tentedly on his ring, shrieking in shriller tones, put the
young Maestro in such a rage, that he would willingly have killed it.
Frau Belier warned him most decidedly against making any attack; the
only person who could aid in this matter was the Countess at the Stift
Neuburg, and the brave little lady hastened thither. Felix however
rushed out again with a dim impulse of rendering himself useful to his
friends. Restlessly he walked around the Witches' Tower, near which he
found excited groups, looking up at the windows, but none could tell
him on which side Lydia had been imprisoned. The heartless remarks made
by the people cut him to the quick. "Dost thou really take the pretty
fair-haired creature to be a witch?" he heard a young man ask in a
commiserating tone. "The Devil likes pretty girls and is not content
with old hags like the herb-picker," was the coarse answer. It was
well, that Frau Belier had locked up his dagger, as otherwise he would
have stabbed the man for this callous brutality. He asked an old man
standing at his side, whether he believed that the young girl would be
set at liberty.

"Ah! Sir," answered the old man. "I have now lived forty years opposite
this Tower, and have never yet seen a prisoner come out of these doors
except with racked limbs, and the most of them only on their way to the
stake." When he saw how pale Felix grew and how his eyes rolled, he
added, "My dear Sir, if you had been obliged, as I have been, to hear
at night time the harrowing shrieks and dreadful moans of those being
tortured, you would wish as I do, that those suspected should at once
be burnt, for the idea, that perhaps an innocent person is being thus
racked, is enough to drive one mad."

"And is there no help, none?" stammered Felix.

"If Lucifer himself, or the All-merciful God does not carry off the
prisoners with the aid of His hosts through the air, none," said the
old man, who with a "God bless you," returned to his house no longer
able to continue a conversation on this dreadful subject.

"Through the air," stammered Felice looking up at the tower, he walked
round it, he counted the windows. He believed it would be possible to
climb into the Tower from the Garden of the Augustine convent without
being noticed. He would thus from the upper rooms search cell after
cell and run anyone through who prevented him from seeing Lydia. If he
could not succeed in carrying her off, he would kill her first and then
him