A low groan filled the wide hall.  I could feel that my words touched them on the raw.

“Also this very night I saw one of your noblest members tremble with alarm—­for the Society, not for himself, I warrant—­when Gottfried Gottfried spake lightly of your meetings here as of a thing well known.  I am not afraid of my life.  In the sight of my father I went forth from the Red Tower in the company of Michael Texel.  He knew of your place of meeting.  And well I wot that if I am not within the precincts of the Red Tower by midnight, the officers of Duke Casimir and his Judgment Hall will come knocking at these doors of yours.  I ask you, are you ready to open?”

“Rash mortal!” said the voice again to me, “you mistake the White Wolf if you think that she or her children are afraid of any tyrant or of his officers.  You yourself shall die, as has been appointed.  For none may speak lightly of the White Wolf and live to tell the tale!”

“So be it,” I replied, calmly; “but first let me recount to you the story of Hans Pulitz.  Not for the hiding of a belt of gold, as men say, was he condemned.  But because he had plotted against the life of the Duke and of his minister of justice, the Red Axe.  Would you know what happened?  I will tell you briefly: 

“Ten men, accounted strong, held Hans Pulitz.  Ten men could scarce lead him through the court-yard to the chair on which sat Duke Casimir.  I saw him judged.  Was he not of the White Wolf?  Did the White Wolf save him?  Have her teeth ravened for those that condemned him?  Or have you that are of that noble society kept close in your halls and played out your puppet shows, while poor Hans, who was faithful to you to the end, went—­whither?”

A sough of angry whispering filled the room, rising presently into a roar of indignation.

“Traitor!  Murderer!  Spy!” they cried.

“Nay,” said I, “’fore God, Hugo Gottfried was more sorry for the poor deceived slave than any here.  For, in the presence of the Duke, I cried out against the horror.  But being no more than a boy, I was stricken to silence by the hand of a man-at-arms.  Then I saw Hans Pulitz cast loose.  I saw him seized by one man—­even by the Red Axe—­raised high in the air, and flung over the barriers among the ravening and leaping blood-hounds.  I heard the hideous noises that followed—­the yells of a man fighting for his life in a place of fiends.  I shut my ears with my hands, yet could I not shut out that clangor of hell.  I shut my eyes, closer than you have shut them for me now.  I fled, I knew not where, terror pursuing me.  And yet I saw, and do now see, the Duke sitting with crossed hands as if at prayers, and the Red Axe standing motionless before the men-at-arms, pointing with one hand to the Duke’s vengeance!  Shall I tell you now why I am not afraid?”

After hearing these words it was small wonder that they cried yet more against me.

“Death to the traitor—­bloody death—­like that which he has rejoiced in!”