ith a yell of pain. Some minutes of
ominous silence then passed, in which the enemy were doubtless busy
taking counsel as to what should be done next. Then they suddenly
burst forth with loud shouts and wild uproar. Though one and another
of their number dropped beneath the shower of stones with which they
were greeted, they did not even pause, but pressed furiously forward
against their antagonists.

'Light the petard!' shouted a terrible voice from beneath the archway,
at the sound of which Hillner's arm seemed involuntarily to lose its
power. Immediately afterwards a Swede made his appearance, whose
murderous eyes and bushy red beard were plainly visible in the
torchlight.

'Father!' cried Hillner sadly; and his strong right arm fell
mechanically at his side, while the left was extended imploringly, as
though to shield him from his father's uplifted sword.

A frightful oath was the answer, the one that Conrad heard on the
Erbisdorf road, and, by his comrade's wish, wrote down on paper; and
the oath was at once followed up by a desperate cut. The young man's
wounded hand fell helpless; and a second blow his father levelled at
him must undoubtedly have been at once fatal, had not a well-aimed
stone struck the Swede in the face at the critical moment and made him
stagger back. Before he could recover himself, a musket-ball struck
him in the chest, and he fell to rise no more. This fortunate shot,
with a volley of others that now greeted the Swedes, was fired by a
party of men approaching at a rapid pace under the leadership of Master
Prieme.

'We wanted to snatch a laurel from your wreath,' was his hasty greeting
to Hillner, who, after his father's fall, was once more, with his
uninjured hand, doing vigorous work against the enemy.

The foe, attacked in rear by the garrison of the water-tower, were
gradually compelled to give way before the superior force of the
Freibergers, and were at length driven back beneath the arched vault of
the Muenzbach, a retreat into which the Saxon bullets followed them,
rapidly thinning their ranks.

'Yield, you dogs!' shouted Prieme, fearful, and not without good
reason, that they might even now explode the petard.

Thereupon arose a short, sharp contest among the entrapped Swedes, in
which the smaller and more courageous section wished to fire the petard
already sunk in the foundations of the water-tower, and bury all in the
ruins; while the other party did their utmost t