and handsome as he turned his frank face and clear blue eyes upon them that they caught his spirit. “Ho for the captain!” they shouted. “Now, boys, we may as well make up our minds, there’s no place like Broek, after all--and that we mean to be there in two hours. Is that agreed to?” “Agreed!” cried all as they ran to the canal. “On with your skates! Are you ready? Here, Jacob, let me help you.” “Now. One, two, three, start!” And the boyish faces that left Haarlem at that signal were nearly as bright as those that had entered it with Captain Peter half an hour before. Hans “Donder and Blixin!” cried Carl angrily, before the party had skated twenty yards from the city gates, “if here isn’t that wooden-skate ragamuffin in the patched leather breeches. That fellow is everywhere, confound him! We’ll be lucky,” he added, in as sneering a tone as he dared to assume, “if our captain doesn’t order us to halt and shake hands with him.” “Your captain is a terrible fellow,” said Peter pleasantly, “but this is a false alarm, Carl. I cannot spy your bugbear anywhere among the skaters. Ah, there he is! Why, what is the matter with the lad?” Poor Hans! His face was pale, his lips compressed. He skated like one under the effects of a fearful dream. Just as he was passing, Peter hailed him: “Good day, Hans Brinker!” Hans’s countenance brightened at once. “Ah, mynheer, is that you? It is well we meet!” “Just like his impertinence,” hissed Carl Schummel, darting scornfully past his companions, who seemed inclined to linger with their captain. “I am glad to see you, Hans,” responded Peter cheerfully, “but you look troubled. Can I serve you?” “I have a trouble, mynheer,” answered Hans, casting down his eyes. Then, lifting them again with almost a happy expression, he added, “But it is Hans who can help Mynheer van Holp THIS time.” “How?” asked Peter, making, in his blunt Dutch way, no attempt to conceal his surprise. “By giving you THIS, mynheer.” And Hans held forth the missing purse. “Hurrah!” shouted the boys, taking their cold hands from their pockets to wave them joyfully in the air. But Peter said “Thank you, Hans Brinker” in a tone that made Hans feel as if the king had knelt to him.