“Look to the money!” cried Claes. “The caroluses are hidden away behind the fireplace.” And with these words he ran out of the kitchen into the garden. Nele understood what he meant, and saw that he was going to try and make his escape over the hedge. But the sergeants seized him by the collar, and now he was hitting out at them in a hopeless endeavour to break free.
“He is innocent!” Nele cried aloud amid her tears. “He is innocent! Do not hurt him. It is Claes, my father! O Ulenspiegel, where are you? Where are you? If you were only here you would kill them both!”
And she threw herself on one of the sergeants and tore at his face with her nails. Then she cried out again: “They will kill him!” and fell down upon the grass in the garden, and rolled there in her despair.
Katheline, hearing the noise, had come out from her cottage, and stood up straight and immovable, gazing at the piteous scene. Then she spoke, wagging her head:
“Fire! Fire! Make a hole! My soul wants to get out!”
Soetkin meanwhile, who had seen nothing of all this, was talking to the sergeants who had entered the cottage.
“Kind sirs,” she began, “what is it that you are looking for in our poor dwelling? If it is my son you want, he is far away. Do you feel equal to a long journey?”
And she felt quite pleased at the way she was handling the matter. But it was at this very moment that Nele began to cry aloud for help, and when Soetkin had made her way into the garden, it was to see her husband seized by the collar and fighting on the pathway near the hedge.
“Hit hard and kill them!” she cried, and then: “O Ulenspiegel, where are you?”
And she was about to go to the assistance of her man when one of the sergeants caught hold of her, not indeed without some danger to himself. And Claes was fighting and hitting out so forcibly that he would certainly have escaped had not the two sergeants with whom Soetkin had been talking come out to aid their fellows in the nick of time. So at last they were able to tie the hands of Claes together, and to carry him back to the kitchen, whither Nele and Soetkin had already come, crying and sobbing.