I waited, with the axe swinging loosely in one hand.  A head bobbed up, clad in a steel cap.  Bat as the unseen feet propelled it upward the Red Axe took little reck of the head.  Betwixt the steel cap and the rim of steel of the body armor appeared a gray line of leather jerkin and a thinner white line of neck.  The Red Axe swung.  I bethought me that it was a bad light to cut off calves’ heads in.  But the Red Axe made no mistake.  I had learned my trade.  There was not even a groan—­only a dull thud some way underneath, such as you may hear when the children of the quarter play football on the streets.

Then the foremost of the assailants were blocked by the fallen body, and the feet of the men behind were stayed as the strange round plaything rebounded among them.

“Back!” they cried, who were in front.

“Forward!” replied those who were hindmost and knew nothing.

“Come, men—­on and finish it!” cried the voice which had commanded the powder-flask and the tree—­the voice I now knew to be that of Duke Otho himself.

But the kick-ball argument of the Red Axe was mightily discouraging to those immediately concerned, and as I felt the muscles of my right arm and waited, I could hear Otho reasoning, threatening, coaxing, all in vain.  Then his tones mounted steadily into hot anger.  He reviled his followers for dogs, cowards, curs who had eaten his bread and now would not rid him of his enemies.

“A thousand rix-dollars to the man who kills Hugo Gottfried!” he shouted.  “But, hear ye, save the girl alive!”

Yet not a man would attempt the first hazard of the stair.

“Knaves, traitors, curs!” he cried; “would that there were so much as a single true man among you—­but there is not one worth spitting upon!”

“Cur yourself!” growled a man, somewhere in the dark—­“you have most at stake in this.  Try the stair yourself if you are so keen.  We will follow fast enough!”

“God strike me dead if I do not!” shouted Otho; “if it were only to shame you cowards.”

He paused to prepare his weapons.

“Follow me, men!” he shouted again; “all together!”

Again there was the clatter of iron-shod feet on the stone steps beneath me.

My grip on the Red Axe became like iron, but my joints were loose and swung easily as a flail swings on well-seasoned leathers.

“Welcome, Otho von Reuss!” I cried; “ye could not be crowned without the death of Helene my wife!  Come up hither and I will crown thee once for all with the iron crown.”

There, at last, was mine enemy at the turn of the stair, rushing furiously upon me, sword in hand.

“Traitor!” he cried, and his sword was almost at my breast, so fast he came.

“Murderer!” I shouted.

And almost ere I was aware the Red Axe flashed as it swept full circle with scarce a pause, but it took the head of a man with it on its way.