Then he again signaled to the executioner who replied with a strange guttural sound and showed by signs that for this he roust employ both hands, and therefore wanted the count to hold the light.
Then the old count took the torch and held it in his outstretched, trembling hand, but when Diedrich pressed Jurand's chest with his knees Zygfried turned his head and looked at the hoarfrost covered wall.
For a while resounded the clank of the chains, followed by the suppressed panting of a human breast which sounded like one dull, deep groan--and then all was still.
Finally Zygfried said: "Jurand, the punishment which you have suffered you have deserved; but I have promised to Brother Rotgier, whom your son-in-law has killed, to place your right hand in his coffin."
Diedrich, who had just got up from his last deed, bent again upon the prostrate form of Jurand, when he heard Zygfried's words.
After a little while, the old count and Diedrich found themselves again in that open courtyard which was illuminated by the bright moon. When they reëntered the corridor, Zygfried took the lantern from Diedrich, also a dark object wrapped up in a rag, and said to himself in a loud voice, "Now to the chapel and then to the tower."
Diedrich looked keenly at the count, but the count commanded him to go to sleep; he covered himself, hanging the lantern near the lighted window of the chapel and left. On his way he meditated upon what had just taken place. He was almost sure that his own end had also arrived and that these were his last deeds in this world, and that he would have to account for them before God. But his soul, the soul of a "Knight of the Cross," although naturally more cruel than mendacious, had in the course of inexorable necessity got accustomed to fraud, assassination and concealing the sanguinary deeds of the Order, he now involuntarily sought to cast off the ignominy and responsibility for Jurand's tortures, from both himself and the Order. Diedrich was dumb and could not confess, and, although he could make himself understood with the chaplain, he would be afraid to do so. What then? Nobody would know. Jurand might well have received all his wounds during the fight. He might have easily lost his tongue by the thrust of a lance between his teeth. An axe or a sword might have easily cut off his right hand. He had only one eye; would it be strange therefore that the other eye was lost in the fracas, for he threw himself madly upon the whole garrison of Szczytno. Alas! Jurand! His last joy in life trembled for a moment in the heart of the old Knight of the Cross. So, should Jurand survive, he ought to be set free. At this, Zygfried remembered a conversation he had had once with Rotgier about this, when that young brother laughingly remarked: "Then let him go where his eyes will carry him, and if he does not happen to strike Spychow, then let him make inquiries on the road." For that which had now happened was a part of the prearranged programme between them. But now Zygfried reentered the chapel and, kneeling in front of the coffin, he laid at Rotgier's feet Jurand's bleeding hand; that last joy which startled him was only for a moment and quickly disappeared, for the last time, from his face.