Many years had gone by since Lysbeth found her love again upon theisland in the Haarlemer Meer. The son that she bore there was now agrown man, as was her second son, Foy, and her own hair showed greybeneath the lappets of her cap.
Fast, fast wove the loom of God during those fateful years, and the webthereof was the story of a people's agony and its woof was dyed red withtheir blood. Edict had followed edict, crime had been heaped upon crime.Alva, like some inhuman and incarnate vengeance, had marched his army,quiet and harmless as is the tiger when he stalks his prey, across thefields of France. Now he was at Brussels, and already the heads ofthe Counts Egmont and Hoorn had fallen; already the Blood Council wasestablished and at its work. In the Low Countries law had ceased toexist, and there anything might happen however monstrous or inhuman.Indeed, with one decree of the Holy Office, confirmed by a proclamationof Philip of Spain, all the inhabitants of the Netherlands, threemillions of them, had been condemned to death. Men's minds were fullof terror, for on every side were burnings and hangings and torturings.Without were fightings, within were fears, and none knew whom they couldtrust, since the friend of to-day might be the informer or judge ofto-morrow. All this because they chose to worship God in their ownfashion unaided by images and priests.
Although so long a time had passed, as it chanced those personages withwhom we have already made acquaintance in this history were still alive.Let us begin with two of them, one of whom we know and one ofwhom, although we have heard of him before, will require someintroduction--Dirk van Goorl and his son Foy.