Gottfried Gottfried smiled a sad smile, wistfully pleasant.

"Already I am wellnigh an old man, and it is the nature of my profession that I should be alone. I work among the issues of life and death. Every man must be lonely when he dies, and I, who have lived most with dying men, am perforce already lonely while I live. It is well--a clearer air for the young bird! But yet it will be lonesome to miss you when I come in--the empty pot wanting the flower; the case without the jewel; silence above and below; your voice and Hugo's, that have changed the sombre Red Tower with your young folks' pleasantries, heard no more. Ah, G.o.d wot, I had thought--I had dreamed far other things."

He stopped and looked from one to the other of us, and I saw that Ysolinde of the White Gate read his thought. Whereat right suddenly the Little Playmate blushed, and as for me I kept watching the dull gold flash on the spangles of our guest's waist-belt, which was in form like a live serpent, with changeful scales and eyes of ruby red.

My father went over to where Helene sat. She rose to meet him and cast her arms about his neck. He laid his right hand on her head--that terrible hand that was yet not dreadful to us-who loved him.

"Little flower," he said, in his simple way, "G.o.d be good to you in the transplanting! It is not fair to your young life that my red stain should lie upon your lot. I have given you a quiet hermitage while you needed it. But now it is right that my house should again be left unto me desolate. It is already late summer with Gottfried Gottfried, and high time that the young brood should fly away."

He turned to me.

"With you, Hugo, it is a thing different; you were born to that to which you are born. And to that, as I read your horoscope, you must one day return. But in the mean time care well for the maid. I lend her to you. I give her into your hand. Cherish her as your chiefest treasure. Let her enemies be yours, and if harm come to her through your neglect, slay yourself ere you come again before me. For, by the Lord G.o.d of all Righteous Judgment, I will have no mercy!"

I saw the eyes of the Lady Ysolinde glitter like those of the snake in her belt as thus my father delivered Helene over to me.

But my father had yet more to say.

"And if any," he went on, in a deep, still voice, keeping his hand upon the downcast head of the Little Playmate--"if any, great or small, prince or pauper, harm so much as a hair of this fair head, by the great G.o.d who wields His Axe over the universe and sits in the highest Halls of Judgment, whose servant I am--I, Gottfried Gottfried, swear that he shall taste the vengeance of the Red Axe and drink to the dregs the cup of agony in his own blood!"

So saying, he kissed Helene and stalked out without turning his head or making any further obeisance or farewell.

We sat mazed and confounded after his departure.

The Lady Ysolinde it was who first recovered herself. She put out a kindly hand to Helene, who stood wet-eyed and drooping by the window, looking out upon the roofs of Thorn, though well I wot she saw nothing of spire, roof, or pinnacle.

"G.o.d do so to me and more also," she said, in a low, solemn voice, "if I too keep not this charge."

And I think for the moment she meant it. The trouble was that the Lady Ysolinde could not mean one thing for very long at a time. As, indeed, shall afterwards appear.

So it was arranged that within the week Helene and I should say our farewells to the Red Tower which had sheltered us so long, as well as to Gottfried Gottfried, who had ever been my kind father, and to the little Helene more than any father.

But in spite of all we wearied day by day to be gone. For, indeed, Gottfried Gottfried said right. The shadow of the Red Tower, the stain of the Red Axe, was over us both so long as we abode on the Wolfsberg. Yet what it cost us to depart--at least till we were out of the gates of the city--I cannot write down, for to both of us the first waygoing seemed bitter as death.

I remember it well. My father had been busy all the morning with his grim work on the day when we were to ride away. A gang of malefactors who had wasted a whole country-side with their cruelty had been brought in. And, as it was suspected that other more important villains were yet to be caught, there had been the repeated pain of the Extreme Question, and now there remained but the falling of the Red Axe to settle all accounts. So that when he came to bid us farewell he had but brief time to spare. And of necessity he wore the fearful crimson, which fitted his tall, spare figure like a glove.

"Fare thee well, little one!" he said, first to Helene. "Not thus, had the choice lain with me, would I have bidden thee farewell. But when it shall be that I meet you again I will surely wear the white of the festa day. I commit you to Him whose mistakes are better than our good deeds, whose judgments are kinder than our tenderest mercies."

So he kissed her, and reached a hand over her shoulder to me.

"Son Hugo," he said, "go in peace. You must return to succeed me. I see it like a picture--on the day when I lie dead you shall stand with the Red Axe in your hand waiting to do judgment. It is well. Keep this maid more sacred than your life--and, meantime, fare you well!"

So saying he left us abruptly.

Our horses were saddled in the court-yard, and as I rode last through the rarely opened gateway, I saw Duke Casimir looking out from his window upon the lower enclosure, as was his pleasure upon the days of execution.

I heard the dull thud, which was the meeting of the Red Axe and the redder block as that which had been between fell apart. And for the last time I heard the blood-hounds leap and the pattering of their eager feet upon the barriers as they leaped up scenting the Duke's carrion.

Thus the latest I heard of the place of my nativity was fitting and dreadful. I was mortally glad to ride away into the clear air and the invigorating silence. But on my heart there still lay heavy the twice-repeated prediction of my father and of the Lady Ysolinde, that I should yet return and hold the Red Axe in his place.

But I resolved rather to die in the honest front of battle.

Nevertheless, had I known the future, I would have seen that they and not I were right.

I was indeed fated to return and stand ready to execute doom, with the Red Axe in my hand and my father lying dead near by.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PRIME OF THE MORNING

Now so strange a thing is woman that, so soon as we were started down the High Street of the city of Thorn, the Little Playmate dried her eyes, turned towards me in her saddle, and straightway began to take me to task as though I had been to blame.

"I have left," said she, "the only home I ever knew, and the only man that ever truly loved me, to accompany a young man that cares not for me, and a woman whom I have seen but once, to a far land and an unkindly folk."

"It is not fair," I said, "to say that I love you not. For, as G.o.d sees me, I have ever loved you--loved you best and loved you only, little Helenchen! And though you are angered with me now, I know not why--still till now you have never doubted it."

"I doubt it sorely enough now, I know," she said, bitterly; "yet, indeed, I care not whether you or any love me at all."

And this saying I was greatly sorry for. It seemed a sad wayfaring from our old Red Tower and out of my native city of Thorn.

"Helene, little one," said I, "believe me, I love none in the whole world but my father and you. Trust me, for I am to keep you safe with my life in the far land to which we go. Do not let us quarrel, littlest. There are only the two of us here that remember the old man my father and the little room to which you came as a babe, all in white."

So presently she was somewhat pacified, and reached me a hand from the back of her beast, on pretence of leaning over to avoid a swinging sign in one of the narrow streets near by the White Gate, where we were to meet the Lady Ysolinde.

"And yet more, Little Playmate," said I, keeping her hand when I had it; "do not begin by distrusting the n.o.ble lady with whom we are to travel.

For she means well to us both, and in the strange country to which we go we may be wholly in her power."

"You are sure that you do not love that woman, then?" said Helene, without looking at me. For, indeed, in many things she was but a child, and ever spoke more freely than other maids--perhaps with being brought up in the Red Tower in the company of my father, who on all occasions spoke his mind just as it came to him.

"Nay," said I, "believe me, little love, I do not love her at all."

And now on horseback Helene looked all charming, and what with the exercise, the unknown adventure, and my rea.s.surance, she had a glow of rose color in her cheeks. She had never before been so far away from the precincts of the Wolfsberg. I had even taught her to ride in the court-yard of a summer evening, on a horse borrowed from one of the Duke's squires.

We found the Lady Ysolinde waiting for us at her house, Master Gerard talking to her in the doorway, earnestly and apart. Both of them had a look of much solemnity, as though the matter of their discourse were some very weighty one.

Presently her father kissed her and she came down the steps. I leaped from my horse to help her to the saddle, but the respectable serving-man was before me. So that instead I went about and looked to the buckles and girths, which were all in order, and patted the arching neck of the beautiful milk-white palfrey whereon she rode. Then Master Gerard waved a hand and went within.

And as we fared forth out of the Weiss Thor into the keener air of the country, I thought what a charge I had--to squire two ladies so surpa.s.singly fair, each in her own several graces, as our Helene and the Lady Ysolinde.

No sooner, however, were we past the outer barriers, at which the soldiers of the Duke Casimir kept guard, than a vast, ungainly wight started up from the road-side.

"Jan Lubber Fiend!" cried the Lady Ysolinde; "what do you here?"

The oaf grinned his awful, writhed smile and wriggled his great body after the manner of a puppy desirous of the milk-platter.

"Think you, my lady," said he, cunningly, "that your poor Jan would abide within the precincts of the city house with that funeral ape bidding me do this and do that, sit here and sit there, come in and go out at his pleasure? A thing of dough that I could twist into knots as easily as I can crack my joints."

And of this latter accomplishment he proceeded to give us certain examples which sounded like cannon-shots delivered at close quarters.