Luck in this chose to favour the Lord of Stoutenburg, for the girl was on the doorstep when he finally reached the house where two nights ago a young soldier of fortune had so generously given up his lodgings to a miserable pair of beggars. He had just been vaguely wondering how best he could--without endangering his own safety--obtain information as to which particular warren in the house she and her father inhabited, when he saw her standing under the lintel of the door, her meagre figure faintly lit up by the glimmer of a street-lamp fixed in the wall just above her head. "I would have speech with thee," he said in his usual peremptory manner as soon as he had approached her, "show me the way to thy room." Then as, like a frightened rabbit, she made ready to run away to her burrow as quickly as she could, he seized hold of her arm and reiterated roughly: "I would have speech of thee, dost hear? Show me the way to thy room at once. Thy safety and that of thy father depend on thy obedience. There is close search in the city just now for Spanish spies." The girl's pale cheeks took on a more ashen hue, her lips parted with a quickly smothered cry of terror. She knew--as did every stranger in these Dutch cities just now--that the words "Spanish spy" had a magical effect on the placid tempers of their inhabitants, and that many a harmless foreign wayfarer had suffered imprisonment, aye and torture too, on the mere suspicion of being a "Spanish spy." "I have nothing to fear," she murmured under her breath. "Perhaps not," he rejoined, "but the man who shelters and protects thee is under suspicion of abetting Spanish spies. For his sake 'twere wiser if thou didst obey me." Stoutenburg had every reason to congratulate himself on his shrewd guess, for at his words all resistance on the girl's part vanished, and though she began to tremble in every limb and even for a moment seemed ready to swoon, she murmured words which if incoherent certainly sounded submissive, and then silently led the way upstairs. He followed her closely, stumbling behind her in the dark, and as he mounted the ricketty steps he was rapidly rehearsing in his mind what he would say to the wench. That the girl was that abominable villain's sweetheart he was not for a moment in doubt, her submission just now, at the mere hint of the fellow's danger, showed the depth of her love for him. Stoutenburg felt therefore that his success in obtaining what information he wanted would depend only on how much she knew. In any case she must be amenable to a bribe for she seemed wretchedly poor; even in that brief glimpse which he had had of her by the dim light of the street-door lamp, he could not help but see how ragged was her kirtle and how pinched and wan her face.