'Mercy!' implored his faithful wife, clasping the captain's knees; but the latter disengaged himself from her, put the children, who pressed around her, out of the room, drew Katharine to a window, and in a low voice said to her, 'you see that I can be either good or bad as you would have me. Upon you alone it depends how I shall further proceed. Therefore answer me honestly and truly, where is your sister?'
'She fled last night,' answered Katharine, with calm firmness; 'to escape the horrors which threaten us. Whither, I do not consider it my duty to inform you.'
'This is fine!' exclaimed the captain, grinning like a Bengal tiger when his keeper compels him to show his teeth. 'I like to know how people feel towards me. I now go to my colonel, and you shall soon hear from me again.'
He departed, and the children, again rushing in, embraced their mother with loud lamentation. Katharine sank upon her knees, and her children with her, and, raising their eyes and hands towards heaven, with a bleeding heart but nevertheless with confidence, the pious woman prayed in the words of the royal psalmist: 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him for his countenance who is my help and my God.'
The boisterous sorrow of the children subsided into gentle weeping, and from every lip was heard the loud, believing, joyful, amen!'
CHAPTER VIII.
Some days later, Katharine was sitting with her children at the close of day and exerting herself to read by the fading twilight a letter of consolation which her imprisoned husband had thrown to little Ulrich. The door was cautiously opened and a soldier in the Lichtenstein uniform hesitatingly entered.
'Do not be alarmed,' whispered he, as they shrunk from his approach. 'I am Dorn, and have smuggled myself into the house in this disguise, that I might bring you consolation and see for myself how you were situated. Your mother and sister are in health and safety, and send kind greetings to you. Nor need you be anxious on your husband's account. I am certain that it is better for him to be in confinement than to be free and expose himself to the outrages to which every hour gives birth, and do things in moments of passion and excitement which would only make matters worse. Should his situation become more critical, I shall always be near him.'
'In God's name, master Dorn, what is to be the end of all this?' anxiously asked Katharine.
'A city full of catholics,' answered Dorn with a bitter smile. 'The count of Dohna has arrived to-day. That is a sufficient reason for fearing the worst. From a renegade, who expects to win the principality of Breslau by his tyrannical fury, nothing is to be hoped.'