He paused, and then, his countenance suddenly changing, he looked fearfully and fixedly at the chair.

“But, little maid, my own Helene,” he cried, in a loud, gasping, alarmed tone, “what is this, best beloved?  Why, you are sewing at a shroud?  Surely such funeral-trappings become not bridals.  A shroud—­and there is blood upon it!  Put it down—­put it down, I pray you!”

The red flames on the fire crackled suddenly up about the back log and cast dancing shadows on his face.

“Lie down and rest, dear father,” I said softly to him, “the Little Playmate is not here—­I, Hugo, your son, am alone beside you.”

“Hugo,” he said, instantly appeased, and passing a lean arm about me, “my good son, my brave boy!  You will be kind to the little Princess.  She loves you.  There is no man so beloved as you in all the city of Thorn.  Many would have loved her besides Otho.  Ah, but I threw him out of the window there.  I threw a Grand Duke out of a window!  Ha! ha! it was the bravest jest!”

He laughed a little at intervals, as at a tale that will bear infinite repetition.  “I, Gottfried Gottfried, threw a proximate reigning Prince out of the window!  How Casimir laughed!  The thing pleased him well.  And the little maid, do you remember her, Hugo?  How she would teach me—­me, the Red Axe of Thorn—­how to dance that first night, and how totteringly she carried the Red Axe?  The little one took heart that night.  She will have a happy future, I know; so blessed, far away from this dark and damned place of the Wolfsberg.  I am glad she is not here to see me die.  That is a sight for men, not for fair young loving women.”

“Hush, my father,” I said, touching his dank brow; “you are not going to die.  You will yet live to be strong and well, a man among men.”

For one tells these things to dying men.  And they smile and pass us by, amused at our childish ignorance, as you and I shall one day smile upon those others.  And even thus did my father.

“Nay, Hugo, I am sped,” he answered.  “This night ends all.  The door I have oped for so many is opening from within for me.  God’s mercy be on a sinful man!  Ere the light of to-morrow’s dawn the Duke’s Justicer must face the Tribunal that has no assessor and no court of appeal.”

He threw back the cloak which served him as a mantle, and crying, “Give me your hand, Hugo!” Gottfried Gottfried staggered to his feet.

“I will die standing up,” he said, bending his brows and gazing about him uncertainly.  He pointed to the walls of the garret.  The fire was flickering low, but still making the place light enough to see easily.  There beside the bed was the Red Axe, with its shining edge undimmed, leaning against the block.  There across it was the crimson mask which was never more to bind his eyes as he did the office of final dread.