it."

Nevertheless, I rode back to Plassenburg on the farmer's beast, sadly
enough, yet somewhat contented. For Helene was with my father, and far
safer, as I judged, than in the palace chambers of Plassenburg, and
within striking distance of the Lady Ysolinde. And in that I judged not
wrong, though the future seemed for a while to belie my confidence.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE GOLDEN NECKLACE

The Chancellor Leopold von Dessauer, High Councillor of the Prince, with
his head still bound up, was pacing the sparred gallery outside the
private apartments of his master. It was in the heats of the late summer,
before the ripening of the orchard fruits had had time to culminate, or
the russet to come out slowly upon the apples, like a blush upon a
woman's soft, dusky cheek.

The High Councillor was in a bad humor. For he had been kept waiting, and
that by a man of no account. At last a forester in a uniform of dark
green, with the Prince's bugle and sparrow-hawk in silver everywhere
about him, made his appearance at the foot of the gallery, and stood
waiting Dessauer's summons with his plumed hat of soft cloth in his hand.

"Hither, man!" cried the High Councillor, sharply. "What has kept you?
Why were you not here half an hour ago? If this be the way you keep the
Prince's forests, no wonder there are many deer taken by reiving rascals
and the forest laws daily broken."

"High Mightiness," said the man, humbly, looking down, "it was my
daughter--she would not give up the necklace. She hath had it for her own
since she was a child, and she would not deliver it, though I threatened
her with your well-born anger."

"And have you got it with you? Surely you and she have not dared to keep
it!" began the Chancellor, with gathering fury on his eyebrow.

"Yea, truly, truly, an you will have patience, my Lord, I have it
here,"-said the man, drawing a necklace of golden bars curiously arranged
from his leathern wallet; and, kneeling on his knee, he presented it to
the Chancellor.

"How did you prevail with the maid?" he asked, as soon as he had it in
hand--"you used no constraint or force, I hope?"

"Nay, sir," said the man, "for my wife being dead and my daughter
marriageable, she keeps house for me; and having a sweetheart betrothed a
year ago she hath been laying aside plenishing gear and women's dainty
gewgaws. So these I took one by one, beginning with a mirror of polished
brass, and made as if I would dash them in