"I knew it! In my dreams they were husband and wife, the while I hugged a bare board to my aching heart." "Husband and wife! They were never that, save at some witches' sabbath, mated by priests unfrocked and anathematised, but not in the sight of gods or men." "Then she is free, and I shall steal her from him yet. I will marry her, but I will kill him first." "You know not what you say. He is swollen in power until he is acknowledged the master magician of all Germany. It is _whispered_ that he made a pact with Satan, and in pledge thereof exchanged one of his eyes for an eye of the fiend's. It is _known_ that he walks abroad with one eye shut until he wishes to perform some evil. Then he lifts the eyelid and shoots forth a spear of light from that eye which is not his own. And it blasts whereever it falls. For this reason we call him the Evil Eye." "His backbone shall be limp for me, his front abased, his star is set, his grave is dug, his flesh already rots! I will bury him in a church that he may hug false hopes of salvation, and then I will set my feet on his gravestone when I stand with her before the priest. He shall shriek curses from his coffin while I knit her life to mine, until the scandalised sacred earth shall spit him forth to those that lie in wait." "Unhappy man, you are still dreaming of the girl you left behind! Do you not realise that, now years have rolled over her, she is a mother witch? Nay, there is worse that I had hoped to spare you. Did you not notice the stakes erected outside in the market place? To-day a host of women, and not a few evil men, are to wipe out their crimes with the last payment. At this very moment the sad procession is entering the square. Do you recognise no prisoner among them?" He threw open the door. It was even as he said. The sailor sprang to his feet and scanned the accused. "I do not see him there!" "Not he, he flies too high for judge or jury, the devil's true knight, hell sublimate! But look again. Do you not recognise one of the women?" With a terrible foreboding Marquard strained his eyes, but saw no face that corresponded to his memories. They were, without exception, abominable hags that were to suffer. But one of them had at once recognised _him_. Recognised him, in spite of the awful change wrought by his captivity. The foulest beldame of them all stretched her skinny arms to him. Her cracked voice called his name. "Marquard!"