“But Spelle would listen to nothing, and bade his catchpolls hoist Michielkin right up to the ceiling, and to let him drop heavily with his weights on his feet. And this they did, and so cruelly that the skin and the muscles of the victim were torn, and that the foot scarcely held to the leg.
“As Michielkin persisted in saying he was innocent, Spelle had him tortured afresh, while giving him to understand that if he would give him a hundred florins he would leave him free and acquitted.
“Michielkin said that he would die first.
“The folk of Meulestee, having learned the fact of the arrest and the torture, desired to be witness par turbes, which is the testimony of all the reputable inhabitants of a commune. ‘Michielkin,’ said they, unanimously, ‘is in no way or guise heretical; he goes every Sunday to mass and to the holy table; he has never said anything else of Our Lady than to call on her to succour him in difficult circumstances; having never spoken ill, even of an earthly woman, he would much less ever have dared to speak ill of the heavenly Mother of God. As for the blasphemies that the false witnesses declared they had heard him utter in the tavern of the Falcon, that was in all points false and lies.’
“Michielkin having been released, the false witnesses were punished, and Spelle cited Pieter de Roose before his court, but set him free without examination or torture, in consideration of one hundred florins paid down in one sum.
“Pieter de Roose, fearing that the money he still had left might attract Spelle’s attention to him once again, fled from Meulestee, while Michielkin, my poor brother, died of the gangrene that had caught hold of his feet.
“He who no longer wished to see me, yet had me sent for to bid me beware well of the fire in my body that would bring me into the fire of hell. And I could but weep, for the fire is within me. And he gave up his soul in my arms.”
“Ha!” said she, “he who would avenge upon Spelle the death of my beloved kind Michielkin would be my master forever, and I would obey him like a dog.”
While she spake, the ashes of Claes beat upon the breast of Ulenspiegel. And he determined to bring Spelle the murderer to the gallows.
Boelkin (that was the girl’s name) returned to Meulestee, well assured in her home against the vengeance of Pieter de Roose, for a cattle dealer, passing by Destelberg, informed her that the curé and the townsfolk had declared that if Spelle touched Michielkin’s sister, they would cite him before the duke.