y?"

The two sentinels continued their pacing up and down, but still at some
distance from the prison doorway, in order, as Hans's companion
expressed it, "to keep as much as possible out of the devil's clutches;"
while Black Claus approached the grating of the door.

As the witchfinder peered, with knitted brow, through the bars of the
grating, it seemed to him at first, so complete was the darkness within,
as though the cell was tenantless; and his first movement was to turn,
in order to warn the guards of the escape of their prisoner. But as he
again strained his eyes, he became at last aware of the existence of a
dark form upon the floor of the cell; and as by degrees his sight became
more able to penetrate the obscurity within, he began plainly to
perceive the form of the miserable woman, crouched on her knees upon the
damp slimy pavement of the wretched hole. She was already dressed in the
sackcloth robe of the penitents condemned to the stake, and her poor
grey hairs were without covering. So motionless was her form that for a
moment the witchfinder thought she was dead, and had fallen together in
the position in which she had knelt down; and the thought was like a
knife in his revengeful heart, that she might thus have escaped the
tortures prepared for her, and thwarted the gratification of his insane
and hideous longings. A second thought suggested to him that she was
sleeping. But this conjecture was scarcely less agonizing to him than
the former. That she, the sorceress, should sleep and be at rest, whilst
he, her victim, could find no sleep, no rest, no peace, body or mind,
was more than his bitter spirit could bear. He shook the bars of the
door with violence, and called aloud, "Magdalena!"

"Is my hour already come?" said the wretched woman, raising her head so
immediately as to show how far sleep was from her eyelids.

"No, thou hast got an hour to enjoy the torments of thy own despair,"
laughed the witchfinder, with bitter irony.

"Let me, then, be left in peace, and my last prayers be undisturbed,"
said Magdalena.

"In order that thou mayst pray to the devil thou servest to deliver
thee!" pursued Black Claus, with another mocking laugh. "Ay--pray--pray;
but it will be in vain. He is an arch-deceiver, the fiend, thy master.
He promises and fulfils not. He offers tempting wages to those who sell
to him their souls, and then deserts his servants in the hour of
trouble. So prayed all the filthy hags w