But my child did not do as I had bidden her, although she had promised she would, and of this her disobedience came all our misery. (Oh, blessed Lord, how grave a matter is thy holy fourth commandment!) For as his reverence Johannes Lampius, of Crummin, who visited me this spring, had told me that the Cantor of Wolgast wanted to sell the _Opp. St. Augustini_, and I had said before her that I desired above all things to buy that book, but had not money enough left, she got up in the night without my knowledge to dig for amber, meaning to sell it as best she might at Wolgast, in order secretly to present me with the _Opp. St. Augustini_ on my birthday, which falls on the 28th _mensis Augusti_. She had always covered over the earth she cast up with twigs of fir, whereof there were plenty in the forest, so that no one should perceive anything of it. Meanwhile, however, it befell that the young _nobilis_ Rüdiger of Nienkerken came riding one day to gather news of the terrible witchcraft that went on in the village. When I had told him all about it he shook his head doubtingly, and said he believed that all witchcraft was nothing but lies and deceit; whereat I was struck with great horror, inasmuch as I had hitherto held the young lord to be a wiser man, and now could not but see that he was an Atheist. He guessed what my thoughts were, and with a smile he answered me by asking whether I had ever read Johannes Wierus, who would hear nothing of witchcraft, and who argued that all witches were melancholy persons who only imagined to themselves that they had a _pactum_ with the devil; and that to him they seemed more worthy of pity than of punishment? Hereupon I answered that I had not indeed read any such book (for say, who can read all that fools write?), but that the appearances here and in all other places proved that it was a monstrous error to deny the reality of witchcraft, inasmuch as people might then likewise deny that there were such things as murder, adultery, and theft. But he called my _argumentum_ a _dilemma_, and after he had discoursed a great deal of the devil, all of which I have forgotten, seeing it savoured strangely of heresy, he said he would relate to me a piece of witchcraft which he himself had seen at Wittenberg.