St. Bavon tell us how those two scarecrows have got here! For they are here in the flesh, both of them, Diogenes would have spotted his brother philosophers through darkness darker than the blackest hell. Pythagoras rolling in fat and Socrates lean and hungry-looking, peering like a huge gaunt bird through the gloom. Someone is holding up a lanthorn and Pythagoras' tip-tilted nose shines with a ruddy glow. "But how did you get here, you old mushroom-face?" asks one of the men. "We had business with him at Rotterdam," quoth Socrates with one of his choicest oaths and nodding in the direction of the prisoner. "All day we have wondered what has become of him." "Then in the afternoon," breaks in Pythagoras, to the accompaniment of a rival set of expletives, "we saw him trussed like a fowl and tied into a sledge drawn by a single horse, which started in the wake of a larger one wherein sat a lovely jongejuffrouw." "Then what did you do?" queries some one. "Do?" exclaimed the philosophers simultaneously and in a tone of deep disgust. "Followed on his trail as best we could," rejoins Socrates simply, "borrowed some skates, ran down the Schie in the wake of the two sledges and their escort." "And after that?" "After that we traced him to this solitary God-forsaken hole, but presently we saw that this molens was not so deserted as it seemed, so we hung about until now ... then we ventured nearer ... and here we are." Here they were of course, but how was it possible to contravene the orders of Jan? What could these scarecrows have to say to the Laughing Cavalier? "Just to ask him if there's anything we can do," murmurs Socrates persuasively. "He's like to hang to-morrow, you said, well! grant something then to a dying man." Grave heads shake in the gloom. "Our orders are strict...." "'Tis a matter of life and death it seems...." "Bah!" quoth Pythagoras more insinuatingly still, "we are two to your thirty! What have ye all to fear?" "Here! tie my hands behind my back," suggests Socrates. "I only want to speak with him. How could we help him to escape?" "We would not think of such a thing," murmurs Pythagoras piously. Anxious glances meet one another in consultation. More than one kindly heart beats beneath these ragged doublets. Bah! the man is to hang to-morrow, why not give pleasure to a dying man? If indeed it be pleasure to look on such hideous scarecrows a few hours before death. Jan is not here. He is with my lord, helping with those heavy boxes. "Five minutes, you old mushroom-face," suggests he who has been left in charge. And all the others nod approval.