What mean that heavy, crashing sound?
Ben could not stir. He could only gasp. "Jacob!""Jacob!" cried another startled voice and another. Ready to faint, Ben managed to turn his head. He saw a crowd of boys on the edge of the wall opposite, but Jacob was not there!
"Good heavens!" he cried, springing forward, "where is my cousin?"The crowd parted. It was only four boys, after all. There sat Jacob in their midst, holding his sides and laughing heartily.
"Did I frighten you all?" he said in his native Dutch. "Well, Iwill tell you how it was. There was a big stone lying on the wall and I put my--my foot out just to push it a little, you see, and the first thing I knew, down went the stone all the way to the bottom and left me sitting here on top with both my feet in the air. If I had not thrown myself back at that moment, Icertainly should have rolled over after the stone. Well, it is no matter. Help me up, boys.""You're hurt!" said Ben, seeing a shade of seriousness pass over his cousin's face as they lifted him to his feet.
Jacob tried to laugh again. "Oh, no--I feels a little hurt ven Istant up, but it ish no matter."The monument to Van der Werf in the Hooglandsche Kerk was not accessible that day, but the boys spent a few pleasant moments in the Stadhuis or town hall, a long irregular structure somewhat in the Gothic style, uncouth in architecture but picturesque from age. Its little steeple, tuneful with bells, seemed to have been borrowed from some other building and hastily clapped on as a finishing touch.
Ascending the grand staircase, the boys soon found themselves in a rather gloomy apartment, containing the masterpiece of Lucas van Leyden, or Hugens, a Dutch artist born three hundred and seventy years ago, who painted well when he was ten years of age and became distinguished in art when only fifteen. This picture, called the Last Judgment, considering the remote age in which it was painted, is truly a remarkable production. The boys, however, were less interested in tracing out the merits of the work than they were in the fact of its being a triptych--that is, painted on three divisions, the two outer ones swung on hinges so as to close, when required, over the main portion.
The historical pictures of Harel de Moor and other famous Dutch artists interested them for a while, and Ben had to be almost pulled away from the dingy old portrait of Van der Werf.
The town hall, as well as the Egyptian Museum, is on the Breedstraat, the longest and finest street in Leyden. It has no canal running through it, and the houses, painted in every variety of color, have a picturesque effect as they stand with their gable ends to the street; some are very tall with half their height in their step-like roofs; others crouch before the public edifices and churches. Being clean, spacious, well-shaded, and adorned with many elegant mansions, it compares favorably with the finery portions of Amsterdam. It is kept scrupulously neat. Many of the gutters are covered with boards that open like trapdoors, and it is supplied with pumps surmounted with shining brass ornaments kept scoured and bright at the public cost. The city is intersected by numerous water roads formed by the river Rhine, there grown sluggish, fatigued by its long travel, but more than one hundred and fifty stone bridges reunite the dissevered streets. The same world-renowned river, degraded from the beautiful, free-flowing Rhine, serves as a moat from the rampart that surrounds Leyden and is crossed by drawbridges at the imposing gateways that give access to the city. Fine broad promenades, shaded by noble trees, border the canals and add to the retired appearance of the houses behind, heightening the effect of scholastic seclusion that seems to pervade the place.
Ben, as he scanned the buildings on the Rapenburg Canal, was somewhat disappointed in the appearance of the great University of Leyden. But when he recalled its history--how, attended with all the pomp of a grand civic display, it had been founded by the Prince of Orange as a tribute to the citizens for the bravery displayed during the siege; when he remembered the great men in religion, learning, and science who had once studied there and thought of the hundreds of students now sharing the benefits of its classes and its valuable scientific museums--he was quite willing to forego architectural beauty, though he could not help feeling that no amount of it could have been misplaced on such an institution.
Peter and Jacob regarded the building with an even deeper, more practical interest, for they were to enter it as students in the course of a few months.
"Poor Don Quixote would have run a hopeless tilt in this part of the world," said Ben after Lambert had been pointing out some of the oddities and beauties of the suburbs. "It is all windmills.
You remember his terrific contest with one, I suppose.""No," said Lambert bluntly.
"Well, I don't, either, that is, not definitely. But there was something of that kind in his adventures, and if there wasn't, there should have been. Look at them, how frantically they whirl their great arms--just the thing to excite the crazy knight to mortal combat. It bewilders one to look at them. Help me to count all those we can see, Van Mounen. I want a big item for my notebook." And after a careful reckoning, superintended by all the party, Master Ben wrote in pencil, "Saw, Dec., 184--, ninety-eight windmills within full view of Leyden."He would have been glad to visit the old brick mill in which the painter Rembrandt was born, but he abandoned the project upon learning that it would take them out of their way. Few boys as hungry as Ben was by this time would hesitate long between Rembrandt's home a mile off and tiffin close by. Ben chose the latter.
After tiffin, they rested awhile, and then took another, which, for form's sake, they called dinner. After dinner the boys sat warming themselves at the inn; all but Peter, who occupied the time in another fruitless search for Dr. Boekman.
