("Naturally, for your wife did not bake it sufficiently, and you stuffed it into your greedy jaws while it was still hot.")
"Yes, not a doubt of it, we have all been poisoned, we have eaten of Death."
"My friends, allow me to put in a word," said the benign rector. "You know that I have always desired your welfare; but look now! this mortal danger has appeared in other districts also, possibly it may be a Divine visitation. There are villages in which two or three deaths have occurred in every house, there are other places in which whole families down to the very last poor member thereof have followed one another to the grave. I know of a man who a short time ago had nine sons, now he has nine corpses with him in the house."
"The gentry have killed them also I'll be bound."
"It is so! What would God want with so many dead men?"
"Have patience for a moment, my friends. I don't want to defend the gentry, but I would not condemn anyone unjustly. If there be any truth in this fearful accusation, it will see the light of day sooner or later, and then the arm of God will not be straitened."
"Thanks for nothing, by that time the whole lot of us will be under the sod."
"Produce the fellow who brought this letter!"
Two stalwart rustics thereupon brought forward upon their shoulders a young fellow, bound and pinioned like a trapped wolf, and put him down in the midst of the mob.
"This is the bird who was carrying about the message of death!" cried the rebels, surrounding the poor wretch. And then one pulled his hair, and another tugged at his ears, and a third tweaked his nose, and everyone of them was delighted to have found a fresh object on which to wreak their furious cruelty.