so bad that human beings would die coming through it, and they let my dog down first to see.'
'Well, and what happened after that, neighbour Roller?' asked the carpenter's young widow, as the speaker paused.
'You must excuse me for a minute or two, neighbours,' replied Roller. 'You know we miners are often rather short of breath.' While he was silent all sat waiting.
'That Turk did not die,' he went on at last, 'you can all see for yourselves, for here he is, and in very good company too. The animal happily came down just far enough for me to cut him loose from the cord. By way of encouraging his tormentors to come down after him, I threw my mining leather, my shoes, and even my miner's coat, on to the fire, and they sent up such a pother of smoke that the Swedes gave it up as a bad job, for that time at all events. I am only a poor miner, but I never repented giving up my mining leather, my shoes, and my coat, to save that dog's life.'
'Come to me, Conrad, my son,' said a gentle woman's voice. 'Give me your hand, and let me feel sure that I have you still, and that you have really and truly escaped from the dreadful Swedes.'
The apprentice drew near to the speaker, who occupied the place of honour in the armchair, and the upper part of whose face was hidden by a large green shade. As he gave his right hand to his blind mother, a little girl, who sat on a stool at the woman's feet, gently took the left hand that the Swedish bullet had wounded.
'Does it hurt, poor Conrad?' asked the child earnestly.
'No, little Dollie,' replied the youth. 'The scratch on my hand isn't nearly so bad as the blisters the hard gulden have made on my feet.'
'Ah!' cried Dollie, with a shudder; 'but how it would have hurt you if the Swedes had caught you!'
'Dollie is quite right,' said the mistress of the house. 'My late husband used to say the Swedes came from the same place where the Turks and the Tartars live, and that that was why they were so cruel.'
The elder journeyman, a young man who had been sitting by with his head resting on his hand, apparently uninterested in what was passing, at this point broke into the conversation rather suddenly. 'Have the Imperialists been one bit less cruel than the Swedes? Have they not tortured people too?'
'It is perfectly true,' said the miner. 'The Swedes and the Imperialists are both tarred with the same brush. For plundering, murdering, and burning, there is not a pin to choose between them.'
'And that,' said the elder journeyman, 'is just because this long, long war has given us a new sort of men—men in whom desperate greediness takes the place of a heart, and whose conscience has been replaced by an empty purse, to fill which is their one object in life. Their general is their god, and they follow him or desert him just according as he leads them to victory and plunder, or to defeat. They march from country to country, selling their services to whichever side they think will give them the richest booty. Swedes! I can assure you, there is not a Swede left in the Swedish army, or, at all events, very few. The men the great Gustavus Adolphus brought over the Baltic Sea are gone long ago, and those who have taken their places will sell both soul and body any day to the highest bidder.'
'Yes,' interrupted the apprentice, 'that's just what I say. The Swedes are no more Swedes than I am; else how could I have understood the oaths of the Swedish dragoon that fired at me to-day? He swore in good round German, and it was one of the most wonderful oaths I ever heard. He said'—
The journeyman sprang up hastily, and put his hand before the lad's mouth. 'Silence!' he cried earnestly. 'Do not repeat the oath you heard to any one. When a man has once heard a wicked thing, it sticks in his memory for years. It is the good things we find so hard to remember. But to return to the Swedes. Their anger against us is not altogether without excuse. After our Elector had actually begged for an alliance with them, to protect him against the Emperor's tyranny,—after Gustavus Adolphus had fought for us Saxons, bled for us, won battles for us,—the Elector deserted his new ally as suddenly as he had joined him, just because fortune frowned on him in one or two battles. He did more than desert him; he threw himself again into the arms of the Emperor, whom he had good reason to know for his worst enemy. For this ingratitude'—
'Come, come, young fellow!' cried the miner, frowning. 'I shall have to serve you as you did the boy just now. What! You take on yourself to blame our illustrious Elector and his court! Pray, do you get better lessons in statesmanship over the glue-pot and vice than what our Elector and his princely council can teach you? You are forgetting that you live in the faithful mountain city of Freiberg—a city that is proud of being loyal to its prince without any grumbling or asking why and wherefore. "Fear God! honour the king! do right and fear no man!" That's what the Bible says.'
'I will be prudent and hold my peace,' said the young journeyman quietly. 'Yet even over the glue-pot and vice thoughts come to a man that cannot easily be got rid of.'
There followed a pause in the conversation, which lasted until Dollie, the miner's little daughter, turned to the apprentice with the question, 'Were the Swedes so very ugly? Had they got horns on their heads, or only one eye each, like the giants in the "Seven-leagued Boots," who used to eat little boys and girls? And oh, perhaps they had dreadful, great mouths, with rows of sharp teeth in them!'
In spite of their terrors, none of those present could restrain their laughter at the child's artless fears.
'I only had one look at the Swede as he leaped his horse over me,' said Conrad; 'and he looked just like anybody else, only that he had black hair and a fierce red moustache, just like'—and he broke off abruptly, and stared at the elder journeyman, then went on: 'Yes, such a long moustache that he could have tied it in a knot behind his head.'
'What!' stammered the journeyman, turning pale; 'black hair and a red moustache?'
'Yes,' replied Conrad; 'it looked so uncommonly odd, that it was the only thing I noticed about him.'
The journeyman sat silent for the rest of the evening. When the company had dispersed, he turned to the lad and said: 'My boy, now tell me the oath you heard the—the Swede use.'
Conrad looked at his companion in astonishment, and saw signs of some deep emotion on his face. 'But,' he objected, 'only a little while ago you said I was not to let any one hear the oath, and now'—
'You are quite right,' replied the journeyman. 'Hold fast by what I told you. But if you write down the words on this piece of paper for me it will hurt no one. I have a good reason for wanting to see them. Can you write?'
'I should just think I could,' said Conrad, half offended by the question. He wrote the words down, and noticed that as soon as the journeyman had read them he became even paler than before, and muttered something between his set teeth.
CHAPTER III.
PRIVATE RIGHTS MUST GIVE PLACE TO PUBLIC NECESSITIES
On the 9th of November 1642, the forest of Freiberg presented a scene of the busiest activity. Several hundred men were at work, and many a great pine and fir tree bowed its lofty head beneath the stroke of axe and saw, to fall at last crashing to earth. The wood-cutters from the mines vied with those from the city—joiners, carpenters, wheelwrights, and coopers—in thinning the dense masses of beautiful forest trees as rapidly as possible. Burghers and others, aided by the gaunt-looking mining people, with earth-stained clothes and red night-caps on their heads, were loading the long heavy trunks upon drays that stood in readiness, and driving them off with all speed towards the town. The wind blew sharp and cool, yet no one complained of the cold; on the contrary, the large drops that tell of honest toil stood out on many a swarthy brow. The household of Mistress Blüthgen, the carpenter's young widow, whose acquaintance we made in the last chapter,
