Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 2 (1925-08).djvu/86

 "We do hereby direct that the self-confessed witch, Maria Schweidler, be duly torn four times across each breast with red hot pincers and after that burned to death by fire.

"Given at the castle of Pudgla, 30th August, 1630."

As he announced her doom, the president of the court picked up a light willow wand and snapped it in two pieces, flinging the halves at the prisoner's feet. This was to signify that, as the wood was broken in twain, so should her soul and body be separated from each other. Had the girl been found guilty of theft, murder or any other crime meriting death, the sentence would have concluded with the pious wish, "And may God have mercy on her soul," but she had confessed to witchcraft under torture, so there was no hope for her on earth or yet in heaven. The tearing pincers and the crackling flames with which her young life was shortly to be ended were but the momentary prelude of the everlasting torture reserved for her by the mereiful God who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believed on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

There was no locus poenitentiae, or opportunity for repentance, permitted the condemned witch under the German code. "What thou hast to do, do quickly," were the executioner's standing orders, and Maria was led from the courtroom to the cart which waited to carry her to the stake. The sheriff mounted his tall gray horse; the constable, with his sword drawn—lest the witch work Christian folk an injury!—took his station in the cart beside the prisoner; and, surrounded by a guard of the graf's varlets, the girl set out for the spot where the fagots were already piled high about the stake and the hideous old women, heated the executioner's pincers white-hot in a charcoal furnace.

Led by the sheriff, the little procession trotted down the unpaved roadway, clattered across the plank bridge above the mill-stream and brought up at the spot of execution. A hundred yokels, gathered in hang-jawed amazement to see a young girl mutilated and burned, set up a cheer as the cart horse, frightened by the fumes from the charcoal stove, pranced and reared on its hind legs, all but oversetting the cart in which the constable and his prisoner stood.

The executioner seized the condemned and tore her bodice open, exposing her white breast to the gazing throng, then pulled on his heavy cowhide gloves and took up his red-hot tongs.

, halloo! Stop!" The shout echoed faintly across the fields from the patch of forest land beneath the castle hill, and the notes of a hunter's horn sounding the "view" followed close upon it. Bent low above their horses' necks, riding like the good St. Hubert himself, came a party of twelve men in the maroon and silver liveries of the house of Neinkerken, the sunbeams playing bravely on the glistening tips of their boar spears.

"Do your duty, headsman!" cried the sheriff as the graf's justicer paused uncertainly at sight of the onrushing riders. "Do your duty; carry out the sentence!"

And to the approaching huntsmen the sheriff announced, "We do but put an impious witch to death, my lords."

"Thou liest, dog and perjurer, and likewise thou diest with the lie in thy throat, or I am no son of Neinkerken," answered the foremost rider as he brought his spear to the charge and drove its razorsharp head through the sheriff's breast.

"Ho, some of you, hold these swine in play!" he shouted as he leaped from his jaded horse, tore off his hunt-