The children went to school and met in the playgrounds as before, but there was rarely a flash of the merry pertness of former days, and what had become of the boys' red cheeks and the round arms of the little girls?
The poor drew their belts tighter, and the morsel of bread, distributed by the city to each individual, was no longer enough to quiet hunger and support life.
Junker Georg had long been living in Burgomaster Van der Werff's house.
On the morning of August 29th he returned home from an expedition, carrying a cross-bow in his hand, while a pouch hung over his shoulder.
This time he did not go up-stairs, but sought Barbara in the kitchen.
The widow received him with a friendly nod; her grey eyes sparkled as brightly as ever, but her round face had grown narrower and there was a sorrowful quiver about the sunken mouth.
"What do you bring to-day ?" she asked the Junker.

Georg thrust his hand into his game-bag and answered, smiling: "A fat snipe and four larks; you know." "Poor sparrows! But what sort of a creature can this be?
Headless, legless, and carefully plucked! Junker, Junker, that's suspicious." "It will do for the pan, and the name is of no consequence." "Yet, yet; true, nobody knows on what he fattens, but the Lord didn't create every animal for the human stomach." "That's just what I said.

It's a short-billed snipe, a corvus, a real corvus." "Corvus! Nonsense, I'm afraid of the thing--the little feathers under the wings.

Good heavens! surely it isn't a raven ?" "It's a corvus, as I said.

Put the bird in vinegar, roast it with seasoning and it will taste like a real snipe.