and suffered in those dark middle ages; of how he saw both the
good and the bad of men, and of how, by gentleness and love and
not by strife and hatred, he came at last to stand above other
men and to be looked up to by all. And should you follow the
story to the end, I hope you may find it a pleasure, as I have
done, to ramble through those dark ancient castles, to lie with
little Otto and Brother John in the high belfry-tower, or to sit
with them in the peaceful quiet of the sunny old monastery
garden, for, of all the story, I love best those early peaceful
years that little Otto spent in the dear old White Cross on the
Hill.

Poor little Otto's life was a stony and a thorny pathway, and it
is well for all of us nowadays that we walk it in fancy and not
in truth.


I.

The Dragon's House.

Up from the gray rocks, rising sheer and bold and bare, stood
the walls and towers of Castle Drachenhausen. A great gate-way,
with a heavy iron-pointed portcullis hanging suspended in the
dim arch above, yawned blackly upon the bascule or falling
drawbridge that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls
and the roadway that winding down the steep rocky slope to the
little valley just beneath. There in the lap of the hills around
stood the wretched straw-thatched huts of the peasants belonging
to the castle - miserable serfs who, half timid, half fierce,