“Look here, old Jew! I will go and fetch a ladder and rope. I should pull my dog out of that hole, and perhaps thou mayest be as good.”
“I will not be taken out till sunset,” returned Delecresse stubbornly.
“The fellow’s a mule! Hie thee, Anselm, and ask counsel of our gracious Lord what we shall do.”
A strange feeling crept over Delecresse when he heard his fate, for life or death, thus placed in the hands of the man whose life he had wrecked. Anselm was heard to run off quickly, and in a few minutes he returned.
“Sir Richard the Earl laughed a jolly laugh when I told him,” was his report. “He saith, Let the cur be, if he will not be plucked forth until Monday morning: for if Saturday be his Sabbath, Sunday is mine, and what will defile the one will defile the other.” (This part of the story is historical.)
“Monday morning! He will be a dead man, hours before that!”
“So he will. It cannot be helped, except—Jew, wilt thou be pulled out now, or not? If not now, then not at all.”
For one moment, the heart of Delecresse grew sick and faint within him as he contemplated the awful alternatives presented to his choice. Then, gathering all his strength, he shouted back his final decision.
“No! I will not break the Sabbath of my God.”
The men outside laughed, uttered an expression of contemptuous pity, and he heard their footsteps grow faint in the distance, and knew that he was left to die as horrible a death as can befall humanity. Only one other cry arose, and that was not for the ears of men. It was the prayer of one in utter error, yet in terrible extremity: and it was honestly sincere.