The thuds against the door had ceased; the flames were already leaping above the roof of the house; the whole building was burning with a steady glare, casting forth showers of sparks upwards towards the sky. And long, long after that, when the flames were towering upwards in each other's embrace above the ruins of the house, it seemed to many as if they heard, arising from the deepest depths of this furnace of blazing embers, the half-smothered sound of a deep sonorous voice intoning the vesper hymn. Perchance it was only imagination, only a delusion of the senses. Nobody could be singing there now, except it were the soul of the headsman. In a short half-hour the roof collapsed between the four walls, burying in a burning tomb all that lay beneath it, and millions of sparks rose straight up into the air.
"So there we have settled your account for you!" cried Dame Zudár, as the hellish glare of the fire lit up her passion-distorted face. "And now comes the turn of the castle!"
"Oh, my father! my poor father!" wailed the child, who lay fast bound at the bottom of the cart beneath a covering of rushes.
The furious virago gazed at her with gnashing teeth.
"Your father indeed! Your real father's turn will come later, my chicken. And now, my lads, let's be up and doing elsewhere!"
And, with that, she leaped upon the car, seized the reins in her hands and whipped up the horses, and before and behind her tore the savage, bloodthirsty mob with torches and pitchforks. There she stood in the midst of them with dishevelled, storm-tossed tresses like the Genius of War and Devastation rapt along on frantic steeds, with coiling snakes for hair, a terrible escort of evil beasts and semi-bestial men, and ruin and malediction before and behind her.
Zudár, as soon as he had guessed the hellish design of his enemies, hastily abandoned all attempts to stave in the door, and rushed to the rear-most room of the house with the intention of escaping into the garden through the window.
But what was his horror when he perceived that here also the windows were covered with a fence of dry reeds and faggots, through which the hissing flames were already beginning to wriggle like fiery serpents—clouds of smoke were already coming through the shattered windows.
Back again he hastened into the front room, the windows of which were guarded by iron shutters, which stopped the intrusion of the flames. Outside resounded the furious howling of the rioters, and all round about him too was to be heard the soft hissing fizz of the burning reeds and the licking of the flames, and the loud crackling of the dry beams—all around him and above his head also.