is
hunger was greater than his curiosity.

Sir Wendelin continued his way through the passages, chambers, halls,
and courts. Everywhere servants, guards, and heyducks swarmed, and from
the stables he heard the stamping of many horses, and the jingle of
their halter chains as they rattled them against their well-filled
mangers. Choruses of trumpeters played inspiriting fanfares, and from
the assembled people in the forecourt a thousand voices shouted again
and again: "Hail to his Grace Duke Greylock, Wendelin the First! Long
may he live!"

The knight bowed graciously to his good people, and when the Chancellor
stepped forward, and after a deep reverence set forth in a carefully
prepared speech the great services which the duke had rendered to the
country, Wendelin listened with polite attention, though he himself was
quite ignorant of what the old man was talking about.

Sir Wendelin had lived through so many adventures that it pleased him
now to sit peacefully on his throne, and he did his best to be worthy of
the honours which the fairy had conferred upon him. After he had learned
the duties of a ruler from A to Z, he returned to Germany to woo his
cousin Walpurga. He led her back to his palace, and for many years they
governed the beautiful land together. All of the five sons which his
wife bore to him, came into the world with the grey lock. They all grew
to be brave men and loyal subjects of their father, whom they served
faithfully in war, holding fraternally together and greatly enlarging
the boundaries of his dukedom by their prowess.

A long time passed and generation after generation of the descendants of
the worthy Sir Wendelin followed one another. The first-born son always
bore the name of the progenitor of the family, and the fairy Clementine
always appeared at the baptism. No one ever saw her; but a gentle
tinkling through the palace betrayed her presence, and when that ceased,
the grey lock on the infant's temple was always found to have twisted
itself into a curl.

At the end of five hundred years, Wendelin XV. was carried to his grave.
No Greylock had ever possessed a more luxuriant grey curl than his, and
yet he had died young. The wise men of the land said that even to
the most favoured only a fixed measure of happiness and good luck was
granted, and that Wendelin XV. had enjoyed his full share in the space
of thirty years.

Certain it is that from childhood everything had prospered with this