But I had never seen the Duke of all the Wolfmark come riding home ere
daybreak, laden with the plunder of captured castles and the rout of
deforced cities. For at such times my father would carefully lock the
door on me, and confine me to my little sleeping-chamber--from whence I
could see nothing but the square of smooth pavement on which the
children chalked their games, and from which they cried naughtily up at
me, the poor hermit of the Red Tower. But this night my father would be
with the Duke, and I should see all. For high or low there was none in
the empty Red Tower to hinder or forbid.

As I waited, thrilling with expectation, I heard beneath me the
quickening pulse-beat of the town. The watch hurried here and there,
hectoring, threatening, and commanding. But, in spite of all, men
gathered as soon as their backs were turned in the alleys and street
openings. Clusters of heads showed black for a moment in some darksome
entry, cried "U-g-g-hh!" with a hateful sound, and vanished ere the
steel-clad veterans of the Duke's guard could come upon them. It was like
the hide-and-seek which I used to play with Boldo, my blood-hound puppy,
among the dusty waste of the lumber-room over the Hall of Judgment,
before my father took him back to the kennels for biting Christian's
Elsa, a child who lived in the lower Guard opposite to the Red Tower.

But this was a stranger hide-and-seek than mine and Boldo's had been. For
I saw one of the men who cried hatefully to the guard stumble on the
slippery ice; and lo! or ever he had time to cry out or gather himself
up, the men-at-arms were upon him. I saw the glitter of stabbing steel
and heard the sickening sound of blows stricken silently in anger. Then
the soldiers took the man up by head and heels carelessly, jesting as
they went. And I shuddered, for I knew that they were bringing him to the
horrible long sheds by the Red Tower through which the wind whistled. But