'If it were not for the leaving you and dear old pussy here that Jüchziger 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 nobody knows how many fascines'—

'Alas, alas!' interrupted Mistress Jüchziger. '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? Pussy 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!'