But we might find neither tournament nor merchant caravan.

Then there would be trouble and hardship for us, and perhaps, at times, an aching void under our belts.

I had often suffered the like.
Ours, you see, was not to be a flower-strewn journey of tinselled prince to embowered princess.

Before our return to Styria, Max would probably receive what he needed to make a man of him--hard knocks and rough blows in the real battle of life.

Above all, he would learn to know the people of whom this great world is composed, and would return to Hapsburg Castle full of all sorts of noxious heresies, to the everlasting horror of the duke and the duchess.