Everyone saw at once that this was arson. They began to wonder whether Herr Arne and his wife were really asleep, or whether some evil had befallen them.
But before the rescuers entered the house they took long poles and pulled away the burning faggots from the wall and clambered up to the roof to tear off the thatch, which had begun to smoke and was ready to catch fire.
Then some of the men went to the door of the house to enter and call Herr Arne; but when the first man came to the threshold he turned aside and made way for him who came next.
The second man took a step forward, but as he was about to grasp the door-handle he turned away and made room for those who stood behind him.
It seemed a ghastly door to open, for a broad stream of blood trickled over the threshold and the handle was besmeared with blood.
Then the door opened in their faces and Herr Arne's curate came out. He staggered toward the men with a deep wound in his head, and he was drenched with blood. For an instant he stood upright and raised his hand to command silence. Whereupon he spoke with the death rattle in his voice: "This night Herr Arne and all his household have been murdered by three men who climbed down through the smoke-hole in the roof and were clad in rough skins. They threw themselves upon us like wild beasts and slew us."
He could utter no more. He fell down at the men's feet and was dead.
They then entered the room and found all as the curate had said.
The great oaken chest in which Herr Arne kept his money was gone, and Herr Arne's horse had been taken from the stable and his sledge from the shed.
Sledge tracks led from the yard across the glebe meadows down to the sea, and twenty men hastened away to seize the murderers. But the women set themselves to laying out the dead and carried them from the bloody room out upon the pure snow.