"In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family
of corpses, father, mother and children, side by side; for a disorder
called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now
came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The
pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed
inhabitants fell like grass beneath it scythe. From six thousand
to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone, yet
the people resolutely held out--women and men mutually encouraging
each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe--an evil more
horrible than pest or famine. [3]

"The missives from Valdez, who saw more vividly than the besieged
could do, the uncertainty of his own position, now poured daily into
the city, the enemy becoming more prodigal of his vows, as he felt that
the ocean might yet save the victims from his grasp. The inhabitants,
in their ignorance, had gradually abandoned their hopes of relief,
but they spurned the summons to surrender. Leyden was sublime in
its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at
the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed
at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his
inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the
heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed
through the streets.

"A crowd had gathered around him, as he reached a triangular place
in the centre of the town, into which many of the principal streets
emptied themselves, and upon one side of which stood the church of
St. Pancras, with its high brick tower surmounted by two pointed
turrets, and with two ancient lime trees at its entrance. There stood