raft. Still trembling with fright
the faithful soul had great trouble in arranging her young mistress'
dress and hair. Finally Lydia was ready and after that Barbara had
thrown a scarf around her, she prepared to follow the police-officer to
the Castle. At the door stood Master Ulrich with his bundle of keys:
"In three days, young lady," he said with a wicked look, "we shall meet
again. The commission on witchcraft always holds its sessions here, for
the gentlemen can never do long without me, so beware of your tongue.
And even if you escape this time, remember, that the next person that I
string up to force out the names of her accomplices, may name you;
sooner or later will you be here again. I say nothing more, you will
yourself know what is best for you."

Klytia passed on in silence. Outside the officer looked at her in a
kindly manner. "Be of good cheer, young lady," he said. "His Gracious
Highness has ordered that you should be taken to your father in the
tower, and I think the good Counsellor will himself not remain long
there. Our Lord God can permit the ravings of the Italians for a while,
but in the end he will not abandon his own." Lydia sobbed. "Only to be
with my father, that is all that I wished yesterday." If no other way
of coming to him existed than through the Witches' Tower, then her
terrible night was none too high a price. She dried her eyes with the
determination to be truly grateful and content, and not to mention her
terrible experiences, in order not to add to the sorrows of the already
overwhelmed man.

At the same moment that Lydia wearied and ill, tottered up the
Schlossberg, mostly leaning on the arm of her still weeping servant,
Erastus sat in a well-secured room in the Great Tower and gazed out
through his barred window at the ruins of the old Castle, now gleaming
in the golden rays of the evening sun. There the Count Palatines had
been wont to hurl down the eastern or western slopes of the Jettenbuehl
their spiritual or mundane enemies. They had ever boasted that they
feared neither the curses of the Bishops nor the excommunications of
the Popes. Now they lived in the proud Castle lower down, but the enemy
had crept within the fort itself, secret Jesuits and calvinistic
notables sowed the seed of Church dissension and formed the strange
combinations which finally must ruin the country. "One side has never
recognized religious peace, the other does its best to hinder its
blessings withi