up like an onion, a fashion which, as we all know, appealed to the Dutch
in the seventeenth century, or at any rate to the plebeian Dutch. I must
also tell you the name of this squire before I go any further: his name
was Hammer--Paul Hammer. He was unmarried.

He went to bed at eleven o'clock, and when he came down at eight o'clock
he had his breakfast. He went into his study at nine o'clock, and was very
much annoyed to find that some burglars had come in during the night and
had taken away a number of small objects which were not without value; and
among-them, what he most regretted, his little pastiche of the corner of
the Van Tromp.

For some moments he stood filled with an acute anger and wishing that he
knew who the burglars were and how to get at them; but the days passed,
and though he asked everybody, and even gave some money to the police, he
could not discover this. He put an advertisement into several newspapers,
both London newspapers and local ones, saying that money would be given if
the thing were restored, and pretty well hinting that no questions would
be asked, but nothing came.

Meanwhile the burglars, whose names were Charles and Lothair Femeral,
foreigners but English-speaking, had found some of their ill-acquired
goods saleable, others unsaleable. They wanted a pound for the little
picture in the frame, and this they could not get, and it was a bother
haggling it about. Lothair Femeral thought of a good plan: he stopped at
an inn on the third day of their peregrinations, had a good dinner with
his brother, told the innkeeper that he could not pay the bill, and
offered to leave the Old Master in exchange. When people do this it very
often comes off, for the alternative is only the pleasure of seeing
the man in gaol, whereas a picture is always a picture, and there is a