Her teeth chattered and she trembled, but she straightened herself up a little, let the chemise hang free, and went out on the stones in the doorway.
The pastor lifted off the moist lid, which was loose, and found nothing else in the plundered casket than shavings and a brown blanket.
“That was just what I needed,” she shivered. She pulled up the blanket, wrapped it over her, stepped up, and laid herself on her back in the shavings.
The pastor bent over her, laid both his hands on her shoulder, and looked into her fearless eyes. She might be eighteen or nineteen years old. Her hair was stroked smoothly back to the braid.
As he stood so, it came over him that he had not always looked on her in the past with as pure and fatherly feelings as he himself had wished and as he had pretended to do. But now he did so. His long white hair fell down as far as her cheeks.
“May it go well with you, child! I am old. It matters little whether my life goes on for a while still or is destroyed in the day that now is. I have been in many a piece of mischief and many an ill deed in my time, and for the forgiveness of my sins I will also for once have part in something good.”
He nodded and nodded toward her and raised himself.
There outside the clamor sounded louder than ever. He laid on the lid and fastened in the long, crookedly set screws as well as he was able. Then he knelt, knotted a rope crosswise around the casket, and with strong arms lifted the heavy burden on his back. Bending forward and staggering, he strode out into the open air.
“Look there!” shouted one of the pillagers at the fire, but his nearest comrade silenced him with the word: “Let the poor old man alone! That’s only a miserable beggar’s casket.”
Sweat trickled out over the old man’s face, and his back and arms ached and smarted under the severe weight. Step by step he moved forward through the dark streets. Every now and then he had to set down the casket on the ground to take breath, but then he stood with his hands on the lid in constant fear of being challenged and hustled away or of being stabbed by some roving band of soldier revelers. Several times he had to step to one side because of the heavy wagons, loaded with men and women, who were to be taken hundreds of miles into Russia to people the waste regions. The great conquering czar was a sower who did not count the seeds he strewed.