And from out the pocket of his doublet he drew the paper which had been writ by the public scrivener and was signed with Nicolaes' cypher signature: he handed it to Gilda, even whilst the prisoner, throwing back his head, sent one of his heartiest laughs echoing through the raftered room. "Well played, my lord!" he said gaily, "nay! but by the devils whom you serve so well, you do indeed deserve to win." In the meanwhile Gilda, wide-eyed and horrified, not knowing what to think, nor yet what to believe, scarcely dared to touch the infamous document whose very presence in her lap seemed a pollution. She noticed that some portion of the paper had been torn off, but the wording of the main portion of the writing was quite clear as was the signature "Schwarzer Kato" with the triangle above it. On this she looked now with a curious mixture of loathing and of fear. Schwarzer Kato was the name of the tulip which her father had raised and named: the triangle was a mark which the house of Beresteyn oft used in business. "O God, have mercy upon me!" she murmured inwardly, "what does all this treachery mean?" She looked up from one man to the other. The Lord of Stoutenburg, dark and sullen, was watching her with restless eyes; the prisoner was smiling, gently, almost self-deprecatingly she thought, and as he met her frightened glance it seemed as if in his merry eyes there crept a look of sadness--even of pity. "What does all this treachery mean?" she murmured again with pathetic helplessness, and this time just above her breath. "It means," said Stoutenburg roughly, "that at last you must be convinced that this man on whom you have wasted your kindly pity is utterly unworthy of it. That bond was never written by your brother, it was never signed by him. But we found it on this villain's person; he has been trading on it, obtaining money on the strength of his forgery. He has confessed to you that he had no accomplice, no paymaster in his infamies, then ask him whence came this bond in his possession, whence the money which we found upon him. Ask him to deny the fact that less than twenty-four hours after he had laid hands on you, he was back again in Haarlem, bargaining with your poor, stricken father to bring you back to him." He ceased speaking, almost choked now by his own eloquence, and the rapidity with which the lying words escaped his lips. And Gilda slowly turned her head toward the prisoner, and met that subtly-ironical, good-humoured glance again. "Is this all true, sir?" she asked. "What, mejuffrouw?" he retorted. "That this bond promising you payment for the cruel outrage upon me is a forgery?" "His Magnificence says so, mejuffrouw," he replied quietly, "surely you know best if you can believe him." "But this is not my brother's signature?" she asked: and she herself was not aware what an infinity of pleading there was in her voice. "No!" he replied emphatically, "it is not your brother's signature." "Then it's a forgery?"