Boldly enough he flung open the door, only to recoil in absolute consternation. In our excitement and raptures we had heard no steps without; we were face to face with no less a personage than her Reverence the Abbess Theckla, and her companion nun, the dried old Sister Hemma. What fiend had prompted them to visit Ilsa at this instant, time lacked to discover. They crossed the threshold before even Andrea recovered enough to close against them. Face to face we all stood, while one could count a slow twenty, before they found wits and we breath enough to speak a word. Then the abbess spoke, shaking all over with struggling passions. “Holy Mother! What--what is this!” Moving by a kind of instinct I strode beside Ilsa. My hands were not too bound to place them upon her shoulders. “Reverend Mother,” spoke I tensely, “what you see is the Graf von Regenstein and his affianced wife.” But the horrified groan of the lady abbess was drowned by the scream of Sister Hemma. With a shriek that might have stirred the dead she flew out through the door, and instantly the inn resounded with her howlings. “The maniac! The maniac! He is loose! He is assaulting Sister Ilsa!” Almost at her flying skirts went Andrea. “He saves himself!” were the ungrateful words that came springing to my lips, when from the door of my former prison room I saw him bounding back again. In the left hand he grasped the pincers, in the right the huge partisan which in his unlucky moment Jan had discarded. But Jan had roused and turned like a startled wild boar. With a great roaring he made after Andrea, but the Sienese with a flying leap was before him. We slammed our door in Jan’s face, and bolted it, whilst he beat on it, cursed, and yelled like a fiend. In the inn below reigned indescribable confusion. “The maniac is loose!” twenty were bawling, and we heard the trampling of feet. Abbess Theckla made wild passes with her hands toward us. She would have flown at my throat, had not her strength failed her. In the tumult we could not follow her desperate reproaches. Andrea, whose brain had never faltered, approached me. “They will be forcing the door in a moment, Eccellenza. It will go better if I release your hands.” “You cannot save me,” I commanded; “save yourself. It can still be done. Get to Giessen and Graf Moritz. Tell him the Cardinale di Forli, passing as the Vicomte de Barras, has ridden in quest of Luther to seize or slay him. Away instantly or Luther is lost!” “It will be wiser to remain, and to save both the Conte and perhaps Luther also,” observed Andrea imperturbably, at the word wrenching my left wrist free; “now for the right.”