Sir Wendelin continued his way through the passages, chambers, halls, and courts.  Everywhere servants, guards, and heyducks swarmed, and from the stables he heard the stamping of many horses, and the jingle of their halter chains as they rattled them against their well-filled mangers.  Choruses of trumpeters played inspiriting fanfares, and from the assembled people in the forecourt a thousand voices shouted again and again:  “Hail to his Grace Duke Greylock, Wendelin the First!  Long may he live!”

The knight bowed graciously to his good people, and when the Chancellor stepped forward, and after a deep reverence set forth in a carefully prepared speech the great services which the duke had rendered to the country, Wendelin listened with polite attention, though he himself was quite ignorant of what the old man was talking about.

Sir Wendelin had lived through so many adventures that it pleased him now to sit peacefully on his throne, and he did his best to be worthy of the honours which the fairy had conferred upon him.  After he had learned the duties of a ruler from A to Z, he returned to Germany to woo his cousin Walpurga.  He led her back to his palace, and for many years they governed the beautiful land together.  All of the five sons which his wife bore to him, came into the world with the grey lock.  They all grew to be brave men and loyal subjects of their father, whom they served faithfully in war, holding fraternally together and greatly enlarging the boundaries of his dukedom by their prowess.

A long time passed and generation after generation of the descendants of the worthy Sir Wendelin followed one another.  The first-born son always bore the name of the progenitor of the family, and the fairy Clementine always appeared at the baptism.  No one ever saw her; but a gentle tinkling through the palace betrayed her presence, and when that ceased, the grey lock on the infant’s temple was always found to have twisted itself into a curl.

At the end of five hundred years, Wendelin XV. was carried to his grave.  No Greylock had ever possessed a more luxuriant grey curl than his, and yet he had died young.  The wise men of the land said that even to the most favoured only a fixed measure of happiness and good luck was granted, and that Wendelin XV. had enjoyed his full share in the space of thirty years.

Certain it is that from childhood everything had prospered with this duke.  His people had expected great things of him when he was only crown prince, and he did not disappoint them when he came to the throne.  Every one had loved him.  Under his leadership the army had marched from one victory to another.  While he held the sceptre one abundant harvest followed another, and he had married the most beautiful and most virtuous daughter of the mightiest prince in the kingdom.

In the midst of a hot conflict, and at the moment that his own army sent up a shout of victory, he met his death.  Everything that the heart of man could desire had been accorded to him, except the one joy of possessing a son and heir.  But he had left the world in the hope that that wish, too, would be fulfilled.