"Thou goest not alone with this ungodly man," answered me Brother Elimelech—his secular name being Emanuel Eckerling—as he stood bravely by my side.
"I too go with thee into the camp of the Philistines," said Brother Jephune, brother to Elimelech, also coming to my side.
Another of the Eckerlings, Brother Jotham, stepped over to me and said quietly: "Even if it be to the stocks or the gallows I go with thee."
"And if I go with thee, Brother Jabez, as I surely will, then thou hast all the sons of my mother with thee," said Brother Onesimus.
"With all these Eckerlings—Emanuel, Samuel, Gabriel, and Israel—I fear naught, not even our formidable friend, the tax collector," I said gayly, not at all disturbed by his fierce looks and scowls at me, whom he regarded as the instigator of all this little rebellion, although in truth there were more than the Eckerlings and myself who thought it not right to pay the taxes. But thus it ever hath been, for doth not the Scriptures say that out of the ten thousand who gathered to fight under the banner of Gideon only three hundred were worthy to be led against the enemy?
"The devil take ye all for a lot of pious fools if ye go not with me at once," thundered the constable, choking with wrath, so that I greatly feared from his purple face he might perish from the palsy.
"The devil, or his deputy, may take us now if he be ready," I said to him, which but the more enraged him, so that he rushed from us puffing and wheezing as he floundered across the meadow, the very swaying of his broad back expressing his indignation at our disregard for the majesty of the law.
"Brother Jabez," said Brother Enoch, as the majesty of the law disappeared down the road beyond the meadow, "dost thou know if we pay not the levy we shall be arrested and taken to jail?"
"If the constable be a man of his word, I doubt not thou art a true prophet," I replied, "but thou knowest Ecclesiastes sayeth there is 'a time of war and a time of peace.' It seemeth my duty to oppose this unjust tax, and now is the time to set our faces firmly against the levy. If we five must go alone, so be it."
Just then some one laid hold of mine arm, and turning about I saw Brother Martin—Martin Brämer being his secular name—our tailor. I asked him: "What hast to say, Brother Martin, shall we pay the taxes?"