I assented, and the boat's course being changed a point or two, three minutes' rowing laid her bows on the mud, some fifty yards from the landward bend of the bridge, and just in the shadow of the causeway. I sprang ashore and clambered up. "Hist!" he cried, warning me as I was about to start on my errand. "Go about it quietly, Master Francis. The people will probably be in bed. But be secret." I nodded and moved off, as warily as he could desire. I spent a minute or two peering about the causeway, but I found nothing that would serve our purpose. There was no course left then but to cross the planks, and seek what I wanted in the hamlet. Remembering how the timbers had creaked and clattered when I went over them in the daylight, I stole across on tiptoe. I fancied I had seen a pile of stones near one of the posts at that end, but I could not find them now, and after groping about a while--for this part was at the moment in darkness--I crept cautiously past the first hovel, peering to right and left as I went. I did not like to confess to myself that I was afraid to be alone in the dark, but that was nearly the truth. I was feverishly anxious to find what I wanted and return to my companion. Suddenly I paused and held my breath. A slight sound had fallen on my ears, nervously ready to catch the slightest. I paused and listened. Yes, there it was again; a whispering of cautious voices close by me, within a few feet of me. I could see no one. But a moment's thought told me that the speakers were hidden by the farther corner of the cottage abreast of which I stood. The sound of human voices, the assurance of living companionship, steadied my nerves, and to some extent rid me of my folly. I took a step to one side, so as to be more completely in the shadow cast by the reed-thatched eaves, and then softly advanced until I commanded a view of the whisperers. They were two, a man and a woman. And the woman was of all people Dymphna! She had her back to me, but she stood in the moonlight, and I knew her hood in a moment. The man--surely the man was Van Tree then, if the woman was Dymphna? I stared. I felt sure it must be Van Tree. It was wonderful enough that Dymphna should so far have regained nerve and composure as to rise and come out to meet him. But in that case her conduct, though strange, was explicable. If not, however, if the man were not Van Tree---- Well, he certainly was not. Stare as I might, rub my eyes as I might, I could not alter the man's figure, which was of the tallest, whereas I have said that the young Dutchman was short. This man's face, too, though it was obscured as he bent over the girl by his cloak, which was pulled high up about his throat, was swarthy; swarthy and beardless, I made out. More, his cap had a feather, and even as he stood still I thought I read the soldier in his attitude. The soldier and the Spaniard!