In the height of despair, at the deacon's prayers having failed, he now tried an old traditional remedy of the Hegau. Tearing down some branches from the nearest oak-tree, he plucked off the leaves, and putting these into his venerable old wedding-coat, he hung that up, on the mighty oak-tree which overspread his house. But the merciless hailstones continued to beat down the corn, in spite of wedding-coat and oak-leaves. Like a statue, the convent-farmer stood there, with his eyes riveted on the bundle in the air, hoping that the wind which would drive the thunderstorm away, would come out of it,--but it came not! Then, biting his lips and with contracted eye-brows, he walked back into the house. Almost heart-broken with grief, he threw himself into a chair before the table, and for some time he sat there without uttering a word. When at last he spoke, it was to pronounce an awful curse. This, with the convent-farmer was already a change for the better.
The head-servant, timidly ventured to approach him now. He was of gigantic stature, but before his master, he stood as timid as a child.
"If I only knew the witch!" exclaimed the farmer. "The weather-witch! the cursed old hag! She should not have shaken out her skirts over the Schlangenhof in vain.... May her tongue be withered in her mouth!"
"Need it have been a witch?" said the head-servant. "Since the woman of the wood has been driven away from the Hohenkrähen, no other has dared to show her face here."
"Hold thy tongue, until thou art asked!" fiercely growled the convent-farmer.
The man remained standing there, well knowing that his turn would come. After some time the old man gruffly said: "What dost thou know?"
"I know, what I know," replied the other, with a sly expression.
Again there ensued a pause. The convent-farmer looked out of the window. The harvest was destroyed. He turned round.
"Speak," cried he.
"Did you notice that strange grey cloud, sailing past the dark ones?" said the man. "What else can it have been, but the cloud-ship? Somebody has sold our corn to the owners of that ship." ...