And when I parted from him the old man was so worn out that I looked momently for him to drop on the rough causeway stones of the street.

Many pictures of my youth passed before me as I mounted towards the castle that night.  I remembered the ride of the wild horsemen returning from the raid such long years agone, the old man who carried the babe, and the Red Axe himself, who now lay dead in the Tower—­my father, Casimir’s Justicer, clad now as then in crimson from head to heel.

Ere long I arrived at the Wolfsberg, and as I came near the Red Tower I saw that the gate was open.  A little crowd of men with swords and partisans was issuing tumultuously from it.  Then came six carrying a coffin.  I stood aside to let them pass.  And not till the last one brushed me did I ask what was their business abroad with a dead man at such a time of the night.

“’Tis one that had wrought much fear in his time,” answered the soldier, for I had lighted on a sententious fellow—­“one that made many swift ends, and now has come to one himself.”

“You mean Gottfried Gottfried, the Duke’s Justicer?” said I, speaking like one in a dream.

“Aye,” he replied.  “The Duke Otho is mightily afraid of the plague, and will not have a dead body over-night in his castle.  Since they condemned the Saint Helena, God wot, the Duke is a fear-stricken man.  He sleeps with half a dozen black riders at the back of his door, as though that made him any safer if a handful of minted gold were dealt out among the rascals.  But when was a Prince ever wise?”

“My father’s funeral,” thought I.  “Well, to-night it is, indeed, ’let the dead bury their dead’; Helene is yet alive!”

Surely I am not wanting in feeling, yet my heart was strangely chill and cold.  Nevertheless, I turned and followed the procession a little way towards the walls.  But even as I went, lo! the bell of the Wolfsberg slowly and brazenly clanged ten.  I stopped.  I had but two hours in which to visit the Little Playmate and tell her all.

“Good-bye, father,” said I, standing with my hat off; “so you would wish me to do—­you who met your God standing up—­you who did an ill business greatly, because it was yours and you were born to it.  Teach me, my father, to be worthy of you in this strait, to the like of which surely never was man brought before!”

The men-at-arms clattered roughly down the street, shifting their burden as if it had been so much kindling-wood, and quarrelling as to their turns.  I heard their jests coming clear up the narrow street from far away.

I stood still as they approached a corner which they must turn.

I waved my hand to the coffin.

“Fare you well, true father; to-night and to-morrow may God help me also, like you, to meet my fate standing up!”

And the curve of the long street hid the ribald procession.  My father was gone.  I had made choice.  The dead was burying his dead.