And now the unhappy woman was forced on to the pile. The executioner followed. He bound her resistless to the stake, and then himself descended. At each of the four corners of the pile, a guard on horseback kept off the crowd. There was a pause. Then appeared, at one end of the mass of wood and fagots, a slight curling smoke--a faint light. The executioner had applied the torch. A few seconds--and a bright glaring flame licked upwards with a forked tongue, and a heavier gush of smoke burst upwards in the air. The miserable woman crossed her hands over her breast--raised her eyes for a moment to heaven, and then, closing them upon the scene around her, moved her lips in prayer--in the last prayer of the soul's agony. The crowd, which, during the time when the procession had advanced towards the pile, had howled with its usual pitiless howl, was now silent, breathless, motionless, in the extreme tension of its excitement. But still the merry peal of bells rang on. The smoke grew thicker and thicker. The flame already darted forward, as if to snatch at the miserable garment of its victim, and claim her as its own, when there was heard a struggle--a cry--a shout of frantic despair. The cripple, in that moment when all were occupied with the fearful sight, had broken on those who held him, and before another hand could seize him, had staggered through the crowd, and now swung himself with force upon the pile. A cry of horror burst from the mass of spectators. They thought him utterly deprived of reason, and determined, in his madness, to die with the sorceress. But in a moment his bony hands had torn the link that bound the chain--had unwound the chain itself--had snatched the woman from the stake. Before, in the surprise of the moment, a single person had stirred, his arm seized, with firm and heavy gripe, the collar of the nearest horseman, who found himself in his seat on horseback upon a level with the elevation of the pile. He knocked him with violence from the saddle. The guard reeled and fell; and in the next instant Claus had flung himself on to the horse, and in his arms he bore the form of the half-fainting Magdalena. With a cry--a yell--a wild scream--he shouted, "To the sanctuary! to the sanctuary! she shall not die--room! room!" Trampling right and left to the earth the dense crowd, who fled from his passage as from an infuriated tiger in its spring, he dashed upon the animal over the market-place, and darted in full gallop down the street leading to the Bridge-gate of the town. "After him!" cried a thousand voices. The three other horsemen had already sprung after the fugitive. The guards hastened in the same direction. Several of the crowd rushed down the narrow street. All was confusion. Part of those who passed on impeded the others. Groans arose from those who had been thrown down by the frantic passage of Claus, and who, lying on the stones, prevented the pushing forwards of the others.