The Young Carpenters of Freiberg Part 6

CHAPTER VIII.

ORDINARY INCIDENTS OF A SIEGE.

'Dear Wahle,' said Dollie to a miner, who, with the a.s.sistance of several others, was carrying a great palisade past the spot where the children stood, 'please have you seen anything of my father? I've brought him a can of warm soup.'

'Warm soup!' said the man jocosely; 'why, the enemy cook enough of that for us, only they warm us in rather a different way. Well, child, your father is down in the moat with a lot of other men, bringing in wood that the enemy had piled up ready to burn us out. When they found their cannon could not knock a hole through at the Peter Gate here, they thought they would have a try what fire could do.'

'It looks,' said another, 'very much as if the enemy read their Bibles.

Wasn't that what Abimelech did when he couldn't get round the people of Sichem any other way?'

'Ah, but when he tried it again at another place,' laughed Wahle, 'a woman dropped a stone on his head from the top of the tower, and that finished him.'

'May the same fate soon overtake Torstenson!' said a third.

'Oh, he'll never venture up here,' said Wahle. 'Don't you know the gout has him in tight grips? why, he can't even stir out of his arm-chair. His people have to play cat's paw for him, and burn their fingers just when he bids them.'

'I just wish,' said the other, 'that Torstenson might go into such a rage at not taking the town, that the gout might rise into his body.

Then he would die, and a good thing for us!'

'Come, come!' said Wahle more seriously; 'we ought not to wish even our enemies such evil as that.'

The words were hardly uttered when a dozen musket-shots rang out from without the wall that surrounded the moat. Several b.a.l.l.s whistled over the heads of the two children, and the miner who had just been rebuked fell with a cry of, 'Oh, I am killed!'

His comrades laid down the palisade they were carrying, picked up the wounded man, and bore him into the nearest covered way, where they laid him for the time in a sheltered corner. The two children, more frightened at the sight of the man's fall than at their own danger, were quite at a loss which way to go next. In another moment, however, Dollie forgot all her trouble as she caught sight of her father coming towards her, his arquebuse in his hand.

'You here, little one!' he cried, and hastily drew the children with him into the gallery, behind the protecting walls of which the combatants found shelter from the enemy's fire. 'A queer kind of supper,' he said, as he hastily gulped down the contents of the can.

'One hardly has time even to say, "Grant, O Lord, what I partake!" And yet I ought to be thankful, too, that I am here to drink my soup at all. How many miners, citizens, peasants, soldiers, and even young children, has this siege cost us already! St. Peter's churchyard is getting too small to hold them all.'

'Yes, father,' said Dollie. 'And poor Hofmann the woodcutter will never be able to eat any more soup. He fell down quite close by us as if a thunderbolt had hit him.'

'Hofmann!' said Roller hastily; 'your G.o.d-father, child, and my old friend? But,' he went on, 'who is that lying in yon dark corner?'

He rose and went across in that direction. As he did so, he caught the sound of a groan, and a feeble voice murmured: 'Ah, merciful Father, do not let the arch-enemy prevail against me, or what will become of my three boys, all of them stampers at the Prince's Shaft. If I must die, do Thou take under Thy care my wife and my four poor girls. They are at the coppersmith's house in the Erbis Street.'

'What is it?' said Roller, turning his dark lantern so that its light fell for a moment on the dying man's pale face.

Hofmann lifted his failing eyes towards the approaching figure, and said in a broken voice, and with long pauses between: 'Comrade, there is a cold Swedish bullet rankling in my vitals. Promise me, old friend, that I shall have an honourable burial; not in this shabby miner's dress, but in my new uniform. And when they lay me in my last resting-place, let the lads say: "A good journey to thee, old comrade!"'

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Promise me that I shall have an honourable burial; and let the lads say, "A good journey to thee, old comrade!"']

'A good journey to thee, old comrade,' responded Roller heartily, as Hofmann, putting his hand to his side, stopped abruptly.

Conrad and Dollie both followed Roller's example, as he folded his hands on his breast and began to repeat the simple words of the 'Our Father' over the dying man. The hollow roar of the Swedish siege-guns outside, and the constant dull thud of the cannon-b.a.l.l.s striking the great earthwork that covered the gallery, formed a strange contrast to the solemn little service within, beside one whose spirit was taking its flight.

'You have come at a most unfortunate time, children,' said Roller, when all was over. 'You had better stay here till things are quieter outside, for the stones and bullets strike just anybody at random, and make no difference between big and little. I will tell you when it is safe for you to go; stay here till I come back.'

As Roller turned to go, he felt his leg suddenly clasped in Dollie's little arms. 'Oh, do stay here with us, dear father!' sobbed the child. 'Something might happen to you like what happened to poor Hofmann there. And then mother and I couldn't live any longer--indeed we couldn't; we should be quite sure to die.'

But Roller gently loosened the little maiden's hold, saying kindly as he did so; 'Dollie must be quiet and good, and G.o.d will take care of father. We do not know whether we are safer in here or out under the clear sky; but the great G.o.d, our heavenly Father, can take care of us wherever we are. Whether I am at work in the deep mine, or in front of the Swedish guns, or sitting quietly at home with you and dear mother, death might come to me if it was G.o.d's will, and it will never come until it is His will. Dollie must try to remember this, and think that her dear father is doing his duty.'

When he was gone, Dollie said sadly: 'The hateful war! Why ever do the stupid soldiers make it? I am sure they would all rather sit by their stoves at home, or else stop in bed, than come to Freiberg and make us all so unhappy.'

Conrad thought for a minute or two, and then said: 'Yes, war is a very funny thing; the people who begin it never have any of the trouble.

And then it soon gets so big they don't know what to do, because they can't stop it. My mistress says this war was begun because of religion, and they've been fighting for twenty-three years, longer than I can remember. I daresay they want to drive religion out of the world altogether, for I don't think anybody can ever expect to make people good by firing off cannons at them. Our schoolmaster says it's like cutting a man's head off to cure him of the toothache. But oh, Dollie, I sometimes feel so sad you can't think. You have a good father to love you and take care of you, and be very sorry when anything hurts you; but nothing in the world would make my stepfather happier than for some one to go and tell him I was dead. I always have to hide like a wicked thief when he comes, and I'm sure it is a great deal worse for poor mother than it is for me. n.o.body but G.o.d knows how father uses her, and I daren't go and protect her.'

'Listen!' said Dollie anxiously. 'Hofmann is coming to life again down there in the corner. I can hear him breathing.'

Both children listened.

'That noise isn't Hofmann,' said Conrad. 'It comes out of the ground.'

He laid himself down and listened again, with his ear close to the earth. 'I think it's the Swedes digging some more mines,' he said at last.

'What are they?' said Dollie. 'Like father's?'

'Oh dear, no!' replied the boy, proud to show off what he knew. 'Long pa.s.sages they dig through the ground till they get underneath the city wall, or else one of the gates. Then the Swedes put a great box full of gunpowder in the end of the pa.s.sage, and set light to it, and then--bang! they blow everything all up into the air together.'

'Oh, do come away directly,' said Dollie in a fright, 'or else we shall all be blown up.'

'Have you forgotten what your father told us?' asked the boy.

'Oh, no indeed!' said Dollie; 'but whatever shall we do? Oh, if father or mother would only come!'

Conrad ventured to one of the loop-holes to look out; it was but little, however, that he could discern in the thick darkness outside.

Here and there he saw the gleam of a light or the flash of a weapon; at times some dark ma.s.s seemed to move before his eyes, or his ears were saluted by a mysterious sound, then all was silent again. Suddenly, on the side that lay open towards the town, two men entered the covered gallery, which was just at that moment untenanted by soldiers.

'As I tell you, Schonleben,' said a deep ba.s.s voice, 'the lad is dearer to me than almost any other in the City Guard. Cool, steady, and brave, experienced too as an old soldier, I have chosen him for these reasons to report to me from time to time how things go at the Castle and the Kreuz Gate. But I thank you all the same for your information, though what the prisoners say, especially about an old comrade, is not always to be trusted. Still, I will have the lad closely watched, and if there's the least sign of anything amiss, put him where he can do no further mischief.'

The commandant, for it was he, followed by the Burgomaster, stepped to the loop-hole from which Conrad had hastily withdrawn.

'This is our weak point,' continued Schweinitz--'the point at which the enemy would like to strike; but they shall find it a hard nut to crack yet, though gate and tower are little better than ruins. Ah! my friend, give me the devotion and bravery of the Freibergers before any number of bastions, if I am to hold the foe at bay. As things stand, our hopes of a speedy raising of the siege grow side by side with the progress of the Swedes. I would willingly have more certain news. I say, Schonleben, couldn't you find me some trustworthy messenger that I could send to the imperial marshal?'

The entrance of a man into the gallery cut short the answer.

'Well, Hillner, what is it?' asked Schweinitz.

'Your excellency,' replied the Defensioner, saluting, 'it is thought advisable, in order to strike with greater effect at the enemy's works before the Peter Gate, to open new loop-holes in the lower part of the Wetter Tower, those in the upper storey having been rendered useless by the enemy's fire.'

'Good!' said Schweinitz; and then, turning away from the messenger, he spoke aside with the Burgomaster.

Meantime Conrad sidled up to his former fellow-workman. 'Do stop with us now you have come,' he said, catching hold of the Defensioner's coat. 'The Swedes are digging another mine; just listen at them hammering. I guess we and this old wooden box shall all go flying up into the air together pretty soon.'

As Hillner laid his ear to the ground to listen, Roller entered with several pieces of wood under his arm.

'Now you two can go,' he said to Dollie and Conrad; 'it's quieter now.

And here are a few sticks I've brought in out of the moat; take them home; when I come I'll bring some more.'

'Roller,' called the Burgomaster, 'you are exactly the man I wanted.

Come to me as soon as you go off duty, we have something to say to you.'