d along the road of destruction; and
often urged the abbot, who was anything but a zealot, to subject him to
an examination by torture.

In November, the chief magistrate was summoned, and informed of the
heresies with which the Hebrew had imperiled the soul of a Christian
child.

The wise abbot wished to avoid anything, that would cause excitement,
during this time of rebellion against the power of the Church, but the
magistrate claimed the right to commence proceedings against the doctor.
Of course, he said, sufficient proof must be brought against the accused.
Father Hieronymus might note down the blasphemous tenets he heard from
the boy's lips before witnesses, and at the Advent season the smith and
his son would be examined.

The abbot, who liked to linger over his books, was glad to know that the
matter was in the hands of the civil authorities, and enjoined Hieronymus
to pay strict attention.

On the third Sunday in Advent, the magistrate again came to the
monastery. His horses had worked their way with the sleigh through the
deep snow in the ravine with much difficulty, and, half-frozen, he went
directly to the refectory and there asked for his son.

The latter was lying with a bandaged eye in the cold dormitory, and when
his father sought him, he heard that Ulrich had wounded him.

It would not have needed Xaver's bitter complaints, to rouse his father
to furious rage against the boy who had committed this violence, and he
was by no means satisfied, when he learned that the culprit had been
excluded for three weeks from the others' sports, and placed on a very
frugal diet. He went furiously to the abbot.

The day before (Saturday), Ulrich had gone at noon, without the young
count, who was in confinement for some offence, to the snow-covered
play-ground, where he was attacked by Xaver and a dozen of his comrades,
pushed into a snow-bank, and almost suffocated. The conspirators had
stuffed icicles and snow under his clothes next his skin, taken off his
shoes and filled them with snow, and meantime Xaver jumped upon his back,
pressing his face into the snow till Ulrich lost his breath, and believed
his last hour had come.

Exerting the last remnant of his strength, he had succeeded in throwing
off and seizing his tormentor. While the others fled, he wreaked his rage
on the magistrate's son to his heart's content, first with his fists, and
then with the heavy shoe that lay beside him. Meantime, snowballs h