the seven accused, who were advised to
appeal to the parliarment at Metz, which they
did; but the parliament at Metz followed in
the steps of the judge of Phalsbourg; and, on
the seventeenth of February, seventeen
hundred and sixty-nine, the sentence was
confirmed.

This intelligence caused a great sensation
at Phalsbourg, where all the population were
in favour of the accused. They assembled in
crowds round the Palais de Justice to catch
sight of the prisoners and to express their
sympathy. Nevertheless, justice took her blind
course. The prisoners, one after the other,
were brought from their cells into the justice-
room. They fully expected it was preliminary
to setting them at liberty. Instead of
that, however, the interpreter pronounced
against four of them the sentence of
preliminary torture and then death; against the
others, torture; but reserving the after
sentence. They looked at each other with
astonishment; for they had never believed
that their sentence could ever come really
true.

All was ready in the torture-chamber.
The judge was there to see, the clerk to
write down what passed, and the interpreter
stood ready to translate whatever their cries
and shrieks might articulate in their agony.
There was a surgeon also, to watch how far
the torture might go without destroying the
life, which was to be claimed by the
executioner. All this terrible scene actually took
place in the year of grace seventeen hundred
and sixty-nine, in the month of February, at
two o'clock in the morning; which was the
usual time for administering the torture.
Guillauine Braun, being the youngest, was
the first delivered over to the question.
He uttered a wild, frightful cry of pain,
which no one heeded. It was confession that
was listened for, but none came. The
torture was applied with cruel ingenuity,
but Braun persisted in asserting his
innocence, and the question continued until the
surgeon interfered: the victim had to die
elsewhere. Errette was the next; but under
the most horrible torments, he persisted in
asserting his innocence. Michel Fix
succeeded to him; a vehement denial of all
knowledge of the crime was all that the
question could obtain. At last the four
poor, mutilated men were thrown scarcely
breathing, into the cart, and carried off to the
gibbet, where death was at length allowed
to end their sufferings.

All this constancy does not appear to have
raised the slightest doubt in the mind of the
stolid judge, with his fixed idea of their guilt.
He proceeded stoically to witness the
application of the torture to the remaining three;
against whom there was nothing but
suspicion. When it came to the turn of the
last, who was Ulrich Beckvert, the judge
appeared anxious. Not one word of confession
had been wrung from the previous six.

This was the last chance for justice to justify
her course; and accordingly this poor Ulrich
was subjected to more severe handling than
any of the rest; but to all questions he
returned an invincible, No! It had now
become a trial of strength between him and
his judge, and the judge was foiled. Out of
the whole seven, not one confessed. But
their constancy did them no good. These
three poor wretches who were only suspected
had their sentence confirmed; they were sent
to the galleys for life,—for as much life at
least, as was left in them. This was not
the worst; according to the existing laws, the
crimes of the accused were to be visited
upon every member of their families,—
amounting to somewhere near forty souls in
all. These unfortunate persons, in the depth
of winter, had to abandon their homes; and,
utterly destitute (for everything they possessed
was confiscated), they were sent forth to beg
their bread, wherever they could find it in a
strange land; for, to their own village, they
might never return again under pain of
death. Great sympathy was felt for them,
—none of the people believed the seven men
were guilty; it was only the judges who had
no doubts.

The memory of this terrible tragedy had
faded away. The Three Houses of Lutzelbourg
had become a legend of the countryside:
eighteen years passed, and no further
light was thrown upon the robbery.

A troop of Bohemians had their
headquarters in the forests round Mittelbron.
They were the terror of the country, and
committed the most frightful outrages far and
wide. The band was so well organised that
the combined efforts of all the authorities of
the Duchies of Wurtemberg, and of Deux
Ponts had long pursued them in vain,—but
at last many of the gang were arrested,
amongst the rest were two brothers, named
Hannickel and Vinceslas. They were
imprisoned at Stultz, in Wurtemberg, where they
were induced to make a confession of the
crimes committed by the band, of which they
had been the captains. Amongst many
robberies they mentioned incidentally, that
one night they had broken into the house of
two rich Jews at Mittelbron, and carried off
all they could find. They were examined
separately, and their stories agreed in every
particular. They stated that, on the twenty-
fourth or twenty-fifth of September, in
seventeen hundred and sixty-eight, their
band, to the number of twenty-four,
entered the house of Cerf Moses and Solomon
Cerf, and carried off property to the amount
of forty thousand francs. They named all
the robbers who took a share in the
expedition, and said that it was undertaken at
the instigation of one Tangen Henerlé, who
was the only German in their band, and
had pointed out to them the house of these
two Jews, as being well worth plundering.
When pressed to declare, if any of the