And she caught the gentleman’s knee and embraced it, and she took his boot and kissed it.
“What is this slain man?” asked the high bailiff.
“I do not know, Monseigneur,” said he. “We have nothing to do with the talk of this beggarwoman; let us forward.”
The populace was assembling around them; the townsmen great and small, artisans and rustics, taking Katheline’s part, cried out:
“Justice, Monseigneur Bailiff, justice.”
And the bailiff said to Nele:
“What is this slain man? Speak in accordance with God and the truth.”
Nele spoke and said, pointing to the pale gentleman:
“This man came every Saturday to the keet to see my mother and to take her money: he killed a friend of his, Hilbert by name, in the field of Servaes van der Vichte, not for love, as this innocent distracted woman thinks, but to have for himself alone the seven hundred carolus.”
And Nele told of Katheline’s loves and what she heard when she was hidden by night behind the dyke that ran through the field of Servaes van der Vichte.