Before long my poor child gave a loud cry, and cast herself upon the
bench, weeping and wailing, "What has happened, what has happened?" I
therefore thought I ought to tell her what I had heard--namely, that she
was looked upon as a witch. Whereat she began to smile instead of weeping
any more, and ran out of the door to overtake the maid, who had already
left the house, as we had seen. She returned after an hour, crying out
that all the people in the village had run away from her when she would
have asked them whither the maid was gone. _Item_, the little children,
for whom she had kept school, had screamed, and had hidden themselves from
her; also no one would answer her a single word, but all spat out before
her, as the maid had done. On her way home she had seen a boat on the
water, and had run as fast as she could to the shore, and called with
might and main after old Ilse, who was in the boat. But she had taken no
notice of her, not even once to look round after her, but had motioned her
to be gone. And now she went on to weep and to sob the whole day and the
whole night, so that I was more miserable than even in the time of the
great famine. But the worst was yet to come, as will be shown in the
following chapter.




_The Seventeenth Chapter_


HOW MY POOR CHILD WAS TAKEN UP FOR A WITCH, AND CARRIED TO PUDGLA

The next day, Monday, the 12th July, at about eight in the morning, while
we sat in our grief, wondering who could have prepared such great sorrow