The refusal of the unhappy Magdalena to abide by the issue of the well-known trial by water, had so much abridged the customary proceedings, that orders were given, and preparations made, for the execution of the ultimate punishment for the crime of witchcraft--burning at the stake--shortly after daybreak on the morrow. It was yet night--a short hour before the breaking of the dawn. The pile had been already heaped in the market-place of Hammelburg--the stake fixed. All was in readiness for the hideous performance about to take place. The guards paced backwards and forwards before the grated doorway, which opened under the terrace of the old town-hall; for there, in that miserable hole, was confined the wretched victim of popular delusion. The soldiers kept watch, however, upon their prisoner at such a distance as to be as far as possible out of the reach of her malefic spells. The heavy clanking of their pikes, as they rested them from time to time upon the pavement, or paused to interchange a word, alone broke the silence of the still sleeping town--sleeping, to awake shortly like a tiger thirsty for blood. The light of a waning moon showed indistinctly the dark mass in the centre of the market-place--the stage upon which the frightful tragedy was about to be enacted--when one of the sentinels all at once turning his head in that direction, descried a dark form creeping around the pile, as if examining it on all sides. "What's that?" he cried in alarm to his comrade, pointing to this dark object. "Is it the demon himself, whom she has conjured up, and who now comes to deliver her? All good spirits"--and he crossed himself with hurried zeal. "Praise the Lord!" continued the other, completing the usual German form of exorcism, and crossing himself no less devoutly. "Challenge him, Hans!" said the first; "at the sound of a Christian voice, mayhap, he may vanish away; and thou art ever boasting to Father Peter that thou are the most Christian man of thy company." "Challenge him thyself," replied Hans, in a voice that did not say much for the firmness of his conscience as a Christian. "Let's challenge him both at once," proposed the other soldier. "Perhaps, between us, we may muster up goodness enough to drive the foul fiend before us." "Agreed!" replied Hans, with somewhat better courage; and upon this joint-stock company principle of piety, both the soldiers raised their voices at once, and cried, in a somewhat quavering duet, "Who goes there?" A hoarse laugh was the only answer received to this challenge; and the dark form seemed to advance towards them across the market-place.