The Young Captives / A Narrative of the Shipwreck and Suffering of John and William Doyley

e remember that the road which leads from Dresden to Freiberg is up hill almost all the way. The Saxon Erzgebirge must not be pictured as a chain of separate mountains, with peaks rising one behind t

19,000. Its ancient fortifications, which of late years have been rapidly giving place to modern improvements, consisted of a double line of walls, guarded by towers, pierced by strongly-fortified gates, and surrounded by a deep and wide moat. The ramparts were built of quarried stone, which, though much harder than sandstone, was far more difficult to bind together with mortar. In view of this fact, we may well be surpris

d hand-truck. This contained a piece of carpenter's work that always tells its own sad story-a little child's coffin. As the truck with its sorrowful burden jol

coffin for the m

een gleaning among the

yes, something like it. Now-a-days the soldiers are the worst plagu

ou mean by

uth, 'are you the only man in Freibe

only came home from Dresden late last night, and I had to mount

ong beer. Meantime the miller's wife stayed with the woman, who, as soon as the coast was clear, declared herself to be a soldier in disguise, and threatened her hostess with instant death unless she fetched out all her jewels and valuables on the spot. The poor woman accordingly had to open her great linen chest, in the bottom of which her little store of silver

of business. How the two-legged mouse must have kicked about

coming up-stairs to help his comrade. Well, the sight of the boy running towards him made him suspicious, so he stopped him and took him back with him into the mill. When the soldier reached the room where he had left his comrade, he found that the miller's wife had bolted the door, and refused

ancake,' said the sentry. 'She

hat the robber inside was suffocated,' said C

ter Prieme gravely. 'But to which side did the two men be

her they were Saxons, or Swedes, or Imperialists, it all comes to the same thing. They chang

ing on now for over twenty-four years. The soldiers are getting so used to ki

t. The animal reared and threatened to fall backwards on its rider, who appeared to be in a towering passion. He rode back a short distance, and used all the arts of his horsemanship to reduce his refractory steed to obedience. The man did not spare either oaths, spurring, or blows of his heavy whip, until the horse, still shying but obedient at last, went trembling past the truck. Then the rider turned the animal back once more, and did not rest until he had made it leap over the object of its terror. As it did so, one of its hind hoofs touched the lid of the truck and threw it back. The soldier turned in mid-career, saw the form of the apprentice, drew a pistol from his holster like lightning, and fired at him where he lay. At the report and flash the youth started up, and the bullet passed close by his hand, grazing the skin, and lodged in the side of t

s to give me a bit of sopped bread to tie on my hand; it begins to burn and smart pretty badly. Just look, Mistress Miller, there's a Swedish d

hat he had asked for, Conrad carrie

n, 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 soldi

, disclosing the body of a fine boy between eight and nine years old. He lay with closed eyes and lit

like that,' said the miller's wife, bursting int

ey 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 othe

her eyes sparkled, and her hands clenched themselves tightly, as her trembling lips gave utterance

try people, who had strolled into the mill on

I met will not come here and find that the two murderers were comr

easant answered for her: 'Dragoons, did you

en to be a bird fancier. Whether they were Saxons, Imperialists, or Swedes, I do not know. The sold

have known the blue doublets ever since 1639, the year they did so mu

lue cloth and yellow facings in the world besides what is on Swedish uniforms;

rom outside the house. 'The schoolmaster

e of the little coffin, and then turned away to lay her son's body in it. Conrad Schmidt hardly knew what he had better do. First of all he hid the money he had just received in one of his shoes, and then began to consider whether he should leave his hand-truck at the mill or take it back with him to Freiberg. His uncertainty did not las