continuing authority
regarding all the happenings of their peasant community.

These gatherings were called Conferences, Peasant Conferences, because
all the estate-owners of a peasant community came together to confer
with one another, and also Peasant Tribunals, because here the
conflicting claims of the men, already by tacit agreement combined in a
union, were either settled or rejected. Inasmuch as the Peasant
Conferences or Peasant Tribunals were held at the oldest and most
aristocratic estate, such an estate was called Court Estate, and the
Peasant Conferences and Peasant Tribunals were called Court Conferences
and Court Tribunals; and the latter, even at the present day, have not
entirely disappeared. The oldest estate, the Court Estate, was called by
way of distinction simply the Estate, the name whereby the people
designated the Main Estate or the Oberhof of the peasant community, and
its owner as the head or chief of the rest.

Thus in a general way we account for the origin of the first association
and the first judicial arrangement of the Westphalian Estates or peasant
communities. It is the less surprising when we consider that the former
condition of Westphalia permitted only a slow increase of population
and a gradual development of agriculture; and precisely this gradual
progress led to those simple and uniform arrangements, as also to the
similarity of culture, manners and customs, which we find among the
ancient inhabitants of Westphalia."

[Illustration: THE OBERHOF BY BENJAMIN VAUTIER]

This passage from Kindlinger's _Contributions to the History of the
Diocese of Muenster_ conducts us to the scene of our story. It throws a
light on our hero, the Justice. He was the owner of one of the largest
and wealthiest of the Main Estates, or Oberhofs, which still exist in
those regions, but which, to be sure, have now fused together to a small
number.

There is something remarkable about the first traditions of a tribe, and
the people as a whole have just as long a memory as the individual
persons, who are wont to retain faithfully to extreme old age the
impressions of early childhood. When now we consider that an individual
human life may last as long as ninety years, and, furthermore, that the
years of a people are as centuries, it is no longer a matter of wonder
to us that, in the regions where the events of our story took place, we
still here and there come across much that points back to the time whe