“Hear you, old man! be you saint or devil, we will have the maid. Whether angel or gnome has hidden her, and where, you know; and by Saint Moritz”—Ulrich felt safe invoking that martyr, in view of his vow,—“out with her hiding-place or try these pretty toys! Behold!”
The anchorite shrugged his shoulders with undisguised contempt.
“Ulrich of Eisenach,” spoke he, sternly, “I answer you on the word of a Christian man, though a sinner, that I know not where the maid is. Doubtless it has pleased God to bring this thing to pass that you may rush headlong in your sins and dash to eternal perdition. As for these oaken splints, which you weakly design to drive betwixt my nails and fingers,—bethink you if a man like me, who has endured the worst gehennas of the paynim will flinch before your petty torments? Or what will they profit you, save to heat sevenfold the fires now lit for you in hell?”
Michael had been stripping back the sheepskin from the prisoner’s shoulder. Then, as the light flickered over it, leaped back in horror.
“Holy Mother! His back,—all marked with scarce-healed scars!”
“Amen!” quoth Jerome, grimly; “those and all other tortures are too gentle for my sins. Yet, if I would glory after the flesh, I can make boast that all your tortures, Ulrich of the Wartburg, will be to me as nothing.”
“He is right,” groaned the Breaker, all his terrors springing up anew; “we are outraging God’s saint. The demons will boil us forever!”
“Silence, fool,” commanded Ulrich, grown desperate; “pass me yonder mallet, and hold fast his wrist. We will sound the depth of this loud boasting. Now and for the last time, babbler! Where hide you Agnes the maid?”
Jerome vouchsafed no reply. Ulrich was clutching the mallet and sliver when Franz-of-the-Ram’s-Pate burst into the prison. Even in the gloom his face shone white as a ghost’s.
“Up, for the love of Christ! Horses and men are all about! The Wartburg is surrounded.”