Part 5 (1/2)

'I had not noticed it,' answered Schweinitz carelessly, looking down at the splash of blood on his coat. 'Possibly a chip of masonry or some ball that has glanced aside may have grazed my hip. The Swedes have paid for it dearly enough, anyhow.'

With a brightened and almost joyful heart Schonleben took leave of the commandant. As the former left the tower and gate, he saw the besieged clambering down into the city moat to make prisoners the wounded Swedes who lay there, and to bring in the firelocks, pikes, and scaling-ladders the enemy had left behind. At the same time, men were set busily to work to repair and rebuild the walls and other defensive works that had suffered injury. The bells were silent, and the glorious words of the Te Deum--'We praise Thee, O G.o.d! we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord'--could be plainly heard as they sounded solemnly forth from the various churches,--words in which the Burgomaster joined with a most devout and thankful heart.

[1] The mediaeval 'morning-star' was a heavy war-club thickly studded with short iron spikes.

CHAPTER VII.

CONRAD UNDER THE WINDOW-SEAT.

It was early in the afternoon, yet the long winter night already lay dark over the city of Freiberg. At intervals the gloom was lighted up for a few minutes by the lurid glare of some burning house set on fire by a hostile sh.e.l.l, and as quickly extinguished by the prompt watchfulness and energy of the fire-brigade, whose members had to struggle against a strong wind that by fanning the flames made them doubly dangerous. The streets were almost deserted. Only now and then might some wayfarer be dimly descried stealing along, keeping close in to the houses so as to gain some slight protection from the falling stones and cannon-b.a.l.l.s. Among these wayfarers was Conrad Schmidt, hastening from his mistress' house to his mother's distant dwelling.

When he had reached his destination, and made sure that his dreaded stepfather was away, he entered the living-room. To his great surprise it was dark and cheerless, and his blind mother sat alone in the midst of it s.h.i.+vering with cold. By way of warming herself, she had taken the sleek tabby cat into her lap and folded her chilled hands over p.u.s.s.y's warm fur. The whole scene sent a pang through the boy's warm and loving heart.

'But, my dearest mother!' he cried, 'has not Hannah got back yet from her parents'? Let me go and call her.'

The woman shook her head sorrowfully. 'Hannah is never coming back,'

she said. 'Your stepfather has turned her off because she was no use now and ate so much.'

The boy clasped his hands. 'No use now!' he repeated. 'Now! when he is away himself all day and most of the night too,--when the lives even of people who have their eyesight are in danger,--when the blind need help more than ever! Oh, my poor, dear mother!'

'If it were not for the leaving you and dear old p.u.s.s.y here that Juchziger has many a time threatened to kill,' sobbed the blind woman, 'I would rather die--die by some Swedish bullet! Why should I wish to live? When your father comes home he beats me if he finds the room cold, and do what I will I can't make the fire burn in the stove. The tinder will not light, though I have often struck the flint and steel together till I made my poor hands quite sore. No one lives in the house but ourselves, so I cannot get my lamp lighted, and if I take it across the street to a neighbour's, the wind blows it out again before I get back.'

Conrad set energetically to work, and very soon a brisk fire was crackling in the great stove that stood at one end of the room, gaily ornamented with its long rows of coloured Dutch tiles. He placed his mother carefully in a warm corner, sat down beside her, and then began: 'Rudorf the journeyman is in bed at our house with a broken leg. It's not at all dangerous, and he gets his gulden of pay and his allowance of bread regularly every week. I only wish I was a journeyman, then I could go and fight and earn some money for you. And Hillner the Defensioner has got on first-rate; the officers all like him, and the governor himself talks to him ever so often. Our mistress loves to see him come into the house, and I'm sure she will marry him as soon as the siege is over, and he is made a citizen and a master carpenter. But then we can't even begin to guess when the siege will be over, for these Swedes keep attacking the town worse than ever. You would think they might have been satisfied with knocking ever so many of our houses to pieces, but now, what with their new batteries, and their new trenches, and n.o.body knows how many fascines'--

'Alas, alas!' interrupted Mistress Juchziger. 'What does a poor blind woman like me know about such dreadful things? Have you a morsel of bread in your pocket, my dear boy? p.u.s.s.y and I have had nothing to eat since early this morning.'

'My poor mother,' cried her warm-hearted son, 'and has it come to this--that in our own Freiberg, where not even a beggar is allowed to starve, the good and honoured wife of the town servant himself cannot get enough to eat?'

'Your father locks everything up as if I was a thief,' said the woman, 'and he has been out ever since mid-day, so we couldn't get anything.'

'Here, dear mother,' cried Conrad, 'take this. I always take good care now-a-days to have a crust of bread in my pocket. I only wish I could give you something nice to eat with it, but that's all I have.'

The woman broke off a morsel for the expectant cat before beginning to satisfy her own hunger. 'Puss is only a dumb creature,' she said by way of excuse, 'but she is as faithful as many Christians, and a good deal kinder than your stepfather.'

'Yes, mother,' replied Conrad, 'so she is. All he wanted was your little house, and now that's gone he is just showing us what he really is.'

'It was for your sake I promised to be his wife,' said the woman, 'that there might be somebody to look after you when I am gone.'

'I know, I know!' said Conrad. 'And how very kind and sweet-spoken he always used to be to me while he was courting you!'

'He is coming!' said the woman in sudden terror. 'I can hear his step.

Quick, hide yourself!'

There was let into the wall of the room, just below the window, a seat, from which, in order to conceal household articles laid there, a low curtain had been hung, thus making a sort of rude cupboard. Conrad crept behind this curtain with all speed, just as his mother succeeded in hiding her crust of bread in her pocket. Immediately afterwards Juchziger entered the room without a word of greeting to his wife. He threw his hat on the seat beneath which his stepson was crouching, and said angrily: 'It's a dog's life now-a-days. On one's legs day and night, always in danger, and never a kreuzer[1] by way of reward. All for the fatherland, forsooth, say the patriots! I am my own fatherland, and I keep my patriotism in my purse. Ever since the fat citizens and journeymen took to cutting about the streets with their pop-guns, they are all grown such big men that if one of them happens to set eyes on you, you must jump out of his way like a bewitched frog.

Wife! Wife, I say! Here's a batzen.[2] Run across to Seiler's and fetch me a herring. I begin to feel horribly hungry.'