"Come, throw down your weapons, ye great and haughty gentlemen, for they are no longer a defence to you. Something very evil is going to happen to-night, for I have not come to you for nothing, I can tell you."
And with that she drew from beneath the kerchief covering her breast the knife sharpened to a keen point, whose edge she had tested so carefully a short time before.
"Do you see my key?" cried she. "This is the key to your hearts, this is the key to the doors of your palaces. This knife will pare down your pride and humble you to the dust beneath my feet. You could shoot me dead as I stand here I know, though that would be no very great master-stroke. But the same instant in which I fell, my mother, the old witch, would stand behind my back and would shout to the infuriated mob with all the force of her lungs, and tell them whose this child is, and then do you know in whose heart this knife would be plunged first of all?"
A sort of painful wail came from below the dark window, like the sounds that are heard in a deserted, dilapidated old fortress where the whole building is ever sighing and moaning, and none can tell whence the noise comes.
During the virago's muttered discourse the bolder spirits among the mob had gradually flitted back again into the courtyard. They perceived that the headsman's wife was not afraid, and this of itself gave them courage. Some of them even drew near to the threshold of the house, where they pricked up their ears and did their best to catch something of what the woman was talking about so mysteriously. It might be worth their while to hear.
Dame Zudár began sharpening the knife against the stone ledge of the castle window.
"I give you three minutes to think it over," she now exclaimed aloud. "If you then say: let there be bloodshed! bloodshed there shall be."
And with that she turned back to the child.
There she stood in front of the castle threshold, with the heavenly resignation of a martyr on her pale, innocent face. She appeared to be quite undisturbed by the dreadful scene before her. The thought that she was now about to die absorbed all her faculties.
"Kneel down!" cried the virago coldly.