o that they might do no harm to anyone.

The same instant the blaspheming mob fell upon the defenceless squire,
tore at his grey locks and impotent limbs, and hurled him to the ground.

"Smash him, kill him, the poison-mixer!" resounded from every side, and
the bloodthirsty cowards rushed furiously from their hiding-places with
cudgels and flails, to the spot where the defenceless old squire was
lying.

The worthy Leather-bell had not another word to say, but he cast himself
at full length upon the prostrate gentleman, and, tightly embracing his
frail figure, defended him with his own body from the first onset of the
raging mob.

In vain they pummelled, in vain they kicked him, his self-sacrificing
back endured everything, and patiently received the beating intended for
his master.

The poor fellow, after all, would really have been a very good man if
only he had not been so very simple.

"Clear out, will you!" cried Dame Zudar and Thomas Bodza simultaneously,
"we must not kill him. We want to get something out of him, so he must
live. Let no one hurt him, then, till he has received his sentence."

At last the two ringleaders succeeded in clearing away the furious mob
from the mauled and trampled body of the squire. Then they raised him
from the ground, tied his hands together, and fastened him tightly by
one lean arm to the trellised gate of the castle. Blood oozed from the
old man's limbs beneath the pressure of the rough cord, yet, with not so
much as a groan did Benjamin Hetfalusy betray the torture he was
suffering.

* * * * *

And thou, oh, man, in thy fiery pit, art thou still singing thy hymns
below there, art thou still testing the edge of thy sword with the tips
of thy fingers, just as if it were the string of some sad and delicate
musical instrument, which can give forth but one voice, and that the
voice of a sad, sad song?

The heat of the collapsed dwelling was now penetrating to the cellar
below, and the straitened prisoner began to bethink him of some other
place of refuge.

Instead of the fierce crackle of the flames which had met his ear
hitherto, he now could only hear a monotonous flickering as of expiring
embers, and this lasted for a long time, when suddenly a fresh noise
attracted his attention.

Not far from his hiding-place something began to sound like the voice of
a wind-clapper. At first it went clap! clap! clap! very rapidly, but
gradually the st