line of the trap-door; he felt a great desire to raise it, to descend into the vault and gaze at the cracked mirror, the brazier of dead coals and the mystic circles on the floor. Looking up, his eyes met Dirk’s, and without words his thought was understood.
“Leave it alone now,” said the sculptor softly. “Let us not speak of it before we reach Basle.”
At these words Theirry felt a great relief; the idea of discussing, even with the youth who so fascinated him, the horrible, alluring thing that was an intimate of his thoughts but a stranger to his lips, had filled him with uneasiness and dread. While he ate the food put before him, Dirk picked up the four gold coins Balthasar had left and looked at them curiously.
“Masses for her soul!” he cried. “Did he think that I would enter a church and bargain with a priest for that!”
He laughed, and flung the money out of the window at the nodding daisies.
Theirry gave him a startled glance.
“Why, till now I had thought that you felt tenderly towards the maid.”
Dirk laughed.
“Not I. I have never cared for women.”
“Nor I,” said Theirry simply; he leant back in his chair and his dreamy eyes were grave. “When young they are ornaments, it is true, but pleasant only if you flatter them, when they are overlooked they become dangerous — and a woman who is not young is absorbed in little concerns that are no matter to any but herself.”
The smile, still lingering on Dirk’s face, deepened derisively, it seemed.
“Oh, my fine philosopher!” he mocked. “Are you well fed now, and preaching again?”
He leant against the wall by the window, and the intense sunlight made his dull brown hair glitter here and there; he folded his arms and looked at Theirry narrowly.
“I warrant your mother was a fair woman,” he said. “I do not remember her. They say she had the loveliest face in Flanders, though she was only a clerk’s wife,” answered the young man. “I can believe it,” said Dirk.
Theirry glanced at him, a little bewildered; the youth had such abrupt changes of manner, such voice and eyes unfathomable, such a pale, fragile appearance, yet such a spirit of tempered courage.
“I marvel at you,” he said. “You will not always be unknown.”
“No,” answered Dirk. “I have never meant that I should be soon forgotten.”
Then he was beside Theirry, with a strip of parchment in his hand.
“I have made a list of what we have in the place of value — but I care not to sell them here.” “Why?” questioned Theirry.
Dirk frowned.
“I want no one over the threshold. I have a reputation — not one for holiness,” his strange face relaxed into a smile.
Theirry glanced at the list.
“Certes! How might one carry that even to the next town? Without a horse it were impossible.” Silver ware, glass, pictures, raiment, were marked on the strip of parchment.
Dirk bit his finger.
“We will not sell these things Master Lukas left to me,” he said suddenly. “Only a few. Such as the silver and the red copper wrought in Italy.”
Theirry lifted his grave eyes.
“I will carry those into the town if you give me a merchant’s name.”
Dirk mentioned one instantly, and where his house might be found.
“A Jew, but a secretive and wealthy man,” he added. “I carved a staircase in his mansion.” Theirry rose; the ache in his head and the horror in his heart had ceased together; the sense of coming excitement crept through his veins.
“There is much here that is worthless,” said Dirk, “and many things dangerous to reveal, yet a few of those that are neither might bring a fair sum — come, and I will show you.”
Theirry followed him through the dusty, sunny chambers to the store-rooms on the upper floor. Here Dirk brought treasures from a press in the wall; candlesticks, girdles with enamel links, carved cups, crystal goblets.
Selecting the finest of these he put them in a coffer, locked it and gave the key to Theirry. “There should be the worth of some gulden there,” he said, red in the face from stooping, and essayed to lift the coffer but failed.
Theirry, something amazed, raised it at once.
“’Tis not heavy,” he said.
“Nay,” answered Dirk, “but I am not strong,” and his eyes were angry.
Theirry was brought by this to give him some closer personal scrutiny than as yet he had. “How old are you” he asked.
“Twenty-five,” Dirk answered curly.
“Certes!” Theirry’s hazel eyes flew wide. “I had said eighteen.”
Dirk swung on his heel.
“Oh, get you gone,” he said roughly, “and be not over long — for I would be away from this place at once — do you hear? — at once.”
They left the room together.
“You have endured this for years,” said Theirry curiously. “And suddenly you count the hours to your departure.”
Dirk ran lightly ahead down the stairs, and his laugh came low and pleasant.
“Untouched, the wood will lie for ever,” he answered, “but set it alight and it will flame to the end.”
Chapter 5
Comrades
They had been a week on the road and now were nearing the borders of Flanders. The company of the other had become precious to each; though Theirry was grave and undemonstrative, Dirk, changeable, and quick of temper; today, however, the silence of mutual discontent was upon them.
Open disagreement had happened once before, at the beginning of their enterprise, when the young sculptor resolutely refused, foolishly it seemed to Theirry, to sell his house and furniture, or even to deliver at the church of St. Bavon the figures of St. Michael and the Devil, though the piece was finished.
Instead, he had turned the key on his possessions, leaving them the prey of dust, spiders and rats, and often Theirry would think uneasily of the shut-up house in the deserted square, and how the merciless sunlight must be streaming over the empty workroom and the daisies growing upon the grave of Balthasar’s wife.
Nevertheless, he was in thrall to the attraction of Dirk Renswoude; never in his life had he been so at ease with any one, never before felt his aims and ambitions understood and shared by another.
He knew nothing of his companion’s history nor did he care to question it; he fancied that Dirk was of noble birth; it seemed in his blood to live gently and softly; at the hostel where they rested, it was he who always insisted upon the best of accommodation, a chamber to himself, fine food and humble service.
This nicety of his it was that caused the coolness between them now.
At the little town they had just left a fair was in holding, and the few inns were full; lodging had been offered them in a barn with some merchants’ clerks, and this Theirry would have accepted gladly, but Dirk had refused peremptorily, to the accompaniment of much jeering from those who found this daintiness amusing in a poor traveller on foot.
After an altercation between the landlord and Theirry, a haughty silence of flashing eyes and red cheeks from Dirk, they had turned away through the gay fair, wound across the town