hopeful disposition than himself and of less heroic mould than Walburg de
Marnix, encouraged him to fly. He fled accordingly, through the desolate
sandy downs which roll between the Hague and the sea, to Scheveningen,
then an obscure fishing village on the coast, at a league's distance from
the capital. Here a fisherman, devoted to him and his family, received
him in his hut, disguised him in boatman's attire, and went with him to
the strand, proposing to launch his pinkie, put out at once to sea, and
to land him on the English coast, the French coast, in Hamburg--where he
would.

The sight of that long, sandy beach stretching for more than seventy
miles in an unbroken, melancholy line, without cove, curve, or
indentation to break its cruel monotony, and with the wild waves of the
German Ocean, lashed by a wintry storm, breaking into white foam as far
as the eye could reach, appalled the fugitive criminal. With the
certainty of an ignominious death behind him, he shrank abjectly from
the terrors of the sea, and, despite the honest fisherman's entreaties,
refused to enter the boat and face the storm. He wandered feebly along
the coast, still accompanied by his humble friend, to another little
village, where the fisherman procured a waggon, which took them as far as
Sandvoort. Thence he made his way through Egmond and Petten and across
the Marsdiep to Tegel, where not deeming himself safe he had himself
ferried over to the neighbouring island of Vlieland. Here amongst the
quicksands, whirlpools, and shallows which mark the last verge of
habitable Holland, the unhappy fugitive stood at bay.

Meantime information had come to the authorities that a suspicious
stranger had been seen at Scheveningen. The fisherman's wife was
arrested. Threatened with torture she at last confessed with whom her
husband had fled and whither. Information was sent to the bailiff of