The Duke's standing guard clamored with their spear-butts on the uneven pavements, crying up and down the streets: "To your kennels, devil's brats, Duke Casimir comes riding home!" Then I tell you my small heart beat furiously.

For I knew that if I only kept quiet I should see that which I had never yet seen--the home-coming of our famous foraying Duke.

I had, indeed, seen Duke Casimir often enough in the castle, or striding across the court-yard to speak to my father, for whom he had ever a remarkable affection.

He was a tall, swart, black-a-vised man, with a huge hairy mole on his cheek, and long dog-teeth which showed at the sides of his mouth when he smiled, almost as pleasantly as those of a she-wolf looking out of her den at the hunters.
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.