"All the devils of Hell! Suppose that should be so! I will eat fire and drink poison if that's true. Wake that Pole up, even if he is half-dead. One can't manage a thing of this kind alone. Rouse the household."
"We will do just the opposite. If we give the alarm, they too will learn it and be on their guard. Instead of that, let everybody drink until he cannot waken himself, and we will drug the bears. There is some secret connection with the church—those bells at midnight, and the ghost in the lighted church that your lordship himself has seen and heard,—all that does not happen without the help of man. There is something underneath it all. Just leave the whole matter to me, my Lord; by evening, I will map out such a campaign as to catch Beelzebub himself if he is in the business."
Until evening there were whispered consultations throughout Mitosin Castle, but the women were kept out of the secret. While Magdalene was at supper, the church was filled with Berezowski's armed servants. The bridegroom, in a violent passion, insisted that he would be present himself. As twilight came on, Berezowski slipped into the chapel, and concealed himself there with his armed followers in the crypt. They had a cask of beer and a checker board to make the time pass more rapidly. When it was hardly dark, Grazian gave orders for all to go to their night's rest, for the next morning they must rub their eyes open early, for there was to be a wedding in the house. The whole night through, not a soul must stir, and cellars and store-houses were to be kept locked. At evening, the students sang the Maiden's song before the windows of the bride's room, and then all the lights in the castle went out. There was as deep a quiet as if no one were awake; only the cracking of the ice on the Waag sounded on the still night.
When the great castle clock struck midnight, Magdalene arose, put on her gown, fastened to her girdle the little bag with its relics, and slipped noiselessly down the stairway to the little gate in the rear that led to the bear den. She looked about her, but the bears were not to be seen. After Candlemas, the bears begin their winter sleep, when the weather outside is raw. The bears did not cross her path. Fearlessly she went to the church-door. From there she breathed one last farewell to the castle of her fathers, that she was to leave forever, and then entered the door. As before, the moonlight fell upon the church, and lighted up the pierced saints, the nameless gravestones, and the altar picture in its carved frame. Now had she reason to fear, for she had learned what those saints suffered from the darts that pierced them. She had learned who slept under nameless gravestones, and the names of those terrible forms that frightened and misled the hermit in the picture.
If her deliverer, if her lover, would only come sooner! The owls in the tower hooted more than ever. Suddenly the bell rang and the altar picture shone brightly. Her lover was near. What a wonderful altar picture that was that appeared in the place of Saint Anthony,—a Saint Ladislaus! This was a genuine Hungarian saint, not one tortured to death by heathen, but one who struck the heathen down! Now he came down from the altar frame to comfort the kneeling maiden.
"It is well that you hurried: to-morrow they are to take me away to Poland. You might never more have seen me."
"Let us hasten, my love."
"Just wait a moment until I offer one last prayer at my brother's grave."
"Let me add mine."
And so the two went and knelt before the monument of the murdered brother, and hand in hand offered their prayer.