the shortness of his sight, he had eyes in his head, and upon occasions
could use them. He therefore repeated the question.

"Very well dressed indeed, professor," returned Koosje, promptly.

"And what are you doing in Utrecht--in such a plight as this, too?" he
asked, still keeping at a safe distance.

"O mynheer, I am all alone in the world," she answered, her blue misty
eyes filled with tears. "I had a month ago a dear, good, kind father,
but he has died, and I am indeed desolate. I always believed him rich,
and to these things," with a gesture that included her dress and the
ornaments on the table, "I have ever been accustomed. Thus I ordered
without consideration such clothes as I thought needful. And then I
found there was nothing for me--not a hundred guilders to call my own
when all was paid."

"But what brought you to Utrecht?"

"He sent me here, mynheer. In his last illness, only of three days'
duration, he bade me gather all together and come to this city, where I
was to ask for a Mevrouw Baake, his cousin."

"Mevrouw Baake, of the Sigaren Fabrijk," said Dortje, in an aside, to
the others. "I lived servant with her before I came here."

"I had heard very little about her, only my father had sometimes
mentioned his cousin to me; they had once been betrothed," the stranger
continued. "But when I reached Utrecht I found she was dead--two years
dead; but we had never heard of it."