the only reply returned to his cries by the crowd.

In truth the miserable man bore all the outward signs of a person who,
in those times, might be supposed to be smitten by the spells of
witchcraft. His eyes rolled in his head. His every feature was distorted
in the agony of his passion. His mouth foamed like that of a mad dog.
His struggles became desperate convulsions.

But he struggled in vain. The procession advanced towards the stake.
Between two bodies of guards, the condemned woman dragged her suffering
bare feet over the rough stones of the market-place. On one side of her
walked the executioner of the town; on the other, his assistant, with a
lighted torch of tow, besmeared with resin and pitch, shedding around in
a small cloud, the lurid smoke that was soon about to arise in a heavy
volume from the pile. The chief _schreiber_ had mounted, with his
adjuncts, the terrace before the door of the town-hall, whence it was
customary for the chief dignitary of the town to superintend such
executions. The bells rang on their merry peal.

And now the unhappy woman was forced on to the pile. The executioner
followed. He bound her resistless to the stake, and then himself
descended. At each of the four corners of the pile, a guard on horseback
kept off the crowd. There was a pause. Then appeared, at one end of the
mass of wood and fagots, a slight curling smoke--a faint light. The
executioner had applied the torch. A few seconds--and a bright glaring
flame licked upwards with a forked tongue, and a heavier gush of smoke
burst upwards in the air. The miserable woman crossed her hands over her
breast--raised her eyes for a moment to heaven, and then, closing them
upon the scene around her, moved her lips in prayer--in the last prayer
of the soul's agony. The crowd, which, during the time when the
procession had advanced towards the pile, had howled with its usual
pitiless howl, was now silent, breathless, motionless, in the extreme
tension of its excitement. But still the merry peal of bells rang on.

The smoke grew thicker and thicker. The flame already darted forward, as
if to snatch at the miserable garment of its victim, and claim her as
its own, when there was heard a struggle--a cry--a shout of frantic
despair. The cripple, in that moment when all were occupied with the
fearful sight, had broken on those who held him, and before another hand
could seize him, had staggered through the crowd, and now swung himself
w