The rushes in the river rustled dry and cold along the brink.  The leaves of the linden-trees chuckled overhead, rubbing their palms together spitefully.  There was mockery of our foolhardy enterprise in the soft whispering sough of the water, as I heard it lapper beneath the ferry-boat that lay ready to cross to the other side.  Old Hans, the Prince’s ferryman, snored in his boat.  Above in the women’s chambers a light went to and fro.  I judged that it was in the bower of the Lady Ysolinde.  But not a string of my heart moved.  For pity is so weak and love so strong that all my nature was now on the strain forward towards Helene and the Wolfsberg, like an eager hound that pulls at the unslipped leash.

“My love! my love!” I cried in my heart, “I am coming to you, I am going out to find you!  Though I give my life for it, I shall at least see and touch you ere I die.”

For during these last days my love had grown greatly upon me, being of that kind which gathers within a man, banks up, fills out his crevices, and he know it not.  In the Wolfmark there are oft, in the heart of the limestone, caverns where the water sleeps deep and cool, while above, on the thin, rocky crust, the sun beats and the very lizards die for lack of moisture.  It was only now that I had broken up the crust of my nature and found the caverns under, where love was abiding all undreamed of, deep, and eternal as the sea.  It is a great thing and a beautiful to meet love for the first time face to face, not to nod to only as to an acquaintance, and to know how great and masterful he is; to say, “Love, I am yours.  Do with me that which seemeth good to you.  I was strong—­now in your hands am I become weak.  I was proud—­now am I glad to be humble and kneel, waiting your word.  You have made life and death the same thing to me, for the sake of the Beloved.  I am ready to take either from your hands!”

But enough!  We were riding out of the dark pleasaunces of the palace, the leaves were rustling and the sedges blowing.  That was what began it, carrying away my thoughts.

Dessauer rode behind me, letting his horse follow mine, nose to tail.  For, being used to the visitation of the city outposts, I knew the ground thoroughly.

At every hundred yards we were halted, and I answered.  For I had posted the men myself, making sure that Plassenburg should not again be taken by surprise.  On the other hand, I had determined that the spoiler should now be made despoiled, and that the foul den of the Wolf should be cleansed as by fire.

Then, like the breaking up of the Baltic ice in spring, the thought ran through me—­my father and the maid of the Red Tower, what of them?

Why, at the very first (so I told myself), I should set a guard of the best troops in Plassenburg about the Red Tower, and carry them all—­Helene, my father, and old Hanne—­to a safe place till Prince Karl and I had made an end.  With our stark veterans swarming in Thorn, that would easily be done.  And so the plan abode to be altered, broidered, and recast in the imagination of my heart.