"There's no
witchcraft here! She is innocent, I tell ye! O God! these bells! they
announce their coming! Bid them cease! bid them cease! they drive me
mad!"

At that moment a merry chime from the church-bells burst out joyously
upon the morning air, to announce that a fete was about to take place in
the town; for such a gratifying show as the burning of a witch, was a
fete for the inhabitants of Hammelburg.

"These bells! these bells!" again cried Claus in agony, as their merry
chime came in gusts along the rising wind, as if to mock his misery and
despair. "How often, during this long night, I have longed to hear their
joyous sound; and now they ring in my ears like the howlings of fiends!
But she shall not die! I will yet save her," continued the distracted
man; and he again shook the prison door with a force which his crippled
limbs could scarcely have been supposed to possess.

With difficulty could the now alarmed sentinels, who shouted for help,
cause the cripple to release his hold. Fresh guards rushed to the spot,
and assisted to seize the desperate man. But in vain he protested the
innocence of the supposed sorceress--in vain he cried to them to release
her. He was treated as bewitched; and it was only when at last, overcome
by the violence of his struggles, he ceased to resist with so much
energy, that they allowed him to remain unbound, and let fall the cords
with which they had already commenced to tie his arms.

"The Ober-Amtmann will come," he said at last, with a sort of sullen
resignation. "He must--he shall hear me. He shall know all--he will
believe her innocent."

In the meanwhile, the market-place had already begin to fill with an
anxious crowd. In a short time, the press of spectators come to witness
the bloody spectacle, began to be great. The throng flowed on through
street and lane. There were persons of all ages, all ranks, of both
sexes--all hurrying, crowding, squeezing to the fete of horror and
death. Manifold and various were the hundreds of faces congregated in a
dense mass, as near as the guards would admit them round the pile--all
moved by one feeling of hideous curiosity. Little by little, all the
windows of the surrounding houses were jammed with faces--each window a
strange picture in its quaintly-carved wooden frame. The crowd was
there--the living crowd eager for death--palpitating with
excitement--each heart beating with one pitiless feeling of greedy
cruelty. And the bells s