Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 6 (1927-12).djvu/51

  "Spectral figures floated, threatened and mocked." Weird Tales v10n06 - The Witch-Baiter.png

YNHEER VAN RAGEVOORT did not like the dark! There were things he could not see in the dark, but which he knew were there. But there were also things that he knew did not exist, which the darkness nevertheless conjured before his eyes. Faces! Spectral figures that floated and threatened and mocked! Many faces, many figures! And those of women chiefly, and girls! Of course, they had been witches and he had condemned them to the torture, to the stake, to the rope. But why should they trouble him, dance about him, beckon him? He had not executed them; he had merely been their judge, the administrator of the Law! The Law forced him and he was helpless! Still they bothered. Sometimes they seemed so real!

Emphatically, Mynheer van Ragevoort, the Justice of Hegemonde, did not like the dark! Worse, noises often came from the night, noises that were mysterious and unaccountable. Sounds like the voices of people, especially sounds of women in pain, shrieking in torture, gasping brokenly!

There! The Justice started. He seemed to recognize a voice—yes, he heard it distinctly! It sounded like—ah, now he remembered! the voice of Melisande zer Honde, a slight girl, pale and pretty, a child of scarcely twelve. How she had screamed when the rack drew out her joints and stretched her muscles and ripped the ligaments! Yet she had confessed! He had been amazed that so young a child should be a witch! But witnesses had stated so, 2em