For one second the Englishman turns after him, a question that has been on his mind every instant since he left her, is now full upon his lips. The next moment he pauses, thinking, “No—to ask from the officer in whose charge she placed me the name and station of my—my love—” he rolls the sound in his mind as if it were a very sweet morsel—“would be too dangerous. I at least should know the lady I have escorted to Antwerp.” So he strides across the Esplanade, which is kept free of trees and all other impediment to the fire of the guns of the Spanish Citadel, that dominates this Flemish town. Cogitating upon this being of his dream, Chester mutters: “That painter can tell me, he knows,” and quickens his pace. A moment after the Englishman finds himself at the entrance of the great street of the Beguins, which leads into the heart of the city. Here, clapping his hands several times, he calls out: “Link boy! Light! Link boy!” which in the course of a little time brings to him a wandering urchin of the street carrying a flaming pine torch. “Which way, your nobleness?” asks the Arab, for Guy’s manner and bearing are patrician. “To Wool street! The house of Jacques Touraine.” “Oh! The blood-letter and barber,” answers the boy. “I know his painted pole.” So skipping along ahead of the young Englishman’s rapid strides, they proceed down the street of the Beguins, lighted occasionally by lamps hanging from the gable ends of the houses of the burghers, and pass by the imposing Church of our Dear Lady of Antwerp, now known as the Cathedral Notre Dame, from which the chimes come every quarter of an hour, silvery and sweet upon the midnight air. Then they dive into the labyrinth of narrow streets filled with the mediæval filth that still clings to them even to this day, making toward the northern end of the town. A few minutes of struggling through close alleys and they stop at a long pole painted in alternate stripes of red, blue and white, that distinguishes the house of Monsieur Jacques Touraine, the little French leecher, surgeon, blood-letter and barber. Late as it is there is no need to knock and rouse him, for this gentleman is in front of his door, talking excitedly in his Gallic way to several of his neighbors. He has a little child of some seven years of age by the hand, and is saying nervously: “Mon Dieu! if the tide reaches here!” “Drommelsch!” answers one of his companions, “The devil himself couldn’t make the flood run up this hill! The mark of the deluge of 1300 is fifty feet below us.” Then he gives a hideous laugh and jeers: “How you French hate water.” Breaking in upon this colloquy, Guy beckons the barber to one side and says to him: “Is the painter who lodges with you, Antony Oliver, in to-night?” The answer he gets is discouraging: “No, he is in Brussels.”