in the city concerning this maid?

"I ask not you, Duke Otho, who have lived apart in your castle or in far
lands, a stranger to the city like myself. But I ask the people among
whom, during all these; past months of the plague, she has dwelt. Is she
not known among them as Saint Helena?"

"Aye," cried the people, "Saint Helena, indeed--our savior when there was
none to help! God save Saint Helena!"

Dessauer waved his hand for silence.

"Did she not go among you from house to house, carrying, not the
poison-cup, but the healing draught? Was not her hand soft on the brow of
the dying, comfortable about the neck of the bereaved? Day and night,
whose fingers reverently wrapped up the poor dead bodies of your
beloved? Who quieted your babes in her arms, fed thorn, nursed them,
healed them, buried them--wore herself to a shadow for your sakes ?"

"Saint Helena!" they cried; "Saint Helena, the angel of the Red Tower!"

"Aye," said Dessauer, in tones like thunder, "hear their voices! There
are a thousand witnesses in this house untortured, unsuborned. I tell
you, the guilt of innocent blood will lie on you, great Duke--on you
counsellors of evil things, if you condemn this maid. Your throne,
Duke Otho, shall totter and fall, and your life's sun shall set in a
sea of blood!"

He sat down calm and fearless as the Duke raged to Michael Texel, as I
think, desiring that the fearless pleader could be seized on the instant,
and punished for his insolence. But as the folk shouted in the hall, and
the thunder of cheering came in through the open windows from the great
concourse without, Michael Texel calmed his master, urging upon him that
the temper of the people was for the present too dangerous. And also,
doubtless, that they could easily compass their ends by other means.

I saw Texel despatch a messenger to the lictors who stood on either side
of Helene. The body-guard of the Duke stood closer about her as the Duke
Otho himself stood up to read the sentence.

I saw that the form of it had been written out upon a paper. Doubtless,
therefore, all had been prearranged, so that neither evidence nor
eloquence could possibly have had any effect upon it.

"We, the Court of the Wolfmark, find the prisoner, Helene, called
Gottfried, guilty of witchcraft, and especially of compassing and
causing the death of our predecessor, the most noble Duke Casimir, and
we do hereby adjudge that, on the morning of Sunday presently
following