'My dear Defensioner,' replied Schweinitz heartily, 'the enemy may commence their grand assault at any moment. There is no time now to examine into your affair. For the present you are liberated on parole. Be of good courage, and get your wound attended to the very first thing.'
With these words, the commandant, finding his presence no longer necessary, hastened away.
The firing on both sides continued till midnight. Then the Freibergers heard loud sounds of confusion and disturbance and much shouting in the Swedish camp; but the dreaded general assault was still unaccountably delayed.
Between two and three o'clock on the morning of February 17th, there arrived at the city moat an Imperialist soldier, who had been taken prisoner by the Swedes before Leipzig, and had now made his escape. On being admitted into the town, he announced that the enemy were making hasty preparations for departure, that the military stores were already loaded, and that he himself had been employed with others in removing the charges from the Swedish mines. This joyful and unexpected news passed rapidly from mouth to mouth, and put the whole city in a ferment. Hope turned to glad certainty, when, at break of day, the enemy's army, with its artillery and baggage-waggons, was seen marching away from the city, and taking the road towards Klein-Waltersdorf; although four or five hundred Swedish dragoons still held the Hospital Church, whence they fired on the town and on all who issued from it. The Freibergers, instead of abandoning themselves to the transports of an excessive joy, re-occupied the Peter Gate without delay, and made a sortie in which they set fire to the enemy's batteries and advanced works.
By about seven in the morning, when the Swedes had finally evacuated the Hospital Church itself, Imperialists began to arrive before the city, in small numbers at first, which, however, rapidly increased. Their officers were astounded at sight of the ramparts and fortifications, which in many places were almost level with the earth. Their colonel asked as a particular favour that he might be permitted to ride his horse into the city over the principal breach by the Peter Gate. This was readily granted by the commandant, and as easily accomplished by the gallant officer. Meantime the prudent Freibergers had not in the least relaxed their diligence in filling up the enemy's trenches and destroying their batteries, while repairing their own barbicans and moat, building the former up with gabions, and strengthening the latter with a stout wooden parapet.
On the 18th of February, Field-Marshal Piccolomini himself entered Freiberg, and highly commended the courageous and unexampled defence that had been made by a town so slightly fortified. The Emperor and the Elector did not fail to distribute weighty gold chains of office, patents of nobility, badges of honour, and similar acknowledgments to the commandant, the Burgomaster, and the city; and Freiberg's fame was heard far and wide through Europe. Its inhabitants attributed the glory of their successful defence to God alone; and just as on the 17th of February 1643, there went up from all the churches of Freiberg, and from every lip, the devout and thankful song, 'Lord our God, to Thee our praises,' so has it been on each anniversary since, as each year has brought round afresh the mountain city's day of joy and thanksgiving.
It has never been fully known whether the approach of the Imperial army, or the failure of the treachery they had planned, or the brave and desperate resistance of the besieged citizens, caused the Swedes at last to abandon their idea of a general assault. But one thing is certain, that the brave Defensioner Hillner was fully cleared of blame by both Commandant von Schweinitz and Burgomaster Schönleben. Nor was it long before he was made a free citizen and a master-craftsman, and that without any cost to himself.
'My son,' said Schweinitz to the newly made master-carpenter, 'you may take my word for it, that in war a soldier must have a heart like a flint, and often say things very different from what he feels. You did quite right not to fire at your own father, and had I been in your place, I should very likely have done the same myself. Now that the enemy is safe out of the way, I may tell you so freely. God grant the foe may never return.'
Nor was it long before his young widowed mistress gave her hand in marriage to her quondam journeyman, and never had the smallest cause to repent the gift. She kept one secret, and one only, from her husband; she never told him that the hand he had asked and won was the hand that had, at exactly the right moment, thrown the stone which was the means of saving his life. The miller's family, after their return to Erbisdorf, kept up their friendship for the city home where they had received so hospitable a welcome. Conrad Schmidt, under Hillner's watchful care, grew up into a famous carpenter. When in later years he, too, became a master-craftsman, he rebuilt his mother's house outside the Peter Gate, making it more beautiful than it had ever been before. To this new home he brought his old playmate Dollie as his wife, and she lovingly and carefully tended her husband's blind mother so long as Mistress Jüchziger needed her ministrations. Roller and Prieme, and all those who have played their parts so bravely in our story, lived for many a year as well-to-do citizens; and in the long winter evenings they delighted to tell one another rousing stories of the events that happened during that memorable siege.
Freiberg has never been besieged again; yet what the artillery and mines of the warlike foe failed to accomplish, has been brought about long since by the genial beams of golden peace.