'You are a band of cowards!' exclaimed Heinrich, defiantly; 'I do not fear to die. Hurrah for Germany!' 'Hah, ha! hah, ha!--à bas le Prussien!' they chorused. One now appeared with a rope, which he had procured somewhere, and a cold perspiration burst over the brows of Heinrich. 'I am the Graf Von Frankenburg,' he urged, almost, but not quite, piteously. 'I am an officer of the Thuringians--let me die the death of a soldier, not that of a felon.' 'You are the Graf Von Frankenburg?' said one; 'be it so. The higher the rank the greater the disgrace in dying the death of a spy; so, coquin, hang you shall.' Resistance was vain; the iron grasp of many was on each of his arms, and he was as helpless in their hands as an infant. His father, his mother, his love--the bright-haired Herminia!--what horror would the story of his fate cost them! It was too dreadful to think of; it was madness! 'Oh,' thought he, 'that I had but died on yonder field, and not thus--not _thus_--in the hands of wretches such as these!' He disdained to ask for mercy, and resolved to die with dignity even the horrid death to which they had doomed him. But little time was given him for reflection, and none for prayer; yet a cry certainly escaped him, and a nervous shudder, when he found a corporal actually adjusting the hastily constructed halter about his neck. An involuntary effort he made for resistance or escape, and then stood still and passive. 'Throw the end of the rope over that apple-tree,' was the command of the corporal; and after one or two efforts it was thrown over a suitable branch, 'Stand aside, comrades,' was the next command; 'whip him up now, and make fast the rope to the branch below.' While a mocking shout burst from the band, and many brutal and irreligious speeches were made, some crying piteously, 'Bon voyage, Monsieur le Comte--bon voyage, mon Prussien,' the noose closed and tightened round the neck of Heinrich. His eyeballs seemed to start from their sockets, dark purple overspread his face, and he was swung up to the branch, where he dangled in convulsive agony, swinging and swaying to and fro, with a hoarse, rattling, gulping sound in his throat, and with his feet about eight feet from the ground. The other end of the fatal rope was made fast to a lower branch, and then the Francs-Tireurs rushed away, with mocking shouts, to join their comrades, and left the unhappy Heinrich--the 'Prussian spy,' as they falsely affected to call him--to his miserable fate. CHAPTER XIX. THE CHATEAU DE CAILLE. And now to account for the mysterious disappearance of Charlie Pierrepont, which the Herr Doctor could only account for by supposing that in the restlessness of his agony, or desire to procure water, he had crawled away into some obscure corner to die. But such was not the case.