The next day was Sunday. Lutheran ministers held services in the trenches, and the guns were silent. Miller again inquired if the fathers had had enough. They answered that they could endure more. Meanwhile the damage in the cloister was examined and found to be considerable. People were killed and the wall was shaken here and there. The most formidable gun was a gigantic culverin standing on the north. It had broken the wall to such a degree, torn out so many stones and bricks, that the besieged could foresee that should the fire continue two days longer a considerable part of the wall would give away. A breach such as the culverin would make could not be filled with beams or earth. The prior foresaw with an eye full of sorrow the ruin which he could not prevent. Monday the attack was begun anew, and the gigantic gun widened the breach. Various mishaps met the Swedes, however. About dusk that day a Swedish gunner killed on the spot Miller’s sister’s son, whom the general loved as though he had been his own, and intended to leave him all that he had,—beginning with his name and military reputation and ending with his fortune. But the heart of the old warrior blazed up with hatred all the more from this loss. The wall at the northern bastion was so broken that preparations were made in the night for a hand-to-hand assault. That the infantry might approach the fortress with less danger, Miller commanded to throw up in the darkness a whole series of small redoubts, reaching the very slope. But the night was clear, and white light from the snow betrayed the movements of the enemy. The cannons of Yasna Gora scattered the men occupied in making those parapets formed of fascines, fences, baskets, and timbers. At daybreak Charnyetski saw a siege machine which they had already rolled toward the walls. But the besieged broke it with cannon fire without difficulty; so many men were killed on that occasion that the day might have been called a day of victory for the besieged, had it not been for that great gun which shook the wall incessantly with irrestrainable power. A thaw came on the following days, and such dense mists settled down that the fathers attributed them to the action of evil spirits. It was impossible to see either the machines of war, the erection of parapets, or the work of the siege. The Swedes came near the very walls of the cloister. In the evening Charnyetski, when the prior was making his usual round of the walls, took him by the side and said in a low voice,— “Bad, revered father! Our wall will not hold out beyond a day.” “Perhaps these fogs will prevent them from firing,” answered Kordetski; “and we meanwhile will repair the rents somehow.” “The fogs will not prevent the Swedes, for that gun once aimed may continue even in darkness the work of destruction; but here the ruins are falling and falling.” “In God and in the Most Holy Lady is our hope.”