"Moreover, it indeed matters little for the argument that this damsel is fair to the eye. Save in so far as she is more the object of desire, and that when the greed of the lustful eye is balked" (here he paused and looked fixedly between his knees), "disappointment oft in such a heart turns to deadly poison. And so that which was desired is the more bitterly hated, and revenge awakes to destroy.

"But if beauty matters little, character matters greatly. And what, by common consent, has been known in the city concerning this maid?

"I ask not you, Duke Otho, who have lived apart in your castle or in far lands, a stranger to the city like myself. But I ask the people among whom, during all these; past months of the plague, she has dwelt. Is she not known among them as Saint Helena?"

"Aye," cried the people, "Saint Helena, indeed—our savior when there was none to help! God save Saint Helena!"

Dessauer waved his hand for silence.

"Did she not go among you from house to house, carrying, not the poison-cup, but the healing draught? Was not her hand soft on the brow of the dying, comfortable about the neck of the bereaved? Day and night, whose fingers reverently wrapped up the poor dead bodies of your beloved? Who quieted your babes in her arms, fed thorn, nursed them, healed them, buried them—wore herself to a shadow for your sakes ?"

"Saint Helena!" they cried; "Saint Helena, the angel of the Red Tower!"

"Aye," said Dessauer, in tones like thunder, "hear their voices! There are a thousand witnesses in this house untortured, unsuborned. I tell you, the guilt of innocent blood will lie on you, great Duke—on you counsellors of evil things, if you condemn this maid. Your throne, Duke Otho, shall totter and fall, and your life's sun shall set in a sea of blood!"

He sat down calm and fearless as the Duke raged to Michael Texel, as I think, desiring that the fearless pleader could be seized on the instant, and punished for his insolence. But as the folk shouted in the hall, and the thunder of cheering came in through the open windows from the great concourse without, Michael Texel calmed his master, urging upon him that the temper of the people was for the present too dangerous. And also, doubtless, that they could easily compass their ends by other means.

I saw Texel despatch a messenger to the lictors who stood on either side of Helene. The body-guard of the Duke stood closer about her as the Duke Otho himself stood up to read the sentence.

I saw that the form of it had been written out upon a paper. Doubtless, therefore, all had been prearranged, so that neither evidence nor eloquence could possibly have had any effect upon it.

"We, the Court of the Wolfmark, find the prisoner, Helene, called Gottfried, guilty of witchcraft, and especially of compassing and causing the death of our predecessor, the most noble Duke Casimir, and we do hereby adjudge that, on the morning of Sunday presently following, Helene Gottfried shall be executed upon the common scaffold by the axe of the executioner. Of our clemency is this sentence delivered, instead of the torture and the burning alive at the stake which it was within our power to command. This is done in consideration of the youth of the criminal, and as the first exercise of our ducal prerogative of high mercy."

With an angry roar the people closed in.

"Take her!" they cried; "rescue her out of their hands!"

And there was a fierce rush, in which the outer barriers were snapped like straw. But the lictors had pulled down the trap-door on the instant, and the people surged fiercely over the spot where a moment before Helene had stood. Before them were the levelled pikes and burning matches of the Duke's guard.

"Have at them!" was still the cry. "Kill the wolves! Tear them to pieces!"

But the mob was undisciplined, and the steady advance of the soldiers soon cleared the hall. Nevertheless the streets without continued angry and throbbing with incipient rebellion. Duke Otho could scarce win scathless across the court-yard to his own apartments. Tiles from the nearest roofs were cast upon the heads of his escort. The streets were impassable with angry men shaking their fists at every courier and soldier of the Duke. Women hung sobbing out of the windows, and all the city of Thorn lamented with uncomforted tears because of the cruel condemnation of their Saint of the plague, Helena, the maiden of the Red Tower.



CHAPTER XLV

THE MESSAGE FROM THE WHITE GATE

I rushed out into the street, distract and insensate with grief and madness. I found the city seething with sullen unrest—not yet openly hostile to the powers that abode in the Castle of the Wolfsberg—too long cowed and down-trodden for that, but angry with the anger which one day would of a certainty break out and be pitiless.

The Black Horsemen of the Duke pricked a way with their lances here and there through the people, driving them into the narrow lanes, in jets and spurts of fleeing humanity, only once more to reunite as soon as the Hussars of Death had passed. Pikemen cried "Make way!" and the regular guard of the city paraded in strong companies.

A soldier wantonly thrust me in the back with his spear, and I sprang towards him fiercely, glad to strike home at something. But as quickly a man of the crowd pulled me back.

"Be wise!" he said; "not for your own sake alone, but for the sake of all these women and children. The Black Riders seek only an excuse to sweep the city from end to end with the besom of fire and blood."

Then came my master out of the Hall of Judgment, his head hanging dejectedly down. As soon as he was observed the people crowded about, shaking him by the hand, thanking him for that which he had done for their maid, their holy Saint Helena of the plague.

"We will not suffer her to be put to death, not even if they of the Wolfsberg raze our city to the ground!"

"Make way there!" cried the Black Horsemen—"way, in the name of Duke Otho!"

"Who is Duke Otho?" cried a voice. "We do not know Duke Otho."

"He is not crowned yet! Why should he take so much upon him?" shouted another.

"We are free burgesses of Thorn, and no man's bond-slaves!" said a third. Such were the shouts that hurtled through the streets and were bandied fiercely from man to man, betraying in tone more than in word the intensity of the hatred which existed between the ducal towers of the Wolfsberg and the city which lay beneath them.

In my boyish days I had laughed at the assemblies of the Swan—the White Wolves and Free Companies. But, perhaps, those who had thus played at revolt were wiser than I. For of a surety these associations were yielding their fruits now in a harvest of hate against the gloomy pile that had so long dominated the town, choked its liberties, and shut it off from the new, free, thriving world of the northern seaboard commonwealths to which of right it belonged.

So soon as Dessauer and I were alone in my master's room at Bishop Peter's I tried to stammer some sort of thanks, but I could do no more than hold out a hand to him. The old man clasped it.

"It was wholly useless from the first," he said; "they had their purpose fixed and their course laid out, so that there was no turning of them. All was a mockery, so clear that even the ignorant men of the streets were not deceived. Accusation, evidence, pleadings, condemnation, sentence—all were ready before the maid was taken; aye, and, I think, before Duke Casimir was dead.

"Also there is no court in the Wolfmark higher than the mockery we have seen to-day. The arms of the soldiers of Plassenburg are our only court of appeal."

"It is two days before they can come," I answered. "I fear me all will be over before then."

"Be not so sure," said Dessauer. "There is at present no Justicer in the Mark capable of carrying out the sentence, so long as your father lies on his bed of mortal weakness."

"Duke Otho will not let that stand in his way—or I am the more deceived," said I, with a heavy heart.

At this moment there came an interruption. I heard a loud argument outside in the court-yard.

"Tell me what you want with the servant of the most learned Doctor!" cried a voice.

"That is his business, and mine—not yours, rusty son of a stable-sweeper!" was the answer.

I went out immediately, and there, facing each other in a position of mutual defiance, I saw Peter of the Pigs and the decent legal domestic of Master Gerard von Sturm.

"Get out of my wind, old Muck-to-the-Eyes!" said the servitor, offensively; "you poison the good, wholesome air that is needed for men's breath."

"Go back to your murderer of the saints," responded Peter of the Pigs, valiantly. "Your master and you will swing in effigy to-night in every street in Thorn. Some day before long you will both swing in the body—if a hair of this angel's head be harmed."

"I must see this learned Doctor's servant!" persisted the man of law, avoiding the personal question.

"Here he is," said I; "and now what would you with him?"

"I am sent to invite you to come to the Weiss Thor immediately, on business which deeply concerns you."

"That is not enough for me," said I. "Who sends for me?"

"Let me come in out of the hearing of this moon-faced idiot," said he, pointing contumeliously to Peter of the Pigs, "and I will tell you. I am not bidden to proclaim my business in the market sties and city cattlepens!"

"You do well, Parchment Knave," cried Peter; "for it is such black business that if you proclaimed a syllable of it there you would be torn to pieces of honest folk. Thank God there are still some such in the world!"

"Aye, many," quoth the servitor, "and we all know they are to be found in the dwellings of priestlings!"

I walked with the man to the gate, for I did not care to take him to where Dessauer was sitting. I feared that it might be some ill news from the Lubber Fiend, who, though I had seen him clear of the gate, might very well have returned and told my message to Master Gerard.

"Well," said I, brusquely, for I had no love for the Sir Rusty Respectable, "out with it—who sends you?"

"It is not my master," answered the man, "but one other."

"What other?" said I.

"The one," he said, cunningly, "with whom on a former occasion you rode out at the White Gate."

Then I saw that he knew me.

"The Princess—" I began.

"Hush," he said, touching my arm; "that is not a word to be whispered in the streets of Thorn—the Lady Ysolinde is at her father's house, and would see you—on a matter of life or death—so she bade me tell you."

"I will go with you," I said, instantly.

"Nay," he said, smirking secretly, "not now, but at nine of the clock, when the city ways shall be dark, you must come—you know the road. And then you two can confer together safely, and eke, an it please you, jocosely, when Master Gerard will be safe in his study, with the lamp lit."

I went back to Dessauer, who during my absence had kept his head in his hand, as if deeply absorbed in thought.

"The Princess is in Thorn!" said I, as a startling piece of news.

"Ah, the Princess!" he muttered, abstractedly; "truly she is the Princess, but yet that will not advantage her a whit."

I saw that he was thinking of our little Helene.

"Nay," I said, taking him by the arm to secure his attention, as indeed about this time I had often to do. "I mean the Lady Ysolinde, the wife of our good Prince."

"In Thorn?" said Dessauer. "Ah, I am little surprised. Twice when I was speaking to-day I saw a face I knew well look through a lattice in the wall at me. But being intent upon my words I did not think of it, nor indeed recognize it till it had disappeared. Now the picture comes back to me curiously clear. It was the face of the Princess Ysolinde."

"I am to see her at nine o'clock to-night in the house of the Weiss Thor."

"Do not go, I pray you!" he said; "it is certainly a trap."

"Go I must, and will," I replied; "for it may be to the good of our maiden. I will risk all for that!"

"I dare say," said he; "so should I, if I saw any advantage, such as indeed I hoped for to-day. But if I be not mistaken, our Princess is deep in this plot."

"And why?" said I. "Helene never harmed her."

"Helene is your betrothed wife, is she not?" he said. He asked as if he did not know.

"Surely!" said I.

"Well!" he replied, sententiously, and so went out.



CHAPTER XLVI

A WOMAN SCORNED

At nine I was at the door of the dark, silent house by the Weiss Thor. I sounded the knocker loudly, and with the end of the reverberations I heard a foot come through the long passages. The panel behind slid noiselessly in its grooves, and I was conscious that a pair of eyes looked out at me.

"You are the servant of the strange Doctor?" said the voice of the servitor, Sir Respectable.

"That I am, as by this time you may have seen!" answered I, for I was in no mood of mere politeness. I was venturing my life in the house of mine enemy, and, at least, it would be no harm if I put a bold face on the matter.

He opened the door, and again the same curious perfume was wafted down the passages—something that I had never felt either in the Wolfsberg nor yet even in the women's chambers of the Palace of Plassenburg.

At the door of the little room in which she had first received me so long ago, the Lady Ysolinde was waiting for me.

She did not shut the door till Sir Respectable had betaken him down again to his own place. Then quite frankly and undisguisedly she took my hand, like one who had come to the end of make-believe.

"I knew you to-day in your disguise," she said; "it is an excellent one, and might deceive all save a woman who loves. Ah, you start. It might deceive the woman you love, but not the woman that loves you. I am not the Princess to-night; I am Ysolinde, the Woman. I have no restraints, no conventions, no laws, no religions to-night—save the law of a woman's need and the religion of a woman's passion."

I stood before her, scarce knowing what to say.

"Sit down," she said; "it is a long story, and yet I will not weary you, Hugo—so much I promise you."

I made answer to her, still standing up.

"To-night, my lady, after what you know, you will not be surprised that I can think of only one thing. You know that to-day—"

"I know," she said, cutting me short, as if she did not wish to listen to that which I might say next; "I know—I was present in the Judgment Hall."

"Then, being Master Gerard's daughter, you knew also the sentence before it was pronounced!" I said, bitterly, being certain as that I lived that the paper from which the Duke Otho read had been penned at this very house of the Weiss Thor in which I now sat.

Ysolinde reached a slender hand to me, as was often her wont instead of speech.

"Be patient to-night," she said; "I am trying hard to do that which is best—for myself first, as a woman must in a woman's affairs. But, as God sees me, for others also! You are a man, but I pray you think with fairness of the fight I, a lonely, unloved woman, have to fight."

"Will they carry out the terrible sentence?" said I, eagerly. For I judged that she must be in her father's counsels.

"Be patient," she said; "we will come to that presently."

Ysolinde sat silent a while, and when I would have spoken further she moved her hand a little impatiently aside, in sign that I was not to interrupt. Yet even this was not done in her old imperious manner, but rather sadly and with a certain wistful gentleness which went to my heart.

When she spoke again it was in the same even voice with which she had formerly told my fortune in that very room.

"That which I have to say to you is a thing strange—as it may seem unwomanly. But then, I did not ask God to make me a woman, and certainly he did not make me as other women. I have never had a true mate, never won the love which God owes to every man and woman He brings into the world.

"Then I mot you, not by any seeking of mine. Next, equally against my will, I loved you. Nay, do not start to-night. It is as well to put the matter plainly."

"You did not love me," said I; "you were but kind to me, the unworthy son of the Executioner of Thorn. Out of your good heart you did it."

I acknowledge that I spoke like a paltering knave, but in truth knew not what to say.

"I loved you—yes, and I love you!" she said, serenely, as though my words had been the twittering of a bird on the roof. "And I am not ashamed. There was indeed no reason for my folly—no beauty, no desirableness in you. But—I loved you. Pass! Let it be. We will begin from there. You loved, or thought you loved, a maid—your Little Playmate. Pshaw, you loved her not! Or not as I count love. I was proud, accustomed to command, and, besides, a Prince's wife. The last, doubtless, should have held me apart. Yet my Princessdom was but as straw bands cast into the fire to bind the flame. As for you, Hugo Gottfried, you were in love with your success, your future, and, most of all, with your confident, insolently dullard self."

She smiled bitterly, and, because the thing she spoke was partly true, I had still nothing to answer her.

"Hugo Gottfried," she said, "try to remember if, when we rode to Plassenburg in the pleasant weather of that old spring, you loved this girl whom now you love?"

"Aye," said I, "loved her then, even as I love her now."

"You lie," she answered, calmly, not like one in anger, but as one who makes a necessary correction, "you loved her not. You were ready to love me—glad, too, that I should love you. And since you knew not then of my rank, it was not done for the sake of any advancement in Plassenburg."

I felt again the great disadvantage I was under in speaking to the Lady Ysolinde. I never had a word to say but she could put three to it. My best speeches sounded empty, selfish, vain beside hers. And so was it ever. By deeds alone could I vanquish her, and perhaps by a certain dogged masculine persistence.

"Princess," I said to her, "you have asked me to meet you here. It is not of the past, nor yet of likings, imaginings, recriminations that I must speak. My love, my sister, my playmate, bound to me by a thousand ancient tendernesses, lies in prison in this city of Thorn, under sentence of a cruel death. Will you help me to release her? I think that with your father, and therefore with you, is the power to open her prison doors!"

"And what is there then for me?" cried the Lady Ysolinde, instantly, bending her head forward, her emerald eyes so great and clear that their shining seemed to cover all her face as a wave covers a rock at flood-tide.

"What for me?" she repeated, in the silence which followed.

"For you," said I, "the gladness to have saved an innocent life."

"Tush!" she cried, with a gesture of extravagant contempt. "You mistake; I am no good-deeds monger, to give my bread and butter to the next beggar-lass. I tell you I am the woman who came first out of the womb of Mother-earth. I will yield only that which is snatched from me. What is mine is more mine than another's, because I would suffer, dare, sin, defy a world of men and women in order to keep it, to possess it, to have it all alone to myself!"

"But," I answered, "who am I, that so great a lady should love me? What am I to you, Princess, more than another?"

"That I know not!" she answered, swiftly. "Only God knows that. Perhaps my curse, my punishment. My husband is a far better, truer, nobler man than you, Hugo. I know it; but what of that, when I love him not? Love goes not by the rungs in a ladder, stands not with the most noble on the highest step, is not bestowed, like the rewards in a child's school, to the most deserving. I love you, Hugo Gottfried, it is true. But I wish a thousand times that I did not. Nevertheless—I do! Therefore make your reckoning with that, and put aside puling shams and whimpering subterfuges."

This set me all on edge, and I asked a question.

"What, then, do you propose? Where, shall this comedy end?"

"End!" she said—"end! Aye, of course, men must ever look to an end. Women are content with a continuance. That you should love me and keep on loving me, that is all I want!"

"But," I began, "I love—"

"Ah, do not say it!" she cried, pitifully, clasping her hands with a certain swift appeal in her voice—"do not say it! For God's sake, for the sake of innocent blood, do not say that you love me not!"

She paused a moment, and grew more pensive as she looked stilly and solemnly at me.

"I will tell you the end that I see; only be patient and answer not before I have done. I have seen a vision—thrice have I seen it. Karl of Plassenburg, my husband, shall die. I have seen the Black Cloak thrice envelop him. It is the sign. No man hath ever escaped that omen—aye, and if I choose, it shall wrap him about speedily. More, I have seen you sit on the throne of Plassenburg and of the Mark, with a Princess by your side. It is not only my fancy. Even as in the old time I read your present fortune, so, for good or ill, this thing also is coming to you."

She never took her eyes from my face.

"Now listen well and be slow to speak. The Princedom and the power shall both fall to me when my husband dies. There are none other hands capable. So also is it arranged in his will. Here"—she broke off suddenly, as with a gesture of infinite surrender she thrust out her white hands towards me—"here is my kingdom and me. Take us both, for we are yours—yours—yours!"

I took her hands gently in mine and kissed them.

"Lady, Lady Ysolinde," I said, "you honor me, you overwhelm me, I know not what to say. But think! The Prince is well, full of health and the hope of years. This thought of yours is but a vision, a delusion—how can we speak of the thing that is not?"

"I wait your answer," she said, leaving her hands still in mine, but now, as it were, on sufferance. Then, indeed, I was torn between the love that I had in my heart for my dear and the need of pleasing the Lady Ysolinde—between the truth and my desire to save Helene. Almost it was in my heart to declare that I loved the Lady Ysolinde, and to promise that I should do all she asked. But though, when need hath been, I have lied back and forth in my time, and thought no shame, something stuck in my throat now; and I felt that if I denied my love, who lay prison-bound that night, I should never come within the mercy of God, but be forever alien and outcast from any commonwealth of honorable men.

"I cannot, Lady Ysolinde," I answered, at last. "The love of the maid hath so grown into my heart that I cannot root it out at a word. It is here, and it fills all my life!"

Again she interrupted me.

"See," she said, speaking quickly and eagerly, "they tell me this your Helene is an angel of mercy to the sick. If she is spared she will be content to give her life to works of good intent among the poor. This cannot be life and death to her as it is to me. Her love is not as the love of a woman like Ysolinde. It is not for any one man to possess in monopoly. Though you may deceive yourself and think that it will be fixed and centred on you. But she will never love you as I love you. See, I would knee to you, pray to you on my knees, make myself a suppliant—I, Ysolinde that am a princess! With you, Hugo, I have no pride, no shame. I would take your love by violence, as a strong man surpriseth and taketh the heart of a maid."

She was now all trembling and distract, her lips red, her eyes bright, her hands clasped and trembling as they were strained palm to palm.

"Lady Ysolinde, I would that this were not so," I began.

A new quick spasm passed over her face. I think it came across her that my heart was wavering. "God knows that I, Hugo Gottfried, am not worth all this!"

"Nay," she said, with a kind of joy in her voice and in her eyes, "that matters not. Ysolinde of Plassenburg is as a child that must have its toy or die. Worthiness has no more to do with love than creeds and dogmas. Love me—Hugo—love me even a little. Put me not away. I will be so true, so willing. I will run your errands, wait on you, stand behind you in battle, in council lead you to fame and great glory. For you, Hugo, I will watch the faces of others, detect your enemies, unite your well-wishers, mark the failing favor of your friends. What heart so strong, what eye so keen as mine—for the greater the love the sharper the eye to mark, prevent, countermine. And this maid, so cold and icy, so full of good works and the abounding fame of saintliness, let her live for the healing of the people, for the love of God and man both, and it liketh her. She shall be abbess of our greatest convent. She shall indeed be the Saint Helena of the North. Even now I will save her from death and give her refuge. I promise it. I have the power in my hands. Only do you, Hugo Gottfried, give me your love, your life, yourself!"

She was standing before me now, and had her arms about my neck. I felt them quiver upon my shoulders. Her eyes looked directly up into mine, and whether they were the eyes of an angel or of a tempting fiend I could not tell. Very lovely, at any rate, they were, and might have tempted even Saint Anthony to sin.

"Ysolinde," I said, at last, "it is small wonder that I am strongly moved; you have offered me great things to-night. I feel my heart very humble and unworthy. I deserve not your love. I am but a man, a soldier, dull and slow. Were it not for one man and one woman it should be as you say. But Karl of Plassenburg is my good master, my loyal friend. Helene is my true love. I beseech you put this thought from you, dear lady, and be once more my true Princess, I your liege subject—faithful, full of reverence and devotion till life shall end!"

As I spoke she drew herself away from me. My hand had unconsciously rested on her hair, for at first she had leaned her head towards me. When I had finished she took my hand by the wrist and gripped it as if she would choke a snake ere she dropped it at arm's-length. I knew that our interview was at an end.

"Go!" she commanded, pointing to the door. "One day you shall know how precious is the love you have so lightly cast aside. In a dark, dread hour, you, Hugo Gottfried, shall sue as a suppliant. And I shall deny you. There shall come a day when you shall abase yourself—even as you have seen Ysolinde the Princess abase herself to Hugo, the son of the Red Axe of the Wolf mark. Go, I tell you! Go—ere I slay you with my knife!"

And she flashed a keen double-edged blade from some recess of her silken serpentine dress.

"My lady, hear me," I pleaded. "Out of the depths of my heart I protest to you—"

"Bah!" she cried, with a sudden uprising of tigerish fierceness in her eyes, quick and chill as the glitter of her steel. "Go, I tell you, ere I be tempted to strike! Your heart! Why, man, there is nothing in your heart but empty words out of monks' copy-books and proverbs dry and rotten as last year's leaves. Ye have seen me abased. By the lords of hell, I will abase you, Executioner's son! Aye, and you yourself, Hugo Gottfried, shall work out in flowing blood and bitter tears the doom of the pale trembling girl for whom you have rejected and despised Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg!"



CHAPTER XLVII

THE RED AXE DIES STANDING UP

How I stumbled down the stairs and found myself outside the house in the Weiss Thor I do not know. Whether the servitor, Sir Respectable, showed me out or not has quite passed from me. I only remember that I came upon myself waiting outside the gate of Bishop Peter's palace ringing at a bell which sounded ghostly enough, tinkling like a cracked kettle behind the door.

The lattice clicked and a face peeped out.

"Get hence, night-raker!" cried a voice. "Wherefore do you come here so untimeously, profaning the holy quiet of our minster-close?"

"There was no very holy calm in the kitchen t'other night, Peter Swinehead!" said I, my wits coming mechanically back to me at the familiar sound.

"Ha, Sir Blackamoor, 'tis you; surely your chafts have grown strangely white, or else are my eyes serving me foully in the torchlight."

Instinctively I covered as much of my face as I could with my cloak's cape, for indeed I had washed it ere I went forth to see the Lady Ysolinde.

"'Tis that you have slipped too much of the Rhenish down thy gullet, old comrade," said I, slapping Peter on the back and getting before him so that he might remark nothing more.

At that, being well pleased with my calling him comrade, he lighted me cordially to my chamber, and there left me to the sleepless meditation of the night.

The next day was one of great quietness in the city of Thorn. An uneasy, sultry pause of silence brooded over the lower town. Men's heads showed a moment at door and window, looked furtively up and down the street, and then vanished again within. Plots were being hatched and plans laid in Thorn; yet, while there was the lowering silence in the city, up aloft the Wolfsberg hummed gayly like a hive. Once I went up that way to see if I could win any news of my father. But this day the door into the Red Tower stood closed, nor would any within open for all my knocking. So perforce I had to return unsatisfied. Several times I went to the Weiss Thor to spy the horizon round for the troops of Plassenburg. But only the gray plain of the Mark stretched itself out so far as the eye could penetrate—hardly a reeking chimney to be seen, or any token of the pleasant rustic life of man, such as in my youth I remembered to have looked down upon from the Red Tower. Beneath me the city of Thorn lay grimly quiescent, like a beast of prey which has eaten all its neighbors, and must now die of starvation because there are no more to devour.

The day passed on feet that crept like those of a tortoise, as the sullen minutes dragged by, leaden-clogged and tardy. But the evening came at last. And with it, knocking at the door of the Bishop's quadrangle and interrupting my long talk with Dessauer, lo! a messenger, hot-foot from the castle.

"To the learned Doctor and his servant, Gottfried Gottfried, being in death's utmost extremities, sends greeting, and desires greatly to have speech with them."

Thus ran my father's message in that testing hour where he had seen so many! Yet I was but little surprised. There was no wonder in the fact save the wonder that it should all seem so natural. Dessauer rose quickly.

"I will go with you," he said; "it will be safer. For at least I can keep the door while you speak with your father."

So, without further word, we followed the messenger up the long, narrow, wooden-gabled street, and heard the folk muttering gloomily in the darkness within, or talking softly in the dull russet glow of their hearth-fires. For there were but few lighted candles in Thorn that night. And I wondered how near or how far from us tho men of Plassenburg might be encamping, and thrilled to think that at any moment a spy might ride in to warn Duke Otho of the spy within his city, or the near approach of his foe.

But so far all was quiet at the Red Tower. The wicket-gate in the angle of the wall was open, and we passed in without difficulty. As I mounted the stairs I heard the key turn behind us. Obviously, therefore, we were expected. The gate of the Red Tower had been left open for our entrance; and so soon as the birds were in the snare, it was shut, and the silly goslings trapped.

Nevertheless we climbed up and up the dark stairs till we came to the door of my father's garret. I pushed it open without knocking, and entered.

"The most learned the Doctor Schmidt," I announced, lest there should be some stranger in the room. And indeed my precaution was necessary enough. For, from my father's bed-head, disengaging himself reluctantly, like a disturbed vulture napping up from the side of a dying steer, Friar Laurence rose out of the darkness, and, folding his robe about him, stalked to the door without a word or nod to either of us. I stood holding the edge of it till I had watched him well down the stairs. Then Dessauer relieved me at the stair-head as I went to approach my father.

I saw a change in him, very startling, indeed, to see. "In the uttermost extremity" he was, indeed, as he had written. A ghastly pallor overspread his face; his eyes were wild, his breathing came both quick and hard. The fire cast nickering lights over his face and on the outlines of his lank figure under the scarlet mantle which had been cast over him. One corner of it was cast aside, as if for air or coolness, and I could see a thing which gave me a cold chill in the marrow of my spine.

My father still wore the dress which he only donned when some poor soul was about to die and pay the forfeit.

At first Gottfried took no notice of me whatever, but lay looking at the ceiling, his lips muttering something steadily, though what the words were I could not hear.

"Father," I said at last, bending over him gently, "I have come to see you."

He turned to me, as if suddenly and regretfully summoned back from very far away. It was a movement I had seen in many dying men. He looked at me, a strange, luminous comprehension growing up gradually in his eyes.

"Hugo," he said, "you have come home at last! The Little Playmate has come home, too. We three will make a merry party in the old Red Tower. We have not been all together for so long. Lord Christ, but I have been a man much alone! Hugo, why did you leave me so long? Ah, well, I do not blame you, my son. You have been pushing your fortunes, doubtless, and you have—so they tell me—become a great man in Plassenburg. And the little maid is a lady of honor, and very fair to see. But now you two have come to the old garret, like birds homing to the nest."

"Yes, father," I said to him, "we have both come home to you, the Little Playmate and I. And now you will give us your blessing!"

"The Little Playmate—say rather the Little Princess," he cried, cheerfully, as, with the air of one who brings good tidings, he sat up in bed. Then he pointed to a chair on which a pillow had carelessly been flung. "Little Maid," he said, looking at the cushion as if it had been Helene, "I am glad you have come back to be wedded to my boy. That was like you. I ever wished it, indeed. But I never expected to see my children thus happy. Yet I always knew you and Hugo were made for each other. You are at your sewing, little maid. Well, 'tis natural. I mind me when my own love sat making dainties of just such delicate and wreathed whiteness."

He paused, and then, his countenance suddenly changing, he looked fearfully and fixedly at the chair.

"But, little maid, my own Helene," he cried, in a loud, gasping, alarmed tone, "what is this, best beloved? Why, you are sewing at a shroud? Surely such funeral-trappings become not bridals. A shroud—and there is blood upon it! Put it down—put it down, I pray you!"

The red flames on the fire crackled suddenly up about the back log and cast dancing shadows on his face.

"Lie down and rest, dear father," I said softly to him, "the Little Playmate is not here—I, Hugo, your son, am alone beside you."

"Hugo," he said, instantly appeased, and passing a lean arm about me, "my good son, my brave boy! You will be kind to the little Princess. She loves you. There is no man so beloved as you in all the city of Thorn. Many would have loved her besides Otho. Ah, but I threw him out of the window there. I threw a Grand Duke out of a window! Ha! ha! it was the bravest jest!"

He laughed a little at intervals, as at a tale that will bear infinite repetition. "I, Gottfried Gottfried, threw a proximate reigning Prince out of the window! How Casimir laughed! The thing pleased him well. And the little maid, do you remember her, Hugo? How she would teach me—me, the Red Axe of Thorn—how to dance that first night, and how totteringly she carried the Red Axe? The little one took heart that night. She will have a happy future, I know; so blessed, far away from this dark and damned place of the Wolfsberg. I am glad she is not here to see me die. That is a sight for men, not for fair young loving women."

"Hush, my father," I said, touching his dank brow; "you are not going to die. You will yet live to be strong and well, a man among men."

For one tells these things to dying men. And they smile and pass us by, amused at our childish ignorance, as you and I shall one day smile upon those others. And even thus did my father.

"Nay, Hugo, I am sped," he answered. "This night ends all. The door I have oped for so many is opening from within for me. God's mercy be on a sinful man! Ere the light of to-morrow's dawn the Duke's Justicer must face the Tribunal that has no assessor and no court of appeal."

He threw back the cloak which served him as a mantle, and crying, "Give me your hand, Hugo!" Gottfried Gottfried staggered to his feet.

"I will die standing up," he said, bending his brows and gazing about him uncertainly. He pointed to the walls of the garret. The fire was flickering low, but still making the place light enough to see easily. There beside the bed was the Red Axe, with its shining edge undimmed, leaning against the block. There across it was the crimson mask which was never more to bind his eyes as he did the office of final dread.

"Do you see them, son Hugo?" he cried, leaning heavily on my shoulder and pointing with his finger; "they are gibbering at me, mowing, processioning by, and pointing mockingly at me. Do you hear them laughing? That horrid one there with his head under his arm? Laughing as if there were no God! But I am not afraid. Mercy of Jesu! Hath God Himself no Justicer, that He should punish me because I have fulfilled my charge? I have all my life been merciful, ever giving the blow of mercy first, and the drop of stupefaction before the Extreme Question. Hence, fiends! Shapes inhuman, torment me not! For in my day I was merciful to you and never struck twice. I will die standing up. The devil shall not fright me—no, nor all his angels!

"God Himself shall not fright me! I appeal to His judgment throne! Get hence, false accusing spirits! I stand at Caesar's judgment-seat. Give me the axe, boy—I will cut down the evil, I will spare the good. Here is the Red Axe, my son. Take it! Strike with it strong and well. Strike, strike, and spare not!"

Totteringly he handed me the axe, and, clasping his hands, he stood looking up.

"God! God!" he cried in a great voice. "I see my Judge face to face; I am not afraid! But I will die standing up!"

And in this manner, even as I tell it, died Gottfried Gottfried, a strong man, standing up and not afraid. And these arms received him, as, being dead, he fell headlong.



CHAPTER XLVIII

HUGO GOTTFRIED, RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK

Then cried Dessauer from the door to me as I stood thus holding my father in my arms:

"Haste you, lad; there are men coming across the yard with torches. They are gathering in groups about the door. Now they are on the stairs—many soldiers—and with weapons in their hands!"

And scarcely had he spoken when the sound of the tramping of men in haste came to us up the turret, and the door of the garret was thrust violently open. A turmoil of men-at-arms burst in on us. I stood still, holding Gottfried Gottfried, his head on my shoulder, though I knew that he was dead. But as one came forward with a paper in his hand I stooped and laid my father gently on his bed.

An officer of the Black Hussars, fantastically dressed in their church-yard array, with skull and cross-bones slashed in silver across his breast, accosted me.

"Hugo Gottfried, son of Gottfried Gottfried, in the name of the Duke Otho and the State of the Wolfmark, I arrest you! Also you, Leopold von Dessauer, Chancellor of the Princedom of Plassenburg. You are accused as spies and enemies of the commonweal. Yield yourselves therefore to me, without condition."

"I am indeed Hugo Gottfried," said I, "but you may see for yourselves the mission on which I have come hither. And for this hour, at least, you might have spared your brutal entry. Behold!"

I caught a torch from the nearest soldier, and let its light shine on the dead face of the fourteenth Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark.

The men started back. The terrible countenance of the dead affected them even more than the grim figure of the Red Axe as they had seen him stalking from the Hall of Justice to the block.

"Ah," said the officer, not wholly irreverently, "Gottfried Gottfried has gone now to the dark place to which he hath sent so many. But, after all, he is dead—and I heard a monkish clerk prate the other day, 'Let the dead bury their dead.' I have my orders, and the Duke Otho waits. Therefore I bid you follow me, Hugo Gottfried and Leopold von Dessauer."

So, leaving the body of my father lying on the bed in his garret, we were constrained to follow our captors down the stairs. Across the court-yard we were hurried, and through the Hall of Justice into the private apartments of the Duke.

Otho von Reuss, now Duke of the Wolfmark, was standing erect by the great chair in which, as my father had so often described him to me, Casimir had sat so many days with his head sunk on his breast. The new Duke stood up proudly, gazing at us with frowning brows and lowering, narrowed eyes. This was mighty fine, but I could not help thinking of the poor appearance he had made on the hill above the Hirschgasse as he slunk off when he saw an evil cause going desperately against him.

"So," he said, "gentlemen both, I have caught you spying in my land. You know what those have to expect who are caught in hostile territory in disguise."

I thought it was as well to take the high hand at once, especially since I saw that humility would avail us nothing at any rate.

"Before now I have seen Otho von Reuss in hostile territory, and a right cowed traitor he looked!" said I, boldly.

The Duke smiled upon me, like a man that has a complete retort on his tongue but who is content for the present to reserve it.

"My friend," he said, suavely, "I will reply to you presently. I have a word to speak to your betters."

He turned him about to Dessauer.

"And what, Lord High Chancellor of Plassenburg, think you of this masquerading? Dignified, is it not? And your wondrous speech in court that was to have done such great things. Will you be pleased to abide with us here in the Wolfsberg? Or must you forsake us to pleasure the Emperor, who, poor man, cannot sleep of nights in his bed at Ratisbon till the eloquent Doctor is come to cheer him with the full-flowing river of speech?"

"Duke Otho," said Dessauer, "my life is indeed in your hands. I hold it forfeit. A few years less or more are but little to Leopold von Dessauer now. But there is one who will most bloodily avenge us if a hair of our heads falls to the ground."

"Who?" said Otho, sneeringly. "Karl Miller's Son, I suppose. Ah, fool that you are, I hold your poor Karl in the palm of my hand!"

"It is like enough," said Dessauer, with a quick look, the look of a keen fencer when he sees an advantage. "I have often enough seen the palm of your hand approach Karl Miller's Son's treasury when I kept the moneys."

I saw the face of Otho twitch angrily. But he had evidently made up his mind to command his temper, sure of having that up his sleeve which would sufficiently answer all taunts.

"You mistake me," he said, with more subtlety than I had expected from the brute. "I had not meant to prove ungrateful. I am but newly come to my own here in the Wolfmark. I have learned from your host, Bishop Peter, how precious a thing forgiveness is. And now I am resolved to practise it. There is a time to love and a time to hate; a time to war and a time to be at peace. This is the last news I had from the holy clerk whose revenues I pay. So lay it to heart, as I have done."

"Glad am I," said Dessauer, courteously, as if he had been turning a phrase on the terrace at Plassenburg—"glad am I that in your hour you are to be mindful of old friends, for they are like old wine, which grows better and mellower with the years."

"It is indeed well," said Otho von Reuss, ironically. "I have known the Chancellor Dessauer many years, and he grows more honorable and more wise with each decade.

"But now 'tis with this young man that I would speak," he said, changing his tone. "He at least is mine own servant, and so I have other words for him. Hugo Gottfried, you remember that you insulted me, striking me on the face with a glove, because I offered certain civilities to a maid of honor to the Princess of Plassenburg. You wounded me in the arm. Your father, of whose death I have heard but now, cast me forth like a cur-dog from a chamber window. Between you ye have shamed me, and would shame me worse—for the sake of the murderess of mine uncle, Duke Casimir."

"Well do you know that the Lady Helene is innocent of that crime, or any other," said I; "she is purer than your eyes can look upon or your heart conceive. Yet, solely because she knows you for the foul thing you are, Helene lies condemned in your dungeons to-night. I ask you to grant me but one boon—that I may die with her!"

"Nay, my friend, gentlest squire of dames, defender of the oppressed, I have better things in store for you and your maid than that!"

He paused and looked a long while at me, as it seemed, chewing the cud of revenge upon that which he had to say to me.

At last he came a step nearer, that he might look into my eyes.

"Hugo Gottfried," he said, slowly, "son of Gottfried Gottfried, you are my servant now. I said that I would forgive you all for the sake of old times in exile together. And now you and I are both again in our own land. They that kept us out of our offices are dead, and we standing in their places. There is a maid down there in the Wolfsberg dungeons who to-morrow must meet her fate."

He paused a moment and laid his hand on my shoulder impressively.

"And you, Hugo Gottfried, Hereditary Justicer of the Dukedom, Red Axe of the Wolfmark, art the man who must carry out that doom!"

Again he paused—and the world seemed instantly to dissolve into whirling vapor at his words. I had never once thought of such a conclusion. Yet I was indubitably, by my father's death, Hereditary Executioner of the Wolfmark. Red Axe of Thorn I was, and by a terrible chance I had returned in time to be installed in mine office, even as the Lady Ysolinde had foretold.

But a strong thought swelled triumphant in my heart.

"Well," said I, looking the sneering tormentor in the face, "if so be that I am your Hereditary Justicer, it will be long ere a sentence so monstrous shall be carried out by me. I will not slay the innocent, nor pour out the blood of a virgin saint, for a million deaths. You can torture me with all your hellish engines, and you will find that a Gottfried has learned how to suffer, as well as, how to make others suffer, in fourteen generations. As God strengthens me, I will never carry out your sentence—do with me what you will."

"Nobly said, Justicer of the Mark!" said Otho. "I had thought of that! But in case you should refuse to do your lawful office, it may be well for you to remember that I have other instruments that mayhap will please you less."

He threw open a door suddenly, and we looked into an underground hall, where a dozen men were carousing—Duke Casimir's Hussars of Death, black-browed, evil-faced, slack-jowled villains every man of them, cruel and sensual. A blast of ribald oaths came sulphurously up, as if the mouth of hell had been opened.

"Listen!" said Otho, with his hand on my shoulder.

And a jest struck to our ears concerning the prisoner, the Little Playmate—a jest which sticks in my memory to this day. And even yet I hope to cleave the jester through the brain, meet him when I may.

The Duke shut the door, and turned to me again. His eyes narrowed to a thin line which glittered with hate and triumph.

"If you, Hugo Gottfried, Hereditary Executioner of the Mark, refuse to do your duty at the time appointed upon the prisoner condemned, I, Duke Otho, solemnly declare that I will cast your fair and tender lamb into that den of wolves down there to work their wills upon. Hark to them! They will have no misgivings—no qualms, no noble renunciations."

Then he turned to me airily and confidently.

"Well, my good Justicer, will you carry out the just and merciful sentence of the law, and baptize your Red Axe with the blood of her for whose sake you chose to insult and wound a Duke of the Mark?"

I turned away, sick at heart.

"Give me time. God's mercy—give me time!" I cried. "At least let me see Helene. I will give you my answer to-night. But, first of all, let me see my beloved."

"I am forgiving and most merciful," he said, smiling till his teeth showed. "Observe, I do not even cast you into prison to make sure of you. Go your ways" (he sat down and wrote rapidly); "here is a pass which will enable you to visit the prisoner. At midnight I shall expect you to tell me that to-morrow you will fulfil your office."

He handed me the paper and motioned us away.

"We are free to go?" said I, wonderingly.

"Surely," he replied, smiling. "Are you not both my friends, and can Otho von Reuss be forgetful of old times? Come and go at your pleasure. Be sure to be here to give me your answer at midnight to-night—or—"

He pointed with his hand to the door he had again opened, and with the fingers of his other hand beat time to the blasphemous chorus which came belching up from below.



CHAPTER XLIX

THE SERPENT'S STRIFE

Dazed and death-stricken by the horror of the choice which lay before me, I hastened down the street, hardly waiting for Dessauer, who toiled vainly after me. I knew not what to do nor where to turn. I could neither think nor speak. But it chanced that my steps brought me to the house of the Weiss Thor. Almost without any will of mine own I found myself raising the knocker of the house of Master Gerard von Sturm. Sir Respectable instantly appeared. I asked of him if the Lady Ysolinde would see me—giving my name plainly. For since Duke Otho knew me, there was no need of concealment any more.

The Lady Ysolinde would receive me.

I followed my conductor, but not this time to the room in which I had seen her on the occasion of my last visit.

It was in her father's chamber that I met the Princess. The room was as I had first seen it. Only there was no ascetic old man with keen, deep-set eyes and receding forehead to rear his head back from the table as though he would presently strike across it like a serpent from its coil.

For the moment the room was empty, but, ere I had time to look around, the curtains moved and the Lady Ysolinde appeared. Without entering, she set a hand on the door-post, and stood poised against the heavy curtain, waiting for me to speak.

Her face was pale, her thin nostrils dilated. Anger and scorn sat white and deadly on every feature.

"So," she said, intensely, as I did not speak, "you have come back already, most noble Hereditary Justicer of the Mark! Even as I told you—so it is. You come to ask mercy from the woman you despised, from the woman whose love you refused. You would beg her to spare her enemy. Ere you go I shall see you on your knees; ah, that will be sweet. I have been on my knees—can I believe it? Nay, I shall not forget it. I, Ysolinde of Plassenburg, have pled in vain to you—to you!"

And the accent of chill hatred and malice turned me to stone.

"My lady," said I, "well do you know that I would never ask aught for my own life, though the Red Axe itself were at my neck. But it is for the maid I love, for the little child I carried home out of the arms of the man condemned. I ask for her life, who never wronged you or any in all this world. You have heard that task which the Duke hath laid on me, because it is my misfortune to be my father's son—I must take away my love's sweet life, or, if I do not—" I could proceed no further for the horror which rose in my heart.

"I know it," she said, calmly; "my father hath told me all."

"Then," cried I, "if the power lie with you, as you hope for mercy to your own soul, be merciful! Save the maiden Helene from the death of shame, and me from becoming her murderer!"

"Ah," she answered, with delicatest meditative inflection, "this is indeed sweet. The mighty is fallen indeed. The proud one is suppliant now. The knee is bent that would not bend. Hearken, you and your puling babe, to the Princess Ysolinde! Were your lives in that glass, to save or to destroy—her life and your suffering—to make or to break, I would fling them to destruction, even as I cast this cup into the darkness!"

And as she spoke the wreathed beaker of Venice glass sped out of the window and crashed on the pavement without.

"Thus would I end your lives," she said, "for the shame that you two put upon me in the day of my weakness."

"Lady," I cried, eagerly, "you do yourself a wrong! Your heart is better than your word. Do this deed of mercy, I beseech you, if so be you can. And my life is yours forever!"

"Your life is mine, you say," cried she; "aye, and that means what? The wind that cries about the house. Your life is mine—it is a lie. Your life and love both are that chit's for whom you have despised—rejected—ME!"

And I grant that at that moment she looked noble enough in her anger as she stood discharging her words at me with hissing directness, like bolts shot twanging from the steel cross-bow.

"And, lest you should think that I have not the power to save you, I will tell you this—when you shall see the neck bared for the blade of the Red Axe, the fine tresses you love, that your eyes look upon with desire, all ruthlessly cut away by the shears of your assistants—ah, I know you will remember then that I, Ysolinde, whom you refused and slighted, had the power in her hand to deliver you both with a word, according to the immaculate laws of the Wolfmark. Aye, and more—power to raise you both to a pinnacle of bliss such as you can hardly conceive. In that hour, when you see me look down upon your anguish, you will know that I can speak the word. You will watch my lips till the axe falls, and under your hand the young life ebbs red. But the lips of Ysolinde will be silent!"

"Such knowledge is an easy boast, Lady Ysolinde!" I answered, thinking to taunt her, that she might reveal whether indeed she had the power she claimed.

"There," she said, pointing to the great collection of black-bound books and papers about the walls; "see, the secret is there—the secret for the lack of which you shall strike your beloved to the death to save her from the unnamable shame. I know it; my father has revealed it to me. I have seen the parchment in these hands. But—you shall never hear it, she never profit by it, and my vengeance shall be sweet—so sweet!"

And she laughed, with a strange crackling laugh that it was a pain to hear.

"God forgive you, Lady Ysolinde," said I, "if this be so. For if there be a God, you must burn in Great Hell for this deed you are about to do. Having had no mercy on the innocent, how shall you ask God to have mercy on you?"

"I will not ask Him!" she cried. "Instead of puling for mercy I will have had my revenge. And after that, come earth, heaven, or hell—I shall not care. All will then be the same to Ysolinde!"

I thought I would try her yet once more.

"The Little Playmate," I said, "the maid whom I have ever loved, though I am not worthy to touch her, is no chance child, no daughter of the Red Axe of Thorn. Leopold von Dessauer hath found and sent to Karl the Prince the full proofs that Helene is the daughter of the last and rightful Prince, and therefore in her own right Princess of Plassenburg."

"You lie, fool!" she cried—"you lie! You think to frighten me. And even if it were true—thrice, four times fool to tell me! For shall not I, the Princess of Plassenburg, the wife of the reigning Prince, stand for my own name and dignity. I would not help you now though a thousand fair heads, well-beloved, the desire of men, the envy of women, were to be rolled in the dust."

"Then farewell, Princess," I cried; "you are wronging to the death of deaths two that never did you wrong, who loved each other with the love of man and woman before ever you crossed their paths, and who since then have only sought your good. You wrong God also, and you lose your soul, divorcing it from the mercy of the Saviour of men. For be very sure that with that measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

She did not answer, but stood with her hand still against the door-post, her head raised, and her lips curling scornfully, looking after me as I retired with a smiling and malicious pleasure.

So, without further speech, I went out from the presence of the Lady Ysolinde. And thus she had the first part of her revenge.



CHAPTER L

THE DUNGEON OF THE WOLFSBERG

And now I must see the Little Playmate. Judge ye whether or no my heart was torn in twain as I went up the long High Street of Thorn, back to the Wolfsberg, alone. For I had compelled Dessauer to return to Bishop Peter's, in order to avert popular suspicion, since our real names and errands were not yet known there.

And when I parted from him the old man was so worn out that I looked momently for him to drop on the rough causeway stones of the street.

Many pictures of my youth passed before me as I mounted towards the castle that night. I remembered the ride of the wild horsemen returning from the raid such long years agone, the old man who carried the babe, and the Red Axe himself, who now lay dead in the Tower—my father, Casimir's Justicer, clad now as then in crimson from head to heel.

Ere long I arrived at the Wolfsberg, and as I came near the Red Tower I saw that the gate was open. A little crowd of men with swords and partisans was issuing tumultuously from it. Then came six carrying a coffin. I stood aside to let them pass. And not till the last one brushed me did I ask what was their business abroad with a dead man at such a time of the night.

"'Tis one that had wrought much fear in his time," answered the soldier, for I had lighted on a sententious fellow—"one that made many swift ends, and now has come to one himself."

"You mean Gottfried Gottfried, the Duke's Justicer?" said I, speaking like one in a dream.

"Aye," he replied. "The Duke Otho is mightily afraid of the plague, and will not have a dead body over-night in his castle. Since they condemned the Saint Helena, God wot, the Duke is a fear-stricken man. He sleeps with half a dozen black riders at the back of his door, as though that made him any safer if a handful of minted gold were dealt out among the rascals. But when was a Prince ever wise?"

"My father's funeral," thought I. "Well, to-night it is, indeed, 'let the dead bury their dead'; Helene is yet alive!"

Surely I am not wanting in feeling, yet my heart was strangely chill and cold. Nevertheless, I turned and followed the procession a little way towards the walls. But even as I went, lo! the bell of the Wolfsberg slowly and brazenly clanged ten. I stopped. I had but two hours in which to visit the Little Playmate and tell her all.

"Good-bye, father," said I, standing with my hat off; "so you would wish me to do—you who met your God standing up—you who did an ill business greatly, because it was yours and you were born to it. Teach me, my father, to be worthy of you in this strait, to the like of which surely never was man brought before!"

The men-at-arms clattered roughly down the street, shifting their burden as if it had been so much kindling-wood, and quarrelling as to their turns. I heard their jests coming clear up the narrow street from far away.

I stood still as they approached a corner which they must turn.

I waved my hand to the coffin.

"Fare you well, true father; to-night and to-morrow may God help me also, like you, to meet my fate standing up!"

And the curve of the long street hid the ribald procession. My father was gone. I had made choice. The dead was burying his dead.

I went on towards the prison of the Wolfsberg; so it was nominated by a sort of grim superiority in that place which was all a prison—the castle which had lorded it so long over the red clustered roofs and stepped gables of Thorn, solely because it meant prisonment and death to the rebel or the refuser of the Duke's exactions.

Often had I seen the straggling procession of prisoners rise, head following head, up from that weary staircase, my father standing by, as they came up from the cells, counting his victims silently, like a shepherd who tells his flock as they pass through a gap in the sheepfold.

For me, alas! there was but one in that dread fold to-night. And she my one ewe lamb who ought to have lain in my bosom.

I clamored long at the gate ere I could make the drowsy jailer hear. As the minutes slipped away I grew more and more wild with fear and anger. At midnight I must face the Duke, and it was after ten—how long I knew not, but I feared every moment that I might hear the brazen clang as the hammer struck eleven.

For time seemed to make no impression on me at all that night.

At last the man came, shuffling, grumbling, and cursing, from his truckle-bed.

"What twice-condemned drunken roysterer may you be, that hath mistaken the prison of Duke Otho for a trull-house?

"An order from the Duke—to see a prisoner! Come to-morrow then, and, meanwhile, depart to Gehenna. Must a man be forever at the beck and call of every sleepless sot? 'Urgent'—is the Duke's mandate. Shove it through the lattice then, that a lantern may flash upon it."

I pushed under the door a broad piece of gold, which proved more to the purpose than much speech.

The door was opened and I showed my pass. That and the gold together worked wonders.

The jailer rattled his keys, donned a hood and woollen wrapper which he took down from a nail, and went coughing before me down the chill, draughty passages. I could hear the prisoners leaping from their couches within as the light of his cresset filtered beneath their doors. What hopes and fears stirred them! A summons, it might be, for some one in that dread warren to come up for a last look at the stars, a walk to the heading-place through the soft, velvet-dark night—then the block, the lightning flash of bright steel, a drench of something sweet and strong like wine upon the lips, and—silence, rest, oblivion.

But we passed the prison doors one by one, and the jailer of the Wolfsberg went coughing and rasping by to another part of the prison.

"'Tis an ill place for chills," he grumbled. "I have never been free of them since first I came to this place, no—nor my wife neither. She has been dead these ten years, praises to the pyx! Ah, would you?" (The torch threatened to go out, so he held it downward in his hand till the pitch melted and caught again, and meanwhile we stood blinded in the smoke and glare which the strong draught forced in our faces.)

At last came the door, a low, iron-spiked grating, like any other of the hundred we had passed.

"Key-metal is not often weared on this cell," the man chuckled. "Those stay not long above ground that bide here."

The door swung back on its creaking hinges. I slipped the fellow another gold piece.

"I must come in with you," he said; "you might do the wench an ill turn which would cheat the Duke of his show and me of my head to-morrow."

I slipped him another piece of gold, and then three together.

"Risk it, man," I said. "Have I not the Duke's own pass? I will do her no harm."

"Well," he said, "pray remember I am a man with five poor motherless children. My wife died of falling down a flight of steps ten years agone—praise the Lord for His mercies. For He is ever mindful of us, the sinful children of men."

The sound of his voice died away as the door closed. I turned, and was alone with the Beloved. The jailer had stuck the cresset in its niche behind the door, and its glow filled the little cell.

At first I could not see the Little Playmate—only a rough pallet bed and something white at the head of it. But as the cresset burned up more clearly, and my eyes became accustomed to the bleared and streaky light, I saw Helene, my love, kneeling at her bed's head.

I stood still and waited. Was she asleep? Was she—was she dead? I almost hoped that she might be. Then the Duke's vengeance would be balked indeed.

"Helene!" I said, softly, as one speaks to the dying—"Helene, dear, dear Helene!"

Slowly she looked up. Her face dawned on me as one day the face of the blessed angel will shine when he calls me out of purgatory.

"My love—my love!" she said, sweetly, like the first note of a hymn when the choir breathes the sweet music rather than sings it.

Ah, Lord of Innocence, that pure loving face, the purple deepness in the eyes, the flush on the cheek as on that of a little child asleep, the soft curled hair which crisped in the hollow of the neck—the throat itself—Eternal God, that I should be alive to think of the horror!

But time was passing swiftly. The minutes were slipping by like men running for their lives.

I raised Helene from her knees, and she nestled her head on my shoulder.

"You have come to me! I knew you would come. I saw you on the day—the day when they condemned me to die."

I broke into an angry, desperate, protesting cry, so that I heard my own voice ring strangely through that dumb, horrible place. And it was I who sobbed in her arms with my head on her shoulder.

"Hush, dear love," she said, clasping her arms caressingly about my head; "do not fear for me. God will keep your little one. God has told me that He will bring me bravely through. Hush thee, then; do not so, Hugo, great playmate! This I cannot bear. Help me to be good. It will not be long nor painful. Do not weep for your little girl! I think, somehow, it is for our love that I suffer, and that will make it sweet!"

But still I sobbed like a child. For how—how could I tell her?

Presently the power returned slowly to me, seeing her smiling so bravely up at me, and rising on tiptoe to kiss my wet face.

Then I told her all—in what words I hardly remember now.

"Love of mine," I said, "I have but an hour or less to speak with you—and ah! such terrible things, such inconceivable things, to say; a horror to reveal such as never lover had to tell his love before."

She drew one of my hands down and softly patted her breast with it.

"Fear not," she said; "tell it Helene. If it be true that love conquers all, your little lass can bear it!"

"I came," said I, "with purpose to see you, and by treachery (it skills not to ask whose) I was taken at my dead father's bedside."

"Our father dead?" she cried, going a step away to look at me, but coming back again immediately; "then there are but you and me in the world, Hugo!"

"Aye," said I, "but how can I tell you the rest? My father died like a man, and then they took me, still holding the dead in my arms. I was confronted with a fiend of hell in the likeness of Duke Otho."

As I mentioned the Duke's name I could feel her shudder on my neck.

"And—But I cannot tell you what he has bidden me do, under penalties too fearful to conceive or speak of."

She put her hands up, and gently, timidly, lovingly stroked my cheek.

"Dear love, tell me! Tell the Little Playmate!" she said, as simply and sweetly as if she had been coaxing me to whisper to her some lightest childish secret of our plays together in the old Red Tower.

I was silent for a space, and then, spurred by the thought of the swiftly passing time, the words were wrenched out of me.

"He says that I, even I, Hugo Gottfried, my father's son, being now hereditary Red Axe of the Wolfmark, must strike off the head of the one I love. And if I will not, then to the vilest of devils for vilest ends he will deliver her. Ah, God, and he would do it too! I saw the very flame of hell's fire in his eyes."

Then I that write saw a strange appearance on the face that looked up in mine. As on a dark April day, with a lowering sky, you have seen the wind suddenly stir high in the heavens, and the sun look through on the dripping green of the young trees and the gay bourgeoning of the flowers, so, looking on my love's face as she took in my words, there awakened a kind of springtime joy. Nay, wherefore need I say a kind of joy only. It was more. It was great, overleaping, sudden-springing gladness. Her eyes swam in lustrous beauty. She smiled up at me as I had never seen her smile before.

"Oh, I am glad, Hugo—so glad! I love you, Hugo! It will be hard for you, my love. And yet you will be brave and help me. I had far rather die at your hand than live to be the bride of the greatest man in all the world. Do that which will save me from, shame; do it gladly, Hugo. I fear it. I saw it in the eyes of that man Otho von Reuss. But only to die will be easy, with you near by. For I love you, Hugo. And I could just say a prayer, and then—well, and then—Do not cry, Hugo—why, then you would put me to sleep, even as of old you did in the Red Tower!

"Nay, nay, dear love! You must not do so. This is not like my Hugo. See, I do not cry. Do you remember when you took me up and laid me on your bed, and our father came and looked? You said I was your little wife. So I was, even though I denied it, and now I can trust you, my husband. I have never been aught else but your little wife, you see—not in my heart, not in my heart of hearts!

"I have been proud with you, Hugo—spoken unkind things. For love, you know, is like that. It hurts that which it would die for. But now you will know, once for all, that I love you. For death tests all. And you will help me. You will not cry then, Hugo—not then, when we walk, you and I, by the shores of the great sea. You will only send me a little voyage by myself, as you used to make me go to the well in the court-yard, to teach me not to be frightened!

"And then you will be with me when I go. You will watch me; soon, soon you will come after me. Yes, I am glad, Hugo—so glad. For—bend down your ear, Hugo—I will confess. Your little girl is such a coward. She is afraid of the dark. But it will not be dark—and it will not be long, and it will be sure. If my love stand by, I shall not fear. And, after all, it is but a little thing to do for my love, when I love him so."

What I said, or what I did, I know not. But when I came a little to myself, I found my head on my knees, and Helene soothing and petting me, as if I had been a child that had fallen down and hurt itself.

"I would have been a good wife to you, Hugo; I had thought it all out. At first I would have been such an ignorant little house-keeper, and you would have needed—oh, such great patience with me! But so willing, so ready, Hugo! And how I should have listened for your foot! Do you know, I used to know it as it came across the court-yard at Plassenburg. But I could not run and meet you then. I could only slip behind the window-lattice and throw you a kiss. But when I was indeed your wife, how I should have flown to meet you!"

I think I cried out here for very agony.

"Hush, Hugo!" she said. "Hush, lad, and listen. There are stairs up aloft—I saw them in a dream. I saw the angels and the redeemed ascending and descending as I prayed, even when you came in to call me back. I shall ask God to let me wait at the stair-head a little while for you—till it should be time for you to come, my dear, my dear. You would not be very long, and I could wait. I would listen for your feet upon the stair, dear love. And when at last you came, I should know your footfall; yes, I should know it ever so far away. You would not be thinking of me just then. And when you came to the top of the golden stairs, there—there, all so suddenly, would be your little lass, with her arms ready to welcome you!"

The door of the cell creaked open.

The jailer appeared. "It is time!" he said, curtly, and stood waiting. We stood up, and I looked in her eyes. She was smiling, dry-eyed, but I—the water was running down my face.

"You will be brave, Hugo, for my sake. Next to life with you—to die by your dear hand, knowing that you love me, is the best gift they could have given me. They thought to hurt, but instead they have made me so happy. Till we meet again, dear love—till we meet soon again!"

And she accompanied me to the door, and kissed me as I went out, standing smilingly on tiptoe to do it, even as of old she was wont to do in the Red Tower.

And the last thing I saw of her, as the door closed upon the darkness of the cell, was my love standing smiling up at me, her eyes filled with the splendors of the love that casteth out fear.



CHAPTER LI

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE MORN

Even as the dwarf on the ledge of the castle clocktower creaked his wires and clicked back his hammer to strike the midnight over the city, even as the first solemn toll of the hour reverberated over the Wolfsberg, I was at the door of the Duke's room waiting for admission.

The Chamberlain in attendance looked within, and seeing his master writing at a table, he was going out again without speech.

"Has Hugo Gottfried returned?" said the Duke, without looking up.

"Hugo Gottfried is here!" I replied, stepping unannounced into the room.

He looked up without smiling, a keen inquiring glance glittering from between eyelids so close together that only the faintest line of the pupil showed black under the lashes.

"Well?" he questioned.

"I will do the thing you have asked," answered I.

And said no more.

The Duke instantly became restless, and getting up, he began to pace about the floor like a caged beast.

"You have seen her?" he inquired, stopping in front of me, wide-nostrilled, like a dog that points the game.

"I have seen her," I replied, as simply.

"Well?" he queried again, with a keen, eager note of anxiety in his voice.

"I am ready to do that which you have asked."

He seemed to be on the point of saying something else. But, changing his mind, he touched a little silver bell.

The usher appeared.

"Show the Hereditary Justicer of the Mark to the Red Tower. Give him all that is necessary to eat and drink. Bid a man-at-arms attend him, and set a sufficient guard at the door!"

So I went out from the presence, and the Duke and the Duke's new Justicer bowed to each other gravely as I stood a moment on the threshold.

"Till we meet again, Red Axe of the Wolfmark!" said Duke Otho.

"Till we meet again!" said I, countering him like blade meeting blade.

In little more than ten minutes after I had entered them, I stood outside the Duke's apartments, and with my escort I strode across to the empty Red Tower, the home of so many memories. My head was reeling, and with the overpress of excitement I could not sleep. So, bribing the soldier, my companion—who had been charged by the Duke not to lose sight of me—to accompany me, I went up to my father's garret.

There I found all things as they had been when my father died.

I set the windows wide, cast the tumbled bedclothes out upon the dust-heap beneath, and bared the whole to the clean, large, wholesome breezes of the night. I saw the fateful Red Axe lean as usual against the block, and, taking it up, I found it keen as a razor. It was spotless, and the edge gave back the long low room and our one glimmering candle like a mirror. It must have been my father's last work in this world to polish it.

Then I went down to my own room and cast myself down upon the bed in which, on that night of the first home-coming of the Playmate, I had laid my little wife.

The soldier couched across the door, rolled in his cloak and some chance wrapping he found about the house.

God keep me from ever spending such a night again! I thought it would never come to an end. Out in the square in front of the Wolfsberg I could hear a knocking—dull, continuous, reverberant. At first I thought it must be within my own head. So I asked the soldier, after a little, if he heard it also. I had some faint idea that it might be Prince Karl of Plassenburg with his army thundering at the gates of Thorn.

"'Tis but the scaffold going up in the Grand Place without!" said the soldier, carelessly; "I heard that the Duke had bidden them work all night by torch-light."

I tried to sleep, but the knocking continued, aching across my brows till I thought I must go mad. After a while I rose and went to the window from which I had so often looked down wistfully upon the play of the city children.

Opposite me, in the middle of the open space, loomed a dark mass—a platform, it seemed, raised a dozen feet above the road—the black silhouette of a ladder set anglewise against it, and that was all. Lower, plainer, somehow deadlier than a gibbet with its flamboyant beam, which one never sees empty without imagining the malefactor aswing upon it; the heading-block did not frown, it grinned—yes, grinned like the eye-holes of a skeleton with a candle behind them, while the torches glinted through the interstices of the framework as it was being nailed together.

All night the dull dunt-dunting went on without. And I sat awake by the window and awaited the dawning.

The city seethed unslaked beneath. When first I looked from my chamber window the square was free to all who chose to enter it. But as the knocking went on the news spread through the town of Thorn.

"They are making the scaffold for our Saint Helena!" So the word ran.

And within an hour the courts and alleys of Thorn belched forth thousands of angry men. Pikes were carried like staves, the steel head hidden up the long white burgess sleeve. Working-men of the trades, 'prentices, and market porters drew their swords and came forth with the bare blades in their hands, leaving the scabbards at home to take care of themselves, as was their custom.

Wives cried from escalier windows to their men to come in by and lie decently down, to be ready for their work in the morning. And the men so addressed paid not the least heed, as the manner of men is. These things and many others I saw, scarce knowing what I saw.

And so, with the hum of gathering crowds, the hours passed slowly over. But the temper of the people in the square grew more and more difficult, and soon the guard had to be brought down from the castle. The great gates beneath me were open, and the Wolfsberg vomited the black men-at-arms to keep the Duke's peace.

But this brought only the quicker strife. Yells received them as soon as their steel partisans showed up in the square.

"Oppressors of the people, ye come to your reward!" cried many voices.

"We will give you your last breakfast—of cold, tempered steel!" cried another, from the bowels of the crowd.

"To the Wolfsberg—ho! Break in the doors! We will have our Saint Helena forth of their cursed prisons!"

It was no sooner said than done. Like a wave the people rushed in a black irregular mass at the front rank of the guard. The soldiers of the Duke were swept away like chaff; I could see one here and another there struggling in the vortices of the angry multitude.

"On to the Wolfsberg!" cried the crowd.

But when the first of them reached the castle gates, lo! they stood open, and there behind them stood file on file of matchlock men with their matches burning in their hands and their pieces trained upon their rests.

"Give them the fire!" cried a voice, that of Duke Otho, as the crowd halted a moment irresolute.

The bright red flame started out here and there from muzzle and touchhole, and then ran along the line in an irregular volley.

A terrible cry of fear went up from the folk. For though they had heard of the new ordnance, and even seen one or two, they had never realized the effect of a fusillade. And when a man on either side sank down with a hollow sound like a beast in shamble-thills, and the man in front fell over on his face without a sound, the multitude turned, broke into groups, fled, and disappeared in a moment like a whirl of snow which the wind canters down the street in a veering flurry.

Then the gates shut to, and the deep lines of matchlock men were hidden from view. After this the city thrilled and murmured worse than ever, humming like an angry hive. But the Wolfsberg kept its counsel. Not yet had deliverance arrived for the captives within its cells.

And the dread morning was coming fast.

At last, wearied out with crowding emotions, I went and cast me down on my bed, and, instantly falling asleep, I slept like a log till one touched me on the shoulder. Looking up, I saw the Duke Otho. He had come to make sure of his vengeance—the vengeance which I knew well was not his, but that of Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg.



CHAPTER LII

THE HEADSMAN'S RIGHT

"Rise, Justicer of the Wolfmark!" said Otho, smiling mockingly upon me like a fiend.

I started up and gazed about bewildered as the coming terrors of the morning broke upon me.

"'Tis scarcely an hour to sunrise," he continued, "and I warrant the noble Red Axe will desire to feel the edge of his tool and see that his assistants are in their places."

The Duke paused as he went out of the door, and looked at me.

"I can promise you a distinguished company at the first public performance of your honorable office," he said, with a polite gesture.

So soon as he was gone I rose to my feet. Across the broad, black oaken stool, whereon from boyhood it had been my habit to place my clothes neatly folded up, I found a suit of new red cloth, plain and rich, with an inscription upon a strip of vellum laid across the breast, bearing that these were a gift from the most Illustrious Duke Otho of the Wolfmark.

Since, after all, my fate was my fate, there was little use in straining at the gnat. So I set to and did upon me the garmentry of shame. They were made after the fashion of my father's, cap and hosen and shoon all of red, with a cloak of red to cover all.

Then I went to the Playmate's room, and before the niche where her little Prie-Dieu had stood, I kneeled me down and said such a prayer as at the moment I could compass. But little was needed. For I think God in heaven Himself was praying for us both that day.

When I went forth into the square, few there were who knew or remembered me, but all knew my attire. Then indeed it did my heart good to hear the great unanimous roar of execration which went up from the multitude as I came out. The soldiers had their work cut out to push a way for me to the scaffold.

"Butcher him—tear him to pieces—wolf's cub that he is—he that was her foster-brother to slay our Saint Helena!"

It made me proud to hear them. And as they rushed furiously against the escort, intent to kill me, we swayed from side to side.

"Down with the Red Axe!" they shouted. "Down with the bloody house of Gottfried and all that belong to it!"

And I felt inclined to cry "Amen!"

Then, when I had mounted the few steps which led to the platform on which stood the black headsman's block, I gazed about me in wonder, holding the Red Axe in my hand. And to my disordered vision I saw the crowd swell and whirl about me on earth and in the air, bubbling and tossing like a pot boiling furiously. Then I bethought me of the work I had to do, and prayed that I might be given strength to do it swiftly and featly, that the suffering of my love might not be long. Also I thought of the lecherous evil demons of the Black Riders, and thereat was somewhat comforted. At the worst I could give my love a better end than that.

Then appeared my Lord Duke Otho. An enclosure had been formed for him by the palace wall, covered with a red hanging, as though my sweetheart's death were a gala sight. And when he had come to the front and arranged his folk, lo! there by his side stood Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg, with her father, Master Gerard. They had a place close by the Duke, and Otho ofttimes bent over to confer graciously with his councillor. But Ysolinde looked neither to right nor left, nor yet spoke to any, keeping her eyes fixed, as it seemed, on the shining blade of the Red Axe in my hand.

Then, as these fine folk stood waiting and gloating among the festoons of their balcony, the devil or God (I know which, but I will not say, lest I be thought a blasphemer) put an intent into my heart. I walked to the edge of the scaffold, and I looked at the barrier of the enclosure. They were of the same height, and the distance between them little more than six feet.

I examined them again, and yet more intently. I saw the steely smile on Duke Otho's face. Already he was tasting the double sweetness of his revenge.

"Wait," I said, within my heart, as I also smiled a little, "only wait a little, Otho, Duke of the Wolfmark. Wait till this bright edge be sullied with my sweet love's blood. And then—then will I leap upon you, and the Red Axe shall crash deep into the brain that hatched and fostered this hellish intent. And by the gentle heart of her who is about to die, so also will I serve Gerard the lawyer, and Ysolinde, his daughter, for their treachery against the innocent. Then, amid the flash of steel and the heady whirl of battle, shall Hugo Gottfried be very content to die!" It would take more than one stroke to dull that which my father had sharpened. And I lifted up the Red Axe and felt the edge with my thumb. It was razor keen.

But the action was observed, and taken as a proof of callousness. And then what a yell of hate surged up around me! I could have taken those burghers of Thorn to my heart. And I thought if only our Karl would come. Alas! it was a full day too soon; for I felt sure that these burghers would proclaim him at the gates, and that the house of Otho and Casimir, the brood of the Wolf, would, like the shadow of the raven as it flits by in the sunshine, pass away. For by that time there would be no Otho. They would find him low enough, with an axe cleft in his head.

So soon as the sun's light tipped the eastern clouds with rose, the Black Hussars came riding forth. The guards and matchlock men lined the way from the castle gates. They blew up their matches to be ready. Suddenly in the midst of the armed throng there appeared a radiant figure coming down the steps of the castle from the Hall of Judgment.

At the sight the people threw themselves wildly in that direction. The dark lines of the guard reeled and wavered. There was the sharp click as the pikes engaged. The shouts of the captains of the matchlock men were heard. But the trained bands stood fast, and the rush was stayed. Then came our Helene down towards me, walking delicately, yet proudly erect as a young tree. She was clad all in white and wore her hair plaited high upon her head, so that the shape of her neck was clearly seen.

And I who stood there with the axe in my hand seemed to have a thousand years to think all these things, and even to mark the lace upon her dress. I saw her come nearer and nearer to me. Yet feeling was dead within me. I seemed to sleep and wake and sleep again. And when at last I awoke, there came a strange feeling to me. It was my wedding-day, and my bride was coming to me, lily pure, clad in whiteness.

Then at the foot of the scaffold there came one forth from the ranks, a captain of the Duke's guard, and with honor and respect offered Helene his arm.

She declined it with a proud smile, and all that were near could hear her clear voice say, "I thank you, sir, but I need no help. I am strong enough to walk thus far."

And she mounted the steps of the scaffold as though they had been those of the grand staircase at Plassenburg.

But when she saw me, standing in my habit of red from head to heel, she seemed a little taken aback. Quickly, however, she came forward and took me by the hand, looking up at me with the love-light making her eyes glorious.

"Hugo," she said, "I am glad you are here—glad that I am to die by no less loving hand. That will be sweeter than to live with any other. And, indeed, I deserve so much, for I have not known much joy in my life, save in the old days when I was your Little Playmate."

Then there came a stern voice from the enclosure:

"Executioner of the Mark, do your duty!"

It was the voice of Master Gerard.

And then I looked over and saw Gerard von Sturm standing a little in front, with his daughter's wrist held tightly in his hand as though he would drag her back. With that a loathing came over me, for I said within me, "Is the woman so anxious for the blood of the innocent whom she has hounded to death that she would intrude on the scaffold itself?"

Then I remembered the duty of the Justicers, ere the sentence was carried out, to recite the crimes of the condemned.

So I cried aloud, even as I had heard my father do.

"The crimes of Helene, Princess of Plassenburg, sole daughter of Dietrich, lately Prince thereof—guilty of no evil, save that she has been the savior of this people of Thorn and their deliverer in time of pestilence!"

The people hushed themselves with astonishment at my words. And then a cry went up.

"The Red Axe speaks true—she is innocent—innocent!"

But the voice of Gerard von Sturm came again, stern as that of the recording angel:

"Executioner of the Wolfmark, do your duty!"

Scarce knowing what I did, I went on with my formal accusation.

"Helene, Princess of Plassenburg, who is about to die, is also guilty of loving me, Hugo Gottfried, son of Gottfried Gottfried, and of none other crime. For this the Duke has decreed that she should die. It is her own will that she should die by my hand."

Helene came forward and put her hand in mine in token that I spoke truly, and there fell a great silence across the people. I saw the Lady Ysolinde straining at her father's hand, like a dog in a leash when the quarry rises.

Then my love kissed me once, just as though she had been saying good-night in the Red Tower, simply and sweetly, like a child, and laid her head down on the block as on the white pillow of her own bed.

"God do so and more also to them on whose heads is the innocent blood of my love and my wife!"

The words burst from me rather than were uttered.

I raised the blade.

But ere the Red Axe could fall there arose a wild scream from the Duke's enclosure. Some one cried, "Let me go! He has said it! He has said it! I will not be silent any longer!" It was the Lady Ysolinde, who had broken away from her father's hand.

"The girl is his wife," she went on. "He has claimed her—according to the laws of the Wolfmark, that cannot be broken, he has called her his wife. It is the Executioner's right. One woman he can claim as his during his term of office—one only, and for his wife. Duke Otho, I call upon you to allow it! Chancellor Texel, I call upon you to read the law! I have it here in my hand. Head! Read! I will save my soul! I will save my soul!"

And ere any one could stop her, the Lady Ysolinde, sobbing and laughing both at once, had overleaped the light barrier, and was thrusting a parchment with a seal into the hands of the Chancellor Michael Texel.