outraged by the spectacle of a whole sect being punished for a crime
committed by a few individuals, who had once been unworthy members of it.

Meantime hue and cry was made after the fugitive conspirators. The
Blansaerts and William Party having set off from Leyden towards the Hague
on Monday night, in order, as they said, to betray their employers, whose
money they had taken, and whose criminal orders they had agreed to
execute, attempted to escape, but were arrested within ten days. They
were exhibited at their prison at Amsterdam to an immense concourse at a
shilling a peep, the sums thus collected being distributed to the poor.
Slatius made his way disguised as a boor into Friesland, and after
various adventures attempted to cross the Bourtange Moors to Lingen.
Stopping to refresh himself at a tavern near Koevorden, he found himself
in the tap-room in presence of Quartermaster Blau and a company of
soldiers from the garrison. The dark scowling boor, travel-stained and
weary, with felt hat slouched over his forbidding visage, fierce and
timorous at once like a hunted wild beast, excited their suspicion.
Seeing himself watched, he got up, paid his scot, and departed,
leaving his can of beer untasted. This decided the quartermaster, who
accordingly followed the peasant out of the house, and arrested him as a
Spanish spy on the watch for the train of specie which the soldiers were
then conveying into Koevorden Castle.

Slatius protested his innocence of any such design, and vehemently
besought the officer to release him, telling him as a reason for his
urgency and an explanation of his unprepossessing aspect--that he was
an oculist from Amsterdam, John Hermansen by name, that he had just
committed a homicide in that place, and was fleeing from justice.

The honest quartermaster saw no reason why a suspected spy should go