Now Pastor Assels was restless. If the pastor of Overijse, an acquaintance of his, should also make a claim on the Oak, there would be trouble. It wasn’t unheard of for neighboring parishes to argue over shrines that lay on the boundary between them, or even for fistfights to break out when members of these parishes happened to reach the shrine at the same time (a regular occurrence, since parish processions often took place on common feast days). Hence, to avoid trouble and to be absolutely certain that his claim was indeed the first, Pastor Assels decided to ride to the Oak again the next
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