"Why did you move against this castle?"

"Because I hoped to take it, burn it, and hang or behead its owner."

"Oh, Wilhelm, Wilhelm!" wailed the girl.

"And, having failed, what do you expect?"

"To be hanged, or beheaded, depending on whether your Lordship is the
more expert with a cord or with an axe."

"You called me a coward, and I might have retorted that in doing so you
took advantage of your position as prisoner, but setting that aside,
and speaking as man to man, what ground have you for such an
accusation?"

"We cannot speak as man to man, for I am bound and you are free, but
touching the question of your cowardice, I have heard it said by those
who took part in the defence of my father's castle, when you attacked
it and destroyed it, commanding a vastly superior force, my father
leaped from the wall and dared you to follow him. For a moment, they
told me, it seemed that you would accept the challenge, but you
contented yourself with calling on others to do what you feared to do
yourself, and thus my father, meeting no opposition from a man of his
own rank, was compelled to destroy the unfortunate serfs who stood in
his way and, so cut out a path to safety. In refusing to accept the
plunge he took, you branded yourself a coward, and once a toward always
a coward."

"Oh, Wilhelm," cried Elsa, in deep distress at the young man's lack of