he bell of the Wolfsberg
slowly and brazenly clanged ten. I stopped. I had but two hours in which
to visit the Little Playmate and tell her all.

"Good-bye, father," said I, standing with my hat off; "so you would wish
me to do--you who met your God standing up--you who did an ill business
greatly, because it was yours and you were born to it. Teach me, my
father, to be worthy of you in this strait, to the like of which surely
never was man brought before!"

The men-at-arms clattered roughly down the street, shifting their
burden as if it had been so much kindling-wood, and quarrelling as to
their turns. I heard their jests coming clear up the narrow street
from far away.

I stood still as they approached a corner which they must turn.

I waved my hand to the coffin.

"Fare you well, true father; to-night and to-morrow may God help me also,
like you, to meet my fate standing up!"

And the curve of the long street hid the ribald procession. My father
was gone. I had made choice. The dead was burying his dead.

I went on towards the prison of the Wolfsberg; so it was nominated by a
sort of grim superiority in that place which was all a prison--the castle
which had lorded it so long over the red clustered roofs and stepped
gables of Thorn, solely because it meant prisonment and death to the
rebel or the refuser of the Duke's exactions.

Often had I seen the straggling procession of prisoners rise, head
following head, up from that weary staircase, my father standing by, as
they came up from the cells, counting his victims silently, like a
shepherd who tells his flock as they pass through a gap in the sheepfold.

For me, alas! there was but one in that dread fold to-night. And she my
one ewe lamb who ought to have lain in my bosom.

I clamored long at the gate ere I could make the drowsy jailer hear. As
the minutes slipped away I grew more and more wild with fear and anger.
At midnight I must face the Duke, and it was after ten--how long I knew
not, but I feared every moment that I might hear the brazen clang as the
hammer struck eleven.

For time seemed to make no impression on me at all that night.

At last the man came, shuffling, grumbling, and cursing, from his
truckle-bed.

"What twice-condemned drunken roysterer may you be, that hath mistaken
the prison of Duke Otho for a trull-house?

"An order from the Duke--to see a prisoner! Come to-morrow then, and,
meanwhile, depart to Gehenna. Must a man be fo