Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/113

 Cornelius, without showing any weakness, but likewise without any bravado, received them rather as friends than as persecutors, and quietly submitted to all those preparations which these men were obliged to make in performance of their duty.

Then, casting a glance into the yard through the narrow iron-barred window of his cell, he perceived the scaffold, and, at twenty paces distant from it, the gibbet, from which, by order of the Stadtholder, the outraged remains of the two brothers De Witte had been taken down.

When the moment came to descend, in order to follow the guards, Cornelius sought with his eyes the angelic look of Rosa; but he saw, behind the swords and halberds, only a form lying outstretched near a wooden bench, and a death-like face, half covered with long golden locks.

But, whilst falling down senseless, Rosa, still obeying her friend, had pressed her hand on her velvet bodice, and, forgetting everything in the world besides, instinctively grasped the precious deposit which Cornelius had entrusted to her care.

Leaving the cell the young man could still see, in the convulsively-clenched fingers of Rosa, the yellowish leaf from that Bible on which Cornelius De Witte had with such difficulty and pain written those few lines, which, if Van Baerle had read them, would undoubtedly have been the saving of a man and a tulip.