"What is it?" I stammered. I began to tremble also. The air rang, it seemed to me, with one word, which a thousand tongues took up and reiterated. But it was a German word, and I did not understand it. "Wait! wait!" Master Lindstrom exclaimed. "Pray God it be true!" He seized my other hand and held it as though he would protect me from something. At the same moment Van Tree pushed past me, and, bounding up the steps, thrust his way through the officials on the scaffold, causing more than one fur-robed citizen near the edge to lose his balance and come down as best he could on the shoulders of the guards. "What is it?" I cried. "What is it?" I cried in impatient wonder. "Oh! my lad, my lad!" Master Lindstrom answered, his face close to mine, and the tears running down his cheeks. "It is cruel if it be not true! Cruel! They cry a pardon!" "A pardon?" I echoed. "Ay, lad, a pardon. But it may not be true," he said, putting his arm about my shoulder. "Do not make too sure of it. It is only the mob cry it out." My heart made a great bound, and seemed to stand still. There was a loud surging in my brain, and a mist rose before my eyes and hid everything. The clamor and shouting of the street passed away, and sounded vague and distant. The next instant, it is true, I was myself again, but my knees were trembling under me, and I stood flaccid and unnerved, leaning on my friend. "Well?" I said faintly. "Patience! patience a while, lad!" he answered. But, thank Heaven! I had not long to wait. The words were scarcely off his tongue, when another hand sought mine and shook it wildly; and I saw Van Tree before me, his face radiant with joy, while a man whom he had knocked down in his hasty leap from the scaffold was rising beside me with a good-natured smile. As if at a signal, every face now turned toward me. A dozen friendly hands passed me up the steps amid a fresh outburst of cheering. The throng on the scaffold opened somehow, and I found myself in a second, as it seemed, face to face with the president of the court. He smiled on me gravely and kindly--what smiles there seemed to be on all those faces--and held out a paper. "In the name of the Duke!" he said, speaking in Spanish, in a clear, loud voice. "A pardon!" I muttered something, I know not what; nor did it matter, for it was lost in a burst of cheering. When this was over and silence obtained, the magistrate continued, "You are required, however, to attend the Duke at the courthouse. Whither we had better proceed at once." "I am ready, sir," I muttered.