“Ah,” he said, “why this night?”

“Great things may happen this night, my Lord Bishop!” said I, and glanced significantly in the direction of Plassenburg.

“Ah,” said the Bishop again, “so then the power of Holy Church may not be the only restraint upon Duke Otho by to-morrow at this time!”

And, calling his attendants, the suave and far-seeing prelate made his way with gravity and reverend ceremony down the streets of Thorn towards his palace.

So, bit by bit, the long day passed away, and I thought it would never end.  For Helene and I sat and waited for that which might happen, with beating and anxious hearts.  Ofttimes I ran to the top of the Red Tower, and sometimes it seemed that I could see a moving cloud of dust, and sometimes a flurry of startled cattle afar on the horizon.  But till dusk there came to our aching eyes no better evidence that the lads of Plassenburg were coming to our rescue and to the deliverance of the down-trodden city of Thorn.

The soldiers of the garrison were still encamped in the great square.  There was also a constant swarming and mustering of men upon the ramparts of the Wolfsberg.  Duke Otho had certainly enough men to make a creditable resistance.  True, they were Free Companions, and without other loyalty than that which they owed to their paymaster.

And beneath this warlike show lay the city, rebellious and turbulent to the core, the merchants longing for unhampered rights of trade and security in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labors, the craftsmen claiming freedom to work in their guilds without a payment of labor-bond tithes to the Duke, and especially without the fear of being snatched away at any moment from their benches and looms to join in his forays and incursions.

Towards the gloaming I had come down from the roof of the tower, and was standing, gloomy, and little like a bridegroom, at the little window whence I had so often looked down upon the playing children of Thorn.  Suddenly a great hand was reached up from the pavement, a folded paper was thrust in at the lattice, and I saw the face of the Lubber Fiend looking up at me from the street below.

“Come up hither, good Jan,” I cried to him.  “I will run and open the gate!”

But the Lubber Fiend only shook his head till his ears flapped like burdocks in the wind by the wood edges.

“Jan will come none within that gate to tell where he has been,” he said.  “Jan may be a fool, but he knows better than that.”

“And where have you been?” I asked, eagerly.

Jan the Lubber Fiend stood on his tiptoes and whispered up to me with his elbows on the sill.

“You are sure the Duke is not behind you?”

“There is none here—­except my wife,” I said, smiling.  And I liked speaking the word.

“I have seen the great Prince,” said Jan, nodding backward, and smiling mysteriously, “and he is coming, but not by himself.  There are such a peck of mad fellows out there.  There will not be much to eat in Thorn when they all come in.  Better make a good dinner to-day, that is my advice to you.  And I was bid to tell you that when all was ready for their coming a fire is to be lighted on a high place, and then the Prince will come to the gates.”