d, saying "I have something
for your Bessie. My Wilhelm, good fellow--"

Here she paused and restored her gift to its old place. She had seen the
Junker's plucked present, and continued in an altered tone: "So you
already have a pigeon--so much the better! The city clerk's little girl
is beginning to droop too. I'll see you to-morrow, if God wills."

She was about to go, but Georg stopped her, saying: "You are mistaken, my
good lady. I shot that bird to-day, I'll confess now, Frau Barbara; my
corvus is a wretched crow."

"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 treat