They went out together and came to the pyre.
The night was black, save when the clouds, driven away by the sharp north wind and galloping like stags across the sky, left the face of the moon clear and shining.
A constable of the commune was patrolling, keeping guard on the pyre. Ulenspiegel and Soetkin heard the sound of his steps upon the hard ground and the voice of a raven, doubtless calling others, for from afar croakings answered him.
Ulenspiegel and Soetkin having drawn near to the dead fire, the raven alit upon Claes’s shoulder; they heard the blows of his beak upon the body, and soon other ravens arrived.
Ulenspiegel would have leaped upon the pyre and struck at the ravens: the constable said to him:
“Wizard, seekest thou hands of glory? Know that the hands of men burned do not render invisible, but only the hands of men hanged as thou shalt be one day.”
“Messire Constable,” answered Ulenspiegel, “I am no wizard, but the orphaned son of him who is there fastened, and this woman is his widow. We were but minded to kiss him once again and to have a little of his ashes in memory of him. Give us leave for this, messire, who art no trooper from a foreign country, but a very son of this land.”
“Be it as thou wouldst,” replied the constable.
The orphan and the widow, going over the burnt wood, came to the body; both kissed with tears the face of Claes.
Ulenspiegel took from the place of the heart, where the flames had made a great hole, a little of the dead man’s ashes. Then kneeling, Soetkin and he prayed. When the dawn appeared pallid in the heavens, they were both there still; but the constable drove them away for fear of being punished because of his good-will.