Marie covered her face with her hands, and sank upon her knees. "Oh,
Caspar!" was the unspoken thought of her affectionate soul.
"Friends!" exclaimed her uncle, "you are drunk with cowardly fright.
Know ye that ye ask of this maiden her own ruin for your lives—?"
"But if Melac's soldiery are set upon us," replied a young woman in the throng; "we shall all he ruined—mothers, wives, and maidens. And is it not better," continued she, raising her voice, and addressing the mob, "is it not better that one woman should suffer dishonor than a thousand?"
"Marie Wengelin will have her father's life to answer for, as well as the lives of her fellow-citizens," cried another voice. "It is her duty to sacrifice herself."
At this moment the loud, shrill tones of an affrighted voice were heard calling out, "Marie! Marie! my child!" and the figure of Frau Wengelin, with outstretched arms, was now seen at the window, whence the mother and daughter had watched the return of the deputies.
Marie would have responded to that pathetic appeal, but as she rose from her knees, and attempted to move, she was forced and held back by the crowd. They were lost to all sense of humanity for the one segregated being by whose immolation the safety of the aggregate might be effected.
"Have pity! have pity!" cried the poor girl. "Do you not hear my mother calling me? Think of your own children, and hinder me not, I implore ye!"
"We think of our children, and therefore you shall not go! You shall sacrifice yourself for the suffering many!"
And they lifted her back to the peristyle, where she stood alone, confronting the pitiless crowd that demanded her honor wherewith to buy their lives. What was the fate of the daughter of Jephthah, compared to that which threatened poor Marie of Esslingen?
Suddenly a cloud seemed to pass over the sky, and the faces of her enemies were no longer distinct. Marie raise her arms wildly over her head, and screamed, for too well she understood the shadow that rested upon the market-place. The sun had sunk behind the heights of Esslingen, and one half hour remained ere her father lost his life.