test
respect for the Princess Ysolinde. I would not wrong her for the world.
But I know her track of old. You are a brave lad, and, after all, I fear
there is something in that calf-love of yours--devil take it!"

I thought I could now dimly discern whither the Prince's plans
were tending.

"Your Highness," said I, "I am a young man and of little experience. I
cannot tell why you have chosen to speak so freely to me. But I am your
servant, and, in all that hurts not the essence and matter of my love for
the Little Playmate, I will do even as you say."

Prince Karl grasped my hand.

"Ah, well said!" he cried. "You are running your head into a peck of
troubles, though. And you are likely to have some experience of womenkind
shortly--a thing which does no brisk young fellow any harm, unless he
lets them come between him and his career. Women are harmless enough, so
that you keep them well down to leeward. I am Baltic-bred, and have ever
held to this--that you may sail unscathed through fleets of farthingales,
so being that you keep the wind well on your quarter, and see the
fair-way clear before you."

I did not at the time understand half he said, but I knew we had made
some sort of a bargain. And I thought, with an aching, unsatisfied heart,
that though it might be well enough for an iron-gray and cynical old
Prince, the thing would hardly commend itself to Helene, my Little
Playmate, to whom I had so recently spoken loving words, sweeter than
ever before.

"Devil take all Princes and Princesses!" I said, as I thought, to myself.
But I must have spoken aloud, for the Prince laughed.

"Do not waste good prayers needlessly," he said; "he will!"

And so, with a careless and humorsome wave of his hand to one side, he
went down the staircase, and so out into the quadrangle of the Palace.

CHAPTER XXIX

LOVES ME--LOVES ME NOT

Now how this plan of my Lord Prince's worked in the Palace of Plassenburg
I find it difficult to tell without writing myself down a "painted
flittermouse," as the Prince expressed it. I was in high favor with my
master; well liked also by most of the hard-driving, rough-riding young
soldiers whom the miller's son had made out of the sons of dead and
damned Ritterdom. I got my share of honor and good service, too, in going
to different courts and bringing back all that Prince Karl needed. To
exercise myself in the art of war, I hunted the border thieves and gave
them short enough shr