"Where is the Ober-Amtmann?" cried Claus in agony. "I must see him--I must speak with him! She is innocent--I swear she is! He will save her, villain as he has been, when he hears all." The general cry that Black Claus had been bewitched by the sorceress, was a sufficient explanation to the chief _schreiber_ of his seemingly frantic words. "Poor man!" was his only reply. "She has worked her last spell upon him. Her death alone can save his reason." In spite of the struggles and cries of the infuriated cripple, the door was opened, and the unhappy Magdalena was forced to come forwards by the guards. She looked wretchedly haggard and careworn in her sackcloth robe, with her short-cut grey hairs left bare. A chain was already bound around her waist, and clanked as she advanced. As her eyes fell upon her miserable son she gave one convulsive shudder of despair; and then, clasping her hands towards him with a look of pity and forgiveness, she murmured with a tone of resignation--"It is too late. Farewell! farewell! until we meet again, where there shall be no sorrow, no care, no pain--only mercy and forgiveness!" "No, no--thou shalt not die!" screamed the cripple, whom several bystanders, as well as guards, now held back with force, in awe as well as pity at his distracted state.--"Thou shalt not die! She is my mother!" he cried like a maniac to the crowd around. "My mother--do ye hear? She is innocent. What I said yesterday was false--utterly false--a damning lie! She is not guilty--you would murder her! Fools! wretches, assassins! You believed me when I witnessed against her; why will ye not believe me now? She is innocent, I tell you. Ye shall not kill her!" "He is bewitched! he is bewitched! To the stake with the sorceress!--to the stake!" was the only reply returned to his cries by the crowd. In truth the miserable man bore all the outward signs of a person who, in those times, might be supposed to be smitten by the spells of witchcraft. His eyes rolled in his head. His every feature was distorted in the agony of his passion. His mouth foamed like that of a mad dog. His struggles became desperate convulsions. But he struggled in vain. The procession advanced towards the stake. Between two bodies of guards, the condemned woman dragged her suffering bare feet over the rough stones of the market-place. On one side of her walked the executioner of the town; on the other, his assistant, with a lighted torch of tow, besmeared with resin and pitch, shedding around in a small cloud, the lurid smoke that was soon about to arise in a heavy volume from the pile. The chief _schreiber_ had mounted, with his adjuncts, the terrace before the door of the town-hall, whence it was customary for the chief dignitary of the town to superintend such executions. The bells rang on their merry peal.