"

"I thought so," cried the widow. "Such an abomination!"

Yet she thrust her finger into the bird's breast, saying: "But there's
meat on the creature."

"A crow!" cried Wilhelm's mother, clasping her hands. "True, dogs and
cats are already hanging on many a spit and have wandered into many a
pan. There is the pigeon."

Barbara unwrapped the bird as carefully, as if it might crumble under
her fingers, gazing tenderly at it as she weighed it carefully in her
hand; but the musician's mother said:

"It's the fourth one Wilhelm has killed, and he said it would have been
a good flier. He intended it specially for your Bessie. Stuff it nicely
with yellow paste, not too solid and a little sweetened. That is what
children like, and it will agree with her, for it is cheerfully given.
Put the little thing away. When we have known any creature, we feel
sorry to see it dead."

"May God reward you!" cried Barbara, pressing the kind old hand. "Oh!
these terrible times!"

"Yet there is still something to be thankful for."

"Of course, for it will be even worse in hell," replied the widow.

"Don't fall into sin," said the aged matron: "You have only one sick
person in the house. Can I see Frau Maria?"

"She is in the workshops, taking the people a little meat from our
store. Are you too so short of flour? Cows are still to be seen in the
pastures, but the grain seems to have been actually swept away; there
wasn't a peck in the market. Will you take a sip of wine too? Shall I
call my sister-in-law?"

"I will seek her myself. The usury in the market is no longer to be
endured. We can do nothing more there, but she is already bringing
people to reason."

"The traders in the market?" asked Georg.

"Yes, Herr von Dornburg, yes. One wouldn't believe how much that
delicate woman can accomplish. Day before yesterday, when we went about
to learn how large a stock of provisions every house contains, people
treated me and the others very rudely, many even turned us out of doors.
But she went to the roughest, and the cellars and store-rooms opened
before her, as the waves of the sea divided before the people of Israel.
How she does it, Heaven knows, but the people can't refuse her."

Georg drew a long breath and left the kitchen. In the court-yard he
found several city soldiers, volunteers and militia-men, with whom
he went through exercises in fencing. Van der Werff placed it at his
disposal for this purpose, and there certainl