CHAPTER XLVI.
One of the thoughts that tortured Raby most was the anxiety as to whathe should do for food, if his benefactress' daily supply of chocolateshould fail him. He saved up a little store of it hidden in his blackbread, and for water, he could trust to the ice which still, through theseverity of the season, constantly formed in his dungeon.
And one day, what he had so long dreaded, happened, and the voice washeard no longer, and he had to take refuge in his hardly saved store ofnourishment. Nor was there any sign of his protectress on the followingday. But that night in the room above he could hear men's footsteps andthe sound of a woman groaning, as if with pain, all the night long. Afearful suspicion crossed his mind that he dared not face, even tohimself.
It was obvious that overhead someone was dying, and that someone awoman. He would not let his mind dwell on the presentiment that suddenlyarose; it could not be, it must be a nightmare conjured up by his ownfevered imagination.
The next morning the groans had ceased, but he could not hear what wasbeing said by those talking. By the afternoon, his fears were changedinto certainty, and he knew it was no dream.
Then he heard the sound of singing, the melancholy droning that theCalvinists use over the corpse, so charged with dreary forebodings, thehorrible gloom of which is in such contrast to the touching Catholicritual for the dead, where all tends to prayerful hope for the departedand to consolation for the survivors.
And then followed a series of dull thuds, as if they were nailing down acoffin-lid, and Raby shuddered, but not this time with the cold.
Towards evening his gaoler came to visit his cell, and Raby mastered hisfeelings sufficiently as far as to ask who it was they were burying.
The castellan read the real question in the prisoner's face as in anopen book. It betrayed his one vulnerable point, and his tormentor wasnot slow to take advantage of his discovery.
So he wiped his eye hypocritically, and murmured in a sorrowful tone,"Alas, it is our beloved Fraulein Mariska, the head notary's daughter,that they are carrying to the grave. Heaven rest her soul!"
The prisoner uttered a sharp cry as if he had received his death-blow;then he burst into tears. Truly the dart had gone home this time, andnothing could ward it off. The gaoler laughed behind the prisoner'sback; he had done better than the executioner for once!
But Raby bowed his head on his knees, and clasped his fettered hands inprayer for the soul that had so lately taken flight from this valley oftears. But had he known it, Raby was praying, not for the soul ofMariska, but for that of his wretched wife, for it was she whom theywere bearing to the grave.
Fruzsinka had been, all unknown to him, a prisoner like himself, andthis was the end. How she had come there we shall learn later, formeantime there are other factors in this strange history to be reckonedwith, and Raby is still languishing in his dungeon.