a cat, which the people had not either eaten in their extreme hunger,
or knocked on the head or drowned long since. Albeit old farmer Paasch
still owned two cows; _item_, an old man in Uekeritze was said to have
one little pig:--this was all. Thus, then, nearly all the people lived on
blackberries and other wild fruits: the which also soon grew to be scarce,
as may easily be guessed. Besides all this, a boy of fourteen was missing
(old Labahn his son) and was never more heard of, so that I shrewdly think
that the wolves devoured him.

And now let any Christian judge by his own heart in what sorrow and
heaviness I took my staff in my hand, seeing that my child fell away like
a shadow from pinching hunger; although I myself, being old, did not, by
the help of God's mercy, find any great failing in my strength. While I
thus went continually weeping before the Lord, on the way to Uekeritze, I
fell in with an old beggar with his wallet, sitting on a stone, and eating
a piece of God's rare gift, to wit, a bit of bread. Then truly did my poor
mouth so fill with water that I was forced to bow my head and let it run
upon the earth before I could ask, "Who art thou? and whence comest thou?
seeing that thou hast bread." Whereupon he answered that he was a poor man
of Bannemin, from whom the enemy had taken all; and as he had heard that
the Lieper Winkel had long been in peace, he had travelled thither to beg.
I straightway answered him, "Oh, poor beggar-man, spare to me, a sorrowful
servant of Christ, who is poorer even than thyself, one little slice of
bread for his wretched child; for thou must know that I am the pastor of
this village, and that my daughter is dying of hunger. I beseech thee by
the living God not to let me depart without taking pity on me, as pity
also hath been shown to thee!" But the beggar-man would give me none,
saying that he himself had a wife and four children, who were likewise
staggering towards death's door under the bitter pangs of hunger; that the
famine was sorer far in Bannemin than here, where we still had berries;