When Sidonia heard this, she turned as pale as a corpse, and her breath seemed stifling, but recovering herself soon, attempted to smile, turned up her eyes to heaven, and, sighing, said, "He that walketh innocently walketh surely" (Prov. x. 9), and then rang for the nuns to go and pray in the chapel. Yet that same day, when she heard of the fearful death of the dairy-mother, she turned her hypocritical mouth to another tune, raged, and stormed, and abused the bloodthirsty savage of a commissioner, who had let the most pious person of the whole parish die so horribly on the rack; then bid the whole chapter assemble in her room, to state the matter to his Highness, for if these evil doings went on, not even the most innocent amongst them was safe from a like bitter death.
Whereupon Anna Apenborg, who had grown the bravest of all, since she found that Sidonia could not do without her, said, "But, gracious Lady Prioress, you yourself accused the dairy-mother of witchcraft when you came back from Stettin, and found the poor priest in his coffin!" which impertinence, however, my hag so resented, that she hit Anna a blow on the mouth, and exclaimed in great wrath, "Take that for thy impudence, thou daring peasant wench!" But, calming herself in a moment, added, "Ah, good Anna, is it not human to err?--have you never been deceived yourself?"
_Summa_.--The nuns must write and sign. Whereupon my Ludecke, out of fear of Sidonia's revenge, withdrew to Saatzig after the death of the dairy-mother, from thence to Dölitz, Pyritz, and so on, still faithful to his motto, "Torture! burn! kill!" for he found as many witches as he pleased in every place; so that the executioner, Curt Worger, who, when he first arrived at Marienfliess, wore nothing but a sorry grey mantle, now appeared decked out like a noble, in a bright scarlet cloak; _item_, a hat with a red feather, a buff jerkin, and jack-boots with gilded spurs; neither would he sit any longer on the cart with the witches, but rode by the side of the commissioner, on a jet black horse, which carried a red flag between its ears; and his drawn sword rested upon his shoulder. Thus they proceeded through the land; and upon entering a town, the executioner always struck up a psalm, in which not only the attorney-general and his secretary frequently joined, but also the wretched witches themselves who sat in the cart.