the narrow black gulph between the roadway and the wall, and the
next were past the echoing arch of the great gateway and in the
gray gloaming of the paved court-yard within.

Otto looked around upon the many faces gathered there to catch
the first sight of the little baron; hard, rugged faces, seamed
and weather-beaten; very different from those of the gentle
brethren among whom he had lived, and it seemed strange to him
that there was none there whom he should know.

As he climbed the steep, stony steps to the door of the Baron's
house, old Ursela came running down to meet him. She flung her
withered arms around him and hugged him close to her. "My little
child," she cried, and then fell to sobbing as though her heart
would break.

"Here is someone knoweth me," thought the little boy.

His new home was all very strange and wonderful to Otto; the
armors, the trophies, the flags, the long galleries with their
ranges of rooms, the great hall below with its vaulted roof and
its great fireplace of grotesquely carved stone, and all the
strange people with their lives and thoughts so different from
what he had been used to know.

And it was a wonderful thing to explore all the strange places
in the dark old castle; places where it seemed to Otto no one
could have ever been before.

Once he wandered down a long, dark passageway below the hall,