steps. I know not how I got down them; but when I came to myself, I was in
the constable his room, and his wife was throwing water in my face. There
I passed the night sitting in a chair, and sorrowed more than I prayed,
seeing that my faith was greatly shaken, and the Lord came not to
strengthen it.




_The Eighteenth Chapter_


OF THE FIRST TRIAL, AND WHAT CAME THEREOF

Next morning, as I walked up and down in the court, seeing that I had many
times asked the constable in vain to lead me to my child (he would not
even tell me where she lay), and for very disquietude I had at last begun
to wander about there; about six o'clock there came a coach from Uzdom,
wherein sat his worship, Master Samuel Pieper, _consul dirigens_, _item_,
the _camerarius_ Gebhard Wenzel, and a _scriba_, whose name, indeed, I
heard, but have forgotten it again; and my daughter forgot it too, albeit
in other things she has an excellent memory, and, indeed, told me most of
what follows, for my old head well-nigh burst, so that I myself could
remember but little. I straightway went up to the coach, and begged that
the worshipful court would suffer me to be present at the trial, seeing
that my daughter was yet in her nonage, but which the Sheriff, who
meanwhile had stepped up to the coach from the terrace, whence he had seen
all, had denied me. But his worship Master Samuel Pieper, who was a little
round man, with a fat paunch, and a beard mingled with grey hanging down
to his middle, reached me his hand, and condoled with me like a Christian