The gloomy people did not lack for subjects of conversation. There were many who could tell how hard it had been in the years of famine of eighteen hundred and eight and nine, and in the cold winter of eighteen hundred and twelve, when the sparrows froze to death. They knew how to make bread out of bark, and how the cows could be taught to eat moss. There was one woman who had tried a new kind of bread of cranberries and corn-meal. She had a sample with her, and let the people taste it. She was proud of her invention. But over them all floated the same question. It stared from every eye, was whispered by every lip: “Who is it, O Lord, whom Thy hand seeks?” A man in the gloomy crowd which had gone westward, and struggled up Broby hill, stopped a minute before the path which led up to the house of the mean Broby clergyman. He picked up a dry stick from the ground and threw it upon the path. “Dry as that stick have the prayers been which he has given our Lord,” said the man. He who walked next to him also stopped. He took up a dry branch and threw it where the stick had fallen. “That is the proper offering to that priest,” he said. The third in the crowd followed the others’ example. “He has been like the drought; sticks and straw are all that he has let us keep.” The fourth said: “We give him back what he has given us.” And the fifth: “For a perpetual disgrace I throw this to him. May he dry up and wither away like this branch!” “Dry food to the dry priest,” said the sixth. The people who came after see what they are doing and hear what they say. Now they get the answer to their long questioning. “Give him what belongs to him! He has brought the drought on us.” And each one stops, each one says his word and throws his branch before he goes on. In the corner by the path there soon lies a pile of sticks and straw,—a pile of shame for the Broby clergyman. That was their only revenge. No one lifted his hand against the clergyman or said an angry word to him. Desperate hearts cast off part of their burden by throwing a dry branch on the pile. They did not revenge themselves. They only pointed out the guilty one to the God of retribution. “If we have not worshipped you rightly, it is that man’s fault. Be pitiful, Lord, and let him alone suffer! We mark him with shame and dishonor. We are not with him.” It soon became the custom for every one who passed the vicarage to throw a dry branch on the pile of shame. The old miser soon noticed the pile by the roadside. He had it carried away,—some said that he heated his stove with it. The next day a new pile had collected on the same spot, and as soon as he had that taken away a new one was begun. The dry branches lay there and said: “Shame, shame to the Broby clergyman!”