A shrill whistle rang through the house, and in moment Medea burst into the room again, clutched the two trembling women by the shoulders, and exclaimed:  “For Christ’s sake, be merciful!  My life is at stake Sorcery is punishable by death.  I have done my best for you.  You came here—­ that is what you must say—­out of charity to nurse the sick.”  She pushed them both behind the hanging whence they still heard feeble groans, into a low, stuffy room, and the over-grown girl slipped in behind them.

Here, on miserable couches, lay an old man shivering, and showing dark spots on his bare breast and face:  and a child of five, whose crimson cheeks were burning with fever.

Heliodora felt as if she must suffocate in the plague stricken, heavy atmosphere, and Katharina clung to her helplessly; but the soothsayer pulled her away, saying:  “Each to one bed:  you to the child, and you—­ the old man.”

Involuntarily they obeyed the woman who was panting with fright.  The water-wagtail, who never in her life thought of a sick person, turned very sick and looked away from the sufferer; but the your widow, who had spent many and many a night by the death-bed of a man she had loved, and who, tender-hearted, had often tended her sick slaves with her own hand, looked compassionately into the pretty, pain-stricken face of the child, and wiped the dews from his clammy brow.

Katharina shuddered; but her attention was presently attracted to something fresh; from the other side of the house came a clatter of weapons, the door was pushed open, and the physician Philippus walked into the room.  He desired the night-watch, who were with him, to wait outside.  He had come by the command of the police authorities, to whose ears information had been brought that there were persons sick of the plague in the house of Medea, and that she, nevertheless, continued to receive visitors.  It had long been decided that she must be taken in the act of sorcery, and warning had that day been given that she expected illustrious company in the evening.  The watch were to find her red-handed, so to speak; the leech was to prove whether her house was indeed plague-stricken; and in either case the senate wished to have the sorceress safe in prison and at their mercy, though even Philippus had not been taken into their confidence.

The visitors he had come upon were the last he had expected to find here.  He looked at them with a disapproving shake of the head, interrupted the woman’s voluble asseverations that these noble ladies had come, out of Christian charity, to comfort and help the sick, with a rough exclamation:  “A pack of lies!” and at once led the coerced sick nurses out of the house.  He then represented to them the fearful risk to which their folly had exposed them, and insisted very positively on their returning home and, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, taking a bath and putting on fresh garments.