ght the Trutz-Drachen folk,
with Baron Frederick at their head, in a narrow defile back of the
Kaiserburg; of the fierce fight that was there fought; of how the
Roderburgs at last fled, leaving Baron Frederick behind them wounded; of
how he had kneeled before the Baron Conrad, asking for mercy, and of
how Baron Conrad had answered, "Aye, thou shalt have such mercy as thou
deservest," and had therewith raised his great two-handed sword and laid
his kneeling enemy dead at one blow.

Poor little Otto had never dreamed that such cruelty and wickedness
could be. He listened to the old woman's story with gaping horror, and
when the last came and she told him, with a smack of her lips, how his
father had killed his enemy with his own hand, he gave a gasping cry and
sprang to his feet. Just then the door at the other end of the chamber
was noisily opened, and Baron Conrad himself strode into the room.
Otto turned his head, and seeing who it was, gave another cry, loud and
quavering, and ran to his father and caught him by the hand.

"Oh, father!" he cried, "oh, father! Is it true that thou hast killed a
man with thy own hand?"

"Aye," said the Baron, grimly, "it is true enough, and I think me I have
killed many more than one. But what of that, Otto? Thou must get out of
those foolish notions that the old monks have taught thee. Here in the
world it is different from what it is at St. Michaelsburg; here a man
must either slay or be slain."

But poor little Otto, with his face hidden in his father's robe, cried
as though his heart would break. "Oh, father!" he said, again and again,
"it cannot be--it cannot be that thou who art so kind to me should have
killed a man with thine own hands." Then: "I wish that I were back
in the monastery again; I am afraid out here in the great wide world;
perhaps somebody may kill me, for I am only a weak little boy and could
not save my own life if they chose to take it from me."

Baron Conrad looked down upon Otto all this while, drawing his bushy
eyebrows together. Once he reached out his hand as though to stroke the
boy's hair, but drew it back again.

Turning angrily upon the old woman, "Ursela," said he, "thou must tell
the child no more such stories as these; he knowest not at all of such
things as yet. Keep thy tongue busy with the old woman's tales that he
loves to hear thee tell, and leave it with me to teach him what becometh
a true knight and a Vuelph."

That night the father a