The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl | Page 4

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 melancholy mission 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 of Project Gutenberg etext of The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl
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