"'Tis in the burial of the dead that the shoe will pinch first with these
burghers of Thorn and among our soldiers at the Wolfsberg. For mass,
indeed, they care not a dove's dropping--but that the corpse should be
carried to a dog's grave, that they cannot away with. Red Axe, I tell you
we shall have the State of the Mark about our ears in the slipping of a
hound's leash--and as for me, I know not what I shall do."

"Listen, and I will counsel you, Duke Casimir! Care you not though the
east wind brought Bishop Peters whirling over the Mark, as many as the
January snowflakes that come to us from Muscovy. I, Gottfried Gottfried,
tell you what to do. In every parish of the Mark there is a parson. Every
clerk of them hath a Presbytery, in which he dwells with those that are
abiding with him. Bid you the soldiers that are obedient to you to carry
all the corpses of the dead to the Presbytery, and leave them there under
guard. Then let us see whether or no the parsons will give them burial.
What think you of the counsel, Duke Casimir?"

I could hear the Duke rise and pace across the floor to where my
father sat on his bed. And by the silence I knew that the two men were
shaking hands.

"Red Axe," said the Duke, much moved, "of a truth you are a great
man--none like you in the Dukedom. These beard-wagging, chain-jingling
gentry I have small notion of. And would you but accept it, I would give
you to-morrow the collar of gold which befits the Chancellor of the Mark.
None deserves to wear it so well as thou."

My father laughed a low scornful laugh.

"Because I bid you teach the parsons their own religion, am I to be made
Chancellor of the Mark? A great gray wolf out of the forest were as
suitable a Chancellor of the Mark as Gottfried Gottfried, the fourteenth
hereditary Red Axe of Thorn!"

Then I heard him reach over his bed for something. I stole out of the
hole in the wall and crouched down till my eyes rested at the great
latchet hole through which the tang of leather to lift the bolt
ordinarily goes. I could see my father sitting on his bed and the Red
Axe lying across his knees. He took it in hand, dangling it like an
infant. He caressed it as he spoke, and ran his thumb lovingly along the
shining edge.

"Ah," he said, "my beauty, 'tis you and not your master they should make
High Chancellor of this realm. 'Tis you that have held the power of life
and death, and laid the spirit of rebellion any time these twenty