people straightway to go into the forest and to drive the wolves with
rattles. Hereupon he, with his hunters and a few men whom he had picked
out of the crowd, were to ride on and spread the nets behind Damerow,
seeing that the island is wondrous narrow there, and the wolf dreads the
water. When he saw my daughter he turned his horse round, chucked her
under the chin, and graciously asked her who she was, and whence she came?
When he had heard it, he said she was as fair as an angel, and that he had
not known till now that the parson here had so beauteous a girl. He then
rode off, looking round at her two or three times. At the first beating
they found the one-eyed wolf, who lay in the rushes near the water. Hereat
his lordship rejoiced greatly, and made the grooms drag him out of the net
with long iron hooks, and hold him there for near an hour, while my lord
slowly and cruelly tortured him to death, laughing heartily the while,
which is a _prognosticon_ of what he afterwards did with my poor child,
for wolf or lamb is all one to this villain. Just God! But I will not be
beforehand with my tale.

Next day came old Seden his squint-eyed wife, limping like a lame dog, and
put it to my daughter whether she would not go into the service of the
Sheriff; praised him as a good and pious man; and vowed that all the world
said of him were foul lies, as she herself could bear witness, seeing that
she had lived in his service for above ten years. _Item_, she praised the
good cheer they had there, and the handsome beer-money that the great
lords who often lay there gave the servants which waited upon them; that
she herself had more than once received a rose-noble from his Princely
Highness Duke Ernest Ludewig; moreover, many pretty fellows came there,
which might make her fortune, inasmuch as she was a fair woman, and might
take her choice of a husband; whereas here in Coserow, where nobody ever
came, she might wait till she was old and ugly before she got a curch on
her head, etc. Hereat my daughter was beyond measure angered, and