Not for all the world, however, would I have eaten the cock, but I turned it out to breed. I went to him once more, and asked whether I should give thanks to the Lord next Sunday for his recovery; whereupon he answered that I might do as I pleased in the matter. Hereat I shook my head, and left the house, resolving to send for him as soon as ever I should hear that his old Lizzie was from home (for she often went to fetch flax to spin from the Sheriff). But mark what befell within a few days! We heard an outcry that old Seden was missing, and that no one could tell what had become of him. His wife thought he had gone up into the Streckelberg, whereupon the accursed witch ran howling to our house and asked my daughter whether she had not seen anything of her goodman, seeing that she went up the mountain every day. My daughter said she had not; but, woe is me, she was soon to hear enough of him; for one morning, before sunrise, as she came down into the wood on her way back from her forbidden digging after amber, she heard a woodpecker (which no doubt was old Lizzie herself) crying so dolefully, close beside her, that she went in among the bushes to see what was the matter. There was the woodpecker sitting on the ground before a bunch of hair, which was red, and just like what old Seden's had been, and as soon as it espied her it flew up, with its beak full of the hair and slipped into a hollow tree. While my daughter still stood looking at this devil's work, up came old Paasch--who also had heard the cries of the woodpecker, as he was cutting roofing shingles on the mountain, with his boy--and was likewise struck with horror when he saw the hair on the ground. At first they thought a wolf must have eaten him, and searched all about, but could not find a single bone. On looking up they fancied they saw something red at the very top of the tree, so they made the boy climb up, and he forthwith cried out that here, too, there was a great bunch of red hair stuck to some leaves as if with pitch, but that it was not pitch, but something speckled red and white, like fishguts; _item_, that the leaves all around, even where there was no hair, were stained and spotted, and had a very ill smell. Hereupon the lad, at his master's bidding, threw down the clotted branch, and they two below straightway judged that this was the hair and brains of old Seden, and that the devil had carried him off bodily, because he would not pray nor give thanks to the Lord for his recovery. I myself believed the same, and told it on the Sunday as a warning to the congregation. But further on it will be seen that the Lord had yet greater cause for giving him into the hands of Satan, inasmuch as he had been talked over by his wicked wife to renounce his Maker in the hopes of getting better. Now, however, this devil's whore did as if her heart was broken, tearing out her red hair by whole handsful when she heard about the woodpecker from my child and old