'Hallo! ho there!' shouted a powerful voice one afternoon late in December, beneath the window of Mistress Blüthgen, the carpenter's widow, and the brawny hand of a burly countryman knocked so vigorously on the window itself that the glass shivered under the blow. 'Can't you make room in your house for a small family? I have always been a regular customer of yours, and many is the gulden I have spent with you.'
At this abrupt demand, journeymen and apprentice hastened to the window. Six asses, each laden with a heavy sack of flour, stood before the door of the house lazily turning their long ears backward and forward, as though they felt quite sure of finding comfortable quarters there. Farther down the street was a heavily-loaded waggon with two powerful brown horses. In the waggon, almost buried among beds and other household gear, sat a woman with a baby in her arms. Four cows, in charge of a servant-maid, were lowing behind the waggon, and a dozen sheep stood bleating round them. Mistress Blüthgen did not take many seconds to settle with her would-be lodger, whose calling in life was shown by the floury state of his clothes.
'That is the miller from Erbisdorf,' said Conrad, and at a sign from his mistress hastened to open the yard gates, that the fugitives might put their various possessions under cover. Willing hands were soon at work unloading and stowing away the goods, and before long the miller, leaving his wife established in her new home, set off with his waggon to return to Erbisdorf and fetch the rest of his possessions.
'Praise be to God!' cried Mistress Blüthgen joyfully. 'We shall not starve now, even if the Swedes do come. God grant they may neither take the town, nor set it on fire over our heads with their shells.'
'We must all do our best to prevent it,' said Hillner boldly. 'God gave us strong arms and brave hearts for that very purpose.'
[1] A small German coin.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ENEMY BEFORE THE TOWN.
The tower of St. Peter's Church rises high into the air above all the other buildings of Freiberg. In those early days church-towers were too often used for purposes with which religion had but little to do. Grim cannon sometimes stood there, not to fire harmless salutes on days of public rejoicing, but more often to be loaded with deadly missiles and fired at an enemy. Thus it happened that one of these instruments of death had been planted in the highest chamber of the St. Peter's Tower at Freiberg. Round this cannon, on December 27, 1642, stood Burgomaster Jonas Schönleben and several others, among whom were Hillner the journeyman, and the town servant Jüchziger. Winter had come in all its might, and the cold, particularly up here in the windy tower, was very severe, while snow lay deep over all the surrounding landscape. The eyes of those present were intently gazing beyond the town, to where, on the hill above the Hospital Church, many cavalry soldiers could be seen moving about and beginning to take up their positions. There had been a good deal of doubt expressed in the town as to whether the Swedish commander really meant to undertake a siege up there among the mountains at such an inclement season, with snow lying thickly on the frozen ground. The appearance of these horsemen and their business-like movements seemed to set such doubts at rest once for all.