! Will the
Prince never set about wiping away the disgrace?"

"Aye, that he will!" cried the High Chancellor, suddenly bursting into a
fury, strangely unlike him. "He will wash it away in the blood of Duke
Casimir and all his evil brood--the Wolves of the Mark truly are they
named. And the Wolfsberg shall go up in flaming fire to heaven, so that
the ashes of it shall be cast abroad to make the Mark yet grayer and more
desolate--like the fell of the beasts that dwelt within it."

"Amen! Let it come quick, say I--that I may see it before I die!" cried
the forester, bowing low before the Chancellor.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE DECENT SERVITOR

"This grows past all bearing," cried the Prince one morning, when he had
summoned into his hall the Chancellor Dessauer and myself. For, though
the Prince was still wont to command in person in any important action,
and in the general policy of his realm took counsel with none, yet it had
somehow come about that we, the old man and the young, had been
constituted an informal council of two which was liable to be summoned at
any moment, whenever the Prince was weary or troubled.

He struck one clinched hand into the palm of the other before he
spoke again.

"Duke Casimir is either in his dotage, or his riders have gotten out of
hand since Hugo and you drove the young wolf over to help the old. Both
are likely enough, with a people praying for deliverance and yearning for
their Duke's death. A bare board and an empty treasury may render a new
course of plunder necessary abroad, in order to keep his Dukedom from
toppling about his ears at home. After all, 'tis natural enough. But I
had thought that he would have had enough of sense to let the borders of
Plassenburg alone so long as its Prince lived."

"And what, my lord, has befallen?" asked the High Councillor.

"Why," cried the Prince, "the Black Riders of the Wolfmark are out again,
and have left their ancient trail behind them in slain men and frantic
women--and on our borders, too, among our kindly husbandmen, our honest,
sunburnt peasants. Bitterly shall Casimir Ironteeth rue the day that he
meddled with Karl Miller's Son."

"Your Highness," I said, "this is indeed madness. We have but to collect
our forces, choose a time, and, lo! we are within the town of Thorn! Once
there, we would be welcomed by man, woman, and child. We could then
besiege the Wolfsberg, and in three days make an end."

"Aye, that is it," said the