Fool--infatuated fool!--monster that I was!" cried the
witchfinder. "Bertha was your daughter--my sister; and I have smitten
the mother for the love she bore her child. And he--her father--he was
that villain! Curses on him!"

"Peace! Peace! my son!" continued Magdalena, "and curse no more. Nor can
I tell thee that it was so. I have sworn that oath never to divulge my
daughter's birth; and cruel, heartless, as was the feeling that forced
it on me, I must observe it ever. And thus I continued to live
on--absorbed in the one thought of my child and her happiness--heedless
of the present--forgetful of my duty; when suddenly, but two days ago,
he who has been the kind guardian of my spiritual weal, appeared before
me in the chamber where, alone and unobserved, I wept over the picture
of my child. He came, I presume, by a passage seldom opened, from the
monastery, whither his duties had called him. He chid me for my
flight--recalled me to my task of expiation--and, bidding me return to
the convent, left me, with an injunction not to say that I had seen him.
Nor could I reveal the fact of my mysterious interview with him, or tell
his name, without giving a clue to the truth of my own existence, and
the discovery of all I had sworn so binding an oath ever to conceal.
Thou sawest him also--but, alas! with other thoughts."

"Madman that I have been!" exclaimed the witchfinder. "Or is it now that
I am mad? Am I not raving? Is not all this insane delusion? No--thou are
there before me--closed from my embraces by these cruel bars that I have
placed between us. Thou! my mother--my long-lost--my beloved--most
wretched mother, in that dreadful garb!--condemned to die by thy own
infatuated son! Would that I _were_ mad, and that I could close my brain
to so much horror! But thou shalt not die, my mother--thou shalt not
die! Thou are innocent! I will proclaim thy innocence to all! They will
believe my word--will they not? For it was I who testified against thee.
I, the matricide! I will tell them that I lied. Thou shalt not die, my
mother! Already! already!--horror!--the day is come!"

The day _was_ come. The first faint doubtful streaks of early dawn had
gradually spread, in a cold heavy grey light, over the sky. By degrees
the darkness had fled, and the market-place, the surrounding gables of
the houses, the black pile in the midst, had become clearer and clearer
in harsh distinctness. The day _was_ come! Already a few narrow
caseme