It was a solemn and extraordinary moment when, on 20 August, after the last Protestant sermon, the rolling chords of the cathedral organ were heard. A deep silence ensued, people sat with heads bowed praying softly and fervently. Then there was an unexpected commotion--a noise, half a sigh, half a repressed cry of anger rang out in a painful sort of way. A murmuring arose, the congregation got up from their seats and ran in an undisciplined confusion towards the church doors, towards those great portals, to which the Catholic portion of the population were already laying siege. Triumph and defeat! Monks of every conceivable order pushed contemptuously or threateningly past the humiliated, still crying or complaining heretics, lifting their wreathes of roses gaily. How long ago it now was since they had had to succumb to these very same heretics who had then cried out to them: "Papen uyt! Papen uyt!" ("Away with the priests! Away with the priests!"). Such a changeable thing is man's fate and triumph and defeat alternate in spiritual struggles. On 20 August the merchant banking house of Norris and Van Bergen was still strong and well respected. On 27 August the firm was officially wound up. Alexander Farnese entered the conquered town in triumph; Jan Geerdes Norris left it with his ten-year-old son and several companions who did not want to endure a Spanish yoke. Michael van Bergen stayed behind with his little daughter who was then six years old. Each of the two partners acted true to character: Norris impulsively and angrily; Van Bergen fearfully and with timidity. The former flew in the face of bitter destiny and abandoned his position to resume it elsewhere, the battle having been lost. The latter bowed to his fate and suffered in silence what he could not hope to alter for the better. But all this was a long time ago and our two protagonists are no longer Geerdes Norris and Michael Van Bergen, but their children Jan and Myga respectively. Into what a frightful, devastated, horrid world had the two poor mites been thrust. How often had maternal lullabies been silenced by the noise of gunfire both near and distant! How often had their fathers had to take son and daughter off their knees because they had been summoned by the warning bell to the walls or to the town hall! Poor little mites! They had never been able like other children born in happier times to tumble out of danger in shady woods and on the green grass of meadows. They had never been able to make crowns from the blue cornflowers and the red poppies which grew at the edge of tilled fields. The woods were full of the roaming bands of His Catholic Majesty, the wild gangs of the forest beggars and lawless and ruthless ragamuffins that had dispersed there from all over Europe.