feather in it which I won at the last arrow-shooting."

I saw the fluttering of the fan falter and stop. A light foot went
pattering up the stairway and a door slammed in the tower.

Then I laughed, like the vain, silly boy I was.

"Mistress Helene," I said to myself, "you will find that poor Hugo, whom
you flouted and despised, can yet pay his debts!"

So I put on the fine clothes which I wore on festal days and sallied
forth. Now, though the lower orders still hated my father and all that
came out of the Red Tower, or indeed, for the matter of that, out of the
Wolfsberg, with hardly concealed malice--yet there were many in the city,
specially among those of the upper classes, who began to think well of my
determination to try another way of life than that to which I had been
born. For I made no secret of the matter to Michael Texel and such of his
comrades as joined us in our gatherings.

Indeed, now, when I come to think of it, it seems to me that my father
was the only person of my acquaintance who did not suspect that I was
resolved never to wear either the black robe of Inquisition or the
crimson of Final Judgment.

Yet it wore round to within two years, and indeed rather less, of the
time for my initiation into the mysteries of the Red Axe, and still I
remained at home, an idle boy, playing at single-stick and fence with
the men-at-arms, drinking beer in the evening with my bosom cronies, and
in the well-grounded opinion of all honest people, likely enough to come
to no good.