was to break up, he would before marching burn the village to the
ground. The Herr Pfarrer was on his way back from the camp where he

had been to plead for mercy, but it had been in vain.
"Such are foul deeds!" said Ulrich.

"The people are mad with hatred of the French," answered the Herr
Pastor. "It may be one, it may be a dozen who have taken vengeance

into their own hands. May God forgive them."
"They will not come forward--not to save the village?"

"Can you expect it of them! There is no hope for us; the village will
burn as a hundred others have burned."

Aye, that was true; Ulrich had seen their blackened ruins; the old
sitting with white faces among the wreckage of their homes, the little

children wailing round their knees, the tiny broods burned in their
nests. He had picked their corpses from beneath the charred trunks of

the dead elms.
The Herr Pfarrer had gone forward on his melancholymission to prepare

the people for their doom.
Ulrich stood alone, looking down upon Alt Waldnitz bathed in

moonlight. And there came to him the words of the old pastor: "She
will be dearer to you than yourself. For her you would lay down your

life." And Ulrich knew that his love was the village of Alt Waldnitz,
where dwelt his people, the old and wrinkled, the laughing "little

ones," where dwelt the helpless dumb things with their deep pathetic
eyes, where the bees hummed drowsily, and the thousand tiny creatures

of the day.
They hanged him high upon a withered elm, with his face towards Alt

Waldnitz, that all the village, old and young, might see; and then to
the beat of drum and scream of fife they marched away; and

forest-hidden Waldnitz gathered up once more its many threads of quiet
life and wove them into homely pattern.

They talked and argued many a time, and some there were who praised
and some who blamed. But the Herr Pfarrer could not understand.

Until years later a dying man unburdened his soul so that the truth
became known.

Then they raised Ulrich's coffin reverently, and the yonng men carried
it into the village and laid it in the churchyard that it might always

be among them. They reared above him what in their eyes was a grand
monument, and carved upon it:

"Greater love hath no man than this."
End

• hatred [´heitrid] n.憎恨，敌意 (初中英语单词)
• forgive [fə´giv] vt.原谅，谅解，宽恕 (初中英语单词)
• mission [´miʃən] n.代表团；使馆vt.派遣 (初中英语单词)
• helpless [´helpləs] a.无助的，无依靠的 (初中英语单词)
• scream [skri:m] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
• melancholy [´melənkəli] n.忧郁 a.忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
• pastor [´pɑ:stə] n.牧师 (高中英语单词)
• homely [´həumli] a.朴素的；不漂亮的 (高中英语单词)
• coffin [´kɔfin] n.棺材，柩 (高中英语单词)
• churchyard [´tʃə:tʃjɑ:d] n.教堂院子 (英语四级单词)