'Why did mother never say anything about the box?' asked Conrad.
'H'm!' said Jüchziger; 'she—well—she—in fact, she didn't quite trust me, I'm sorry to say, and wanted to keep all the things in it for you. But now she sees how wrong that was, and she has confessed all about it to me. I don't want the box for myself; all I want is to see it out of danger.'
'But how can I get out?' asked Conrad again. 'Nobody may leave the town.'
'In about an hour's time there is to be a sortie from the Donat Gate, and you can manage to creep out with the men. Roller the miner is going out with them as well; he and Wahle are going all the way to General Piccolomini in Bohemia, but on no account show the safe-conduct to him.'
'I should like just to run home to mother,' said Conrad, 'to tell her about the box, and say good-bye to her.'
'Now would you really be so unkind to a poor, frightened, blind woman as that?' said his stepfather. 'Why, there's Roller; he has not even told his wife, though he is going all the way to Bohemia, and you want to make your mother unhappy because you're going a few yards outside the city wall.'
'It is quite true, stepfather,' said Conrad with a sigh. 'So give me my safe-conduct, and tell me how I am to get into the town again.'
'You can easily do that. You will only have to creep up the bed of the Münzbach. No one will take any notice of a slight youth like you.'
Conrad then received from his stepfather a folded and sealed paper, on which was written in large letters the word 'Safe-Conduct.'
Underneath were several more words, but as they were all in Swedish the boy could make nothing out of them. When he had taken leave of Jüchziger, the latter muttered to himself: 'Either the Swedes will put an end to him, or else he will do my errand and never be a bit the wiser himself. It will be a good day's work for me whichever way it goes.'