In the street of Zaandpoort, upon a certain evening, it had grown early dark. The sullen, sultry day had broken down at the gloaming into a black and gurly night of rain, which came in fierce dashes, alternating with fickle, veering flaws and yet stranger lulls and stillnesses. Anon, when the rain slackened, the hurl of the storm overhead could be heard, while up aloft every chimney in Amersfort seemed to shriek aloud in a different key. Maisie had gone down an hour ago and barred the outer door with a stout oaken bolt, hasping the crossbar into its place as an additional precaution. She would sit up, she said, till William returned from duty, and then she would be sure to hear him approach. On a still night she could distinguish his footsteps turning out of the wide spaces of the Dam into the echoing narrows of the street of Zaandpoort.

She and Kate sat between the newly lighted lamp and the fire of wood which Maisie had insisted on making in order to keep out the gusty chills of the night. A cosier little upper-room there was not to be found in all Amersfort.

But there had fallen a long silence between the two. Maisie, as usual, was thinking of William. It troubled her that her husband had that day gone abroad without his blue military overcoat, and she declared over and over that he would certainly come home wet from head to foot. Kate's needle paused, lagged, and finally stopped altogether. Her dark eyes gazed long and steadily into the fire. She saw a black and gloomy prison-cell with the wind shrieking into the glassless windows. She heard it come whistling and hooting through the bars as though they were infernal harp-strings. And she thought, at once bitterly and tenderly, of one who might be even then lying upon the floor without either cloak or covering.

A sharp, hard sob broke into Maisie's pleasant revery. She went quickly over to the girl, and sat down beside her.

"Be patient, Kate," she said; "it will all come right if you bide a little. They cannot kill him, for none of the men who were wounded are dead—though for their own purposes his enemies have tried to make the prince believe so."

Kate lifted her head and looked piteously at Maisie.

"But even if he comes from prison, he will never forgive me. It was my fault—my fault," she said, and let her head fall again on Maisie's shoulder.

"Nay," said Maisie; "but I will go to him and own to him that the fault was mine—tell him that he was not gone a moment before I was sorry and ran after him to bring him back. He may be angry with me if he likes; but, at least, he shall understand that you were free from blame."

But this consolation, perhaps because it was now repeated for the fiftieth time, somehow failed to bring relief to Kate's troubled heart.

"He will never come back, I know," she said; "for I sent him away! Oh, how I wish I had not sent him away! Why—why did you let me?"

Maisie's mouth dropped to a pathetic pout of despair. It was so much easier comforting a man, she thought, than a girl. Now, if it had been William—

But at that moment a loud and continuous knocking was heard at the outer door, which had been so carefully barred against the storm.

"It is my dear!" cried Maisie, jumping eagerly to her feet, "and I had not heard his footstep turn into the street."

And she looked reproachfully at Kate, as though in this instance she had been entirely to blame.

"It is the first time that I ever missed hearing that," she said, and ran quickly down the stairs. As she threw open the fastenings a noisy gust of wind rioted in, and slammed all the doors with claps like thunder.

"William!" she cried, "dear lad, forgive me; I could not hear your foot for the noise of the wind, though I was listening. Believe me that—"

But it was the face of an unknown man which confronted her. He was clad in a blue military mantle, under which a uniform was indistinctly seen.

"Your pardon, madam," he said, looking down upon her, "are you not Mistress Gordon, the wife of Captain William Gordon, of the regiment of the Covenant?"

"I am indeed his wife," said Maisie, with just pride; "what of him?"

"I am bidden to say that he urgently requires your presence at the guard-house."

Maisie felt all the warm blood ebb from about her heart. But she only bit her lip, and set her hand hard over her breast.

"He is ill—he is dead!" she panted, scarcely knowing what she said.

"Nay," said the man, "not ill, and not dead. But he sends you word that he needs you urgently."

"You swear to me that he is not dead?" she said, seizing him fiercely by the wet cuff of his coat. For the man had laid his hand upon the edge of the wind-blown door to keep it steady as he talked, or perhaps in fear lest it should be shut in his face before his errand was accomplished.

Without waiting for another word besides the man's reiterated assurance, Maisie fled up-stairs, and telling Kate briefly that her husband needed her and had sent for her to the guard-room, she thrust a sheathed dagger into her bosom, and ran back down to the outer door.

"Bide a moment, and I will come with you!" cried Kate, after her.

"No, no," answered Maisie, "stay you and keep the house. I shall not be long away. Keep the water hot against William's return."

So saying, she shut the outer door carefully behind her, and hurried into the night.

Maisie had expected that the man who had brought the message would be waiting to guide her, but he had vanished. The long street of Zaandpoort was bare and dark from end to end, lit only by the lights within the storm-beaten houses where the douce burghers of Amersfort were sitting at supper or warming their toes at an early and unwonted fire.

Then for the first time it occurred to Maisie that she did not know whether her husband would be found at the guard-house of the palace, or at that by the city port, where was the main entrance to the camp. She decided to try the palace first.

With throbbing heart the young wife ran along the rain-swept streets. She had thrown her husband's cloak over her arm as she came out, with the idea of making him put it on when she found him. But she was glad enough, before she had ventured a hundred paces into the dark, roaring night, to drawn it closely over her own head and wrap herself from head to foot in it.

As she turned out upon the wide spaces of the Dam of Amersfort, into which Zaandpoort Street opened, she almost ran into the arms of the watch. An officer, who went first with a lantern, stopped her.

"Whither away so fast and so late, maiden?" he said; "an thou give not a fitting answer we must have thee to the spinning-house."

"I am the wife of a Scottish officer," said Maisie, nothing daunted. "And he being, as I think, taken suddenly ill, has sent for me by a messenger, whom in the darkness I have missed."

"Your husband's name and regiment?" demanded the leader of the watch, abruptly, yet not unkindly.

"He is called William Gordon," she said, "and commands to-night at the guard-house. He is a captain in the Scots regiment, called that of the Covenant."

The officer turned to his band.

"What regiments are on guard to-night?"

"The Scots psalm-singers at the palace—Van Marck's Frisians at the port of the camp," said a voice out of the dark. "And if it please you, I know the lady. She is a main brave one, and her husband is a good man. He carried the banner at Ayrsmoss, a battle in Scotland where many were slain, and after which he was the only man of the hill folk left alive."

"Go with her, thou, then," commanded the officer, "and bring her in safety to her husband. It is not fitting, madam, that you should be on the streets of the city at midnight and alone. Good-night and good speed to you, lady. Men of the city guard, forward!"

And with that the watch swung briskly up the street, the light of their leader's lantern flashing this way and that across the darkling road, as it dangled in his hand or was swayed by the fitful wind.

It seemed but a few minutes before Maisie's companion was challenging the soldiers of the guard at the palace.

"Captain William Gordon? Yea, he bides within," said a stern-visaged sergeant, in the gusty outer port. "Who might want him at this time of night?"

"His wife," said the soldier of the watch, indicating Maisie with his hand.

The sergeant bent his brows, as if he thought within him that this was neither hour nor place for the domesticities. Nevertheless, he opened an inner door, saluted upon the threshold, spoke a few words, and waited.

Will Gordon himself came out almost instantly in full uniform. One cheek was somewhat ruddy with sitting before the great fire, which cast pleasant gleams through the doorway into the outer hall of the guard.

"Why, Maisie!" he cried, "what do you here, lassie?"

He spoke in the kindly Scots of their Galloway Hills.

Maisie started back in apprehensive astonishment.

"Did you not send for me, William? A messenger brought me word an hour ago, or it may be less, that you needed me most urgently. I thought you had been sick, or wounded, at the least. So I spared not, but hasted hither alone, running all the way. But I came on the watch, and the officer sent this good man with me."

Will Gordon laughed.

"Some one hath been playing April-fool overly late in the day. If I catch him I will swinge him tightly therefor. He might have put thee in great peril, little one."

"I had a dagger, William," said Maisie, determinedly, putting her hand on her breast; "and had I a mind I could speak bad words also, if any had dared to meddle with me."

"Well, in a trice I shall be relieved," he said. "Come in by the fire. 'Tis not exactly according to the general's regulations. But I will risk the prince coming on such a night—or what would be worse, Mr. Michael Shields, who is our regimental chaplain and preceptor-general in righteousness."

Presently they issued forth, Maisie and her husband walking close together. His arm was about her, and the one blue military cloak proved great enough for two. They walked along, talking right merrily, to the street of Zaandpoort. At the foot of the stair they stopped with a gasp of astonishment. The door stood open to the wall.

"It hath been blown open by the wind," said Will Gordon.

They went up-stairs, Maisie first, and her husband standing a moment to shake the drops of rain from the cloak.

"Kate, Kate, where are you?" cried Maisie, as she reached the landing-place a little out of breath, as at this time was her wont.

But she recoiled from what she saw in the sitting-room. The lamp burned calmly and steadily upon its ledge. But the chairs were mostly overturned. The curtain was torn down, and flapped in the gusts through the window, which stood open towards the canal. Kate's Bible lay fluttering its leaves on the tiles of the fireplace. The floor was stained with the mud of many confused footmarks. A scrap of lace from Kate's sleeve hung on a nail by the window. But in all the rooms of the house in the street of Zaandpoort there was no sign of the girl herself. She had completely vanished.

Pale to the lips, and scarce knowing what they did, Will Gordon and his wife sat down at opposite sides of the table, and stared blankly at each other without speech or understanding.