One night a swarm of pillagers bivouacked in a corner of the churchyard. Hi! what fun it was to pile up a bonfire of bed-slats and bolsters and chairs and coffin-ends and what the devil else could be dragged forth. Flames and sparks blazed up as high as the attic window of the parsonage. Round about stood coffins propped one against another. The bottom of one of the uppermost had been broken, so that the treasurer, of blessed memory, who was inside it, stood there upright with his spliced wig on his head and looked as if he thought: “I pray you, into what company have I been conducted?” “Haha! little father,” the robbers called to him, as they roasted August apples and onions at the flames; “you always wanted something to wet your whistle, you there!” The glow of the fire lighted up the living-room of the parsonage and the sparks flew in through the broken panes. In the rooms stood only a broken table and a chair, upon which sat the parson with his head propped on his hands. “Who knows? Perhaps it might succeed,” he mumbled and raised himself as if he had found the key to a long-considered problem. His silver-white beard spread itself over all his breast, and his hair hung down to his shoulders. In his youth as chaplain he had gone in for a little of everything and he had never pushed back a cup that was offered him. Afterwards as a widower in the parsonage he had worshipped God with joy and mirth and a brimming bowl, and it was bruited about that he did not reach first for his Bible if a well-formed wench happened to be in his company. He therefore even now took misfortune more bravely and resignedly than others, and his heart was as undaunted as his soldierly body was unbowed by years. He went out into the entry and cautiously pulled out the five or six rusty nails that held down a couple of boards above a little narrow recess under the stairs. Then he lifted the boards aside. “Come out, my child!” he said. When no one obeyed him, his voice grew somewhat more severe and he repeated his words: “Come out, Lina! Both the other maids have been bound and carried away. It was verily at the last minute that I got you in here. But it is almost a day since then, and you cannot live without meat and drink. Eh?”