Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/81

 “That’s no affair of mine, Doctor, you will explain all that before your judges.”

“Where?”

“At the Hague.”

Cornelius, in mute stupefaction, embraced his old nurse, who was in a swoon; shook hands with his servants, who were bathed in tears; and followed the magistrate, who put him in a coach, as a prisoner of State, and had him driven at full gallop to the Hague.

  incident just related was, as the reader has guessed before this, the mischievous work of Mynheer Isaac Boxtel.

It will be remembered that, with the help of his telescope, not even the least detail of the private meeting between Cornelius De Witte and Van Baerle had escaped him. He had, indeed, heard nothing; but he had seen everything, and had rightly concluded that the papers entrusted by the Warden to the Doctor must have been of great importance, as he saw Van Baerle so carefully secreting the parcel in the drawer where he used to keep his most precious bulbs.

The upshot of all this was, that when Boxtel—who watched the course of political events much more attentively than his neighbour Cornelius was used to do—heard the news of the brothers De Witte being arrested on a charge of high treason against the States, he thought within his heart, that very likely he, Boxtel, needed only to say one word, and the godson would be arrested as well as the godfather. 