As it happened, this lenience could not have been less fortunately (or, for Grotius, more fortunately) framed.

Books came continually to the prisoner, which, when read, were returned in the same chest that conveyed his linen to the Gorcum wash.

At first the guard carefully examined each departing load; but after a while the form was omitted.

Grotius's wife, a woman of no common order (when asked why she did not sue for her husband's pardon, she had replied, "I will not do it: if he have deserved it let them strike off his head"), was quick to notice the negligence of the guard, and giving out that her husband was bedridden, she concealed him in the chest, and he was dumped on a tjalck and earned over to Gorcum.

While on his journey he had the shuddering experience of hearing some one remark that the box was heavy enough to have a man in it; but it was his only danger.