"I don't!" the woman yelled back defiantly. "There is no God!"
At that same instant her head leaped so suddenly into the air that her body remained standing upright, three long jets of blood at the same time shooting up from between her vacant shoulders. Her two hands still fumbled about in the air as if they would have drawn back the uttered blasphemy and defended her against this terrible judgment, and then the whole figure collapsed in the direction of the fallen head, which lay with its face turned heavenwards, and its mouth gaping open, as if longing to speak, whilst the tongue still moved, perchance, asking mercy or pardon from Heaven. Too late, too late! There was no longer any power of utterance there. Once or twice there was a twitching of the eyelids over the stiffening staring eyes, till at last they closed painfully in the dream of death.
And above the condemned sinner towered the form of the avenger of sin—the headsman.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE VOICE OF THE LORD.
During the blasphemous speech of the frantic virago nobody had observed that Peter Zudár had reached the courtyard of the castle. In the darkness and prevailing confusion he had been able to creep up to the wretched woman unobserved.
He had heard to the end her furious outburst, her horrible menace. He had seen the convulsions of the stony-hearted squire in the midst of his fetters, he had seen the tender child collapse beneath the touch of the horrible virago, and he had fulfilled his mission.
The people, who in that awful moment had seen his bright sword flash forth like Heaven's lightning, who had seen the monstrously mutilated body of the woman totter in their midst, and spurt blood on all the bystanders, who had seen the awe-inspiring figure of the headsman close to them all, him whom they had fancied dead and buried, him whom their own eyes had seen burnt to ashes—all these people stood for a moment as if turned to stone, as if their souls had left their bodies.
This brief interval of petrified astonishment was sufficient for Peter Zudár to snatch up the sorrowing child with one hand, while with the other he whirled his bloody sword above his head, and opened a way for himself to the gate.