Note 2 — Chapter XIV

The accounts which different historians give of the circumstances of Catharine's early history vary very materially. One authority states that the occasion of Gluck's taking Catharine away was the death of the curate and of all his family by the plague. Gluck came, it is said, to the house to see the family, and found them all dead. The bodies were lying on the floor, and little Catharine was running about among them, calling upon one after another to give her some bread. After Gluck came in, and while he was looking at the bodies in consternation, she came up behind him and pulled his robe, and asked him if he would not give her some bread. So he took her with him to his own home.