reme
tension of the nerves.

"Oh no!" she murmured to herself as he yet spoke; "that were too
horrible!" and when he paused, it was with a smothered scream of agony,
still mixed with doubt, that she cried "Karl!"

"Karl!" repeated the witchfinder, clenching the bars with still firmer
grasp, and raising himself with the effort to the full height of his
stature, as though his limbs had on a sudden recovered all their
strength--"Karl! Ay, that was my name! How dost thou know it, woman?"

"O God!" exclaimed the wretched tenant of the cell, "was my cup of
bitterness not yet full? Hast thou reserved me this?" She wrung her
hands in agony, and then, looking again at the cripple, cried in a tone
of concentrated misery, "Karl! they told me that thou wast dead--that
thou, too, hadst died after that night of horrors!"

"Who art thou, woman?" cried the cripple again, with an accent of
horror, as if a frightful thought had for the first time forced itself
upon his brain. "Who art thou, that thou speakest to me thus, and
freezest the very marrow of my bones with fear? Who art thou that criest
'Karl' with such a voice--a voice that now comes back upon my ear, as if
it were a damning memory of times gone by? Who art thou woman?--speak!
Let not this dreadful thought, that blasts me like lightning, strike me
utterly to the earth."

"Who I am?" sobbed the miserable woman. "Thy wretched and guilty mother,
Karl!"

"Guilty!" shouted the cripple. "Then thou art not she! My mother was not
guilty--she was all innocence and truth!"

"I am thy guilty mother, Karl," repeated the kneeling woman, "who has
striven, by long years of penitence and prayer, to expiate the past.
Alas, in vain! for Heaven refuses the expiation, since it has reserved
the wretched penitent this last, most fearful blow of all!"

"Thou!--oh no!--say it not! Thou my mother!" cried the witchfinder.

"Thy mother--Margaret Weilheim!"

"Horrible!--most horrible!" repeated the agonized son, letting go the
bars, and clasping his bony hands over his face. "Thou, my once beloved
mother, the wretched being of misery and sin--the accomplice of the
spirits of darkness--and _I_ thy denouncer! O God! This is some fearful
delusion!"

"The delusion is in thy own heart, my poor, distracted, infatuated son,"
pursued the miserable mother. "Happy and blessed were I, were no greater
guilt upon my soul than that of the crime for which I am this day
condemned to die. Bitter it is to di