To the right a fair road or causeway along the waterside led to Arnheim. At the point where I stood, this road on its way from the city took a turn at right angles, running straight away from the river to avoid a wide track of swamp and mere which lay on my left--a quaking marsh many miles round, overgrown with tall rushes and sedges, which formed the head of the bay in which our island lay. I looked up the long, straight road to Arnheim, and saw only a group of travelers moving slowly along it, their backs toward me. The road before me was bare of passengers. Where, then, was Dymphna, if she had crossed the bridge? In the last resort I scanned the green expanse of rushes and willows, which stretched, with intervals of open water, as far as the eye could reach on my left. It was all rustling and shimmering in the light breeze, but my eye picked out one or two raised dykes which penetrated it here and there, and served at once as pathways to islets in the mere and as breastworks against further encroachments of the river. Presently, on one of these, of which the course was fairly defined by a line of willows, I made out the flutter of a woman's hood. And I remembered that the day before I had heard Dymphna express a wish to go to the marsh for some herb which grew there. "Right!" I said, seating myself with much satisfaction on the last post of the bridge. "She is safe enough there! And I will go no nearer. It is only on the road she is likely to be in danger from our Spanish gallants!" My eyes, released from duty, wandered idly over the landscape for a while, but presently returned to the dyke across the mere. I could not now see Dymphna. The willows hid her, and I waited for her to reappear. She did not, but some one else did; for by and by, on the same path and crossing an interval between the willows, there came into sight a man's form. "Ho! ho!" I said, following it with my eyes. "So I may go home! Master Van Tree is on the track. And now I hope they will make it up!" I added pettishly. Another second and I started up with a low cry. The sunlight had caught a part of the man's dress, a shining something which flashed back a point of intense light. The something I guessed at once was a corselet, and it needed scarce another thought to apprise me that Dymphna's follower was not Van Tree at all, but a Spanish soldier!