“Zillah has been wrecked, and only she and two of her train, with a few common sailors, have escaped. Her strange companions, her foreign tongue, but, more than all, the accursed perjuries of a thieving innkeeper, have brought on her the charge of sorcery, a tumult has been raised, she has been arrested, and—God of my fathers!—may even now be suffering on the rack or at the stake. Oh! why did I ever submit to leave her? But, by the mother of God! if a hair of her head is harmed, I will hang every knave of Bourdonnois.” “Let us on at once, then; we may yet arrive in time.” “Pass the word down the line,” exclaimed the Count. “On, knights and gentlemen; we must not draw rein until we reach Bourdonnois.” After a few minutes of hurried consultation with the servant, who stated that he and his fellow had escaped in the height of the tumult, and each, by different roads, sought the port where they supposed the Count to be, the gallant array set forward at a rapid pace, and in a few moments nothing but a cloud of dust in the valley and on the hill-side was left to tell of their late presence. It was already high noon in Bourdonnois. A little out of the town, in a gentle valley, was the place chosen for the infliction of the horrid sentence. For more than an hour—indeed ever since the condemnation of the accused—the populace had been pouring thither in crowds, until now a vast multitude, comprising nearly the whole population of the town, surrounded the place of execution, and covered the encircling hills, like spectators in an amphitheatre. At length the procession came in sight. First marched a body of soldiery; then followed the magistrates of the town; directly after appeared several monks; and then, clad in white, with her pale face bent on the ground, and her hands tightly pressed together, came the victim. She made no answer, it was observed, to the words of the monks on either hand, but ever and anon she would kiss a crucifix which she carried, and raise her swimming eyes to Heaven. In that hour of bitterest agony, what must have been her emotions? She, the daughter of an Emir, and the affianced bride of one of the proudest nobles of France, to be hissed at by a mob, and end her life in unheard-of torments at the stake! Oh! if her lover, she thought, only knew of her peril! But alas! he was far away. Well might she raise her streaming eyes to Heaven as to her only hope, and well might she turn away from the ministers of religion who sanctioned her sacrifice, and trust only in that cross which was her lover’s gift, and the emblem of the sufferings of one whom that lover had taught her was the only true God. “Oh!” she murmured to herself, “if Henri only knew my peril, he would yet rescue me. But there is no hope; and I must not forget that I am the daughter of a warrior. Henri shall hear that I died as became his affianced bride;” and her figure seemed to dilate and her walk to grow more majestic as she thought.