The soldier was sitting on the pavement in front of the door, draining the last drops of brandy from a flask. Finding it was all gone he threw the flask away and was amusing himself by dislodging the stones on the path with the point of his dagger. Soetkin went in to Katheline, crying most bitterly. But Katheline said: "Fire! Fire! Make a hole! My soul wants to get out!" And she kept wagging her head. XXXIX Borgstorm, the great bell of Damme, had summoned the judges to judgment. It was four o'clock, and now they were collected together at the Vierschare, around the Tree of Justice. Claes was brought before them. Seated upon the dais was the high bailiff of Damme, and by his side, opposite Claes, the mayor, the alderman, and the clerk of the court. The populace ran together at the sound of the bell. A great crowd they were, and many of them were saying that the judges were there to do--not justice--but merely the will of His Imperial Majesty.... After certain preliminaries, the high bailiff began to make proclamation of the acts and deeds for which Claes had been summoned before that tribunal. "The informer," he said, "had been staying by chance at Damme, not wishing to spend all his money at Bruges in feasting and festivity as is too often the case during these sacred occasions. On a time, then, when he was taking the air soberly on his own doorstep, he saw a man walking towards him along the rue Héron. This man Claes also saw, and went up to him and greeted him. The stranger, who was dressed all in black, entered the house of Claes, leaving the door into the street half open. Curious to find out who the man was, the informer went into the vestibule, and heard Claes talking to the stranger in the kitchen. The talk was all about a certain Josse, the brother of Claes, who it seems had been made prisoner among the army of the Reformers, and had suffered the punishment of being broken alive on the wheel of torture, not far from Aix. The stranger said that he had brought Claes a sum of money which his brother had desired to leave him, which money having been gained from the ignorant and poverty-stricken, it behoved Claes to spend it in bringing up his own son in the Reformed Faith. He also urged Claes to quit the bosom of our Holy Mother Church, and spake also many other impious words to which the only reply vouchsafed by Claes was this: 'The cruel brutes! Alas, my poor Josse!' So did the prisoner blaspheme against our Holy Father the Pope and against His Royal Majesty, accusing them of cruelty in that they rightly had punished heresy as a crime of treason against God and man. When the stranger had finished the meal that Claes put before him, our agent heard Claes cry out again: 'Alas, poor Josse! May God keep thee in his glory! How cruel they were to thee!' And thus did he accuse God himself of impiety by this suggestion that He could receive a heretic into His heaven. Nor did Claes ever cease to cry aloud: