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 Juechziger 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.

Freiberg's strong gates and barbicans, her towers, walls, and moats,
have, for the most part, passed away. Where once the cannon thundered,
roses and jessamines now fill lovely gardens with their rich perfume;
where the blood of Saxon burgher and Swedish trooper was once shed in
savage strife, the air now rings with the laughter of happy children;
and no trace is ever seen of those who fought so bravely for their
beloved city more than two hundred years ago. Yet their memory will
never die; it lives on through the ages, and strong and pure, like
Freiberg's native silver, shall endure the story of their faithfulness
to prince and fatherland.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUN