So it mattered not what I answered myself. I hoped, now Master Lindstrom had appeared, that the women would be allowed to go free; and it seemed to me that to surrender to Clarence would be to hand over the Duchess to her enemy simply that the rest of us might escape. Master Lindstrom returned while I was still considering this, and, observing the same precautions as before, I bade him join me. "Well?" I said, not so impetuously, I hope, as Mistress Anne, yet I dare say with a good deal of eagerness. "Well, what do they say?" For he was slow to speak. "I have bad news," he answered gently. "Ah!" I ejaculated, a lump which was due as much to rage as to any other emotion rising in my throat. "So they will give us no terms? Then so be it! Let them come and take us." "Nay," he hastened to answer. "It is not so bad as that, lad. They are fathers and husbands themselves, and not lanzknechts. They will suffer the women to go free, and will even let me take charge of them if necessary." "They will!" I exclaimed, overjoyed. I wondered why on earth he had hesitated to tell me this. "Why, that is the main point, friend." "Yes," he said gravely, "perhaps so. More, the men may go too, if the tower be surrendered within an hour. With one exception, that is. The man who struck the blow must be given up." "The man who struck the blow!" I repeated slowly. "Do you mean--you mean the man who cut the patrol down?" "Yes," he said. He was peering very closely at me, as though he would learn from my face who it was. And I stood thinking. This was as much as we could expect. I divined, and most truly, that but for the honest Dutchman's influence, promises, perhaps bribes, such terms would never have been offered to us by the men who hours before had driven us to hold as if we had been vermin. Yet give up Master Bertie? "What," I said, "will be done to him? The man who must be given up, I mean?" Master Lindstrom shook his head. "It was an accident," I urged, my eyes on his. He grasped my hand firmly, and, turning away his face, seemed for a while unable to speak. At last he whispered, "He must suffer for the others, lad. I fear so. It is a hard fate, a cruel fate. But I can do no more. They will not hear me on this. It is true he will be first tried by the magistrate, but there is no hope. They are very hard." My heart sank. I stood irresolute, pondering on what we ought to do, pondering on what I should say to the wife who so loved the man who must die. What could I say? Yet, somehow I must break the news. I asked Master Lindstrom to wait where he was while I consulted the others, adding, "You will answer for it that there will be no attack while you are here, I suppose?"