And she pointed him to Nele who was looking at him in anger, for he had raised his whip to Katheline: but Katheline, weeping:
“Ah!” said she, “dost thou not remember at all? Have pity on thy handmaiden. Take her with thee wherever thou wilt. Take away the fire, Hans; pity!”
“Begone!” said he.
And he drove his horse on so hard that Katheline, loosing the bridle, fell; and the horse stepped on her and gave her a bloody wound in the forehead.
The bailiff then said to the pale lord:
“Messire, do you know this woman?”
“I do not know her at all,” said he, “doubtless it is some mad creature.”
But Nele, having raised Katheline from the ground:
“If this woman is mad, I am not, Monseigneur, and I pray that I may die here of this snow that I eat”—and she took up snow in her fingers—“if this man has not known my mother, if he did not borrow all her money, if he did not kill Claes’s dog in order to take from the wall of the well at our house seven hundred carolus belonging to the poor dead man.”
“Hans, my darling,” wept Katheline, bleeding, and on her knees, “Hans, my beloved, give me the kiss of peace: see the blood flowing: my soul has made the hole and would fain come forth: I shall die presently: leave me not.” Then in a whisper: “Long ago thou didst slay thy comrade for jealousy, along by the dyke.” And she stretched out her finger in the direction of Dudzeele. “Thou didst love me well in those days.”