For some time he had been at work breaking through the thin partition between the two cells. His only tool was a small piece of iron, and the work progressed but slowly. After these words of Dame Hollin he worked day and night with the utmost exertion of his strength, and in the third night he could manage to crawl through the small hole.
There was no time to be lost. This same night Jörg’s door was left unbolted again, so there were a few hasty words of farewell spoken. Dame Hollin crept through into her neighbour’s cell. Thus Jörg, trembling from head to foot, threw his arms about the old woman’s knees, and, as if he wanted to throw the fulness of his obedience and gratitude into one word, he cried, “Mother!” and she passed her hands gently over his face, feeling his features in the darkness, and crying, “My poor, unhappy son!”
Dame Hollin hid in the house of a faithful friend, to escape to Ulm the next day. Jörg slipped over into the deserted cell, and when his gaoler came to the door in the morning to push in a dish of humble fare, he crouched down in a corner, wrapped in the cloak of the old woman, and when the man passed on to his cell, he slipped nimbly through the hole in the wall, and in the garb of Jörg Muckenhuber received his own ration. He kept this up for about a week with much skill and secret delight, if sorrow for the loss of his faithful comrade had not choked his pleasure.
But one day the door was opened wide enough to admit the town-scribent, together with the gaoler, the former ordering Dame Hollin to follow him to the court-room. Jörg played his rôle as long as he could, crouched down in terror in the darkest corners, and repelled his tormentors with silent gestures. But when the town-scribent cried reassuringly, “Woman, come boldly forth; I lead thee not to the rack, but to freedom,” then Muckenhuber forgot his mask, threw his cloak from his shoulders in impotent rage, started up indignantly and cried, with his clenched hands in his side, “You will do no such thing; I want to be hanged, and I won’t let you off!”
The town-scribent tore his hair in despair and rage when he perceived that the witch was gone and the vagabond was left. He had intended to conduct Dame Hollin to freedom, but it was to have been freedom under weighty conditions; and now she had disappeared without any conditions whatsoever. Jörg, however, who was to have disappeared and no questions asked, sat once more firmly upon the neck of the senate. “Fellow, there’s no putting an end to you!” cried the town-scribent, foaming at the mouth. But Muckenhuber replied coldly, “It is this I complain of, that you won’t even try!”
The senators poured bitter reproaches upon each other, at first in a low tone, then louder, until the storm grew, and there was a wild confusion of voices. Then the town-scribent silenced them all with his deep bass, and united the disputants with a word. He cried, “The cause of all this trouble is only Jörg Muckenhuber. Hang him at once if he does not recant his old confessions!” Jörg replied, “I do not recant!” and when the town-scribent asked him for the second time, “Now, I certainly shan’t recant,” and the third time ...
There stood old Dame Hollin as if she had grown out of the ground, conducted by two of the most respectable burghers of Nördlingen and Ulm. She looked sharply at Muckenhuber, and said in a firm tone, “Jörg, you will recant your false confession!” The voice struck the insolent fellow like a peal of thunder. He was silent and lowered his eyes. There was no sound, one could hear the laboured breathings; then he spoke, “No other power on earth could have made me recant, but I cannot lie in the face of this woman;—I recant!”
Meanwhile the tumult of the populace without was increasing. The air was filled with wild threats, and with demands for the immediate release of Dame Hollin. The gentlemen saw that there was danger in delay. After a short, whispered debate the town-scribent read aloud the writ the old woman was to swear to. But Dame Hollin replied that she did not want mercy but demanded her right. The gentlemen of the senate made very wry faces and began to try persuasion, but they had learned ere this that there was little to be gained in that way with Dame Hollin.
After a moment’s thought, she said to her judges, “You have tried to make a bargain with me. Having done so, you are no longer my judges, and cannot give me my right. Well then, I too am ready to offer you a bargain. Release that wicked lad yonder, I will adopt him in child’s stead, and take him to Ulm with me, and see if I can do better by him than you have done. My property has lain dead while you kept me in the tower. You should refund the usury I have lost; instead of that give me this wicked lad. On this condition will I sign your writ.”
Already the populace clamoured outside the door. The senate would have had no choice, even though she had demanded much more than this.