"No!" cried Heinrich, who had come back to the stable, pale and dishevelled, the water dripping from him as he stood within the room. "No! something will happen. You will run into the arms of those fiends who are seeking for you, and I have been told that they have sworn to find you, and break you on the rack, and after that to burn you in the Holy House garden, into which all who are confined there are to be brought to witness your sufferings." Margaret shuddered, and hid her face in her hands. "Who told you all that?" Herman asked, pale and trembling at the threat, but realising, from what was common knowledge, that what the simple-minded man said was more than likely to be true. It was the thing one could have expected. "I will not tell you," Heinrich answered, almost curtly. "Why should I? And yet, why not?" he added quickly, wiping his face with his kerchief, for it was streaming with the rain which could be heard pattering heavily on the roof. Before he said more, he looked round the room, and, uncertain about the door, went to it, and, standing on the top, called down softly to his mother, who was below: "Is the outer door locked?" The whispered question was answered softly, when, from the sounds that followed, they who listened knew that she had gone to the door to try it. "Yes, my son." "You are sure?" "Certain." Heinrich turned to the others with a look of relief. "Now I will tell you. This afternoon I stood at the ferry, keeping well out of sight to see what the Burgomaster was doing there. Something had gone wrong, and he was directing some men who were working at the posts which take the chains that stretch across the water-gate. Some of the men, who were standing waist-deep in the water, crossed themselves, and it was easy to see that they shrank from something. I bent forward to see what they were looking at, and there I saw them--two of those hungry vultures--walking noiselessly, side by side. When they had looked around, as if to mark whether they were observed, they disappeared among the bushes which hide the entrance to the cavern." "What then?" Margaret half whispered, leaning forward in her chair, her lips white and parted, and her fingers on them, trembling. [Illustration: "HALT!" CAME THE CRY ON THE NIGHT AIR. _See page 214._] "I followed them, and stole along until I, too, came to the bushes. They were gone into the cavern then, but I went also, and followed until I saw them, by the light of their lantern, going to the passage which leads into the Holy House. They thought themselves alone, and talked freely to two others who had just come out of the Holy House, going, no doubt, on some nefarious errand.