CHAPTER II

THE LITTLE PLAYMATE COMES HOME


But there was to be no Session in the Hall of Judgment that night. The
great court-yard, roofed with the vault of stars and lit by the moon, was
to see all done that remained to be done. The torches were planted in the
iron hold-fasts round about. The plunder of the captured towns and
castles was piled for distribution on the morrow, and no man dared keep
back so much as a Brandenburg broad-piece or a handful of Bohemian
gulden. For the fear of the Duke and the Duke's dog-kennels was upon
every stout fighting-kerl. They minded the fate of Hans Pulitz, who had
kept back a belt of gold, and had gotten himself flung by the heels with
no more than the stolen belt upon him, into the kennels where the Duke's
blood-hounds howled and clambered with their fore-feet on the
black-spattered barriers. And they say that the belt of gold was all that
was ever seen again of the poor rascal. Hans Pulitz--who had hoped for so
many riotous evenings among the Fat Pigs of Thorn and so many draughts of
the slippery wine of the Rheingan careering down the poor thirsty throat
of him. But, alas for Hans Pulitz! the end of all imagining was no more
than five minutes of snapping, snarling, horrible Pandemonium in the
kennels of the Wolfsberg, and the scored gold chain on the ground was all
that remained to tell his tale. Verily, there were few Achans in Duke
Casimir's camp.

And it is small wonder after this, that scant and sparse were the jests
played on the grim master of the Wolfsberg, or that the bay of a