o put upon itself.

Old Ursela seemed nearer to the boy than anyone else about the castle,
excepting it was his father, and it was a newfound delight to Otto to
sit beside her and listen to her quaint stories, so different from the
monkish tales that he had heard and read at the monastery.

But one day it was a tale of a different sort that she told him, and one
that opened his eyes to what he had never dreamed of before.

The mellow sunlight fell through the window upon old Ursela, as she sat
in the warmth with her distaff in her hands while Otto lay close to her
feet upon a bear skin, silently thinking over the strange story of a
brave knight and a fiery dragon that she had just told him. Suddenly
Ursela broke the silence.

"Little one," said she, "thou art wondrously like thy own dear mother;
didst ever hear how she died?"

"Nay," said Otto, "but tell me, Ursela, how it was."

"Tis strange," said the old woman, "that no one should have told thee
in all this time." And then, in her own fashion she related to him the
story of how his father had set forth upon that expedition in spite of
all that Otto's mother had said, beseeching him to abide at home; how he
had been foully wounded, and how the poor lady had died from her fright
and grief.

Otto listened with eyes that grew wider and wider, though not all with
wonder; he no longer lay upon the bear skin, but sat up with his hands
clasped. For a moment or two after the old woman had ended her story, he
sat staring silently at her. Then he cried out, in a sharp voice, "And
is this truth that you tell me, Ursela? and did my father seek to rob
the towns people of their goods?"

Old Ursela laughed. "Aye," said she, "that he did and many times. Ah!
me, those day's are all gone now." And she fetched a deep sigh. "Then we
lived in plenty and had both silks and linens and velvets besides in the
store closets and were able to buy good wines and live in plenty upon
the best. Now we dress in frieze and live upon what we can get and
sometimes that is little enough, with nothing better than sour beer to
drink. But there is one comfort in it all, and that is that our good
Baron paid back the score he owed the Trutz-Drachen people not only for
that, but for all that they had done from the very first."

Thereupon she went on to tell Otto how Baron Conrad had fulfilled the
pledge of revenge that he had made Abbot Otto, how he had watched day
after day until one time he had cau