within the walls of the solemn
castle. So long as we kept to the outer yard and did not intrude upon the
Duke's side of the enclosure, we were free to come and go at our
pleasure. For even Casimir himself was soon well accustomed to see us run
about like puppies, slapping and tumbling, and minded us no more than the
sparrows that pecked in the litter of the stable-yard. Indeed, I think he
had forgotten all about the strange home-coming of the Little Playmate.
The kennels of the blood-hounds especially were full of fascination for
us. That fatal deep-mouthed clamoring at morn and even drew us like a
magnet. Helene, in particular, never tired of gazing between the chinks
of the fence of cloven pine-wood at the great russet-colored beasts with
their flashing white teeth, over which the heavy dewlaps fell. And when
my father, with his red livery upon him and a loaded whip in his hand,
once a day opened the tall, narrow door and went within, we thought him
brave as a god. Then the way the fierce beasts shrank cowering from him,
the fashion in which they crouched on their bellies and heaved their
shoulders up without taking their hind quarters off the ground, equally
delighted and surprised us.
"Your father is almost as great a man as _my_ father," said the Princess
Helene, who, however, was rapidly forgetting her dignity. Indeed,
already it had become little more than a fairy-tale to her. And that was
perhaps as well.
One day, when I was about thirteen, or a little older, my father came out
with a new short mantle in his hand, red like his own.
"Come hither, Hugo Gottfried!" he said, for he had learned the trick of
the name from Helene.
I went to him tardy-foot, greatly wondering.
"Here, chick," he said, in his kindly fashion, "it is time you were
beginning to learn your duties. Come with me to-day into the kennels of
the blood-hounds."
But I hung back, shifting the new mantle uneasily on my shoulders, yet
not daring to throw it off.
"I do not want to go, father," said I, edging away in the direction of
the Playmate.
"What, lad!" he cried, slapping me on the shoulder; "they will not hurt
thee with that cloak on. They know their masters better--as their fathers
and mothers knew our fathers. Have we, the Gottfrieds, been the
Hereditary Justicers of the Wolfmark for six hundred years to be afraid
now of the blood-hounds that are kept to hunt the Duke's enemies and to
feed on the Duke's carrion?"
"It is n
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