was soon left alone, for, with another question as briefly asked and
answered, the click of swords crossed and uncrossed before and behind
him, and the screechy grind of bolts, Michael passed out of sight within.
While as for me, I was left to twirl my thumbs, and wish that I had
stayed at home to watch the nimble fingers of the Playmate busy at her
sewing, and the rounded slenderness of her sweet body set against the
light of evening, which would at that hour be shining through the windows
of the Red Tower.

Nevertheless, it was no use repining or repenting. Here was I, Hugo
Gottfried, the son of the Red Axe, at the inner port of a treasonable
society. It was certainly a curious position; but even thus early I had
begun to consider myself a sort of amateur of strange situations, and I
admit that I found a certain stimulus in the thought that in an hour I
might have ceased to be heir to the office of Hereditary Justicer of the
ducal province of the Wolfmark.

Presently through the door there came one clothed in the long white
garments of a Brother of Pity, the eye-holes dark and cavernous, and the
eyes shining through the mask with a look as if the wearer were much more
frightened than those who looked upon him.

"Child of the White Wolf," he said, in a shaking voice, "would you dare
all and become one of the companions of the mysteries?"

But the accent of his voice struck me, the son of Gottfried Gottfried,
the dweller in the enclosure of the Red Tower, as painfully hollow and
pretentious. I had looked upon real terror, even plumbed some of the
grimmer mysteries of existence, and I had no fears. On the contrary, my
spirits rose, and I declared my readiness to follow this paltering,