Now before we were out of the wood, we espied some ten peasants, of whom part were armed with musquets, while the rest were busied with burying something. So our musqueteers ran upon them, crying, "Stay! stay!" But they answered with a discharge of shot, and when they saw they were outnumbered by the soldiers, away they went so quick that none of the musqueteers, being weary, could overtake them. So then they would dig up again what the peasants had been burying: and that was the easier because they had left the mattocks and spades which they used lying there. But they had made few strokes with the pick when they heard a voice from below crying out, "O ye wanton rogues, O ye worst of villains, think ye that Heaven will leave your heathenish cruelty and tricks unpunished? Nay, for there live yet honest fellows by whom your barbarity shall be paid in such wise that none of your fellow men shall think you worth even a kick of his foot." So the soldiers looked on one another in amazement, and knew not what to do. For some thought they had to deal with a ghost: to me it seemed I was dreaming: but the officer bade them dig on stoutly. And presently they came to a cask, which they burst open, and therein found a fellow that had neither nose nor ears, and yet still lived. He, when he was somewhat revived, and had recognised some of the troop, told them how on the day before, as some of his regiment were a-foraging, the peasants had caught six of them. And of these they first of all, about an hour before, had shot five dead at once, making them stand one behind another; and because the bullet, having already passed through five bodies, did not reach him, who stood sixth and last, they had cut off his nose and ears, yet before that had forced him to render to five of them the filthiest service in the world.[4] But when he saw himself thus degraded by these rogues without shame or knowledge of God, he had heaped upon them the vilest reproaches, though they were willing now to let him go. Yet in the hope one of them would from annoyance send a ball through his head, he called them all by their right names: yet in vain. Only this, that when he had thus chafed them they had clapped him in the cask here present and buried him alive, saying, since he so desired death they would not cheat him of his amusement.