rods scourged his fettered limbs, his thumbs were pressed in the screws,
bound to the ladder, he was dragged over the larded hare---"

"Oh, hush!" cried Fran Christine with uplifted hands, and her husband
nodded understandingly. Then, with a faint sigh, he added:

"Why should I torture you with these horrors? Nothing was spared him.
Yet the worthy fellow stuck to his statement that he had accompanied his
master to your house in the full moonlight to take a somnambulist who had
wandered out of the open door back to her friends. Sir Heinz Schorlin
had met Jungfrau Ortlieb only once--at the dance in the Town Hall.
Though he had sometimes appeared before her father's house, it was not
on account of Herr Ernst's daughters, but--and this was an allusion to
Cordula von Montfort--for the sake of another lady.

"After the lightning had killed his master's horse under him he had
avoided every woman, because he wished to enter a monastery. He could
prove all these statements by many witnesses. Yesterday he named them,
and Count Gleichen and his retainers appeared with several others. The
Minorite Benedictus was vainly sought at the Franciscans."

"He is here in the house of the Beguines," replied Frau Christine, "and
weak as he is, he will have strength enough to make a deposition in the
knight's favour."

The magistrate said that this might be necessary if a new charge were
brought against the servitor, Katterle, and perhaps even Sir Heinz
Schorlin himself. Rarely had he seen a bad cause maintained with so much
obstinacy. The complainants had witnesses who testified under oath what
they had heard in taverns and tap-rooms from Sir Seitz Siebenburg and