"Open, in the name of the Duke!" cried, clamorously, many fierce voices
without. I heard the rush and scuffle of a multitude of feet. The hands
that had held me abruptly loosened their grip, and I was free. I raised
my bound wrists to my brow and tried to push the bandage back. But it was
firmly tied, and it was but dimly that I saw the hall of the White Wolf
filled with the armed men of the Duke's body-guard, boisterously
laughing, with their hands on their sides, or kicking over the mock
throne covered with white cloth, the coils of rope, the axes of painted
wood, and the other properties of this very faint-hearted Fehmgericht.

"But what have we here?" they cried, when they came upon me, bound and
helpless, with the bandage only half pushed off my eyes.

"Heave him up on his pins, and let us look at him," quoth a burly
guardsman. "I trust he is no one of any account. I want not to see
another such job done on a poor scheming knave like that last, when the
Duke Casimir settled accounts with Hans Pulitz!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed his companion; "a rare jest, i' faith; 'tis the son of
our own Red Axe--a prisoner of the White Wolf and ready for the edge. We
came not a moment too soon, youngster. What do you here?"

"Why," said I, "it chanced that I spoke slightingly of their precious
nonsense of a White Wolf. But they dared not do me harm. They were all
more frightened than a giggling maiden is of the dark, when no man is
with her."

Then I saw my father at the end of the hall. He came towards me, clad in
his black Tribunal costume.