alace, out of which Duke Casimir had for the time being
frightened Bishop Peter. Black stood the Gate Port against the moonlight
and the snow when I first looked at it. A moment after it had opened, and
a hundred lights came crowding through, like sheep through an entry on
their way to the shambles--which doubtless is their Hall of Judgment,
where there waits for them the Red Axe of a lowlier degree.

The lights, I say, came thronging through the gate. For though it was
moonlight, the Duke Casimir loved to come home amid the red flame of
torches, the trail of bituminous reek, and with a dashing train of riders
clattering up to the Wolfsberg behind him, through the streets of Thorn,
lying black and cowed under the shadows of its thousand gables.

So the procession undulated towards me, turbid and tumultuous. First a
reckless pour of riders urging wearied horses, their sides white-flecked
above with blown foam, and dark beneath with rowelled blood. Many of the
horsemen carried marks upon them which showed that all had not been
plunder and pleasuring upon their foray. For there were white napkins,
and napkins that had once been white, tied across many brows. Helmets
swung clanking like iron pipkins from saddle-bows, and men rode wearily
with their arms in slings, drooping haggard faces upon their chests. But
all passed rapidly enough up the steep street, and tumbled with noise and
shouting, helter-skelter into the great court-yard beneath me as I
watched, secure as God in heaven, from my perch on the Red Tower.

Then came the captives, some riding horses bare-backed, or held in place
before black-bearded riders--women mostly these last, with faces
white-set and strange of eye, or all beblubbered with weeping. Then came
a man or two also on horseback, old and reverend. After them a draggled
rabble of lads and half-grown girls, bound together with ropes and kept
at a dog's trot by the pricking spears of the men-at-arms behind, who
thought it a jest to sink a spear point-deep in the flesh of a man's
back--"drawing the claret wine" they called it. For these riders of Duke
Casimir were every one jolly companions, and must have their merry jest.

After the captives had gone past--and sorry I was for them--the
body-guard of Duke Casimir came riding steadily and gallantly, all
gentlemen of the Mark, with their sons and squires, landed men, towered
men, free Junkers, serving the Duke for loyalty and not servitude, though
ever "li