Stiero desired the man to rise. "You have found out now that we are no women under our cowls, to be frightened by violence. Now kneel down, poor wretch, and crave for mercy, for your life is no safer than that of a mad dog."
The man, with his hands tied across each other, stood silent in a stupor of despair; he knelt down as Stiero bid him, but he did not utter a word, he fixed his sullen gaze on no one, he knew his fate and had lost all hope.
"What do you think, my brethren," said the Abbot turning to the others, "shall we give him up to the provost to be judged?"
"Yes!" replied Correntian.
"Then his sentence is pronounced; he has lifted his hand against a priest, his life is forfeited," said the Abbot.
The woman gave a piercing shriek of anguish and fell at Correntian's feet.
"Pity--mercy!" she sobbed out almost mad with terror, and she clasped his knees with all the strength of despair, for she too felt that her ruin was lowering in those sinister eyes. A scarlet flush lighted up the monk's pale face--as the northern lights flash across a winter midnight-sky--he flung her from him and clung to the bed-post for support.
"If you do not have some regard for the nurse you will kill the boy," said a voice suddenly in Latin, and father Eusebius was seen standing by the unhappy woman as if he had sprung out of the ground.
"God be thanked!" muttered brother Wyso. "Here at length is a reasonable man."
Eusebius had looked on at the proceedings, silent and unobserved till it was necessary to speak; he raised the trembling woman from the floor, and kindly comforting her he led her to the bed on which she sank down powerless. Correntian let go the bed-post he was clasping, as if it had suddenly turned to hot iron.