ho sat there before thee,
Magdalena; but they prayed in vain."

"Leave me, wretched man!" said Magdalena, who now became aware that it
was the cripple who addressed her. "Hast thou not sufficiently sated thy
thirst for evil, that thou shouldst come to torment me in my last
moments? Go! tempt not the bitterness of my spirit in this supreme hour
of penitence and prayer. Go! for I have forgiven thee; and I would not
curse thee now."

"I defy thy curses, witch of hell!" cried the cripple with frantic
energy. "Already the first pale streaks of dawn begin to flicker in the
east. A little time, and thy power to curse will be no more; a little
time, and nothing will remain of thee but a heap of noisome ashes; and a
name, which will be mingled with that of the arch-enemy of mankind, in
the execrations of thy victims--a name to be remembered with horror and
disgust--as that of the foul serpent--in the thoughts of the tormented
cripple, and of the pure angel of brightness, upon whom thou hast sought
to work evil and death."

"O God! make not this hour of trial too hard for me to bear!" exclaimed
the unhappy woman; and then, raising her clasped hands to Claus in
bitter expostulation, she cried, "Man! what have I done to harm thee,
that thou shouldst heap these coals of fire on my soul?"

"What thou hast done to harm me?" cried the witchfinder. "Hast thou not
tormented my poor cripple limbs with thy infernal spells? Hast thou not
caused me to suffer the tortures of the damned? But it is not vengeance
that I seek. No--no. I have vowed a holy vow--I have sworn to spend my
life in the good task of purging from the earth such workers of evil as
thou, and those who served the fiend by their foul sorceries, were it
even at the risk of exposing my body to pain and suffering, and even
death, from the revengeful malice of their witchcrafts. And God knows I
have suffered in the holy cause."

And the cripple clenched again within his right hand, the image attached
to the rosary in his bosom, as if to satisfy himself by its contact of
the truth and right of those deeds, which he strove to qualify as holy.

"What thou, or such as thou, have done to harm me!" he continued with
bitter spite. "I will tell thee, hag! I was once a young and happy boy.
I was strong and well-favoured then. I had a father--a passionate but a
kind man; and I had a mother, whom I loved beyond all created things.
She was the joy of my soul--the pride of my boyish dre