He now went into the garden, tolerably quieted, with the secret hope that Hanchen would miss the right gooseberry-bush; but while he was busied looking for the right-sized stick, he saw, with inward quaking, that the girl had gone to the right bush, and picked up something that, in the distance, appeared to him to be very much like a sausage. He must try, therefore, to help himself in some other way. So he first of all cut a couple of imperceptible notches in the stick, which did not exactly add to its firmness, and then he tried to get the find from Hanchen. But this did not succeed, for Hanchen had no wish to undergo a second examination before the Herr Amtshauptmann; and, besides, it occurred to her that perhaps it had been Fritz Sahlmann, who had one night, about a week before, strewn her bed with hog's bristles. So Fritz and Hanchen made their appearance once more before the Herr Amtshauptmann, the former with the stick, and the latter with a nice little pork sausage. "Hanchen," said the Herr Amtshauptmann, taking the sausage from her; "you can go now. Neiting," he said, turning to his wife and holding up the sausage before her eyes, "this is what we call a _corpus delicti_." "It may be, Weber, that it is called so in Latin, but we call it a 'pork sausage.'" "Good, Neiting. But, tell me, can you swear that this is one of our sausages?" "Yes, Weber, I know it by the string." "Fritz Sahlmann, how did you come by this sausage?" Now, this was a terrible question for Fritz; Providence was clearly not interfering on his behalf; his luck was deserting him; the Amtshauptmann stood before him, in one hand the sausage, in the other the stick, and the stick was hardly two feet from his back; he was therefore wholly thrown upon the little bundle of papers for help, and that too was only so-so, for the Amtshauptmann might discover it by the noise. So he gave himself up for lost, began to cry and said--"It was given me." "That's a story," broke in the Frau Amtshauptmann, "you have stolen it with the long pole." "Be quiet, Neiting! No leading questions. Fritz, who gave you this sausage?" "Mamsell Westphalen." "When, Fritz." "When I was sitting in the tree." "Was she sitting by your side?" "No, she was sitting in the smoking-garret, and then she fixed the sausage on the pole; I had stuck a nail into the end of it." "But you said just now, you did not know where Mamsell Westphalen was. Fritz Sahlmann, you have told me a lie." "Don't beat me, don't beat me, Herr Amtshauptmann. I couldn't help it, I couldn't really. The Rathsherr Herse made me take a solemn oath not to tell anybody, not even you, where Mamsell Westphalen was." "Are you in the Rathsherr Herse's service or in mine? You have told me a falsehood, Fritz, and when you tell lies you are to be whipped; those are the terms of our contract."