The great house in the centre was the Baron's Hall, the part to
the left was called the Roderhausen; between the two stood a
huge square pile, rising dizzily up into the clear air high
above the rest - the great Melchior Tower.

At the top clustered a jumble of buildings hanging high aloft in
the windy space a crooked wooden belfry, a tall, narrow watch-
tower, and a rude wooden house that clung partly to the roof of
the great tower and partly to the walls.

>From the chimney of this crazy hut a thin thread of smoke would
now and then rise into the air, for there were folk living far
up in that empty, airy desert, and oftentimes wild, uncouth
little children were seen playing on the edge of the dizzy
height, or sitting with their bare legs hanging down over the
sheer depths, as they gazed below at what was going on in the
court-yard. There they sat, just as little children in the town
might sit upon their father's door-step; and as the sparrows
might fly around the feet of the little town children, so the
circling flocks of rooks and daws flew around the feet of these
air-born creatures.

It was Schwartz Carl and his wife and little ones who lived far
up there in the Melchior Tower, for it overlooked the top of the
hill behind the castle and so down into the valley upon the
further side. There, day after day, Schwartz Carl kept watch
upon the gray road that ran like a ribbon through the valley,
from the rich town of Gruenstaldt to the rich town of
Staffenburgen, where passed merchant caravans from the one to
the other - for the lord of Drachenhausen was a robber baron.