No cheering, it is all done in silence! Men do not cheer on the eve of being butchered; they only look on their standard up above the high altar behind the carved figure of the Redeemer, and though they have given silent consent for this deputation to the tyrant they still murmur in their hearts: "For Orange and Liberty!" Jan van Migrode, weak and ill from his wound, has had the last word. He begs that every one should wait--here--just as they are ... in silence and patience ... until the High-Bailiff and his friends come back with the news ... good or bad! peace or renewed fighting--life or death!--whichever it is they must all be together in order to decide. Just at the last the High-Bailiff turns to his son. "You do not approve of our going, Mark?" he asks with some diffidence. "I think that it is purposeless," replies Mark; "you cannot extract blood out of a stone, or mercy out of the heart of a brute!" II They go, the once proud burghers of the city of Ghent, they go to throw themselves for the last time at the feet of that monster of tyranny and cruelty who even at this hour is gloating over the thought of the most deadly reprisals he hath ever dealt to these down-trodden people. They go with grave yet hopeful faces, in their dark robes which are the outward sign of the humility, the loyalty which dwell in their hearts. The crowd have wished them God speed! and as they file out of the stately cathedral and through the close, the men stand respectfully aside and eye them with a trustful regard which is infinitely pathetic. Their leaders have remained beside the altar rails, grouped together, talking quietly among themselves: Mark van Rycke, however, goes to mingle with the crowd, to speak with all those who desire a word with him, with the men whose heart is sore at the humiliation which they are forced to swallow, who would sooner have died than see the dignitaries of their city go once again as suppliants before that execrable tyrant whom they loathe. "What is thine idea, van Rycke?" most of the men ask him as they crowd around him, anxious to hear one word of encouragement or of hope. "Dost think the tyrant will relent?" "Not unless we hold him as he holds us--not unless we have him at our mercy." "Then what can we do? what can we do?" "Do?" he reiterates for the hundredth time to-day, "do? Fight to the last man, die to the last man, until God, wearied of the tyrant’s obstinacy, will crush him and give us grace." "But we cannot win in the end." "No! but we can die as we have lived, clean, undaunted, unconquered." "But our wives, our daughters?" "Ask them," he retorts boldly. "It is not the women who would lick the tyrant’s shoes."