“How now, you impudent hussy?” scoffed Selenus; “where is your maiden modesty? I saw no struggles, no blushes.” “God Almighty knows, judge, that till this day I have never seen the face of man, for I was only two years old when I was taken as a little baby to my aunt, and the rest of my life I have spent there among the good sisters. Do I seem lost to shame? Nay, I have been assured that wrestlers strip in the games when they strive for victory. I fear thee not.” “Stretch her, face downwards, over a slow fire. Bind her hands and feet to four stakes, and so—scourge her.” He was obeyed, and the crimson blood trickled over her white skin at every stroke of the lash, and hissed in the glowing charcoal. The multitude, looking on, could not bear the sight, and with one voice entreated that she might be removed and dismissed. But the shouts only made Selenus more angry, and he ordered the executioners to redouble the blows. Thomais, unable to endure the sight, fainted at the feet of Hiera, who uttered a cry of “Oh, Febronia, my sister! Thomais is dying.” The poor sufferer turned her head, and asked the executioner to throw water over the face of the fainting woman, and begged to be allowed to say a word to Hiera. But the judge interposed to forbid this indulgence, and ordered Febronia to be untied and placed on the rack. This was sometimes called “the little horse.” It had four legs united by planks. At each end was a crank. The sufferer was attached by the feet and hands at ankles and wrists to cords that passed over rollers between the planks. She thus hung below and between the two pieces of wood. At a signal from the magistrate, the executioners turned the cranks, and these drew the feet and hands tighter towards the rollers, and strained them, so that if this were persisted in, the limbs were pulled out of joint. “Well, girl,” asked Selenus, “how do you like your first taste of torture?” “Learn from the manner in which I have borne it, that my resolution is unalterable,” answered Febronia. On the rack her sides were torn with iron combs. She prayed incessantly: “O Lord, make haste to help me. Leave me not, neither forsake me in my hour of pain!” “Cut out her tongue,” ordered the judge. Febronia was detached from the rack and tied to the post in the centre of the place. But when the multitude saw what the executioner was about to do, the excitement and indignation became so menacing, that the judge thought it prudent to countermand the order. Instead of which, however, he bade the surgeon in attendance extract her teeth. When he had drawn seventeen, Selenus bade him desist. “Cut off her breasts.” This atrocious order caused a renewed uproar. The physician hesitated. But Selenus was fairly roused. “Coward, go on! Cut!” he shouted, and the surgeon, with a sweep of the razor, sliced off her right breast. Febronia uttered a cry as she felt the steel gash her: “My Lord! my God! see what I suffer, and receive my soul into Thy hands.”