I behold the pageants splendid
That adorned those days of old;
Stately dames like queens attended,
Knights who wore the Fleece of Gold.
Longfellow.

The three knights who wore the Golden Fleece of Burgundy, proved to be the prince of Ravenstein, the marquis of Berg, and Englebert, count of Nassau, who was hereditary burg graf, or governor of Antwerp, and who, when a mere boy, in 1404, had espoused the heiress of Loeke and Breda. The prince of Ravenstein's territory lay between Gueldres and Brabant; it is now merged in the duchy of Cleves, but his castle still stands near the Maese.

Gueldres was an ancient and then very powerful dukedom, though it shrank to a petty state after the declaration of independence by the maritime provinces of the Netherlands in 1579, when it lost Nimeguen, the county of Zutphen, and Arnheim, and afterwards Ruremond, which was made over to Prussia; and since then, these portions have frequently changed their masters and form of government.

In the days of Arnold d'Egmont the duchy contained sixteen cities, two hundred and thirty villages, five great fortresses, and a vast number of castles.

The old duke treated Gray with great condescension, and conversed freely with him as they rode on together.

He inquired in what battle Gray received the severe wound the mark of which yet remained upon his face; and for the first time since he had left Scotland, our hero felt his heart glow with petty anger, in having to acknowledge that he had gained it in a mere street brawl with the enemies of the king,—the adherents of the turbulent and unruly house of Douglas.

"TÊte Dieu!" said the duke; "that is the family which gives the king, your master, so much trouble. By Saint Louis, I would make quick work in disposing of them."

"They can bring twenty thousand men into the field," urged Sir Patrick.

"The great lord of Douglas is now in Flanders."

"Here—here in Flanders!" exclaimed Gray.

"Not in my territories; but on the other side of Brabant, and when last heard of he was travelling with a brilliant train of knights towards Breda, for the purpose of visiting that city, after which he passes forward to France. He was at the Feast of the Assumption in Antwerp, but proudly and haughtily kept aloof from all."

This unexpected intelligence filled Gray with emotions of a varied character, and solved a great mystery, the recollection of which had greatly troubled him.

It was, then, really Murielle Douglas whom he had seen, and no visionary or fancied resemblance; and he felt a glow of pleasure at the conviction that he had looked upon her face so recently, that he had breathed the same air with her; and that even now she was separated from him, not by the stormy German Ocean, and many a league of hill and glen; but only by a few miles of level land, and he mentally resolved, at every hazard and danger, that on leaving the duke of Gueldres, he would follow the Douglases to Breda, and that if they had departed, he would track them elsewhere; so powerful a noble, with so brilliant a retinue, would be easily traced in Flanders.

Pleasure, anticipation, and excitement, made him alternately gay and abstracted; thus he could barely attend with becoming reverence to the kind old prince who, being anxious to make a favourable impression on one who seemed the trusted subject of his intended son-in-law, drew his attention to the various castles, spires, and other features of the country, beguiling the way by many a story and legend, as they rode towards his hunting-lodge, at which they were to pass the night.

It stood upon the Gueldrian side of the Peel Morass. The latter included great tracts of land now dry and fertile, which were then deep swamps; and strange old stories lingered there, of broken dykes and bursting sluices—of overflowings from the Waal and Maese, with inundations from the Zuider Zee, by which whole farms were swept away, strong castles overthrown, and villages submerged; and of mermaids and mermen being swept by the retiring waters to flounder in the slough until they were captured; and the duke averred that in the days of his ancestor, Reinold II., duke of Gueldres, two had been instructed in Christianity and taught to make reverence to a crucifix,—a story corroborated in later times.

The "History of the Seven United Provinces," published at London in 1705, tells us, that "one day, when the sea had broken the banks and overflowed one part of the country, some young damsels of Ednam, going in a boat to milk their cows, found a nymph, or sea-woman, who lay half-covered in the mud, after the waters had been drained off. They drew her out and carried her to Ednam, where they taught her to spin and dress herself like other women; but they could not teach her to speak, nor lose the inclination which she had to return to her former element. There is an author who pretends that they imprinted in her some knowledge of a God, and that she made her reverence as she passed a crucifix. But it was not in Holland only," adds the historian, "that they found mermen in those days. There were some taken on the coast of Norway, which had on them the cross, the mitre, and all the pontifical habits of a bishop; but they only sighed after they were taken, and died very quickly."

Night had closed when the party reached the hunting-lodge, which was an old castle of some extent and considerable antiquity.

"This," said the duke, "is the hereditary mansion of the counts of Endhoven; and under its roof Count Ludwig, the last of that line, was born."

"Where he is not likely to die," added the count of Nassau.

"Since his attainder it has been mine."

"There is a strange story connected with it—or rather with the parents of Ludwig," said the count of Nassau, a noble with a long grave and pleasing countenance.

"His father was a cruel passionate and vindictive man, who used his countess so barbarously that she was wont to carry a dagger in her boddice, for her protection. Six months after Ludwig was born, she died of a broken heart, and the dagger, as she requested with her last breath, was buried with her. For a few weeks the count drank deeply, gamed and hunted, it seemed to all, as if to drown thought; but after a time he recovered, and to lighten the old castle, which seemed so grim and gloomy now, he carried off a beautiful peasant girl from the neighbourhood of Endhoven. Long and bitterly did the girl weep, on finding herself in his power, and earnestly she prayed to be permitted to return to her parents and to her lover, with whom she had been on the point of marriage; but the wild count only laughed, and forced her to drink cup after cup of Rhenish wine, and to sing and play on her ghittern.

"One day, when he was caressing and endeavouring to console her in his own rough way, he swore a terrible oath that he would love her till death, and no one else!

"Believe him not!" exclaimed a hollow voice behind—a voice like that of the dead countess. At the same moment a lean and wasted arm and hand, grasping a dagger, came out of the stone wall, and the count fell dead, stabbed to the heart!

"In his breast was found the countess's dagger—the same weapon that had been buried with her!"

As the count of Nassau concluded this strange story, they rode through the dark archway into the barbican of the castle, which seemed old and gloomy, even to Gray, who had come from a land of grim and guarded fortresses.