tears was just tapped for me, and so indeed it was. Moreover, the ass of a
_Custos_, having finished the _Te Deum_ before we were come to the bridge,
straightway struck up the next following hymn, which was a funeral one,
beginning, "The body let us now inter." (God be praised that no harm has
come of it till _datum_.) My beloved gossip rated him not a little, and
threatened him that for his stupidity he should not get the money for the
shoes which he had promised him out of the Church-dues. But my child
comforted him, and promised him a pair of shoes at her own charges, seeing
that peradventure a funeral hymn was better for her than a song of
gladness.

And when this vexed the young lord, and he said, "How now, sweet maid, you
know not how enough to thank God and me for your rescue, and yet you speak
thus?" She answered, smiling sadly, that she had only spoken thus to
comfort the poor _Custos_. But I straightway saw that she was in earnest,
for that she felt that although she had escaped one fire, she already
burned in another.

Meanwhile we were come to the bridge again, and all the folks stood still,
and gazed open-mouthed, when the young lord jumped down from the cart, and
after stabbing his horse, which still lay kicking on the bridge, went on
his knees, and felt here and there with his hand. At length he called to
the worshipful court to draw near, for that he had found out the
witchcraft. But none save _Dom. Consul_ and a few fellows out of the
crowd, among whom was old Paasch, would follow him; _item_, my dear gossip
and myself, and the young lord, showed us a lump of tallow about the size
of a large walnut, which lay on the ground, and wherewith the whole bridge
had been smeared, so that it looked quite white, but, which all the folks
in their fright had taken for flour out of the mill; _item_, with some
other _materia_, which stunk like fitchock's dung, but what it was we