It was now almost dark; to continue the search further would be vain. They returned home to their belated supper, Grootz promising to set exhaustive enquiries on foot in the morning. That night, for the first time for many months, Harry was unable to sleep. He was oppressed by perplexity and uneasiness. From whatever point of view he looked at Sherebiah’s disappearance it seemed equally inexplicable. He could divine no motive for a message sent to Sherebiah in his name; the man appeared to be on very good terms with Dutchmen and was unlikely to have private enemies. Harry was almost forced to the conclusion that Gretel had been mistaken, after all, and that Sherebiah would by and by return with a simple explanation of his absence. He might have met a friend, and be spending a convivial evening with him. Perhaps—the thought came like an illumination—one of the English troopers from Rotterdam was a friend of his—a Wiltshire man, possibly. The suggestion allayed his uneasiness, and he fell asleep half expecting to be called by Sherebiah as usual next morning. But Sherebiah did not return that night. It happened next day that Mynheer Grootz was early summoned to a conference with a committee of the States General, and when after a prolonged discussion he was released he had to start at once for Leyden on important business. It was late before he returned. Harry meanwhile had lost no time in pursuing enquiries in every likely quarter, but in vain. Sherebiah had not returned; nothing had been heard of him; and there was nothing for it but to wait yet another day. He was again wakeful, and his thoughts turned to the errand on which the party of English horse had come. He pitied the unfortunate wretch for whom they were in search—some poor fellow, perhaps, who had escaped in the hope that he would be less easily tracked in a foreign land. The punishment for desertion had become much more stringent and summary of late owing to the prevalence of the offence. Harry himself remembered one bleak morning in London when, having gone early into Hyde Park, he had been the unwilling spectator of the shooting of a deserter. Had they caught the man? he wondered. "I hope——" he thought, then suddenly a strange suspicion flashed upon him. Surely it was impossible; yet—— In a moment slumbering recollections awoke. He remembered that many times, when approaching English soldiers in London, Sherebiah had sidled away and disappeared. He remembered how, more than once, Sherry had shown a knowledge of military matters singularly intimate for a civilian; how insistently he had always proclaimed himself a man of peace; how hardily he had behaved in the fight at Lindendaal. These facts, and many a slight hint scarcely regarded before, combined to convert a chance surmise, almost dismissed as absurd, into a strong presumption little short of certainty.