Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/69

 belief that he was levelling a never-failing musket at him; and then he would seek with his finger for the trigger to fire the shot which was to have killed his neighbour. But it is time that we should connect with this epoch of the operations of the one, and the espionage of the other, the visit which Cornelius De Witte came to pay to his native town.

  , after having attended to his family affairs, reached the house of his godson, Cornelius van Baerle, one evening in the month of January, 1672.

De Witte, although being very little of a horticulturist or of an artist, went over the whole mansion, from the studio to the greenhouse, inspecting everything, from the pictures down to the tulips. He thanked his godson for having joined him on the deck of the admiral’s ship “The Seven Provinces,” during the battle of Southwold Bay, and for having given his name to a magnificent tulip; and whilst he thus, with the kindness and affability of a father to a son, visited Van Baerle’s treasures, the crowd gathered with curiosity, and even respect, before the door of the happy man.

All this hubbub excited the attention of Boxtel, who was just taking his meal by his fireside. He inquired what it meant, and, on being informed of the cause of all this stir, climbed up to his post of observation, where in spite of the cold, he took his stand, with the telescope to his eye.  E