'I know one thing,' he said to the miller's wife when she returned, 'our senior journeyman must be a very smart man; I should think he can almost hear the grass grow. If he had not been, my last hour would have come today. "Conrad Schmidt," he said to me before I started,—"Conrad Schmidt, in these days we must mind what we are about. You will perhaps meet some soldiers on the way to Erbisdorf, and if you do, I will tell you how to escape." If he had not told me what to do, they would have killed me to a certainty. But where is the poor little boy?'
The miller's wife stepped across to a corner of the room and drew back a large linen cloth from a bed, disclosing the body of a fine boy between eight and nine years old. He lay with closed eyes and little hands peacefully folded on his breast, so quiet that any one might have thought it was only sleep.
'We found him with his little hands folded just like that,' said the miller's wife, bursting into tears. 'His soul has gone to heaven, I am sure.'
'Ah! you can see he did not suffer much,' said Conrad softly, 'and that is something to be thankful for. Whether the two soldiers were Imperialists or Swedes, they might have tied the little fellow to a barn-door and practised at him with their pistols, or tortured him in fifty cruel ways, as they have often done to others. My mistress always says it is a happy thing for those who rest peacefully in their quiet graves. But what have you done with the bodies of the two wicked men?'
At this question a sudden change came over the miller's wife. A bright colour rose to her pale face, her eyes sparkled, and her hands clenched themselves tightly, as her trembling lips gave utterance to the words, 'They lie out there, behind the barn, waiting till the executioner comes to bury them.'
In the meantime the room had filled with country people, who had strolled into the mill on hearing that the child's coffin had arrived.
'H'm!' said the young carpenter; 'are you quite sure the dragoons I met will not come here and find that the two murderers were comrades of theirs? If they did, your brave deed might cost you dear.'
A smile was the woman's only reply, but a peasant answered for her: 'Dragoons, did you say, youngster? What countrymen were they?'
'Well,' replied Conrad, 'you can't always tell a bird by its feathers, especially if you don't happen to be a bird fancier. Whether they were Saxons, Imperialists, or Swedes, I do not know. The soldier that tried to kill me spoke good German, and he wore a blue doublet with bright yellow facings.'
'God help us!' cried the peasant. 'They are the Swedes, sure enough; I have known the blue doublets ever since 1639, the year they did so much harm to Erbisdorf, when General Bannier made his attack on Freiberg.'