Meanwhile the tumult of the populace without was increasing. The air was filled with wild threats, and with demands for the immediate release of Dame Hollin. The gentlemen saw that there was danger in delay. After a short, whispered debate the town-scribent read aloud the writ the old woman was to swear to. But Dame Hollin replied that she did not want mercy but demanded her right. The gentlemen of the senate made very wry faces and began to try persuasion, but they had learned ere this that there was little to be gained in that way with Dame Hollin. After a moment’s thought, she said to her judges, “You have tried to make a bargain with me. Having done so, you are no longer my judges, and cannot give me my right. Well then, I too am ready to offer you a bargain. Release that wicked lad yonder, I will adopt him in child’s stead, and take him to Ulm with me, and see if I can do better by him than you have done. My property has lain dead while you kept me in the tower. You should refund the usury I have lost; instead of that give me this wicked lad. On this condition will I sign your writ.” Already the populace clamoured outside the door. The senate would have had no choice, even though she had demanded much more than this. As she signed the writ, she found a bill appendixed for her fare during the time of her custody. She returned the leaf with a courteous smile to the town-scribent, and as the rabble was knocking at the door he plucked the interesting supplement into bits as fast as possible, and strewed the pieces under the table. Meanwhile the chains had been removed from Jörg; he looked about him as in a dream. Dame Hollin took his hand, and went to the door with him, where both were received by the gratified shouts of the shuffling crowd. * * * * * The old woman kept her word. In her house Jörg became an honest, valiant man, who in the Thirty Years’ War did great service to Ulm, the town of his adoption, and his name was never spoken but in honour and gratitude. But the witch’s counsel was forced to resign office, and after those five years of terror followed a better decade, during which law and justice reigned once more in the old Reichstadt. _W. H. Riehl._ _ELECTIVE AFFINITIES._ I. HIGHLY-ESTEEMED MADAM,--I venture to write these lines to you in the firm belief that you, like all women of mental distinction, love the unusual, and hate to the utmost the commonplaces of ordinary conventionality....