“It is like enough,” said Dessauer, with a quick look, the look of a keen fencer when he sees an advantage.  “I have often enough seen the palm of your hand approach Karl Miller’s Son’s treasury when I kept the moneys.”

I saw the face of Otho twitch angrily.  But he had evidently made up his mind to command his temper, sure of having that up his sleeve which would sufficiently answer all taunts.

“You mistake me,” he said, with more subtlety than I had expected from the brute.  “I had not meant to prove ungrateful.  I am but newly come to my own here in the Wolfmark.  I have learned from your host, Bishop Peter, how precious a thing forgiveness is.  And now I am resolved to practise it.  There is a time to love and a time to hate; a time to war and a time to be at peace.  This is the last news I had from the holy clerk whose revenues I pay.  So lay it to heart, as I have done.”

“Glad am I,” said Dessauer, courteously, as if he had been turning a phrase on the terrace at Plassenburg—­“glad am I that in your hour you are to be mindful of old friends, for they are like old wine, which grows better and mellower with the years.”

“It is indeed well,” said Otho von Reuss, ironically.  “I have known the Chancellor Dessauer many years, and he grows more honorable and more wise with each decade.

“But now ’tis with this young man that I would speak,” he said, changing his tone.  “He at least is mine own servant, and so I have other words for him.  Hugo Gottfried, you remember that you insulted me, striking me on the face with a glove, because I offered certain civilities to a maid of honor to the Princess of Plassenburg.  You wounded me in the arm.  Your father, of whose death I have heard but now, cast me forth like a cur-dog from a chamber window.  Between you ye have shamed me, and would shame me worse—­for the sake of the murderess of mine uncle, Duke Casimir.”

“Well do you know that the Lady Helene is innocent of that crime, or any other,” said I; “she is purer than your eyes can look upon or your heart conceive.  Yet, solely because she knows you for the foul thing you are, Helene lies condemned in your dungeons to-night.  I ask you to grant me but one boon—­that I may die with her!”

“Nay, my friend, gentlest squire of dames, defender of the oppressed, I have better things in store for you and your maid than that!”

He paused and looked a long while at me, as it seemed, chewing the cud of revenge upon that which he had to say to me.

At last he came a step nearer, that he might look into my eyes.

“Hugo Gottfried,” he said, slowly, “son of Gottfried Gottfried, you are my servant now.  I said that I would forgive you all for the sake of old times in exile together.  And now you and I are both again in our own land.  They that kept us out of our offices are dead, and we standing in their places.  There is a maid down there in the Wolfsberg dungeons who to-morrow must meet her fate.”