troubles and adversities which it might please him henceforward to lay
upon us, according to his divine pleasure, I ran rather than walked back
into the village to old Paasch his farm, where I found him just about to
kill his cow, which he was slaughtering from grim hunger. "God bless
thee," said I, "worthy friend, for sowing my field; how shall I reward
thee?" But the old man answered, "Let that be, and do you pray for us";
and when I gladly promised this and asked him how he had kept his corn
safe from the savage enemy, he told me that he had hidden it secretly in
the caves of the Streckelberg, but that now all his store was used up.
Meanwhile he cut a fine large piece of meat from the top of the loin, and
said, "There is something for you, and when that is gone you can come
again for more." As I was then about to go with many thanks, his little
Mary, a child nearly seven years old, the same who had said the _Gratias_
on the Streckelberg, seized me by the hand and wanted to go to school to
my daughter; for since my _Custos_, as above mentioned, departed this life
in the plague, she had to teach the few little ones there were in the
village; this, however, had long been abandoned. I could not, therefore,
deny her, although I feared that my child would share her bread with her,
seeing that she dearly loved the little maid, who was her godchild; and so
indeed it happened; for when the child saw me take out the bread, she
shrieked for joy, and began to scramble up on the bench. Thus she also got
a piece of the slice, our maid got another, and my child put the third
piece into her own mouth, as I wished for none, but said that I felt no
signs of hunger and would wait until the meat was boiled, the which I now
threw upon the bench. It was a goodly sight to see the joy which my poor
child felt when I then also told her about the rye. She fell upon my neck,
wept, sobbed, then took the little one up in her arms, danced about the
room with her, and recited as she was wont, all manner of Latin _versus_,
which she knew by heart. Then she would prepare a right good supper for
us, as a little salt was still left in the bottom of a barrel of meat