befallen me on earth than your death, sweet maid, and nought more sweet than your life!" But at these words my child only wept and sighed; and when he looked on her, she cast down her eyes and trembled, so that I straightway perceived that my sorrows were not yet come to an end, but that another barrel of tears was just tapped for me, and so indeed it was. Moreover, the ass of a _Custos_, having finished the _Te Deum_ before we were come to the bridge, straightway struck up the next following hymn, which was a funeral one, beginning, "The body let us now inter." (God be praised that no harm has come of it till _datum_.) My beloved gossip rated him not a little, and threatened him that for his stupidity he should not get the money for the shoes which he had promised him out of the Church-dues. But my child comforted him, and promised him a pair of shoes at her own charges, seeing that peradventure a funeral hymn was better for her than a song of gladness. And when this vexed the young lord, and he said, "How now, sweet maid, you know not how enough to thank God and me for your rescue, and yet you speak thus?" She answered, smiling sadly, that she had only spoken thus to comfort the poor _Custos_. But I straightway saw that she was in earnest, for that she felt that although she had escaped one fire, she already burned in another. Meanwhile we were come to the bridge again, and all the folks stood still, and gazed open-mouthed, when the young lord jumped down from the cart, and after stabbing his horse, which still lay kicking on the bridge, went on his knees, and felt here and there with his hand. At length he called to the worshipful court to draw near, for that he had found out the witchcraft. But none save _Dom. Consul_ and a few fellows out of the crowd, among whom was old Paasch, would follow him; _item_, my dear gossip and myself, and the young lord, showed us a lump of tallow about the size of a large walnut, which lay on the ground, and wherewith the whole bridge had been smeared, so that it looked quite white, but, which all the folks in their fright had taken for flour out of the mill; _item_, with some other _materia_, which stunk like fitchock's dung, but what it was we could not find out. Soon after a fellow found another bit of tallow, and showed it to the people; whereupon I cried, "Aha! none hath done this but that ungodly miller's man, in revenge for the stripes which the Sheriff gave him for reviling my child." Whereupon I told what he had done, and _Dom. Consul_, who also had heard thereof, straightway sent for the miller.