"Tear her in pieces, Wolf; bury your teeth in her white fingers that have bewitched him with their devilish music! curse her! cursed be the tones that come from her fingers! may they turn to poisonous arrows, and bury themselves in her own heart and destroy it!"
Again she threw herself against the door; the old oaken planks creaked and groaned, but it did not yield to the little powerless feet.
Elizabeth meanwhile leaned against the door on the other side, with lips tightly closed and a face pale as death. She had seized a piece of wood that lay at her feet that she might defend herself, if need should be, against the dog. Her whole frame shuddered at the curses which Bertha shrieked out, but she nerved herself with new resolution.
Had she only glanced at the latch of the door, she would have seen that any effort upon her part to keep it closed was wholly needless,—a huge bolt had slipped forward, against which the maniac's utmost strength could avail nothing.
"Open the door!" Bertha shouted again. "Transparent, brittle creature! Ha! ha! Old Bruin, whom I hate, calls her Gold Elsie. The old fellow despises heaven, and may go to hell for all I care, for I shall be blessed, eternally blessed. He calls her Gold Elsie because she has hair of amber. Fie! how ugly you are! my hair is black as the raven's wing. I am a thousand times the fairer. Do you hear me, moonlight face?"
She paused exhausted, and Wolf, too, ceased his whining and scratching at the threshold.
At the same moment the tolling of a distant bell broke the evening silence of the forest. Elizabeth well knew what it signified,—a funeral train was descending the mountain from the ruins of old Castle Gnadeck. Lila's mortal remains were leaving the walls which had once echoed the sighs and groans of the lovely gypsy girl. She was borne through the forest, in longing for which her heart had broken two centuries before.
Bertha, too, seemed to listen to the sound of the bell; for a moment she did not stir.
"They are ringing," she cried suddenly; "come, Wolf, let us go to church; let her stay up here with the clouds that will fall upon her in the night,—the tempest will tear her hair, and the ravens will come and pick out her eyes, for she is accursed, accursed!"
And then she began the hymn again. Her terrible voice echoed eerily against the narrow walls of the tower. She ran down and out of the door below, then rushed singing across the open space, and disappeared in the thicket whence she had issued at first,—the dog following her. She never once turned round towards the tower. As soon as she turned her back upon it she seemed to forget entirely that the object of her hatred was standing up there upon the gray stone platform. Elizabeth caught a last glimpse of her scarlet jacket among the dark bushes, and then, with her savage companion, she was seen no more. Gradually her song died away, and soon the gentle breeze wafted only the tolling of the bell to the ears of the lonely girl upon the roof of the tower.