Then the knight, laughing, handed over the stick to the priest, saying—
"It was still possible they might forget; they better, therefore, have another little memorandum from his reverence."
"No! no!" screamed the boys, "we will remember it to eternity."
However, his reverence just gave them a little touch of the stick in fun, till they roared out the boundary marks a second time.
But now stepped forth the churchwarden, to take his turn with the stick on the boys' backs. This man had been a forester of the old Baron Dewitz, and had often taken note of one of the young fellows present, how he had poached and stolen the buck-wheat, so he gladly seized this opportunity to punish him for all his misdeeds, and laying the cudgel on his shoulders, thrashed and belaboured him so unmercifully, that the lad ran, shrieking, cursing, howling, and roaring, far away in amongst the bushes to hide himself, while the churchwarden cried out—
"Well! if all the other lads forget the boundary, I think my fine fellow here will bear the memorandum to the day of judgment."
And so they went away laughing from the place, and returned to the castle.
But the devil drew his profit from all this, for where should the lad run to, but close to the very spot where the robbers were hiding, and there he threw himself down upon the grass, writhing and howling, and swearing he would be revenged upon the churchwarden. This is a fine hearing for my knave in the bush, so he steps forward, and asks—
"What vile Josel had dared to ill-treat so brave a youth? He would help him to a revenge upon the base knave, for injustice was a thing he never could suffer. The tears really were in his eyes to think that such wickedness should be in the world;" and here he pretended to wipe his eyes. So the lad, being quite overcome by such compassionate sympathy, howled and cried ten times more—
"It was the forester Kell, the shameless hound; but he would play him a trick for it."