The Young Carpenters of Freiberg | Page 5

into the very bowels of the earth, so that the miners themselves are not safe from them. When wicked General Bannier was here three years ago, we hid ourselves from the Swedes, with our wives and children, in the mines. To hinder them from following us, we lighted fires at the bottom of the shafts, and put all kinds of pungent things in them, that sent up a thick, stifling smoke through every cranny and crevice. What followed? While I was sitting by the fire putting on more fuel,--I had sent my wife and children farther into the mine to be out of the reek,--something suddenly came plunging down through the smoke-cloud, and I was astounded to see my dog, this very Turk here, drop upon me with his four legs all tied together and fastened to a cord. His tongue was hanging out, and only a faint quiver or two told me he was not quite dead. What did the cruel Swedes do that for? They wanted to try whether the smoke was so bad that human beings would die coming through it, and they let my dog down first to see.'
'Well, and what happened after that, neighbour Roller?' asked the carpenter's young widow, as the speaker paused.
'You must excuse me for a minute or two, neighbours,' replied Roller. 'You know we miners are often rather short of breath.' While he was silent all sat waiting.
'That Turk did not die,' he went on at last, 'you can all see for yourselves, for here he is, and in very good company too. The animal happily came down just far enough for me to cut him loose from the cord. By way of encouraging his tormentors to come down after him, I threw my mining leather, my shoes, and even my miner's coat, on to the fire, and they sent up such a pother of smoke that the Swedes gave it up as a bad job, for that time at all events. I am only a poor miner, but I never repented giving up my mining leather, my shoes, and my coat, to save that dog's life.'
'Come to me, Conrad, my son,' said a gentle woman's voice. 'Give me your hand, and let me feel sure that I have you still, and that you have really and truly escaped from the dreadful Swedes.'
The apprentice drew near to the speaker, who occupied the place of honour in the armchair, and the upper part of whose face was hidden by a large green shade. As he gave his right hand to his blind mother, a little girl, who sat on a stool at the woman's feet, gently took the left hand that the Swedish bullet had wounded.
'Does it hurt, poor Conrad?' asked the child earnestly.
'No, little Dollie,' replied the youth. 'The scratch on my hand isn't nearly so bad as the blisters the hard gulden have made on my feet.'
'Ah!' cried Dollie, with a shudder; 'but how it would have hurt you if the Swedes had caught you!'
'Dollie is quite right,' said the mistress of the house. 'My late husband used to say the Swedes came from the same place where the Turks and the Tartars live, and that that was why they were so cruel.'
The elder journeyman, a young man who had been sitting by with his head resting on his hand, apparently uninterested in what was passing, at this point broke into the conversation rather suddenly. 'Have the Imperialists been one bit less cruel than the Swedes? Have they not tortured people too?'
'It is perfectly true,' said the miner. 'The Swedes and the Imperialists are both tarred with the same brush. For plundering, murdering, and burning, there is not a pin to choose between them.'
'And that,' said the elder journeyman, 'is just because this long, long war has given us a new sort of men--men in whom desperate greediness takes the place of a heart, and whose conscience has been replaced by an empty purse, to fill which is their one object in life. Their general is their god, and they follow him or desert him just according as he leads them to victory and plunder, or to defeat. They march from country to country, selling their services to whichever side they think will give them the richest booty. Swedes! I can assure you, there is not a Swede left in the Swedish army, or, at all events, very few. The men the great Gustavus Adolphus brought over the Baltic Sea are gone long ago, and those who have taken their places will sell both soul and body any day to the highest bidder.'
'Yes,' interrupted the apprentice, 'that's just what I say. The Swedes are no more Swedes than I am; else how could I have understood the oaths of the