d raised, and her lips curling scornfully, looking after me as I
retired with a smiling and malicious pleasure.

So, without further speech, I went out from the presence of the Lady
Ysolinde. And thus she had the first part of her revenge.

CHAPTER L

THE DUNGEON OF THE WOLFSBERG

And now I must see the Little Playmate. Judge ye whether or no my heart
was torn in twain as I went up the long High Street of Thorn, back to the
Wolfsberg, alone. For I had compelled Dessauer to return to Bishop
Peter's, in order to avert popular suspicion, since our real names and
errands were not yet known there.

And when I parted from him the old man was so worn out that I looked
momently for him to drop on the rough causeway stones of the street.

Many pictures of my youth passed before me as I mounted towards the
castle that night. I remembered the ride of the wild horsemen returning
from the raid such long years agone, the old man who carried the babe,
and the Red Axe himself, who now lay dead in the Tower--my father,
Casimir's Justicer, clad now as then in crimson from head to heel.

Ere long I arrived at the Wolfsberg, and as I came near the Red Tower I
saw that the gate was open. A little crowd of men with swords and
partisans was issuing tumultuously from it. Then came six carrying a
coffin. I stood aside to let them pass. And not till the last one brushed
me did I ask what was their business abroad with a dead man at such a
time of the night.

"'Tis one that had wrought much fear in his time," answered the soldier,
for I had lighted on a sententious fellow--"one that made many swift
ends, and now has come to one himself."

"You mean Gottfried Gottfried, the Duke's Justicer?" said I, speaking
like one in a dream.

"Aye," he replied. "The Duke Otho is mightily afraid of the plague, and
will not have a dead body over-night in his castle. Since they condemned
the Saint Helena, God wot, the Duke is a fear-stricken man. He sleeps
with half a dozen black riders at the back of his door, as though that
made him any safer if a handful of minted gold were dealt out among the
rascals. But when was a Prince ever wise?"

"My father's funeral," thought I. "Well, to-night it is, indeed, 'let the
dead bury their dead'; Helene is yet alive!"

Surely I am not wanting in feeling, yet my heart was strangely chill and
cold. Nevertheless, I turned and followed the procession a little way
towards the walls. But even as I went, lo! t