He stared at the floor, absorbed in his own gloomy thoughts, while my father regarded him with his eyes as though he had been a lad in his ’prenticing who needed encouragement to persevere.

“Duke,” he said, steadily, “you have borne the rule many years, and I have stood behind you.  Have I ever advised you wrong?  Make peace with the young man, your nephew; he is now only the Count von Reuss, but one day he will be Duke Otho.  And if he be rightly guided he may be a brave ruler yet.  But if not, and he gather in his hand the various seditions and confused turbulences in the Dukedom, why, a worse thing may befall.”

“You advise me,” said the Duke, lifting his head and looking at his Justicer, “to recall my nephew and risk all that threatened us ere he fled to the Prince of Plassenburg—­Karl, the Miller’s Son.”

Gottfried Gottfried continued to run his thumb to and fro along the edge of the Red Axe.

“Even so,” he replied, without raising his head; “give him the command of the Black Riders of the Guard, who, as it is, adore him.  Let him try his ’prentice hand on Bamberg and Reichenan.  And if he offend, why, then it will be time to apply for further advice to this chancellor in the Red Robe, whose face so shines with wisdom.”

The Duke rose.

“Well, on your head be it!” he said.

“Nay,” said my father, “I but advise, it is for you to decide, my Lord.  If Duke Casimir sees a better way of it, why, then the words of his servant are but as the tunes that the east wind whistles through the key-hole.”

And at the mention of key-holes I imagined that I saw my father’s eyes rest on the latchet crevice.  So I bethought me that it was time for me to be retiring to bed.  To my room, therefore, I went straightway, tiptoeing on the points of my hose.  And with ears cocked I heard my father attend the Duke to the door, and on across the yard, lest any night-wandering traitor should take a fancy to make a hole in the back of Duke Casimir of the Wolfmark.

Presently came my father in again, and I heard his foot climb steadily up to my room.  The door opened, and never was I in so deep a sleep.  He turned down the coverlet to see that I was undressed—­but that I had seen to.  Whereat he departed fully satisfied.

Nevertheless this interview left me with a great feeling of insecurity.  If the Duke Casimir were thus full of fears, doubts, misgivings, whence came the fierce and cruel courage with which he dominated his liege burghers and harassed the country round about for a hundred leagues?  The cunning of a weak man?  Say, rather, the contrivance of a strong servant to hide the frailty of a weak master.

Then first it was that I saw that my father Gottfried Gottfried was the true ruler of the Wolfmark, and that the man who had carried me on his shoulders and played with the little Helene was—­at least, so long as Duke Casimir lived—­the greatest man in all the Dukedom and first Councillor of State, whether the matter were one of peasant or Kaiser.