en on her poor forlorn head as the reward, not of
apostasy, but of steadfastness. She asked her tormentors how they could
expect her to abandon her religion for fear of death. She had read her
Bible every day, she said, and had found nothing there of the pope or
purgatory, masses, invocation of saints, or the absolution of sins except
through the blood of the blessed Redeemer. She interfered with no one who
thought differently; she quarrelled with no one's religious belief. She
had prayed for enlightenment from Him, if she were in error, and the
result was that she felt strengthened in her simplicity, and resolved to
do nothing against her conscience. Rather than add this sin to the
manifold ones committed by her, she preferred, she said, to die the
death. So Anna van den Hove was led, one fine midsummer morning, to the
hayfield outside of Brussels, between two Jesuits, followed by a number
of a peculiar kind of monks called love-brothers. Those holy men goaded
her as she went, telling her that she was the devil's carrion, and
calling on her to repent at the last moment, and thus save her life and
escape eternal damnation beside. But the poor soul had no ear for them,
and cried out that, like Stephen, she saw the heavens opening, and the
angels stooping down to conduct her far away from the power of the evil
one. When they came to the hay-field they found the pit already dug, and
the maid-servant was ordered to descend into it. The executioner then
covered her with earth up to the waist, and a last summons was made to
her to renounce her errors. She refused, and then the earth was piled
upon her, and the hangman jumped upon the grave till it was flattened and
firm.

Of all the religious murders done in that hideous sixteenth century in
the Netherlands; the burial of the Antwerp servantmaid was the last and
the worst. The worst, because it was a cynical and deliberate attempt to
revive the demon whose thirst for blood had been at last allayed, and who
had sunk into repose. And it was a spasmodic revival only, for, in the
provinces at least, that demon had finished his work.

Still, on the eastern borders of what was called civilization, Turk and
Christian were contending for the mastery. The great battle of Koveso had
decided nothing, and the crescent still shone over the fortified and most
important Hungarian stronghold of Raab, within arm's length of Vienna.
How rapidly might that fatal and menacing emblem fill its hor