It was a rude lesson which she had been made to learn within the last hour: the lesson that the idols of her childhood and girlhood had not only feet of clay but that they were steeped to the neck in the mire of falsehoods and treachery: she had also learned that the man whom she had once hated with such passionate bitterness was worthy of a pure woman’s love: that happiness had knocked at the gateway of her own heart and been refused admittance: and that God was not wont to give very obvious guidance in the terrible perplexities which at times beset His creatures. Therefore now she no longer lured herself with the belief that she was acting at this moment under the direct will of God, she knew that she was guided by an overmastering and blind instinct which told her that she must see Mark--at once--and warn him that the perfidy of the Duke of Alva had set a deathly trap for him and for his friends. A few more minutes and she and Grete were over the Ketel Brüghe and under the shadow of the tall houses on the river embankment beyond. "Take me!" she said to Grete peremptorily, "to the house of the High-Bailiff of Ghent." CHAPTER XVIII THE LAST STAND I The word has gone round, we must all assemble in the cathedral church--every burgher, every artisan, every apprentice who belongs by blood to Ghent must for the nonce cast aside pick and shovel: the dead can wait! the living claim attention. Quite a different crowd from that which knelt at prayer this morning! It is just two o’clock and the sacred edifice is thronged: up in the galleries, the aisles, the chancel, the organ loft, the pulpit, everywhere there are men--young and old--men who for two days now have been face to face with death and who wear on their grim faces the traces of the past fierce struggle and of the coming cataclysm. There are no women present. They have nobly taken on the task of the men, and the dainty burghers’ wives who used to spend their time at music or needlework, wield the spade to-day with as much power as their strength allows. Perfect order reigns despite the magnitude of the crowd: those who found no place inside the building, throng the cemetery and the precincts. Behind the high altar the Orangist standard is unfurled, and in front of the altar rails stand the men who have fought in the forefront of the insurgents’ ranks, who have led every assault, affronted every danger, braved musket fire and arrow-shot and burning buildings and crumbling ruins, the men who have endured and encouraged and cheered: Mark van Rycke the popular leader, Laurence his brother, Pierre Deynoot, Lievin van Deynse, Frédéric van Beveren and Jan van Migrode, who is seriously wounded but who has risen from his sick bed and crawled hither in order to add the weight of his counsel and of his enthusiasm to what he knows van Rycke will propose.