"Who comes here?" cried the sentinel at the bottom of the steep road which led up to the gate at the rear of the town of Sfetigrade.

The man thus challenged made no reply except to speak sharply to a large hound he was leading, and which was struggling to break away from him. In his engrossment with the brute he did not seem to have heard the challenge. As he came nearer the sentinel eyed him with a puzzled, but half-comical look, as he soliloquized,--

"Ah, by the devil in the serpent's skin, I know him this time. He is the Albanian Turk we were nigh to hamstringing. If I mistake that red head again it will be when my own head has less brain in it than will balance it on a pike-staff, where Colonel Kabilovitsch would put it if I molested this fellow again. I'll give him the pa.s.s word, instead of taking it from him; that will make up for past mistakes."

The sentinel saluted the new comer with a most profound courtesy, and, shouldering his spear, marched hastily past him, ogling him with a sidelong knowing look.

"Tako mi Marie!"[60]

"Tako mi Marie!" responded the man, adding to himself, "but this is fortunate; the fellow must be crazy. I thought I should have had to brain him at least."

As he pa.s.sed by, the sentinel stood still, watching him, and muttered,

"How should I know but Castriot himself is in that dog's hide."

The dog turned and, attracted by the soldier's att.i.tude, uttered a low growl.

"Tako mi Marie! and all the other saints in heaven too, but I believe it is the general in disguise," said the sentinel.

"Tako mi Marie!" said the stranger saluting the various guards, whom he pa.s.sed without further challenge, through the town gates and up to the main street.

The great well, from which the beleaguered inhabitants of Sfetigrade drew the only water now accessible, since the Turks had so closely invested the town, was not far from the citadel. It was very deep, having been cut through the great layers of rock upon which the upper town stood. Above it was a great wheel, over the outer edge of which ran an endless band of leather; the lower end dipping into the water that gleamed faintly far below. Leathern sockets attached to this belt answered for buckets, which, as the wheel was turned, lifted the water to the top, whence it ran into a great stone trough. The well was guarded by a curb of stones which had originally been laid compactly together; but many of them had been removed, and used to hurl down from the walls of the citadel upon the heads of the Turks when they tried to scale them.

The dog, panting with the heat, mounted one of the remaining stones, and stretched his long neck far down to sniff the cool water which glistened a hundred feet below him. The man shouted angrily to the beast, and so clumsily attempted to drag him away that both dog and stone were precipitated together into the well.

"A grapple! a rope!" shouted the man to a crowd who had seen the accident from a distance. "Will no one bring one?" he cried with apparent anger at their slow movements--"Then I must get one myself."

The crowd rushed toward the well. The man disappeared in the opposite direction.

It was several hours before the dead dog was taken from the polluted water. The Dibrian soldiers refused to drink from it. The superst.i.tion communicated itself like an epidemic, to the other inhabitants. For a day or two bands sallied from Sfetigrade, and brought water from the plain: but it was paid for in blood, for the Turkish armies, aware of the incident almost as soon as it occurred, drew closer their lines, and stationed heavy detachments of Janizaries at the springs and streams for miles around. The horrors of a water-famine were upon the garrison. In vain did the officers rebuke the insane delusion. The common soldiers, not only would not touch the water, but regarded the accident as a direct admonition from heaven that the town must be surrendered. Appeals to heroism, patriotism, honor, were less potent than a silly notion which had grown about the minds of an otherwise n.o.ble people--as certain tropical vines grow so tough and in such gradually lessening spirals about a stalwart tree that they choke the ascending sap and kill it. They who would have drunk were prevented by the others who covered the well with heavy pieces of timber, and stood guard about it.

FOOTNOTE:

[60] Help me, Mary!

CHAPTER XXVI.

In vain did Castriot a.s.sault the Turks who were intrenched about the wells and springs in the neighborhood. Now and then a victory over them would be followed by a long procession from the town, rolling casks, carrying buckets, pitchers, leather bottles and dug-out troughs. The amount of water thus procured but scarcely sufficed to keep life in the veins of the defenders: it did not suffice to nourish heart and courage. It was foreseen that Sfetigrade must fall.

Constantine was in the madness of despair about Morsinia. Her fate in the event of capture was simply horrible to contemplate. Yet she could hardly hope to make her way through the Turkish lines. Constantine was at the camp with Castriot when it was announced that the enemy had at length got possession of every approach to the town, so that there was no communication between the Albanians within and those without, except by signaling over the heads of the Turks. Castriot determined upon a final attack, during which, if he should succeed in uncovering any of the gates of the town, the people might find egress.

Constantine begged to be allowed the hazardous duty of entering, by pa.s.sing in disguise through the Turkish army, and giving the endangered people the exact information of Castriot's purpose. Taking advantage of his former experience, he donned the uniform of a Janizary, easily learned the enemy's pa.s.sword, and at the moment designated to the besieged by Castriot's signal--just as the lower star of the Great Dipper disappeared behind the cliff--he emerged from the dense shadows of an angle of the wall. He was scarcely opposite the gate when the drawbridge lowered and rose quickly. The portcullis was raised and dropped an instant later, and he was within the town.

Throwing off his disguise, he went at once toward the commandant's quarters to deliver despatches from Castriot. But a shout preceded him--

"The destroyer! The destroyer! Death to the destroyer!"

Mult.i.tudes, awakened by the shouting, came from the houses and soldiers' quarters. Constantine was seized by the crowd, who yelled:

"To the well with him! Let the dog's soul come into him!"

He was borne along as helplessly as a leaf in the foaming cataract.

"To the well! To the well with the poisoner!"

The cry grew louder and shriller; the mult.i.tude maddening under the intense fury of their mutual rage, as each coal is hotter when many glow with it in the fire. Women mingled with soldiers, shrieking their insane vengeance, until the crowd surged with the victim around the well. The planks were torn off by strong hands. The horror of the deed they were about to commit made them pause. Each waited for his neighbor to a.s.sume the desperate office of actually perpetrating what was in all their hearts to do.

At length three of the more resolute stepped forward as executioners of the popular will. The struggling form of Constantine was held erect that all might see him. Torches waved above his head. One stood upon the well curb, and, dropping a torch into the dark abyss, cried with a loud voice--

"So let his life be put out who destroys us all!"

"So let it be!" moaned the crowd; the wildness of their wrath somewhat subdued by the impressiveness of the tragedy they were enacting.

The well hissed back its curse as the burning brand sunk into the water.

But a new apparition burst upon the scene. Suddenly, as if it had risen from the well, a form draped in white stood upon the curb. Her long golden hair floated in the strong wind. Her face, from sickness white as her robe, had an unearthly pallor from the excitement, and seemed to be lit with the white heat of her soul. Her sunken eyes gave back the flare of the torches, as if they gleamed with celestial reprobation.

"The Holy Virgin!" cried some.

"One of the Vili!" cried others.

The crowd surged back in ghostly fear.

"Neither saint nor sprite am I," cried Morsinia. "Your own wicked hearts make you fear me. It is your consciences that make you imagine a simple girl to be a vengeful spirit, and shrink from this horrid murder, to the very brink of which your ignorance and wretched superst.i.tion have led you. Blessed Mary need not come from Heaven to tell you that a man--a man for whom her Son Jesu died--should not be made to die for the sake of a dead dog. I, a child, can tell you that."

"But the well is accursed and the people die," said a monk, throwing back his cowl, and reaching out his hand to seize her.

"And such words from you, a priest of Jesu!" answered the woman, warding him off by the scathing scorn of her tones. "Did not Jesu say, 'Come unto Me and drink, drink out of My veins as ye do in Holy Sacrament?' Will He curse and kill, then, for drinking the water which you need, because a dog has fallen into it?"

These words, following the awe awakened by her unexpected appearance, stayed the rage of the crowd for a moment. But soon the murmur rose again--

"To the well!"

"He is a murderer!"

"It is just to take vengeance on a murderer!"

The woman raised her hand as if invoking the witness of Heaven to her cause, and exclaimed--

"But _I_ am not a murderer. A curse on him who slays the innocent. I will be the sacrifice. I fear not to drink of this well with my dying gasp. Unhand the man, or, as sure as Heaven sees me, I shall die for him!"

A shudder of horror ran through the crowd as the light form of the young woman raised itself to the very brink of the well. It seemed as if a movement, or a cry, would precipitate her into the black abyss.

The crowd was paralyzed. The silence of the dead fell upon them, as she leaned forward for the awful plunge.