th!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

The bishop was too late. He found the widow Susannah a corpse;
standing at the head of the bed was little Katharina, as pale as death,
speechless, tearless, utterly annihilated. He kindly tried to cheer her,
and to speak words of comfort; but she pushed him away, tore herself
from him, and before he could stop her, she had fled out of the room.

Poor child! He had seen many a loving daughter mourning for her mother,
but never such grief as this. Here, thought he, were two human souls all
in all to each other, and hence this overwhelming sorrow.

Katharina had escaped to her own room, had thrown herself on the
couch--cowering so close that no one entering the room would have taken
the undistinguishable heap for a human being, a grown up, passionately
suffering girl.

It was very hot, and yet a cold shiver ran through her slender frame.
Was she now attacked by the pestilence? No; it would be too merciful of
Fate to take such pity on her woes.

The mother was dead, dragged to the grave by her own daughter. The
disease had first shown itself on her lips; and how many times had the
physician expressed his surprise at the plague having broken out in this
healthy quarter of the town, and in a house kept so scrupulously clean.
She knew at whose bidding the avenging angel had entered there, and
whose criminal guile had trifled with him. The words "murdered your
mother" haunted her, and she remembered the law of the ancients which
refused to prescribe a punishment for the killing of parents, because
they considered such a monstrous deed impossible.

A scornful smile curled her lip. Laws! Principles! Was there one that
she had not defied? She had contemned God, meddled with magic, borne
false witness, committed murder--and as to the one law with promise,
which, if Philippus was right, was exactly the same in the code of her
forefathers as on the tables of Moses, how had she kept that? Her own
mother was no more, and by her act!

All through this frightful retrospect she had never ceased to shiver
and, as this was becoming unendurable, she took to walking up and down
and seeking excuses for her sinful doings: It was not her mother, but
Heliodora whom she had wished to kill; why had malicious Fate...?

Here she was interrupted, for the young widow, who had heard the sad
news, sought her out to comfort her and offer her services. She spoke
to the girl with real affection; but her sweet, low tones