The Red Axe. S. R. Crockett

Gottfried, slowly, "once!"

      "And did he say that you cut well?" the little maid went on, with a strange, wilful persistence in her idea.

      "He neither said that I did well nor yet that I did ill," replied

       Gottfried Gottfried.

      "Ah!" said Helene, "that was just like the Prince. He was afraid of flattering you and making you unfit for your work. But if he said nothing, depend upon it he was pleased."

      "Thank you, Princess," said my father. "I think he was well enough pleased."

      Just then there came a noise that I knew—a sound which chilled every bone in my body.

      It was the clear ring of a steady footstep upon the pavement without. It came heavily and slowly across the yard. The outer hasp of our door clicked. The door opened, and the footstep began to ascend the stair.

      There was but one man in the world who dared make so free with the

       Red Tower and its occupant. Our visitor was without doubt the Duke

       Casimir himself.

      For the first time I saw my father manifestly disconcerted. The little maid's life might be worth no more than a torn ballad if Duke Casimir happened to be in evil humor or had repented him of his mercy of the past night. I saw the Red Axe look aimlessly about for a hiding-place. There was a niche round which certain cloaks and coverlets were hung.

      "Come in here," he said, abruptly.

      "Why should I hide, whoever comes?" asked the Little Playmate, indignantly.

      "It is the Duke Casimir," whispered my father, hurriedly, stirred as I had never seen him. "Come hither quickly!"

      But the little maid struck an attitude, and tapped the floor with her foot.

      "I will not," she said. "What is the Duke Casimir to me that am a

       Princess? If he is good, I will give him my hand to kiss!"

      But at this point I rushed from the ladder-head, and, taking her in my arms, I sped up the turret stairs with her out upon the leads, my hand over her mouth all the time.

      And as I ran I could hear the Duke trampling upward not twenty steps in the rear. I opened the trap-door and went out into the clear morning sunshine. And only the turn of the stair prevented Casimir from seeing me go up the narrow turret corkscrew with my little white burden.

      Then I heard voices beneath, and I knew, as if I had seen it, that my father stood up straight at the salute. Presently the voices lowered, and I knew also that the Duke Casimir was unbending as he did to none else in his realm save to the Hereditary Justicer of the Wolfmark.

      But I had my hands full with the little Princess. I dared not go down the stairs. I dared not for a moment take my palm off her mouth. For as like as not she would call out for the Duke Casimir to come and deliver her from my cruelty. So I stuck to my post, even though I knew that I angered her.

      The morning was warm for a winter's day in Thorn, and I pulled open my brown blanket and wrapped her coseyly within it, chilling myself to the bone as I did so.

      It seemed ages before the Duke strode down the stair again, and took his way across the yard, with my father, in black, after him. For so he was used to dress when he went to the Hall of Judgment, to be present and assist at the discovery of crime by means of the Minor and Extreme Questions.

      Then, so soon as they were fairly gone, I took my hand from the mouth of the Little Playmate, and carried her down-stairs; which as soon as I had done, she slapped my face soundly.

      "I will never, never speak to you any more so long as I live, rude boy—common street brat!" she said, biting her under-lip in ineffectual, petulant anger. "Listen, never as long as I live! So do not think it! Upstart, so to treat a lady and a Princess!"

      And with that she burst into tears.

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      THE BLOOD-HOUNDS ARE FED

      But the Princess-Playmate spoke to me again. I was even permitted to call her Helene. Me she addressed uniformly as "Hugo Gottfried." But neither her name nor mine interfered with our plays, which were wholly happy and undisturbed by quarrelling—at least, so long as I did exactly what she wished me to do.

      On these terms life was made easy for me from that day forth. No longer did I wistfully watch the children of the street from the lonely window of the Red Tower. They might spit all day on the harled masonry at the foot of the wall for aught I cared. I no longer desired their society. Had I not that of a real Princess, and if my companion was inclined to be a little wayward and domineering—why, was not that the very birthright of all Princesses?

      Helene and I had great choice of plays within the walls of the solemn castle. So long as we kept to the outer yard and did not intrude upon the Duke's side of the enclosure, we were free to come and go at our pleasure. For even Casimir himself was soon well accustomed to see us run about like puppies, slapping and tumbling, and minded us no more than the sparrows that pecked in the litter of the stable-yard. Indeed, I think he had forgotten all about the strange home-coming of the Little Playmate.

      The kennels of the blood-hounds especially were full of fascination for us. That fatal deep-mouthed clamoring at morn and even drew us like a magnet. Helene, in particular, never tired of gazing between the chinks of the fence of cloven pine-wood at the great russet-colored beasts with their flashing white teeth, over which the heavy dewlaps fell. And when my father, with his red livery upon him and a loaded whip in his hand, once a day opened the tall, narrow door and went within, we thought him brave as a god. Then the way the fierce beasts shrank cowering from him, the fashion in which they crouched on their bellies and heaved their shoulders up without taking their hind quarters off the ground, equally delighted and surprised us.

      "Your father is almost as great a man as my father," said the Princess Helene, who, however, was rapidly forgetting her dignity. Indeed, already it had become little more than a fairy-tale to her. And that was perhaps as well.

      One day, when I was about thirteen, or a little older, my father came out with a new short mantle in his hand, red like his own.

      "Come hither, Hugo Gottfried!" he said, for he had learned the trick of the name from Helene.

      I went to him tardy-foot, greatly wondering.

      "Here, chick," he said, in his kindly fashion, "it is time you were beginning to learn your duties. Come with me to-day into the kennels of the blood-hounds."

      But I hung back, shifting the new mantle uneasily on my shoulders, yet not daring to throw it off.

      "I do not want to go, father," said I, edging away in the direction of the Playmate.

      "What, lad!" he cried, slapping me on the shoulder; "they will not hurt thee with that cloak on. They know their masters better—as their fathers and mothers knew our fathers. Have we, the Gottfrieds, been the Hereditary Justicers of the Wolfmark for six hundred years to be afraid now of the blood-hounds that are kept to hunt the Duke's enemies and to feed on the Duke's carrion?"

      "It is not that I am afraid of the dogs, father," I made answer to him. "I would quickly enough go among them, if only you would let me go without this scarlet cloak."

      My father laughed heartily and loudly—that is, for him. A quick ear might have heard him quite three feet away.

      "Silly one!" he exclaimed, "do you not know that even the Duke Casimir dares not set foot in the kennels—no, nor I myself, save in the garb they know and fear—as indeed do all men in this state."

      Still I hung my head down and scraped the gravel with my foot.

      "Haste thee," said my father, roughly.