The next day all my dependants were buzzing with a horror they hardly suppressed in my sight. The Lord Graf had actually had Father Jakob clapped in a dungeon, “there to stay three days, to have bread and water only, and to meditate upon his sins,” while a messenger had sped toward Wittenberg, begging Dr. Luther to send some pious and tolerably learned priest! I think if Adolf had not stood stoutly by me, my Regensteiners would have mutinied at the order to lock up the Chaplain; for he had threatened them with all the fury of the Vatican and the thunders of heaven. But the three days passed. Father Jakob emerged from his dungeon a sadder and hungrier man. The pinnacles of the Regenstein still rose proudly in the sky. No plague had swept off the children or harried the flocks. I had won a moral victory that gave me an invaluable hold over my peasantry. In due time an honest and sincerely devout young parson, a pupil of Dr. Luther, came to take up the parish, and much genuine comfort I was to gain from his support and company. But this was only the beginning. The peasants needed far more than better sermons. Very few of my subjects could read, much less write. Their huts were such that often I felt the swine were better housed than the children. Their agriculture was utterly crude. Repeated bad harvests had driven them to desperation. I heard many rumors that my subjects were becoming impregnated with the _Bundschuh_ movement,--that secret league among the peasants, farther south, which in a few years was to culminate in bloody revolt against their lords, and infinite ruin and misery. Many were in debt to the Halberstadt usurers, and ever becoming more hopelessly involved. All over Germany again prices were increasing direfully. The price of black bread had trebled in half a generation. Along with this I found that Adolf, with a loyalty to my interest admirable in any other case, had been exacting the uttermost farthing in the way of rents and dues. I was horrified to learn that even while I was in Leipzig a peasant, caught by my underlings cutting down a tree illicitly, had had his feet put in the stocks, and his soles burned nigh to a crisp in a slow fire. It was easy to halt deeds like that. Easy when I had my Venetian bankers, to satisfy some of the most greedy usurers, to distribute seed corn, and breeding cattle, to arrange for the opening of a school in the largest hamlet, to bestow direct alms upon the most needy. All this won me the noisy popularity which the down-trodden will usually fling to the generous. But to put matters so that my Regensteiners should become self-respecting, prosperous folk, would be the work not of weeks, but of years--and of infinite labor and patience.