"You are not anxious, Monseigneur?" "No. Not anxious," replies Alva with a fierce oath, "we can subdue these rebels of course. But I would I had brought Spanish soldiers with me, rather than these Walloon louts. They let themselves be massacred like sheep or else run like poltroons. Vitelli declares he has lost over a thousand men and at least a thousand more are prisoners in the various guild-houses--probably more. We ought never to have lost ground as we did," he adds sullenly, "but who would have thought that these louts meant to fight?" "Who, indeed?" retorts de Vargas with a sneer, "and yet here we are besieged in our own citadel, and by a handful of undisciplined peasants." "Nay! their triumph will be short-lived," exclaims Alva savagely. "We have over two thousand men inside the Kasteel and surely they cannot be more than three thousand all told unless..." He broke off abruptly, then continued more calmly: "Darkness closed in on us ere reprisals could commence ... if I had more Spaniards with me, I would try a sortie in the night and catch these oafs in their sleep ... but these Walloons are such damnable fools and such abominable cowards.... But we’ll fight our way through in the morning, never fear!" "In the meanwhile cannot we send to Dendermonde for reinforcements? The garrison there is all Spanish and..." "How can we send?" Alva breaks in savagely. "The way is barred by the artillery of those bandits--save upon the north and north-east, where that awful morass nearly half a league in length and width is quite impassable in autumn. No! we cannot get reinforcements unless we fight our way through first--unless one of the commandants at the gates has realised the gravity of the situation. Lodrono at the Waalpoort has intelligence," he continues more calmly, "and Serbelloni hath initiative--and by the Mass! if one of them doth not get us quickly out of this sorry place, I will have them all hanged at dawn upon their gates!" The Duke of Alva’s fierce wrath is but a result of his anxiety. He holds the Netherlanders in bitter contempt ’tis true! He knows that to-morrow perhaps he can send to Dendermonde for reinforcements and can then crush that handful of rebels as he would a fly beneath his iron heel. He would have his revenge--he knew that--but he also knew that that revenge would cost him dear. He has fought those Flemish louts, as he calls them, too often and too long not to know that when the day breaks once more he will have to encounter stubborn resistance, dogged determination and incalculable losses ere he can subdue and punish these men who have nothing now to lose but their lives--and those lives his own tyranny has anyhow made forfeit. V