"The report goes that Coy’s Horse embark at Harwich for Ostend on Friday the 16th current. They will join the forces now operating under General Lumley in Dutch Flanders." "With a fair wind they’ll make port to-morrow. Then, Sherebiah Minshull, my sweet coz, we shall begin to square accounts,—you and I." Stuffing the two packets into his capacious pocket, he clapped on his hat, flung a cloak over his shoulders, wound the comforter more tightly about his neck, and made his way out, sneezing half a dozen times as he met the cooler air of the street. He walked along the Lange Pooten, the chief business thoroughfare, into an open space known as the Plein. As he was crossing this he caught sight of a figure hastening into one of the larger houses, and almost involuntarily he stepped aside into a doorway until all danger of being seen was past. "What is the puppy doing here?" he muttered, passing on his way to the old road to Scheveningen. After a pleasant woodland walk of two miles he reached that little fishing village, and found, as he expected, Captain Rudge, owner and skipper of the sloop _Skylark_, a fast sailer which ran to and fro between Scheveningen and Harwich. To him Aglionby confided his own letter and Polignac’s. Then he retraced his steps, and at the Hague took horse for Rotterdam. It was near midnight when he returned and wearily climbed the lofty stair to his attic room; but though he was fatigued, and his cold perceptibly worse, he seemed well satisfied with himself, and chuckled many a time before he had drained to the dregs the bottle of sack he had broached with Monsieur de Polignac. The person from whose sight he had shrunk in the afternoon was Harry Rochester himself, who had just returned from a visit to Marlborough’s camp at Hanneff. Mynheer Grootz was up to his eyes in business, and the wide area over which the confederate forces were spread taxed his resources to the utmost. He had now come to the Hague to confer with a committee of the States General and arrange further contracts, and had instructed Harry to meet him there on the completion of his own errand. "Well, my boy," said Grootz on his arrival, "I did not expect you zo zoon." They were now on such friendly and familiar terms that the Dutchman had dropped the formal address. "How have you fared?" "Excellently, Mynheer," replied Harry. "The commissary was well content with your arrangements, and said—’tis no harm to repeat it—that were all Dutchmen like Jan Grootz he would be spared a peck of trouble." "Dat is goot," said Grootz, evidently well pleased. "Dat is how I do my business; always in time, always ready, always sure."