cross was yet to come, as will be told hereafter.




_The Eighth Chapter_


HOW OUR NEED WAXED SORER AND SORER, AND HOW I SENT OLD ILSE WITH ANOTHER
LETTER TO PUDGLA, AND HOW HEAVY A MISFORTUNE THIS BROUGHT UPON ME

Next day, when I had buried the poor corpses amid the lamentations of the
whole village (by the same token that they were all buried under where the
lime-tree overhangs the wall), I heard with many sighs that neither the
sea nor the Achterwater would yield anything. It was now ten days since
the poor people had caught a single fish. I therefore went out into the
field, musing how the wrath of the just God might be turned from us,
seeing that the cruel winter was now at hand, and neither corn, apples,
fish nor flesh to be found in the village, nor even throughout all the
parish. There was indeed plenty of game in the forests of Coserow and
Uekeritze; but the old forest ranger, Zabel Nehring, had died last year of
the plague, and there was no new one in his place. Nor was there a musket
nor a grain of powder to be found in all the parish; the enemy had robbed
and broken everything: we were therefore forced, day after day, to see
how the stags and the roes, the hares and the wild boars, _et cet_., ran
past us, when we would so gladly have had them in our bellies, but had no
means of getting at them: for they were too cunning to let themselves be
caught in pit-falls. Nevertheless, Claus Peer succeeded in trapping a roe,
and gave me a piece of it, for which may God reward him. _Item_, of
domestic cattle there was not a head left; neither was there a dog, nor