to the spot where one
unhappy woman had already perished that day, a victim to the
superstition of the times, Magdalena, who, during his praise of the fair
girl, had again looked at him with awakened interest, disengaged herself
from the other. "God's will be done!" she said with humility. "I am
prepared for all. But thou, unhappy man!" she continued, "beware in
turn, lest, before thou hast time to repent thee of the hardness and
cruelty of thy heart, His judgement fall on thee, and his justice punish
thee."

She spoke with hand upraised to heaven; and then, pulling her hood over
her face, hurried from the market-place.

The witchfinder gazed after her, fixed to the spot, and for a moment
awe-struck by her words. As he still stood struggling with his various
passions, the storm, which had been gathering ever since sunset, began
to burst over his head. The rain came down in torrents.

"Ah! was it that?" screamed the beggar, with a fit of wild laughter.
"The miserable old beldam! she stretched out her finger to the sky, and
it was to bring down these waterspouts upon my head. Curses on the foul
malicious fiend!" And he spat upon the ground, as if to exorcise the
evil spirit.

"But I must find shelter," he murmured. "Already pains rack my limbs; my
bones ache; a shudder runs through my frame! The old hag has worked her
spell upon me. _Apage, Sathanas!_ Anathema!"

Speaking thus, the wretched man shuffled along as fast as the crippled
state of his limbs, and the acute pains of rheumatism, which the damp
night-air had again brought upon him, would allow him to proceed. He
staggered to the shelter of a doorway, which was placed under the
advancing terrace of the town-hall, and between two staircases which
descended on either side on to the market-place. The protruding vault of
the Gothic archway afforded him some refuge from the storm, which now
burst down with increased violence. But the excited witchfinder's brain
seemed to wander, as he caught an indistinct vision of the gaping jaws
of the dragons and other grotesque monsters, which protruded as
waterspouts from the roofs of the surrounding houses, and now disgorged
torrents of rain.

"Spit, spit, ye devils all!" he shouted aloud. "Ye cannot reach me here.
Ha! ha! rage, storm, spew forth your venom, do the bidding of your
mistress--I defy you!" And as the wind swept round the corners of the
building, and spattered some of the water of the gushing cataracts in
his