"I have satisfied myself that I have courage enough," he answered. "Hearken, and you will every now and then distinguish a peculiar whizzing, and a rattling like the fall of stones; you do not know what this is. I will tell you. These are cannon-shot, Lady Regina; you would know this better if the noise outside was not so deafening. For some time the balls have been shattering the walls of the turret, and almost always at the same place. Fair cousin, these are no sugar-plums. The Swedes must have been taught to shoot by the Wild Huntsman."
"Do you really think——"
"That the enemy intend to destroy this turret, and will fill the castle moat with the debris? Yes, cousin, and I believe they will do it very soon. You are in danger here, every moment, and must go somewhere else."
"Immediately, good count, at once! Come, lady!" cried Ketchen, trying with friendly violence to take her young mistress away with her. But Regina was in an exalted mood. In the habit of ruling, and perhaps from the defiant nature of her character, full of strange contrasts, joined to the burning fanaticism which the Jesuit had implanted in her mind from childhood ... she stepped backwards, grasped the gilded image of the Virgin, which Father Hieronymus had sent to guard her, and placed it in front of herself on the window-sill.
"Go," she exclaimed; "you are weak in the faith; you doubt the protection of the holy saints. I shall remain, and the efforts of the heretics will avail nothing against——"
Lady Regina's speech was not finished, when a ball struck the turret at an oblique angle, knocking away a piece of the facing. A shower of stone fragments hurtled through the window, demolishing the image of the Holy Virgin, and enveloping Lady Regina in dust and dirt.
"You must away! Now you see for yourself!" cried the count.
"Let us go!" exclaimed all the girls nearly paralyzed with fear.
But Regina, nearly overwhelmed for a moment, recovered her self-confidence, and stooped down to pick up the image, saying with faith,
"They cannot triumph over the Holy Mother."