look. When
out of the room he was about to open his mouth to ejaculate an oath,
but his eye catching sight of a page, he made a grimace intended to
represent a smile, as he descended the staircase.

CHAPTER IX.

An hour after the attack in the court-yard Lydia found herself in a
small room with barred windows lying on a bundle of straw alive with
vermin. She felt a hard bony hand applying a wet cloth to her forehead.
She wished in her gratitude to see who her nurse might be, but the face
which met her look was so repulsive, that terrified she once more
closed her wearied eyelids. "How did I get here?" she asked herself.
Indistinctly she seemed to remember having been jolted in a cart. Once
as she opened her eyes, she had seen groups of horrified citizens
staring up from the street at her. It still appeared to her as in some
dreadful dream that before her stood the terrible tower within the
walls of the Zwinger and that she had been dragged along a dark
passage.

"You seem to think I have nothing else to do than to wait on you," she
heard a coarse gruff voice saying. "You may go at once to the Devil as
far as I am concerned, that would be best for us and you." Therewith
the poor fainting creature was shaken so roughly, that Lydia came back
to her senses and started up terrified. The dirty woman before her
resembled a wicked old dog, having a still more wicked master. One of
her eyes had been knocked out, and the red face bore traces of
continued ill-treatment. "What must I do, what must I do?" sobbed Lydia
vainly endeavoring to break away from the iron gripe of the old woman.
"You must acknowledge, at once acknowledge that you are a witch, for if
once persons of your kind are allowed time to think over things, the
affair drags on twice as long."

"But I am no witch," sighed the wearied child.

"That is what they all say, but did you not go to the Holtermann at
night?"

"Yes," sobbed Lydia.

"You see, you see."

"I wished only ..."

"Only what. We know well what people do who go at night to the
Holtermann. Did you not on the day that the storm which uncovered the
roof, broke loose, draw water from the well at sunrise?"

"Draw water, yes, I did that."

"You see, you see."

"I only wished ..."

"We already know what you wished," croaked the old woman. "Did you not
tell carroty Frances that you practised magic?"

"Never, never," assured Lydia weeping.

"What never,