Simon looked shocked. “No, wife, you misjudge me. It is a rough world, and we must take queer cuts to fortune, but once I get there, respectability for me and a seat in the village church, provided, of course, that it is orthodox. I know that you come of the people, and your instincts are of the people, but I can never forget that my grandfather was a gentleman,” and Simon puffed himself out and looked at the ceiling. “Indeed,” sneered Meg, “and what was your grandmother, or, for the matter of that, how do you know who was your grandfather? Country house! The old Red Mill, where you hide goods out there in the swamp, is likely to be your only country house. Village church? Village gallows more likely. No, don’t you look nasty at me, for I won’t stand it, you dirty little liar. I have done things, I know; but I wouldn’t have got my own aunt burned for an Anabaptist, which she wasn’t, in order to earn twenty florins, so there.” Simon turned purple with rage; that aunt story was one which touched him on the raw. “Ugly——” he began. Instantly Meg’s hand shot out and grasped the neck of a bottle, whereon he changed his tune. “The sex, the sex!” he murmured, turning aside to mop his bald head with a napkin; “well, it’s only their pretty way, they will have their little joke. Hullo, there is someone knocking at the door.” “And mind how you open it,” said Meg, becoming alert. “Remember we have plenty of enemies, and a pike blade comes through a small crack.” “Can you live with the wise and remain a greenhorn? Trust me.” And placing his arm about his spouse’s waist, Simon stood on tiptoe and kissed her gently on the cheek in token of reconciliation, for Meg had a nasty memory in quarrels. Then he skipped away towards the door as fast as his bandy legs would carry him. The colloquy there was long and for the most part carried on through the keyhole, but in the end their visitor was admitted, a beetle-browed brute of much the same stamp as his host. “You are nice ones,” he said sulkily, “to be so suspicious about an old friend, especially when he comes on a job.” “Don’t be angry, dear Hans,” interrupted Simon in a pleading voice. “You know how many bad characters are abroad in these rough times; why, for aught we could tell, you might have been one of these desperate Lutherans, who stick at nothing. But about the business?” “Lutherans, indeed,” snarled Hans; “well, if they are wise they’d stick at your fat stomach; but it is a Lutheran job that I have come from The Hague to talk about.” “Ah!” said Meg, “who sent you?” “A Spaniard named Ramiro, who has recently turned up there, a humorous dog connected with the Inquisition, who seems to know everybody and whom nobody knows. However, his money is right enough, and no doubt he has authority behind him. He says that you are old friends of his.”