“Art a wise forester.  Where got you that wisdom?”

“Why,” said the man, modestly, “partly by nature, partly because I also have been married, and so have graduated in the wars.”

“It is the same thing,” said the Chancellor, “according to your own telling.”

“Aye, sir,” quoth the man, “but yet the young fellows will take no warning.  ‘It is better to marry than to burn,’ said the other Apostle.  But methinks he knew nothing about it, being no better than a bachelor, or he would have amended it, ’It is better to burn than to marry and burn.’”

“Ha! art also a theologe, Sir Woodman?” cried Dessauer.  “But enough; this touches on the Inquisition and the Holy Office.  Let us despatch.”

All this time the High Councillor had been gazing by fits and starts at the links of the necklace, turning it about and viewing it from every-angle.  It was composed of short bars of gold laid horizontally three and three together, and bound together with short chains of gold.  And on each of the bars there was engraven a crest.  Letters also were on the bars, cut in plain deep script.

“Now tell your tale and tell it briefly—­that is, if brevity be in you, which I doubt,” said Dessauer.

“As I said before,” quoth the forester, “I was in the wars; I mean not only in the wars with womenkind, but also with mankind.  And among other things I remember the night of the Duke Casimir’s famous ride, when he took Plassenburg, because there was scarce a sober man within the walls.”

“And his Highness the Prince Karl away on Baltic side with his men, else had Casimir never set foot within the city!” cried the High Chancellor.

“Ah, like enow,” said the woodman, “I ken naught of that.  But this I do know, Plassenburg was taken with much slaughter and grievous loss of goodly gear.  They captivated many noble prisoners also, and, because I slept in the stables, they took me to help lead the horses.  Yet I was not ill-treated, save that I had to keep pace with the horsemen upon my feet.  But I saw the Prince—­”

“Which Prince?  Speak plainly,” said the High Councillor, gruffly.

“Why, the Prince Dietrich Hohenfriedberg of Plassenburg,” said the man.  “He, as your well-born Wisdom remembers, was then the only Prince in these parts—­a good man, and born of the noblest, though not of the capacity of his present Highness the Prince Karl.”

“Proceed somewhat faster.  Yon move as slowly as one of your own forest oxen at the wood-hauling,” cried the well-born Councillor in a testy tone.

“We were long in riding over to Thorn—­two days and nights upon the way.  It was a terrible time, and all the while those condemned beasts of the Wolfmark, Casimir’s Black Riders, driving us with their spears like prick-goads, till our backs were all bleeding, gentle and simple alike.  So at midnight of the third day we came to the city of Thorn, and up through the streets to the Wolfsberg.  There was no gladness in the town, such as there would have been in our city had there been news of a victory, or even of some hundreds of the enemy’s horses well driven.  For then as now the town hated its Duke.  And so they were all silent.