reat was somewhat
comforted. At the worst I could give my love a better end than that.

Then appeared my Lord Duke Otho. An enclosure had been formed for him by
the palace wall, covered with a red hanging, as though my sweetheart's
death were a gala sight. And when he had come to the front and arranged
his folk, lo! there by his side stood Ysolinde, Princess of
Plassenburg, with her father, Master Gerard. They had a place close by
the Duke, and Otho ofttimes bent over to confer graciously with his
councillor. But Ysolinde looked neither to right nor left, nor yet spoke
to any, keeping her eyes fixed, as it seemed, on the shining blade of
the Red Axe in my hand.

Then, as these fine folk stood waiting and gloating among the festoons
of their balcony, the devil or God (I know which, but I will not say,
lest I be thought a blasphemer) put an intent into my heart. I walked to
the edge of the scaffold, and I looked at the barrier of the enclosure.
They were of the same height, and the distance between them little more
than six feet.

I examined them again, and yet more intently. I saw the steely smile
on Duke Otho's face. Already he was tasting the double sweetness of
his revenge.

"Wait," I said, within my heart, as I also smiled a little, "only wait a
little, Otho, Duke of the Wolfmark. Wait till this bright edge be sullied
with my sweet love's blood. And then--then will I leap upon you, and the
Red Axe shall crash deep into the brain that hatched and fostered this
hellish intent. And by the gentle heart of her who is about to die, so
also will I serve Gerard the lawyer, and Ysolinde, his daughter, for
their treachery against the innocent. Then, amid the flash of steel and
the heady whirl of battle, shall Hugo Gottfried be very content to die!"
It would take more than one stroke to dull that which my father had
sharpened. And I lifted up the Red Axe and felt the edge with my thumb.
It was razor keen.

But the action was observed, and taken as a proof of callousness. And
then what a yell of hate surged up around me! I could have taken those
burghers of Thorn to my heart. And I thought if only our Karl would come.
Alas! it was a full day too soon; for I felt sure that these burghers
would proclaim him at the gates, and that the house of Otho and Casimir,
the brood of the Wolf, would, like the shadow of the raven as it flits by
in the sunshine, pass away. For by that time there would be no Otho. They
would find him low