ooted palisadoes, and other works which the
Freibergers were in hot haste trying to strengthen. The steady
industry of so many hundred busy hands in the cold and darkness of that
winter night must have struck an onlooker with surprise; but probably
his surprise would have been even more excited by the unusual silence
in which such heavy work was being done. That they might not attract
the enemy's attention and so draw down an attack, the besieged were
using the miners' dark lanterns, which open only on one side, instead
of such torches or other lights as would generally be employed. From
the top of the city wall and gate, these lanterns now shone down like
the glimmering fires of innumerable glowworms, while, through the dusky
twilight, lit up by their flickering rays, the soft white snowflakes
fell steadily and quietly. The dim light and the falling snow combined
to transform the brave defenders into so many ghost-like shapes. One
such weird figure could be descried, leaning silent and motionless
against the parapet at the top of the tower, his heavy double arquebuse
by his side. No part of the man stirred save the restless eyes, and
they wandered incessantly to and fro, striving to make out the
movements of the enemy. The miners, busy constructing a new moat just
within the battered Peter Gate, looked, as they glided about, more like
mountain-gnomes than human beings. If one of these same human gnomes,
with weather-beaten, swarthy face and wrinkled forehead framed in its
snowy hood, had suddenly stepped out into the circle of light cast by
one of the dark lanterns, people would have been strongly tempted to
declare they had seen a ghost.

Up there on the Hospital Mountain, where the enemy's headquarters lay,
great watch-fires were blazing through the thick, snow-laden air. Now
and then the glare of a mortar shone suddenly out, followed after a few
seconds by the thundering explosion. Then a fiery curve traced itself
against the sky, the end of which advanced hissing towards the city,
and at last burst somewhere among the houses. Such was the picture
that presented itself to the eyes of the two children when they reached
the Peter Gate on that dark winter's night.

[1] A small German coin worth about a farthing English.

[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 m