The imprisoned wretch kept running frantically up and down the room like a wild beast caught in a trap, striking the walls with his fist and hacking at the beams with his axe. In vain, in vain, slash away as you will, neither on the right hand nor on the left, neither from above nor from below, is there any way of deliverance! At last, in his despair, he began to sing the hymn: "On Sion's Hill the Lord is God...!" and collapsed upon his knees in the midst of the room. And lo! the Lord answered the man who cried out to Him in his dire extremity. The boards resounding beneath him suddenly gave him a bright idea of deliverance. Above and around there was no place of safety, but might there not be a refuge below--down in the cellar? The entrance into the cellar was from the outside by an iron door; but if the vault beneath the room where he was, the ceiling of which had resounded so loudly beneath his footsteps, if this vault were broken open, it would be possible to get down into it that way. Ah! how nice and cool it would be down there. The atmosphere of the room was now burning hot. Terror and exertion had bathed every limb of the headsman with sweat; the glare of the iron windows was merging into a dazzling white, and radiated a heat that burnt the eye that looked upon it. There was no time to be lost. Zudár hastily broke up the floor with his axe, it would not be difficult for him to find the key-stone of the cellar beneath it. Nevertheless, he had to be careful lest he should stave in the whole vault, and thus open a way therein after himself for the fire. He must cautiously pick out the mortar from the interstices with a knife, and lift up the bricks one by one. And, now and then, in the midst of his work, he would stop and listen. And then he would hear on every side of him a hubbub of wild voices, hissing, shrieking, savage dance-music, and bloodthirsty harangues. Or was it, after all, but the many-voiced gabble of the flames above his head? And on he went--digging, digging, digging. The first layer of bricks over the vault was followed by a second. This cellar vault had been very strongly built, it was well lined with a double row of bricks. And he had to pick out each brick of the second layer as carefully as he had done with the first.