, Princess of Plassenburg."

I was never more smitten dazed and dumb in my life. Ysolinde, the
daughter of Master Gerard, the maid who had read my fate in the ink-pool,
whom I had "made suffer," according to her own telling--she the Princess
of Plassenburg '.

Ah, I had it now. Here at last was the explanation of the threadbare and
inexplicable jest of Jorian and Boris, "The Prince hath a Princess, and
she is oft upon her travels !"

But, after all, what a Wendish barking about so small an egg. I have
heard an emperor proclaimed with less cackle.

Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg--yes, that made a difference. And I
had taken her hand--I, the son of the Red Axe--I, the Hereditary
Justicer of the Wolfmark. Well, after all, she had sought me, not I
her. And then, the little Helene--what would she make of it? I longed
greatly to find an opportunity to tell her. It might teach her in what
manner to cut her cloth.

The archers of the Prince camped with us the rest of the night in the
place of the outcast crew. They behaved well (though their forbearance
was perhaps as much owing to the near presence of the Princess as to any
inherent virtue in the good men of the bow) to the women and children who
remained huddled in the corners.

Then came the dawn, swift-foot from the east. A fair dawn it was, the
sun rising, not through barred clouds, with the lightest at the
horizon (which is the foul-weather dawn), but through streamers and
bannerets that fluttered upward and fired to ever fleecier crimson and
gold as he rose.

We rode among a subdued people, and ere we went the Princess called for
the Burgomeister and bade him send to Plassenburg the landlord, so soon
as he should be found, and also the heads of the half-dozen houses on
either side of the inn.

Then, indeed, there was a turmoil and a wailing to speak about. Women
folk crowded out of the huts and kissed the white feet of the palfrey
that bore the Lady Ysolinde.

"Have mercy!" they wailed; "show kindness, great Princess! Here are our
men, unwounded and unhurt, that have lain by our sides all the night.
They are innocent of all intent of evil--of every dark deed. Ah, lady,
send them not to your prisons. We shall never see them more, and they
are all we have or our children. 'Tis they bring in the bread to this
drear spot!"

"Produce me your husbands, then!" said the Lady Ysolinde.

Whereat the women ran and brought a number of frowsy and bleared men, all
un