dward peasants and all the
tankard-swilling gutter-knaves of the town.

Of the remainder of our journey I need not speak, seeing that more than
once I have had to tell of that journey from Thorn to Plassenburg. It is
sufficient that by evening the dark, frowning mass of the Wolfsberg lay
imminent before us, each tower black against the sky. For even the new
portions which Casimir had builded were of intention blackened with
soot--mingled with the plaster and mortar, so that they should be of one
piece of grim terror with the rest of the building.

"After all it is not strange," said I to the Councillor, for when
there was no one in sight or very near us I rode with him instead of
behind him, "that the man who shakes at every breeze among the aspens
should take such pains to create the fiction and shadow of terror
about him, when the substance and reality is dominant all the while in
his own bosom."

Since we had come within the distressed and depopulated territory of the
Wolfmark we had not spoken to any soul. Indeed, except a few poor,
desolate peasant folk, burned black with the sun, scuttling from den to
den at the sight of mounted men, we had not seen any living creatures.
The cruelty which had marked the reign of the Black Duke seemed to have
afflicted the very face of the country with a visible curse.

But the day of deliverance was at hand.

As we came nearer to Thorn, there before us was the Red Tower, at first
dimly apparent, then prominent, then commanding, finally rising higher
than all the buildings of the Wolfsberg. How many days had I not looked
down from those windows! And my father was even now up there in his grim
garret, his heart stirring calm and kindly within him, in spite of all
the atmosphere of blood in which his life had moved, as untouched as
though he had been a gardener working among the flowers of the parterre.
Also the block was there, and against it the Red Axe was leaning.

Then I called to mind the prophecy of the Lady Ysolinde, that I should
return to take up my father's dreadful trade. And I smiled thereat.
For I thought that now I came in other circumstances--aye, even though
riding in at The tail of the learned Doctor Schmidt with my shaven and
chestnut-stained face, my flowing hair cropped to the roots, as in the
manner of the servant tribe! Yet for all that was I not the virtual
military commander of the Plassenburg and the right hand of the
Prince, whose forces would soon be