must keep fair with him, for we have gone too far to draw back.«
    »Your daughter advises well,« said Quentin Durward, abstaining from
reproaches or exhortations, which he saw would be alike unavailing to sway a
resolution, which had been adopted by the worthy magistrate in compliance at
once with the prejudices of his party and the inclination of his wife - »Your
daughter counsels well - We must part in disguise, and that instantly. We may, I
trust, rely upon you for the necessary secrecy, and for the means of escape?«
    »With all my heart - with all my heart,« said the honest citizen, who, not
much satisfied with the dignity of his own conduct, was eager to find some mode
of atonement. »I cannot but remember that I owed you my life last night, both
for unclasping that accursed steel doublet, and helping me through the other
scrape, which was worse; for yonder Boar and his brood look more like devils
than men. So I will be true to you as blade to haft, as our cutlers say, who are
the best in the whole world. Nay, now you are ready, come this way - you shall
see how far I can trust you.«
    The Syndic led him from the chamber in which he had slept to his own
counting-room, in which he transacted his affairs of business; and after bolting
the door, and casting a piercing and careful eye around him, he opened a
concealed and vaulted closet behind the tapestry, in which stood more than one
iron chest. He proceeded to open one which was full of guilders, and placed it
at Quentin's discretion, to take whatever sum he might think necessary for his
companion's expenses and his own.
    As the money with which Quentin was furnished on leaving Plessis was now
nearly expended, he hesitated not to accept the sum of two hundred guilders; and
by doing so took a great weight from the mind of Pavillon, who considered the
desperate transaction in which he thus voluntarily became the creditor, as an
atonement for the breach of hospitality which various considerations in a great
measure compelled him to commit.
    Having carefully locked his treasure-chamber, the wealthy Fleming next
conveyed his guest to the parlour, where, in full possession of her activity of
mind and body, though pale from the scenes of the preceding night, he found the
Countess attired in the fashion of a Flemish maiden of the middling class. No
other was present excepting Trudchen, who was sedulously employed in completing
the Countess's dress, and