Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/203

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182
The Green Bag.

family and goods out of the parsonage, and died there sixteen days after the sentence, on Good Friday, April i6, 1703. On the 24th of June the twelve weeks allotted to Provost Hahn had elapsed. It was Sunday, and, moreover, St. John the Baptist's day. The provost preached in the morning in the parish church of Meldorf, on a passage from the Gospel for the day (Luke i. 57-80). He felt perfectly well and in good spirits; and in the afternoon jokingly sent a message to the Chancellor to remind him that his time was up, but that no token ap peared of anything being the matter with him. Before the messenger returned, he had fallen in an apoplectic fit and had breathed his last. Exactly on the day appointed, at the end of the fourteenth week, the judge

also died; so also the prosecutor, on the same day; and within the" twelvemonth every one of the witnesses summoned by Wattenbach to attest his innocence was dead. This account was given by the provost Burchard, who sat in the consistory before which Wattenbach had appeared, and he says that all who were mixed up in the matter could attest the truth of what he relates. The registrars of the parish of Barlt cer tainly confirm some of the particulars. The son of Wattenbach became afterwards pastor at Colmar. That nervous terror may have in many cases worked the death of the men summoned is likely enough. Some of the stories recorded may have been invented aprbs coup, but certainly not all. — Chambers' Journal.