This was the first time that I realized how constantly my husband had cherished the hope of returning to his old cure. I must say the news did not come to me as to him. I had had enough of removing to and fro. I had many friends in Rotterdam, and none that I knew of in Devon, and I would have been content to spend my life in that same little parsonage, waked every morning by the clatter of the storks and the cry of their young ones. I loved our people and the family which had so frankly and kindly adopted me, and my heart sunk at the thought of such another pulling up as this would be. I answered rather peevishly: "At all events, you need not bring all Holland in upon my clean floor. We are not going to take the country with us, I suppose." I was ashamed of myself the moment the words were spoken. The men all looked at me in surprise, and I saw in a moment that my husband was hurt by my outburst. "Why, what ails thee, this morning?" said mine uncle, laughing. "Art become such a thorough Dutch housewife as to think a little mud on the floor of more matter than the death of a king or the well-being of the church?" Anneke called me out to the kitchen just then, and I was not sorry to get away and recover my composure. When I had settled the domestic difficulty, whatever it was, I retired to my chamber, and strove by prayer and meditation to bring myself to a better temper. I succeeded so far that I was able to meet my husband with a pleasant face when he came in to dinner, and to ask him particulars of the news he had received from England. He was the same as ever, and told me all he had heard; but he said never a word of returning to Devon, and I felt that I would not trust myself with the subject just now. We were bidden to supper at Garrett Van Alstine's house that night, to meet the guests who had brought the news. I was pleased to meet in one of them a gentleman I had often seen in her Grace of Suffolk's withdrawing-room— one Mr. Evans, a West country man and a great scholar. While I sat talking with him, I heard Avice say to my husband in a tone of surprise— "But you will never think of leaving us, and returning to England, surely?" "Of course not," said Mynheer Bogardus, Garrett's uncle, a very rich and consequential merchant, who always seemed to think he was to carry all before him by sheer force of will. "I take it Master Walter is too wise a man to leave certainty for uncertainty." "I have hitherto found uncertainty the only certain thing in this world," answered Walter, smiling. "I suppose our poor friends in Honak were as certain of rising in the morning as we are." He alluded to a flourishing village, which only a few days before had been destroyed in the night so that not a trace remained, and that not by an inundation, but by that strange undermining of the sea, which gives no warning, and which has destroyed thousands of lives in Holland.