Lastly he had walked home arm in arm with his lady-snatching Spaniard, and by Heaven! yes, he had sworn eternal friendship with him on the doorstep.
Well, there was no doubt that the Count was an uncommonly good fellow--for a Spaniard.

As for that story of the foul he had explained it quite satisfactorily, and he had taken his beating like a gentleman.
Could anything be nicer or in better feeling than his allusions to Cousin Pieter in his after-supper speech?
Also, and this was a graver matter, the man had shown that he was tolerant and kindly by the way in which he dealt with the poor creature called the Mare, a woman whose history Dirk knew well; one whose sufferings had made of her a crazy and rash-tongued wanderer, who, so it was rumoured, could use a knife.
In fact, for the truth may as well be told at once, Dirk was a Lutheran, having been admitted to that community two years before.

To be a Lutheran in those days, that is in the Netherlands, meant, it need scarcely be explained, that you walked the world with a halter round your neck and a vision of the rack and the stake before your eyes; circumstances under which religion became a more earnest and serious thing than most people find it in this century.

Still even at that date the dreadful penalties attaching to the crime did not prevent many of the burgher and lower classes from worshipping God in their own fashion.
Indeed, if the truth had been known, of those who were present at Lysbeth's supper on the previous night more than half, including Pieter van de Werff, were adherents of the New Faith.
To dismiss religious considerations, however, Dirk could have wished that this kindly natured Spaniard was not quite so good-looking or quite so appreciative of the excellent points of the young Leyden ladies, and especially of Lysbeth's, with whose sterling character, he now remembered, Montalvo had assured him he was much impressed.

What he feared was that this regard might be reciprocal.