or, The Silver Skates 231

stones of its history. He could not forget Philip of Spain,
nor the Duke of Alva, even while rejoicing in the prosperity
that followed the Liberation. He looked in the meekest of
Dutch eyes for something of the fire that once lit the haggard
faces of those desperate, lawless men, who, wearing with pride
the title of “ beggars,” which their oppressors had mockingly
cast upon them, became the terror of land and sea. In
Haarlem he had wondered that the air did not still resound
with the cries of Alva’s three thousand victims. In Leyden
his heart had swelled in sympathy as he thought of the long
procession of scarred and famished creatures, who, after the
siege, with Adrian van der Werf at their head, tottered to the
great church to sing a glorious anthem because Leyden was
free. He remembered that this was even before they had
tasted the bread brought by the Dutch ships. They would
praise God first, then eat. Thousands of trembling voices
were raised in glad thanksgiving. For a moment it swelled
higher and higher, then suddenly changed to sobbing: not
one of all the. multitude could sing another note. But who
shall say that the anthem, even to its very end, was not heard
in heaven ?

Here, in the Hague, other thoughts came to Ben, — of how
Holland, in later years, unwillingly put her head under the
French yoke, and how, galled and lashed past endurance, she
had resolutely jerked it out again. He liked her for that.
What nation of any spirit, thought he, could be expected to
stand such work, — paying all her wealth into a foreign
treasury, and yielding up the flower of her youth under
foreign conscription? It was not so very long ago, either,
since English guns had been heard booming close by in the
German Ocean. Well, all the fighting was over at last!