[2] A small German coin equal to four kreuzers.
[3] The river that flows through Freiberg.
CHAPTER VIII.
ORDINARY INCIDENTS OF A SIEGE.
'Dear Wahle,' said Dollie to a miner, who, with the assistance 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.