tue as a dwelling-place. Bare walls, stone floors,
sour wine, coarse boar's meat, brown bread, and poor beds constituted
our meagre portion.

Duke Frederick was poor because his people were poor. They lived among
the rocks and crags, raised their goats, ploughed their tiny patches of
thin earth, and gave to the duke and to each man his due. They were
simple, bigoted, and honest to the heart's core.

Though of mean fortune, Duke Frederick was the head of the great House
of Hapsburg, whose founders lived in the morning mists of European
history and dwelt proudly amid the peaks of their mountain home. Our
castle in Styria was not the original Castle Hapsburg. That was built
centuries before the time of this story, among the hawks' crags of
Aargau in Switzerland. It was lost by the House of Hapsburg many years
before Max was born. The castle in Styria was its namesake.

To leaven the poor loaf of life in Castle Hapsburg, its inmates enjoyed
the companionship of the kindest man and woman that ever graced a high
estate--the Duke and Duchess of Styria. Though in their little court,
life was rigid with the starch of ceremony, it was softened by the
tenderness of love. All that Duke Frederick asked from his subjects was
a bare livelihood and a strict observance of ceremonious conventions.
Those who approached him and his son did so with uncovered head and
bended knee. An act of personal familiarity would have been looked on as
high treason. Taxes might remain unpaid, laws might be broken, and there
was mercy in the ducal heart; but a flaw in ceremony was unpardonable.

The boar's meat and the brown bread were eaten in state; the sour wine
was drunk solemnly; and going to bed each night was an act of national
importance. Such had been the life of this house for generations, and
good Duke Frederick neither would nor could break away from it.

Of all these painful conditions young Max was a suffering victim. Did
he sally forth to stick a wild boar or to kill a bear, the Master of the
Hunt rode beside him in a gaudy, faded uniform. Fore-riders preceded
him, and after-riders followed. He was almost compelled to hunt by
proxy, and he considered himself lucky to be in at the death. The bear,
of course, was officially killed by Maximilian, Count of Hapsburg, no
matter what hand dealt the blow. Maximilian, being the heir of Hapsburg,
must always move with a slow dignity becoming his exalted station. He
must, if possible, always act t