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During a famine, St Nicholas lodged with an inn-keeper who had murdered three children and salted down their dismembered bodies to feed his guests. Nicholas miraculously restored them to life. The story is thought to have arisen out of another concerning three soldiers who were saved by Nicholas from being unjustly executed. In medieval stained glass the soldiers stand in a tower representing their prison. As was the custom, the saint's stature was greatly enlarged in relation to the other figures, which therefore were the size of children, beside him. In due course, when the original legend was forgotten, the story of the school-children was invented to explain the discrepancy in size.
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