So pretty Michal partook of the Lord's Supper, and the clergyman gave her his benediction.
And pretty Michal at that moment had no bodily ailment, yet for all that she was on the point of death.
Next day—it was a dark January morning—the gloomy scaffold stood ready in the market-place of Kassa. The early risers could see through the thick mists the headsman's apprentices, in their pointed caps, moving like hellish shadows about the burning fire, in which they were heating their terrible tools red-hot, and warming their hands the while, to prevent them from growing stiff.
When the clock in the church-tower struck seven, the watchmen on the bastions struck the big drum three times, whereupon the felon's bell in the tower of the townhall began to toll—a sad, heartrending sound. Then the gates of the courtyard were thrown open, and out came the procession in the usual order, the headsman first on horseback, then the convict, and last of all the members of the town council, the sheriff, the superrector, the conrector, the syndic, and the civic warden. All these took their places on the dais, with the sheriff in the center, while the headsman dismounted from his horse and ascended the scaffold.
The soldier who had been condemned to be beheaded was accompanied to the place of execution by his comrades. It was the special privilege of every citizen of Kassa who suffered capital punishment to go to the scaffold free and unfettered, take leave there of his family and friends, and not be maltreated by the headsman.
The convict in question advanced with a cheerful countenance and head erect. Two of his comrades accompanied him, consoling and consoled by him.
"Never mind, gossips! I am not the first to whom it has happened. I don't take it so much to heart, and it doesn't hurt anyone else. God bless those who are left behind!"
Then he kissed and embraced his little children one after the other, and distributed them among his friends.
"To you I give my little son, and to you I leave my little daughter."