ever he receives orders to do so. This is what war
demands, and the morality of your catechisms has no place in it. War
puts its trust in the strong arm, the sword, and the fire-lock alone.
Speak, fellow! why would you not shoot that Swede?'

'Many of the enemy have already met their death by my hand during the
past few weeks,' replied Hillner quietly; 'and only against one have I
refused to raise my weapon, for that one was--my father;--an unnatural
father, it is true, who deceived my poor mother, and shamefully
deserted her, and made me fight against my fatherland,--but yet, in
spite of all, my father. His blood flows in my veins; but for him I
should never have existed. So I say again, let me die rather than kill
him.'

'We can easily manage that,' said Schweinitz angrily. 'All such talk
as this in war-time is so much rubbish. Bah! While I stand here
debating with a traitor, the villain yonder has prudently taken himself
out of range.' Defensioner, you will give me your weapons, both
firelock and sabre. You are my prisoner. Ha! Schoenleben doubtless
had sound reasons for warning me against you.'

His step-father's absence and his mother's quiet slumber having given
Conrad the opportunity he wanted, he was on the way to his mistress'
house to find his friend Hillner, when he saw the Defensioner coming
along the street, closely surrounded by the guard, and followed by a
crowd of curious people. The boy stared in astonishment at hearing the
ugly word 'traitor' applied to his old comrade, and did not fully
recover himself until he caught sight of his step-father marching with
a joyful face close beside the prisoner, on the way to lock him up in
one of the strongest cells at the town hall.

When the news of Hillner's arrest reached Mistress Bluethgen's house,
where it produced great excitement, the miller, who had not yet fully
recovered, remarked dryly to the women:

'Seems to me as though our Defensioner must have acted rather like one
of my donkeys. He could have obeyed the commandant's order, aimed his
weapon, and fired over the Swede's head. He had it all in his own
hands.'

'No,' said his wife, showing, what was very unlike her, the deepest
emotion, 'Hillner was right not to lift his hand against his father,
even in pretence. What marksman in the whole wide world can say where
his bullet shall go, when it is once out of his gun and flying towards
a mark that some mischievous sprite may shift at