While he spoke thus he looked at me with his green eyes half closed.

“But,” said I, calmly enough, though my heart beat fast, “I am but a lad untried.  I may never rise beyond a private soldier.  I may be killed at the first assault of my virgin campaign.”

Master Gerard looked up quickly.  He beckoned to his daughter.  For though by no faintest gesture had he betrayed his knowledge of her presence, he had yet clearly known it all the time.

“Ysolinde,” he said, “bring hither thy crystal!”

The maid disappeared and presently returned with a ball in her hand of some substance which looked like misty glass.

“I have been looking in it already,” she said, “ever since Hugo Gottfried came out of the Red Tower.”

Her voice was soft and even, with the same sough in it as of the wind among poplar-trees which I had heard in the rustle of her silken dress as she came up the stair.

“And what,” asked her father, “have you seen in the crystal, child of my heart?”

He looked up at me with some little shamefacedness, or so I imagined.

“I am a dry old man of the law,” he went on, “dusty of heart as these black books up yonder—­books not of magic but of fact, of crime and pain and penalty.  But this my daughter Ysolinde, wise from a child, solaces herself with the white, innocent magic, such as helps man and brings him nearer that which is unseen.”

The maid knelt by her father’s knee, and held the crystal ball in the hollow of her hands against the sable of his velvet robe.  She passed one hand swiftly twice or thrice over her brow, as though to clear away some cobwebs, gossamer thin, that had folded themselves across her vision.  Then, in the same wistful, wind-soft voice, she began to speak.  And as she spoke all that I had loved and known began to pass from before me.  I forgot my father.  I forgot the Red Tower.  I forgot (God forgive me, yet help it I could not!) the little Princess Playmate and her sweetest eyes.  I forgot all else save this lithe, serpentine maiden with the massive crown of burned and tawny gold upon her head.

“I see,” she began, “a long street and many men struggling on it—­the Wolf of the Wolfmark, the Eagle of Plassenburg are face to face.  I see Red Karl the Prince.  The young Wolf has the better of it.  He bites his lip and drives hard.  The Prince is down.  He is wounded.  He is like to die.  The Wolf will drive all to destruction.

“But see—­” she sighed, and paused the while as if that which she saw next touched her—­“from the swelter in the rear comes a young soldier.  He has lost his helmet.  I see his head.  It is a fair head with crisp curls.  He has a sword in his hand and he lays well about him.  He cuts a way to the Prince—­he bestrides his body.

“Give way there, scullions, that I may see more!” she cried, impetuously, and waved her hand before her eyes, which were fixed expressionless on the crystal.  “I see him again.  Well done, young soldier!  Valiantly laid on.  It is great sword-play.  Bravo!  The Wolf is down.  The Eagle of Plassenburg is up—­I can see no more!”