Martin and Gunther were preparing to depart after dinner, for they always on the road in the final weeks of the harvest season. Since sunrise, Anna had been helping make sausages. Elisabeth chopped and pounded scraps of meat and stirred in salt and bits of fennel and sage. Anna stuffed this claylike mixture into cleaned lengths of pig intestine that Margarete tied with strings made of sinew. As they blanched these sausages in a cauldron and hung them on a rope high above the smoky hearth, Anna sang a song she had learned from Martin. She had a surprisingly deep, rich singing voice that even Agnes had to admit she enjoyed. While the girls made sausages, Agnes fussed about the midday meal. She set out fresh roast pork seasoned with mustard and garlic and a milk pudding of boiled grains and currants and stewed pears. The family treated the meal as a celebration for Elisabeth because her day had been ruined and for Martin who had been on the road with Gunther on his saint’s feast day. Karl gave Elisabeth a splendid horn drinking cup on which he had carved snowdrops, and her older brothers gave her a new knife with a polished bone handle.
