"I'll soon make the stubborn fellow yield," cried the castellan brutally; "let's see if this won't bend him! Now, gentlemen, do your duty; strip him, and torture him till he confesses his crimes."
Ráby was dumb with horror. They tore his clothes from him, but the sight of the prisoner's haggard face and emaciated figure smote the heart even of the executioner with a sudden pity.
"My good Janosics," he said, "I won't torment the poor wretch, not if you give me the whole Assembly House for doing such work."
And with that, he put on his coat, seized the water-pitcher which stood by Ráby's bed, and extinguished the coals, so that the cell was plunged in sudden darkness. Then the whole crew withdrew quarrelling among themselves.
When Ráby brought the occurrence to the notice of the court the following day, they only laughed, and said he had been dreaming!
One of the thoughts that tortured Ráby most was the anxiety as to what he should do for food, if his benefactress' daily supply of chocolate should fail him. He saved up a little store of it hidden in his black bread, and for water, he could trust to the ice which still, through the severity of the season, constantly formed in his dungeon.
And one day, what he had so long dreaded, happened, and the voice was heard no longer, and he had to take refuge in his hardly saved store of nourishment. Nor was there any sign of his protectress on the following day. But that night in the room above he could hear men's footsteps and the sound of a woman groaning, as if with pain, all the night long. A fearful suspicion crossed his mind that he dared not face, even to himself.
It was obvious that overhead someone was dying, and that someone a woman. He would not let his mind dwell on the presentiment that suddenly arose; it could not be, it must be a nightmare conjured up by his own fevered imagination.
The next morning the groans had ceased, but he could not hear what was being said by those talking. By the afternoon, his fears were changed into certainty, and he knew it was no dream.
Then he heard the sound of singing, the melancholy droning that the Calvinists use over the corpse, so charged with dreary forebodings, the horrible gloom of which is in such contrast to the touching Catholic ritual for the dead, where all tends to prayerful hope for the departed and to consolation for the survivors.