Martin looked at his bow, and turned it round in his hand, and seemed to
interrogate it. But the examination left him as incredulous as before.

Then Peter told them his story, how the faithful squire got the knight
out of a high tower at Brescia. The manoeuvre, like most things that
are really scientific, was so simple, that now their wonder was they had
taken for impossible what was not even difficult.

The letter never went to Rotterdam. They trusted to Peter's learning and
their own dexterity.

It was nine o'clock on a clear moonlight night; Gerard, senior, was
still away; the rest of his little family had been some time abed.

A figure stood by the dwarf's bed. It was white, and the moonlight shone
on it.

With an unearthly noise, between a yell and a snarl, the gymnast rolled
off his bed and under it by a single unbroken movement. A soft voice
followed him in his retreat.

"Why, Giles, are you afeard of me?"

At this, Giles's head peeped cautiously up, and he saw it was only his
sister Kate.

She put her finger to her lips. "Hush! lest the wicked Cornelis or the
wicked Sybrandt hear us." Giles's claws seized the side of the bed, and
he returned to his place by one undivided gymnastic.