it, and found us there together.
As they ascended the stairs we discovered from their blustering and
talking that they were troopers, so, in bad plight as I was, I
endeavoured, alas! to climb. I clambered up into the belfry and curled
myself like a cat behind the clock; but one of the thieves climbed up
at the same time and found me. My parishioners said I was their
schoolmaster, and entreated for me, as I had already been badly beaten
by the soldiers. It was however of no avail. They insisted on this
schoolmaster descending. The magistrate went first, after him a
trooper, the smith followed, then another trooper, and lastly I
followed, lingering. Now when they all came out through the door of the
church, I remained within, bolted the little door, and ran out of the
other, and crept into a turnip pit. God help me! How woeful it was for
me to be obliged to stoop and lie on all-fours for a whole hour! Thus I
was saved, but my dear fellow-watchers were taken to a mill and obliged
to fill the flour sacks.

"On the Friday before Whitsuntide I came with many citizens to Coburg.
A thief had carried off my shoes, and left me a pair of old bad ones
instead; I had nothing else to wear for almost a week, and both soles
had fallen out, and when it became necessary to take to one's heels,
the shoes turned round hindforemost, so that often I could not help
laughing outright. Thus I came to Coburg. The news of my torments had
reached Coburg some days before, together with the report that I had
been killed; when therefore I came myself, the citizens and my old
acquaintance were much astonished. Dr. Kesler, general superintendent,
_item_, consul Koerner, invited me several times during the Whitsuntide
festival, and for a whole month the Coburgers showed great kindness to
me, my wife, and children, which I lauded in print on St. John's day.

"Ah, how great was the grief and misery to be seen and heard in all the
surrounding small towns at that time! the inhabitants of Eisfeldt,
Heldburg, and Neustadt, together with the villagers, had to make shift
miserably in the town. Asking and begging was no shame. Yet I did not
wish to burden too much my good host, Herr Hoffman the apothecary. I
went out into the wide world with the pastor of Walburg, Eisentraut,
for three weeks, _victum quaerendi gratia_, to Culmbach, Bayreuth,
Hirschheid, Altorf, and Nuremberg, and again back to Coburg. I then
found that my wife had returned to Poppenhausen, acco