The woman told the following story:  The day on which Niels Bruus was said to have run away from the rectory, she and her daughter were passing along the road near the rectory garden a little after the noon hour.  She heard some one calling and saw that it was Niels Bruus looking out through the garden hedge.  He asked the daughter if she did not want some nuts and told the women that the rector had ordered him to dig in the garden, but that he did not take the command very seriously and would much rather eat nuts.  At that moment they heard a door open in the house and Niels said, “Now I’m in for a scolding.”  He dropped back behind the hedge and the women heard a quarrel in the garden.  They could hear the words distinctly but they could see nothing, as the hedge was too high.  They heard the rector cry, “I’ll punish you, you dog.  I’ll strike you dead at my feet!” Then they heard several sounding slaps, and they heard Niels curse back at the rector and call him evil names.  The rector did not answer this, but the women heard two dull blows and saw the head of a spade and part of the handle rise and fall twice over the hedge.  Then it was very quiet in the garden, and the widow and her daughter were frightened and hurried on to their cattle in the field.  The daughter gave the same testimony, word for word.  I asked them if they had not seen Niels Bruus coming out of the garden.  But they said they had not, although they had turned back several times to look.

This accorded perfectly with what the rector had told me.  It was not strange that the women had not seen the man run out of the garden, for he had gone toward the wood which is on the opposite side of the garden from the highroad.  I told Morten Bruus that this testimony was no proof of the supposed murder, especially as the rector himself had narrated the entire occurrence to me exactly as the women had described it.  But he smiled bitterly and asked me to examine the third witness, which I proceeded to do.

Jens Larsen testified that he was returning late one evening from Tolstrup (as he remembered, it was not the evening of Niels Bruus’s disappearance, but the evening of the following day), and was passing the rectory garden on the easterly side by the usual footpath.  From the garden he heard a noise as of some one digging in the earth.  He was frightened at first for it was very late, but the moon shone brightly and he thought he would see who it was that was at work in the garden at that hour.  He put off his wooden shoes and pushed aside the twigs of the hedge until he had made a peep hole.  In the garden he saw the rector in his usual house coat, a white woolen nightcap on his head.  He was busily smoothing down the earth with the flat of his spade.  There was nothing else to be seen.  Just then the rector had started and partly turned toward the hedge, and the witness, fearing he might be discovered, slipped down and ran home hastily.

Although I was rather surprised that the rector should be working in his garden at so late an hour, I still saw nothing in this statement that could arouse suspicion of murder.  I gave the complainant a solemn warning and advised him not only to let fall his accusation, but to put an end to the talk in the parish.  He replied, “Not until I see what it is that the rector buried in his garden.”