332 Hans Brinker

the wit would never have come to ye again. Well, the lad
caught ye by the arm, and said ye looked honest (well he
might). What then? Was it noontime ?”

“« Nay, before daylight, — long before early chimes.”

“Tt was the same day you were hurt,” said the dame. “1
know it seemed you went to your work in the middle of the
night. ‘You left off where he caught your arm, Raff.”

“© Yes,” resumed her husband ; -“ and I can see his face this
minute, — so white and wild looking. ‘Take me down the
river a way,’ says he. I was working then, you Il remember,
far down on the line, across from Amsterdam. I told him I
was no boatman. ‘It’s an affair of life and death, says he,
‘take me on a few miles. Yonder skiff is not locked; but it
may be a poor man’s boat and Id be loathto rob him.’ (The
words might differ some, vroww; for it’s all like a dream.)
Well, I took him down, — it might be six or eight miles, — and
then he said he could run the rest of the way on shore. I was
in haste to get the boat back. Before he jumped out, he says,
sobbing-like, ‘I can trust you. I’ve done a thing — God
knows I never intended it — but the man is dead. I must fly
from Holland.’ ”

“© What was it, did he say, Raff? Had he been shooting at
a comrade, like they do down at the University at Gottingen ?”

“‘T can’t recall that. Mayhap he told me; but it’s all likea
dream. I said it wasn’t for me, a good Hollander, to cheat
the laws of my country by helping him off that way. But he
kept saying,‘ God knows I am innocent!’ and looked at me in
the starlight as fair, now, and clear-eyed as our little Hans
might —and I just pulled away faster.”

“Tt must have been Jan Kamphuisen’s boat,” remarked Dame
Brinker, dryly: “none other would have left his oars out.”