From these they went to the inn of St. Nicholas, which belonged to the
Hunchback. Here, too, so as to appease them, the door was opened at
once; but, when the soldiers reappeared amid a great uproar, they
carried three children in their arms. The marauders were surrounded by
the Hunchback, his wife, and daughters, all, with clasped hands,
imploring for mercy.

When the soldiers came to their white-bearded leader, they placed the
children at the foot of an elm, where the little ones remained seated on
the snow in their Sunday clothes. But one of them, in a yellow frock,
got up and toddled unsteadily towards the sheep. A soldier followed,
with bare sword; and the child died with his face in the grass, while
the others were killed around the tree.

The peasants and the innkeeper's daughters all fled screaming, and shut
themselves up in their houses. The cure, who was left alone in the
orchard, threw himself on his knees, first before one horseman, then
another, and with crossed arms, supplicated the Spaniards piteously,
while the fathers and mothers seated on the snow beyond wept bitterly
for the dead children whom they held upon their knees.

As the lancers passed along the street, they noticed a big blue
farmstead. When they had tried, in vain, to force open the oaken door
studded with nails, they clambered atop of some tubs, which were frozen
over near the threshold, and by this means gained the house through the
upper windows.

There had been a kermesse in this farm. At sound of the broken window-
panes, the families who had assembled there to eat gaufres, custards,