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.”