"What of whom?" queried Peter, who, like all great talkers, was rapidly growing testy under questioning.
"There is but one 'he' to-day, man. The young lad, the Princess Margaret's sweetheart."
"They have brought him down from the cart. The Cossacks are close about him. They have put all the Courtland men far back."
"Aye, aye; they dare not trust them. Oh, for an hour of Prince Conrad! If we of the city trades had but a leader, this shame should not blot our name throughout all Christendom! What now, Peter?"
"The Muscovites are binding the lad to a wooden frame like the empty lintels of a door. He stands erect, his hands in the corners above, and his feet in the corners below. They have stripped him to the waist."
"Hold me higher up, Jan the smith! I would see this out, that you may tell your children and your children's children. Aye—ah, so it is. It is true. Sainted Virgin! I can see his body white in the sunshine. It shines slender as a peeled willow wand."
Then the woman who had wept began again. Her wailing angered the people.
"He is like my son—save him! He is the very make and image of my Kaspar. Slender as a young willow, supple as an ash, eyes like the berries of the sloe-thorn. Give me a sword! Give an old woman a sword, and I will deliver him myself, for my Kaspar's sake. God's grace—Is there never a man amongst you?"
And as her voice rose into a shriek there ran through all the multitude the strange shiver of fear with which a great crowd expects a horror. A hush fell broad and equal as dew out of a clear sky. A mighty silence lay on all the folk. Peter Altmaar's lips moved, but no sound came from them. For now Maurice was set on high, so that all could see for themselves. White against the sky of noon, making the cross of Saint Andrew within the oblong framework to which he was lashed, they could discern the slim body of the young man who was about to be torn in sunder. The executioners held him up thus a minute or two for a spectacle, and then, their arrangements completed, they lowered that living crucifix till it lay flat upon its little platform, with the limbs extended stark and tense towards the heels of the wild plunging horses of the Ukraine.