nocent blood
thy false witness has this day shed?"

"It is a lie!--it is a damning lie!" screamed the cripple, foaming with
passion. "I have borne no false witness! Besides, did not she avow her
deeds of darkness? did she not confess her complicity with the spirits
of hell, and her harlotries with the arch-deceiver of mankind?"

"Ay! when, tortured in mind and body, her poor weak old head gave way,
and she unconsciously affirmed all that her torturers had for hours past
been pressing upon her wavering understanding. Ye had driven her mad,
poor wretch!"

"'Tis false again!--'tis false!" repeated the witchfinder. "The truth
spoke out of her at last, when her treacherous paramour, the demon, had
deserted her. God's glory and that of the holy church, for which I work,
had triumphed over the powers of darkness."

"Thou serve the holy church! Hear not the blasphemy, O Lord!" cried the
excited woman, raising up her hands to heaven. "Thou, miserable wretch!
who, for the favour of the Amtmann or the priest, for the pittance
bestowed on thee in reward of thy discovery of the supposed foul
practices of witchery and magic, art ever ready to sell the innocent
blood of the aged, helpless, and infirm!"

"For the lucre of gain!" screamed the cripple, but in a tone as much of
despair at this accusation as of wrath. "For the lucre of gain! No--no;
as God is my judge, it is not! My motives are pure; God and the Holy
Virgin know they are! It is not even a spirit of revenge that instigates
me. No--no! it cannot be; it _is_ not! If the words of my mouth have
condemned and killed, it is because my voice was uplifted in the cause
of religion, and to the confusion of the prince of evil!" But as he
spoke, the beggar covered his face with his hands, with a shudder, as
though there passed in his soul a struggle with himself--a doubt of his
own real motives.

Magdalena was about to quit in haste her dangerous companion, when a
sentiment of pity at the sight of the cripple's evident emotion seemed
to mingle strangely with her disgust and aversion to the witchfinder. It
was even with an uncontrollable feeling of interest that she stopped for
a moment to look upon the wretched man.

After a pause, the beggar removed his hands from his face, and uttering
in a low tone the words, "I thirst," staggered to the edge of the well,
and seized the bucket within his hands. He bent over it but for a moment
to drink, and could scarcely have swallowed many