"You forget," expostulated Pastor Rad, "that there were above three hundred troopers, well armed and well horsed. We should have been cut in pieces."
"And would they have gone scathless? Has the forest lost all its manhood?"
"What was done or left undone cannot be remedied!" said the pastor.
"Did you know the man?" the farmer asked after a pause.
"Yes, it is the same fellow, a Scot, so they told me, who broke into the house at Magdeburg!"
"And saved all your lives, so Elspeth told me! 'Tis a pity he saved yours!"
"Friend Nicholas! You are too much beside yourself with grief. I was but an instrument of God."
"He rode with you to Erfurt, as I mind," the farmer went on. "Did he treat Elspeth as a light o' love?"
As a matter of fact, the pastor had been too much engaged in the contemplation of his coming sermons to remember, so he answered truthfully enough—