Page:Augusta Seaman--Jacqueline of the carrier pigeons.djvu/292

266 and ate as only a half-starved, healthy boy can eat, till he could hold no more.

Hunger satisfied, he proceeded to investigate the fleeing general’s quarters. By the dying fire-light he could discern several maps  of Leyden and the outlying districts pinned  about the walls, and on the table lay a scrap  of paper hastily written upon. Gysbert took it out to the fire, coaxed the embers into a  blaze, and kneeling over the flames tried to  decipher the writing. It was in Latin, and very poor Latin at that, and was plainly the  General’s farewell to the city. Gysbert had been for over a year studying this language  in school, so he was able to construe its  meaning fairly well.

“Vale civitas!” he read. “Valete castelli parvii, qui relicti estis propter aquam et non  per vim inimicorum!”

“‘Vale civitas!’—That’s ‘Farewell city of Leyden!’ I suppose. ‘Valete castelli parvii—’ What in the world can he mean by that! If I had written such stuff in the