All the tables in the Angulus were occupied, and whoever wanted to be understood by a distant neighbor was forced to raise his voice very loud, for special conversations were being carried on at every table. Here, there, and everywhere, people were shouting to the busy bar-maid, glasses clinked together, and pewter lids fell on the tops of hard stone-ware jugs. The talk at a round table in the end of the long room was louder than anywhere else. Six officers had seated themselves at it, among them Georg von Dornburg. Captain Van der Laen, his superior officer, whose past career had been a truly heroic one, was loudly relating in his deep voice, strange and amusing tales of his travels by sea and land, Colonel Mulder often interrupted him, and at every somewhat incredible story, smilingly told a similar, but perfectly impossible adventure of his own. Captain Van Duivenvoorde soothingly interposed, when Van der Laen, who was conscious of never deviating far from the truth, angrily repelled the old man’s jesting insinuations. Captain Cromwell, a grave man with a round head and smooth long hair, who had come to Holland to fight for the faith, rarely mingled in the conversation, and then only with a few words of scarcely intelligible Dutch. Georg, leaning far back in his chair, stretched his feet out before him and stared silently into vacancy. Herr Aquanus, the host, walked from one table to another, and when he at last reached the one where the officers sat, paused opposite to the Thuringian, saying: “Where are your thoughts, Junker? One would scarcely know you during the last few days. What has come over you?” Georg hastily sat erect, stretched himself like a person roused from sleep, and answered pleasantly: “Dreams come in idleness.” “The cage is getting too narrow for him,” said Captain Van der Laen. “If this state of things lasts long, we shall all get dizzy like the sheep.” “And as stiff as the brazen Pagan god on the shelf yonder,” added Colonel Mulder. “There was the same complaint during the first siege,” replied the host, “but Herr von Noyelles drowned his discontent and emptied many a cask of my best liquor.” “Tell the gentlemen how he paid you,” cried Colonel Mulder. “There hangs the paper framed,” laughed Aquarius. “Instead of sending money, he wrote this: ‘Full many a favor, dear friend, hast thou done me, For which good hard coin glad wouldst thou be to see There’s none in my pockets; so for the debt In place of dirty coin, This written sheet so fine; Paper money in Leyden is easy to get.’” “Excellent!” cried Junker von Warmond, “and besides you made the die for the pasteboard coins yourself.” “Of course! Herr von Noyelles’ sitting still, cost me dear. You have already made two expeditions.”