Now it fell out that as I was walking down the valley with some fops of the spa to visit a company at the lower baths, there met us an old peasant with a goat on a string, that he wished to sell, and because methought I had seen him before, I asked whence he came with his goat. At which he doffed his cap and "Your worship," says he, "that I may not tell you." "How," said I, "surely thou hast not stolen the beast?" "Nay," answered the peasant, "but I bring him from a village there in the valley, the which I may not mention to your worship in the presence of a goat"[38] which caused my company to laugh, and because I changed colour they deemed I was vexed or ashamed that the peasant did answer me so neatly. Yet my thoughts were otherwise, for by the great wart that this peasant had, like an unicorn, in the middle of his forehead, I was assured 'twas my dad from the Spessart, and so would first play the conjurer before I would make myself known and delight him with so fine a son as my clothes shewed me to be. So I said to him, "Good father, is not your home in the Spessart?" "Yes, your worship," says he. "Then," said I, "did ye not some eighteen year agone have your house and farm plundered and burnt by the troopers?" "Yea, God-a-mercy," quoth the peasant, "yet 'tis not so long ago": but I asked him further, "Did ye not, then, have two children, a grown daughter and a young lad that kept your sheep?" "Nay, your worship," says my dad, "the daughter was my child but not the boy: yet would I bring him up as mine own." And by that I understood I was no son of this rough yokel: and that in part rejoiced me yet again troubled me, for I thought now I must be some bastard or foundling, and therefore asked my dad how he had come by the said boy or what reason he had had to rear him as his own. "Ah," says he, "I had strange luck with him: by war I got him and by war I lost him."