“Let him go,” said the voice of the Pastor Arentz.  “We fight the Church, not its ministers.”

“Hear me first,” she answered who had spoken before, and men turned to see standing above them in the great pulpit of the church, a fierce-eyed, yellow-toothed hag, grey-haired, skinny-armed, long-faced like a horse, and behind her two other women, each of whom held a torch in her right hand.

“It is the Mare,” roared the multitude.  “It is Martha of the Mere.  Preach on, Martha.  What’s your text?”

“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed,” she answered in a ringing, solemn voice, and instantly a deep silence fell upon the place.

“You call me the Mare,” she went on.  “Do you know how I got that name?  They gave it me after they had shrivelled up my lips and marred the beauty of my face with irons.  And do you know what they made me do?  They made me carry my husband to the stake upon my back because they said that a horse must be ridden.  And do you know who said this? That priest who stands before you.”

As the words left her lips a yell of rage beat against the roof.  Martha held up her thin hand, and again there was silence.

“He said it—­the holy Father Dominic; let him deny it if he can.  What?  He does not know me?  Perchance not, for time and grief and madness and hot pincers have changed the face of Vrouw Martha van Muyden, who was called the Lily of Brussels.  Ah! look at him now.  He remembers the Lily of Brussels.  He remembers her husband and her son also, for he burned them.  O God, judge between us.  O people, deal with that devil as God shall teach you.

“Who are the others?  He who is called Ramiro, the Governor of the Gevangenhuis, the man who years ago would have thrust me beneath the ice to drown had not the Vrouw van Goorl bought my life; he who set her husband, Dirk van Goorl, the man you loved, to starve to death sniffing the steam of kitchens.  O people, deal with that devil as God shall teach you.

“And the third, the half-Spaniard, the traitor Adrian called van Goorl, he who has come here to-night to be baptised anew into the bosom of the Holy Church; he who signed the evidence upon which Dirk was murdered”—­here, again, the roar of hate and rage went up and beat along the roof—­“upon which too his brother Foy was taken to the torture, whence Red Martin saved him.  O people, do with that devil also as God shall teach you.

“And the fourth, Hague Simon the spy, the man whose hands for years have smoked with innocent blood; Simon the Butcher—­Simon the false witness——­”

“Enough, enough!” roared the crowd.  “A rope, a rope; up with him to the arm of the Rood.”

“My friends,” cried Arentz, “let the man go.  Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.”

“Yes, but we will give him something on account,” shouted a voice in bitter blasphemy.  “Well climbed, Jan, well climbed,” and they looked up to see, sixty feet above their heads, seated upon the arm of the lofty Rood, a man with a candle bound upon his brow and a coil of rope upon his back.