Such a welcome is given Guy and Haring as only the besieged, despairing and cut-off give to friends from the outer world. “You bring news of succor?” cries one Dutch burgher on guard. “The Prince’s fleet is almost ready,” whispers another with anxious lips. “We have word by a carrier pigeon that he is fitting out an expedition by land.” “Tell me of my wife in Delft, Margaret Enkhuysen—you left there, didn’t you?” asks another. But explaining their business and delivering over their three sacks of flour they are shortly afterward taken into the town by the Schalkwyker gate. Here Guy needs no word of mouth to tell him that he is in a town stricken by wounds and death, by siege and famine. The streets are dark, no lights burn save in the great church, now used as a hospital, and in the town-hall, where Ripperda, the Commandant, is busy with his officers. The place is unnaturally silent. There are no barking dogs, nor even yelling cats; these have been eaten. The only sounds in the streets are the tramp of patrols relieving each other, or companies of men marching to duty on the walls. The voices of the sentries are hollow and weak with hunger. Guy, leaving Haring at the Swan Inn, before which sit no happy burghers, and within which all is dark, makes his way to the great ravelin between the St. Jan’s gate and the Kruys gate, where he is informed that Pieter Kies is on guard, and gets interview with him. “Why didn’t you send the daughter of Niklaas Bodé Volcker out of the town when it was besieged?” Guy asks indignantly. “Because we had use for her.” “Use for her? How? She is a woman, a non-combatant.” “Women are not non-combatants here. Were it not for women we men would hardly hold this town.” “You don’t mean to say that Mina fights?” “No, she fills sand bags and sews them up, but there are plenty of women who do fight. Fight as well as men. Women are men here! no, they are more than that, they are angels of mercy—angels of death; nursing the wounded one day and killing the Spaniards the next, with their own hands. There’s the widow Kenau Hasselaer, the Spaniards fly from her faster than they would from any man in the garrison.” “Nevertheless,” says Guy, unheeding this tribute to the advanced womanhood of the sixteenth century, “I have promised my friend, this girl’s lover, to take her safely out of Haarlem.” “How can you get her out?” queries the burgher grimly. “That will be my business if she will take the chance.” “You’ll have to see Commandant Ripperda. If he says so, well and good. If not, I’ll not let you take the responsibility of trying to get Mina out of this town. She’s safer here. Do you believe we’re going to surrender? Not while we have anything to eat.”