But in the meantime a graceless youth, named Hans Blisselwartle, made
the startling discovery that none of the fowls that pursued the Frau
ever came back to boast of it. A brief martial career seemed to have
weaned them from the arts of peace and the love of their kindred. Full
of unutterable suspicion, Hans one day followed in the rear of an
exciting race between the timorous dame and an avenging pullet. They
were too rapid for him; but bursting suddenly in at the lady's door
some fifteen minutes afterward, he found her in the act of placing
the plucked and eviscerated Nemesis upon her cooking range. The Frau
betrayed considerable confusion; and although the accusing
Blisselwartle could not but recognize in her act a certain poetic
justice, he could not conceal from himself that there was something
grossly selfish and sordid in it. He thought it was a good deal like
bottling an annoying ghost and selling him for clarified moonlight; or
like haltering a nightmare and putting her to the cart.
When it transpired that the Frau ate her feathered persecutors, the
patience of the villagers refused to honour the new demand upon it:
she was at once arrested, and charged with prostituting a noble
superstition to a base selfish end. We will pass over the trial;
suffice it she was convicted.
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