CHAPTER XIV.

THE JUDGMENT OF THE SAINTS.

Early the next morning Father Hieronymus entered the room that was occupied by Lady Regina von Emmeritz and old Dorthe. Pale from watching and suffering, the beautiful young girl sat by the bedside of her faithful servant. When the Jesuit entered, Regina rose quickly.

"Save Dorthe, my father!" she impetuously exclaimed ... "I have looked for you everywhere, and you have abandoned me!"

"Hush!" said the Jesuit whispering. "Speak low, the walls have ears. So ... actually? ... Dorthe is sick? Poor old woman, it is too bad, but I cannot help her. They have penetrated our disguise. They suspect us. We must fly this day--this moment."

"Not before you have made Dorthe well again. I beseech you, my father; you are wise, you know all the remedies; give her an immediate restorative, and we will follow you wherever you choose.

"Impossible, we have not a moment to lose. Come!"

"Not without Dorthe, my father! Holy Virgin, how could I abandon her, my nurse, my motherly friend?"

The Jesuit went to the bed, took the old woman's hand, touched her forehead, and pointed to it in silence, with an air which Regina understood but too well.

"She is dead!" cried the young girl with dismay.

"Yes, what then?" replied the Jesuit, a marked sinister smile on his lips fighting with the air of regret he tried to assume.

"You see, my child," he added, "that the saints have wished to spare our faithful old friend a toilsome journey, and have taken her instead to heavenly glory. There is nothing more to be done here. Come!"

But Regina had perceived the malignant smile through her tears, and it struck her with an indescribable horror. She seemed to detect a dark secret.

"Come!" he repeated hastily. "I will give Messenius' wife, who is a Catholic, the charge of burying our friend."

Regina's dark eyes looked on the monk with fear and aversion.

"At seven o'clock yesterday evening," she said, "Dorthe was in good health. Then she drank the beverage of strengthening herbs which you have prepared for her every evening. At eight o'clock she was taken ill ... ten hours afterwards she has ceased to live."

"The fatigue of the long journey ... a cold, an _inflammation_ ... nothing more is wanted. Come!" said the monk uneasily.

But Regina did not move.

"Monk," she said in a voice trembling with disgust and horror, "you have poisoned her."

"My child, my daughter, what are you saying? Grief has clouded your reason; come, I forgive you."

"She was a burden to you ... I saw your impatience on our journey here. And now you wish me to place myself in your power without protection. Holy Virgin, save me! I will not go with you!"

The Jesuit's mobile features instantly changed their expression, and assumed that commanding air which had made Messenius yield.

"Child," he said, "do not draw upon yourself the anger of the saints by listening to the voice of the tempter. Remember _where_ you are, unfortunate, and _who_ you are. A moment's delay, and I leave you here a prey to want, captivity, and death; a target for the heretic's scorn, a lost sheep abandoned by the Holy Virgin. Here perdition and misery ... there in your Fatherland the favour of the saints. Choose quickly, for the sleigh stands waiting; the morning dawns, and day must not find us in this nest of heretics."

Regina hesitated.

"Swear," she said, "that you are innocent of Dorthe's death!"

"I swear it!" exclaimed the Jesuit, "by the cross and by the holy Loyola's bones. May the firm ground open under my feet, and the abyss swallow me alive, if I have ever given this woman any drink but what was healthful and medicinal."

"Well, then," said Regina, "the saints have heard your oath, and written it down in the book of judgment. Farewell, my mother, my friend! Come, let us go!"

Both hurried out.

It was still dark. A pale ray of light appeared over the dark firs on the edge of Koivukoski fall. The horses stood harnessed. The sleepy guard at the castle gate gave a free passage to the physician, who was well known to all.

The Jesuit already thought himself in safety, when a sleigh from the mainland met the fugitives on the narrow bridge, and drove close up to them in the darkness. The monk's sleigh turned on the edge, and was only hindered by the half-rotten railing from upsetting into the depths.

Regina gave a cry of terror.

At the sound of this cry a man sprang from the other sleigh and approached the fugitives.

"Regina!" cried a well-known voice, which trembled from surprise.

"You are mistaken, my friend," the Jesuit hastened to say in a disguised voice. "Give way to Doctor Albertus Simonis, army physician in the service of his Royal Majesty."

"Ha! it is you, accursed Jesuit!" cried the stranger. "Guard, to arms! To arms! and seize the greatest villain on earth." And so saying, he grasped the monk by his fur cloak.

For an instant Hieronymus tried to disengage the sleigh and escape through the speed of the horses. But when he found that this was impossible, he left his fur cloak behind him, wriggled from his enemy's grasp, and, throwing himself quickly over the railing of the bridge, jumped down on the ice, which, in the terrible cold, had formed between the castle island and the mainland. He soon vanished in the dim morning light.

Alarmed by the cry, the castle gate guard discharged his musket after the fugitive, but without effect. Some of the soldiers seemed inclined to pursue him on the ice.

"Do not do that, boys!" cried a bearded sergeant, "it has thawed during the night, and the stream has cut the ice underneath; I think it will break up to-day."

"But the fellow jumped down there!" cried some.

"The devil will get him," replied the sergeant, calmly lighting his morning pipe. "I guess by this time he is not far from Ämmä."

"What did you say?" cried the driver of the sleigh in alarm.

"I say that the old woman* has got her breakfast to-day," answered the sergeant with perfect composure. "Just listen, she barks like a chained dog; now she is satisfied."

* The Finnish word ämmä means old woman.

All listened, appalled, to the din of the waters. It seemed to them as if the mighty fall roared more wildly, more terribly than before, in the dreary winter dawn. The sergeant was right, it was like the howl of an angry dog, when they have thrown him his prey.