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Updated: June 12, 2025
I advised him to get rid of the man somehow, or else to get along with him the best he could until the latter's time was up. The rector was somewhat hasty at first, but later on he listened calmly and thanked me for my good advice. He is inclined to be violent at times, but can always be brought to listen to reason. We parted good friends. I spent a charming day in Veilbye yesterday.
May God deal with us all after His wisdom and His mercy! O Lord, inscrutable are thy ways! In the thirty-eighth year of my service, and twenty-one years after my unfortunate brother in office, the Rector of Veilbye had been beheaded for the murder of his servant, it happened one day that a beggar came to my door. He was an elderly man, with gray hair, and walked with a crutch.
The body was hidden in a sack and kept in the house during the next day. At night the day following, they carried it out to the wood near Veilbye. Several times Niels had asked of his brother what all this preparation boded. But Morten answered only, "That is my affair. Do as I tell you, and don't ask questions."
"Reverend father, they tell me my brother Morten is dead. I have been to Ingvorstrup, but the new owner chased me away. Is my old master, the Rector of Veilbye, still alive?" Then it was that the scales fell from my eyes and I saw into the very truth of this whole terrible affair. But the shock stunned me so that I could not speak. The man bit into his bread greedily and went on.
"That will be too late," I said. "You are playing a dangerous game. Dangerous to your own honor and welfare." "I owe it to my brother," he replied, "and I demand that the authorities shall not refuse me assistance." My office compelled me to accede to his demands. Accompanied by the accuser and his witnesses I took my way to Veilbye.
Morten Bruus said to me that he had the Rector of Veilbye under suspicion of having killed his brother Niels. I answered that I had heard some such talk but had regarded it as idle and malicious gossip, for the rector himself had assured me that the fellow had run away. "If that was so," said Morten, "if Niels had really intended to run away, he would surely at first come to me to tell me of it.
Farewell, my own beloved bride. . . . What will she do? she is so strangely calm the calm of wordless despair. Her brother has not yet come, and to-morrow on the Ravenshill ! Here the diary of Erik Sorensen stopped suddenly. What followed can be learned from the written and witnessed statements of the pastor of Aalso, the neighboring parish to Veilbye.
It had been permitted to us to bury the body with Christian rites, if we could do it in secret. The young man threw himself over the lifeless body. Then, clasping his sister in his arms, the two wept together in silence for some while. At midnight we held a quiet service over the remains of the Rector of Veilbye, and the body was buried near the door of Aalso church.
He had better have taken my advice, but it is not my province to school a servant of God, and a man so much older than I. The idle gossip may blow over ere long. I will go to Veilbye to-morrow and find out if he has heard anything. The bracelet the goldsmith has made for me is very beautiful. I am sure it will please my sweet Mette. My honored father-in-law is much distressed and downhearted.
These extracts from the diary of Erik Sorensen, District Judge, followed by two written statements by the rector of Aalso, give a complete picture of the terrible events that took place in the parish of Veilbye during Judge Sorensen's first year of office.
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