at, as I read your horoscope, you must one day
return. But in the mean time care well for the maid. I lend her to you. I
give her into your hand. Cherish her as your chiefest treasure. Let her
enemies be yours, and if harm come to her through your neglect, slay
yourself ere you come again before me. For, by the Lord God of all
Righteous Judgment, I will have no mercy!"

I saw the eyes of the Lady Ysolinde glitter like those of the snake in
her belt as thus my father delivered Helene over to me.

But my father had yet more to say.

"And if any," he went on, in a deep, still voice, keeping his hand upon
the downcast head of the Little Playmate--"if any, great or small,
prince or pauper, harm so much as a hair of this fair head, by the great
God who wields His Axe over the universe and sits in the highest Halls of
Judgment, whose servant I am--I, Gottfried Gottfried, swear that he shall
taste the vengeance of the Red Axe and drink to the dregs the cup of
agony in his own blood!"

So saying, he kissed Helene and stalked out without turning his head or
making any further obeisance or farewell.

We sat mazed and confounded after his departure.

The Lady Ysolinde it was who first recovered herself. She put out a
kindly hand to Helene, who stood wet-eyed and drooping by the window,
looking out upon the roofs of Thorn, though well I wot she saw nothing of
spire, roof, or pinnacle.

"God do so to me and more also," she said, in a low, solemn voice, "if I
too keep not this charge."

And I think for the moment she meant it. The trouble was that the Lady
Ysolinde could not mean one thing for very long at a time. As, indeed,
shall afterwards appear.

So it was arranged that within the week Helene and I should say our
farewells to the Red Tower which had sheltered us so long, as well as to
Gottfried Gottfried, who had ever been my kind father, and to the little
Helene more than any father.

But in spite of all we wearied day by day to be gone. For, indeed,
Gottfried Gottfried said right. The shadow of the Red Tower, the stain of
the Red Axe, was over us both so long as we abode on the Wolfsberg. Yet
what it cost us to depart--at least till we were out of the gates of the
city--I cannot write down, for to both of us the first waygoing seemed
bitter as death.

I remember it well. My father had been busy all the morning with his grim
work on the day when we were to ride away. A gang of malefactors who had
wasted a whole cou