And springing furiously forward, more rapid than thought in his movement, the old man, his eyes gleaming, but his hand grasping firmly the glittering chisel, flung himself upon the baron, and before the latter could draw the dagger from his girdle, the steel disappeared in the folds of his velvet doublet and buried itself in his breast. The hand that aimed it was firm, the blow was sure; the chisel as of old failed not to perform its master's will; and Otho of Arneck fell upon the bare space of ground—fell, never more to rise, upon the very spot where Mina lay cold and dead.
"Thou dost well—thou art avenged," gasped the fallen man, fixing his glazing eyes upon Sebald. "In thy place I had done likewise—but—in honorable combat—for I—I am a knight and noble. But I truly loved Mina."
His head dropped back, his limbs relaxed, and he was silent. The clear red blood of youth and health flowed from the wound and stained the bare earth.
Sebald, with his arms folded upon his breast, gazed upon his work.
"Let his blood flow on," he murmured at length; "let it moisten her coffin, as it should. And now I shall deliver myself to justice. My vengeance as a father and my mission as a sculptor are fulfilled."
He turned away and walked with rapid steps from the cemetery, leaving his weapon still fixed in the baron's body.
Chapter IX.
A few weeks after the occurrences detailed in the last chapter, on a dull, gray day of the autumn of 1435, a crowd of the burgesses of Baden assembled in the great hall of justice to listen to the judgment to be pronounced against Master Koerner, the sculptor. "Who," said they, "would have imagined a few months since that a man so peaceful and just to all, an artist so skilful, so fervent a Christian, would be dragged to that seat of infamy?" They would as soon have expected to hear the judges condemn them themselves to death and to see themselves led by the grand-provost to the gibbet. Master Sebald a criminal! Master Sebald an assassin! Alas for poor humanity, if that were all sixty years of virtue could bring forth!
Nevertheless, there he was, the artist criminal—the white-haired murderer standing erect before the magistrates in their robes of ermine and carnation, before the ivory image of Christ crucified, with its black velvet background, which hung above their seats. There he stood while near him on a table lay the mute witnesses against him: the velvet pourpoint, stiff with blood; the fine linen tunic, now reddish brown in its hue; the murderous chisel, with its once gleaming blade dark and rusty and covered with a crust of clotted blood.
Several witnesses were called: the servant who received from Master Sebald the treacherous letter, which he delivered to Count Otho; the keeper of the burial-ground, who testified to having seen the accused enter the field the dead on the morning of the twenty-second of August. But tears flowed fastest when the Countess Gertrude, the youthful widow of the baron, gave her deposition. While relating her mournful story, the noble lady swooned several times, and her beauty, her placid face, and long, closed lashes, and raving flaxen hair, unfastened and rolling in masses over her black robe, moved the auditory that more than once the life of the assassin seemed in instant danger.