"Sparling, I command you by your duty to me as your Prince, if this evil and notorious hag should make the least disturbance or strife in the convent, seize her that instant, either yourself or by means of your bailiffs, and chase her over the frontiers. Item, you are not to permit her to leave the convent, to alarm or intimidate the neighbouring nobles, as she hath hitherto done. Therefore I command the new abbess to replace the heavy padlock on the gate from this day forth. Do you hear this, Sidonia? These poor maidens shall have peace at last. Too long they have been your sport and mockery, but it shall end."
So the new abbess answered—"Your Highness shall be obeyed!"
But my sheriff could not utter a word from horror, and seemed stifling with a thick, husky cough in his throat. But when Sidonia crept up close to him, and menaced him privately with her dry, clenched hand, he forgot himself entirely, and made a spring that brought him clean over the churchyard wall, while his sword clattered after him, and his plumed beaver dropt from his head to the ground. All the lacqueys laughed loud at the sight, even his Grace laughed. But my sheriff makes the best of it, and calls out—
"Ah, see, my Lord Duke, how the little boys have stolen the flowers that I myself planted on the grave of the blessed abbess. I'll make them pay for it, the thieving brats!"
Hereat his Grace asked why the abbess was not buried within the church, but in the graveyard. And they answered, she had so commanded. Whereupon he said mildly—
"The good mother is worthy of a prayer; I shall go and say a paternoster upon her grave, and see if the youngsters have left me a flower to carry away for memory."
So he alighted, made Eggert show him the grave, removed his hat, and prayed, while all his suite in the six coaches uncovered their heads likewise. Lastly, he made the sign of the cross, and bent over the grave to pluck a flower. But just then a warm heavy wind blew across the graves, and all the flowers drooped, faded, and turned yellow as it passed. Yea, even a yellow stripe seemed to mark its passage straight across all the graves over the court, up to the spot where the thrice-accursed witch stood upon the convent wall, and people afterwards remarked that all plants, grass, flowers, and shrubs within that same stripe turned pale and faded, only some poison plants, as hemlock, nightshade, and the like, stood up green and stiff along that livid line. When the Duke observed this, he shook his head, but made no remark, stepped hastily, however, into his carriage, after again earnestly admonishing Sidonia; item, the sheriff to remember his commands. He ordered the procession to start, and proceeded on his way to the Diet.
It may be easily believed that no one ventured to put the commands of his Grace into execution; therefore, Sidonia remained abbess as heretofore. Agnes Kleist, indeed, that same day, had the great padlock put upon the gate; but my hag no sooner sees it than she calls for the convent servant, saying she must go forth to drive, then takes her hatchet, and with it hews away at the padlock, until it falls to the ground. Whereupon, laughing scornfully, she went her way out into the road; and the new abbess could not remonstrate, for on Sidonia's return home (I forgot to say that, latterly, she had gone much about amongst the neighbouring nobles, even as his Highness observed, frightening them to death with her visits) she shut herself up again; and Anna Apenborg soon brings the news from Wolde, "The lady is praying;" and Anna, having privately slid under the window, found that it was even so.
So the whole convent shuddered; but no one dared to say a word, though each sister judged for herself what the praying betokened, without venturing to speak her surmise. But this time she did not pray for three days and three nights, only once in the week, when her bath-day came; by which, people suspected that his Highness was destined to a slower death than the other victims of her demoniac malice.