They all went about it. To find a place and to arrange stones for the kettle, and to collect fuel, and to build and kindle the fire. Stones for the chimney-place were not at hand in manageable size; so Mr. Murray planted three strong sticks on the ground with their bases a couple of feet or so apart and their heads tied together; and slung the kettle to them, over the fire. This was very pretty, and drew forth great expressions of admiration. Then while waiting for the kettle to boil, they all threw themselves on their pine branches again and called for a story; only Fenton sat by the fire to keep it up. Meredith took his book from his pocket and laid it on the pine branches, open before him. "You could not attend to anything very deep till you have had something to eat," he said. "I will give you something easy." "Most of your stories are so profound," added Flora. "Never mind; listen." CHAPTER XIX. "'The story that I am going to tell now happened here in Hermannsburg.'" "A great many things seem to have happened in Hermannsburg," Flora remarked. "Yes. Just think what it must be to live in a village with a history. "'It is, for one thing, a beautiful story for passion week; and then it gives a lovely picture of the relation in which princes and their vassals at that time stood to one another. The Thirty Years' War had brought frightful misery over our country. Havoc and devastation had come even into the churches. So, for example, in this place; the imperial troops had not only plundered the church and carried away everything that was of value; for to be sure the people here were Lutheran heretics; but they had even broken to pieces all the bells in the tower, and driven off no less than five baggage waggons full of brass metal, to be recast for cannon. And the last one, the big bell, was broken up and about to be carried away by the Croats; the horses were even put to the waggon; when suddenly the blast of trumpets and the battle-cry, "_God with us!_" announced the coming of Lutheran troops, and scared the Croats away. So the metal was left behind. After the Thirty Years' War, gradually the people gathered together again; but the number of them was very small, and many a farm had to lie waste for want of both farmer and farming stock. There are said to have been at first only ten families come back to our parish village, with four oxen and two cows. Besides all that, towards the end of the war epidemics were constantly prevailing, so that, for example, in this parish, in the thirty years from 1650 to 1680, three pastors died one after another of contagious epidemics; namely, Andreas Kruse'" (that was the fellow who stood out so for his church vessels), "Paulus Boccatius, Johannes Buchholz; and the fourth Justus Theodor Breyhan, who died in 1686, was three times at death's door. Those were troubled times!