The noon bell now rang from the neighboring church, and soon after was heard from the tower of the town-hall, the little boys noisily left the room, but--strange-=the patience of the older ones still held out; they were surely hearing things that did not exactly belong to their lessons. The man who stood before them was no teacher in the school, but the city clerk, Van Hout, who, to-day filled the place of his sick friend, Verstroot, master of arts and preacher. During the ringing of the bells he had closed the book, and now said: “‘Suspendo lectionem.’ Jan Mulder, how would you translate my ‘suspendere’?” “Hang,” replied the boy. “Hang!” laughed Van Hout. “You might be hung from a hook perhaps, but where should we hang a lesson? Adrian Van der Werff.” The lad called rose quickly, saying: “‘Suspendere lectionen’ means to break off the lesson.” “Very well; and if we wanted to hang up Jan Mulder, what should we say?” “Patibulare--ad patibulum!” cried the scholars. Van Hout, who had just been smiling, grew very grave. Drawing a long breath, he said: “Patibulo is a bad Latin word, and your fathers, who formerly sat here, understood its meaning far less thoroughly than you. Now, every child in the Netherlands knows it, Alva has impressed it on our minds. More than eighteen thousand worthy citizens have come to the gallows through his ‘ad patibulum.’” With these words he pulled his short black doublet through his girdle, advanced nearer the first desk, and bending his muscular body forward, said with constantly increasing emotion: