"It's easy for you to talk, wench," retorted my father. "What do you know?"
After that … she said no more.
I had a fresh fright at that time. Prompted by curiosity to see the godless fellows once more and to spy out whether the devil, in the guise of a wood-cutter, was helping them with their work, I peeped one day from the forest path and through the thicket at their work-place. Then I saw that they were making coffins.
I announced the fact at home and caused the greatest excitement in consequence.
"As I said, they have some fresh thing in their minds!" said my mother.
Father suggested:
"Boy, you have been dreaming again, in broad daylight. Still, I will go and see."
We went into the woods. My father peered through the thicket at the wood-cutters; and then I saw him turn pale.
"You half-wit!"[8] he said; and then he groaned. "They're burying every peasant of us at Alpel!"
The coffins were stacked in great piles; and the men were still chopping and trimming new ones with their axes. We rushed away to inform the local magistrate, who, at that time, lived on the mountain on the other side of the Engthal, and tell him what we had seen. On the road to his house we met Michel the carpenter, to whom my father said that he had better have all his knives and choppers ready, for it looked as if we were in for bad times. The strangers who were working in his wood did nothing but make coffins.