[16] See p. 280.
[17] Kreidenfeuer—alarm fires, from Krei, a cry.
[18] A leading spiritualist, who has also a prominent position in the literary world, tells the story that one day he had missed his footing in going downstairs, and was within an ace of making as fatal a fall as Professor Phillips, when he distinctly felt himself seized, supported, and saved by an invisible hand. The analogy between the two convictions is curious.
[19] Consult Cesare Cantù Storia Universale, § xvii. cap. 21.
[20] Since writing the above, I have been assured by one who has frequently conversed with her, that the concealment of her name arose from her own modesty; it was Katharina Lanz. To avoid public notice, she went to live at a distance, and up to the time of her death in 1854, bore an exemplary character, living as housekeeper to the priest serving the mountain church of S. Vigilius, near Rost, the highest inhabited point of the Enneberg. When induced to speak of her exploits, she always made a point of observing that, though she brandished her hay-fork, she neither actually killed or wounded anyone. She had heard that the French soldiers were nothing loth to desecrate sacred places, and she stationed herself in the church porch determined to prevent their entrance; the churchyard had become the citadel of the villagers. From her post of observation she saw with dismay that her people were giving way. It was then she rushed out and rallied them; in her impetuosity she was very near running her hay-fork through a French soldier, but she was saved from the deed by her landlord, who, encouraged by her ardour, struck him down, pushing her aside. The success of her sally and her subsequent disappearance cast a halo of mystery round her story, and many were inclined to believe the whole affair was a heavenly apparition.
[21] Celebration of the Resurrection.