Mark led the crowd across the wide cathedral square to the guild-house of the armourers--the fine building with the tall, crow-step gables and the magnificent carved portico to which a double flight of fifteen stone steps and wrought-iron balustrade gave access. He ran up the steps and stood with his back to the portico fronting the crowd. Every one could see him now, from the remotest corners of the square--many had invaded the houses round, and heads appeared at all the windows. "Burghers of Ghent," he called aloud, "we have to conquer or we must die. There are less than four thousand of us at this moment fit to bear arms against Alva’s hordes which still number seven. Five thousand more of them are on their way to complete the destruction of our city, to murder our wives and our children, and to desecrate our homes. We want two thousand well-trained soldiers to oppose them and inflict on the tyrant such a defeat as will force him to grant us all that we fight for: Liberty!" "How wilt do that, friend of the leather mask?" queried some of the men ironically. "How wilt find two thousand well-trained soldiers?" "Follow me, and I will show you." He turned and went into the building, the whole crowd following him as one man. The huge vaulted hall of the guild-house was filled in every corner with Walloon prisoners--the fruit of the first day’s victory. They were lying or sitting about the floor, some of them playing hazard with scraps of leather cut from their belts; others watched them, or merely stared straight in front of them, with a sullen look of hopelessness: they were the ones who had wives and children at home, or merely who had served some time under Alva’s banner and had learned from him how prisoners should be treated. When the leaders of the insurrection with Mark van Rycke at their head made irruption into the hall followed by a tumultuous throng, the Walloons, as if moved by a blind instinct, threw aside their games and all retreated to the furthest end of the hall, like a phalanx of frightened men who have not even the power to sell their lives. Many of those who had rushed in, in Mark’s wake, were the malcontents whose temper Peter Balde’s hot-headed words had inflamed. Awed by the presence of their leaders they still held themselves in check, but the Walloons, from their place of retreat, crowded together and terrified, saw many a glowing face, distorted by the passion to kill, many an eye fixed upon them with glowering hatred and an obvious longing for revenge. Then Mark called out: