"Don't drink any more, my dear fellow, you've drunk enough already. And that not only for to-day, but for your whole life. You are a dead man already, and so am I. This 'bratina' that we have been drinking out of, was poisoned with an Italian poison that goes by the clock. You have two hours left to live. So get yourself together and go on your way; the ice is firm, you can go over to Tepla to your daughter. Then you can go to bed, send for a priest, and make your will, and you will at least have somebody to close your eyes."
That was the end of the comedy.
Master Mathias sprang up in terror, his hair on end. He began already to feel the pangs of approaching death. With a curse he dashed out of the room, leaving behind his bag of gold, and goaded by torture, rushed out through the castle gate over the ice-covered Waag.
Lord Grazian filled his beaker again and again with wine; and drank and drank—all sole alone. In his heart he offered toasts to all who had received good from him and returned evil, and then again to those who had done him favors, returned only by evil. Every cup was a new draught of poison, though so compounded that it acted slowly. Lord Grazian must make haste, for he wished to fulfil his word made to the Lady of Madocsany—"I swear to you that Father Peter shall live longer than I."
CHAPTER XVII.
ALL IS OVER.
Idalia could not sleep that night. Satisfied revenge brings no sweet sleep! Frightful visions chased through her brain, in which the distorted faces of her disgraced victims haunted her. There is a maiden in a boat that the ice flood sweeps along, her cry is borne on the wind; and that man?—it is the one to whom Idalia has prayed, whom she has lost, and now she would give him over to neither man nor devil.
The beautiful woman had many stately rooms, and yet there was not space enough for her. Long since had she wept through them all. Back and forth she went to the balcony and blew her breath on the panes in warm rings through which she could look out at the Waag. A great waste field of ice stretched out before her, reaching from Mitosin Castle to Madocsany; the moon lighted up a landscape still as death; about three o'clock in the morning, as she gazed out from her balcony over the wide waste, like a mad woman, it suddenly seemed to her as if a black spot moved over there and came nearer and nearer the castle; as it came nearer, it proved to be the figure of a man; the nearer it approached, stumbling among the ice blocks, the more evident became its purpose to come straight to the castle. It was somebody from Mitosin! Idalia wakened her people and gave orders to carry out a stretcher and help the man who was with difficulty struggling through the ice, and bring him to the castle. This man was Master Mathias. When brought before Idalia, his face was hardly recognizable, it was so blue with frost and pain, and its features were so distorted.
"I came from Mitosin," he gasped out, sinking down upon the bearskin before the fire where they had laid him.