rasped his bundle
of papers and rose to make his final speech.

The judges settled themselves to closer attention. The hush of
listening folk broadened to the utmost limits of the great hall. At a
whisper or a cough a hundred threatening faces were turned in the
direction of the sound, so strained was the attention of the people and
such the fear of the eloquence of this most famous pleader in all
Germany. In these days when learning has reached so great a pitch, and
is so general that in a largish city there may be as many as a thousand
people who can read and write, of course there are many eloquent men.
But in those days it was not so, and Grerard von Sturm was counted the
one Golden Mouth of the Wolfmark.

And this in brief was the matter of his speech. The manner and the
persuasive grace I cannot attempt to give:

"It has at all times been a received opinion of the wise that witchcraft
is a thing truly practised--by which such women as the Witch of Endor in
Holy Writ were able to call dead men out of their deep graves grown with
grass; or, as in that famous case of Demarchaus, who, having by the
advice of such a woman tasted the flesh of a sacrificed child, was
immediately turned into a wolf.

"Further, the testimony-of Scripture is clear: 'Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live'; and, again, as sayeth the Wise Man, 'Thou hast hated
them, 0 God, because with enchantments they did horrible works.'

"Now, men may by conspicuous bravery guard their lives against assault by
the sword of the enemy, against the spear of the invader that cometh over
the wall, even against the knife of the assassin. But who shall be able
to keep out witchcraft? It moveth in the motes of the mid-day sun. It
comes stealing into the room on the pale beams of the moon. Witchcraft
rides in the hurtling blast, and shrieks in the gust which shakes the
roof and blows awry the candle in the hall.

"Enchantment can summon Azazeli, the Lord of Flesh and Blood, called in
another place the Lord of the Desert, by whose spiriting of the elements
even the pure water of the spring or the juice of the purple grape may
become noxious as the brew of the serpent's poison-bag.

"Of such a sort was the ill-doing of this woman. For her own hellish
purposes she desired and compassed the death of the most noble Duke
Casimir. There may be those who try to discover a motive for such an act.
But in this they do foolishly. For to those who have studied of this
m