The shadow of the Red Tower, the stain of the Red Axe, was over us both so long as we abode on the Wolfsberg.

Yet what it cost us to depart--at least till we were out of the gates of the city--I cannot write down, for to both of us the first waygoing seemed bitter as death.
I remember it well.

My father had been busy all the morning with his grim work on the day when we were to ride away.

A gang of malefactors who had wasted a whole country-side with their cruelty had been brought in.

And, as it was suspected that other more important villains were yet to be caught, there had been the repeated pain of the Extreme Question, and now there remained but the falling of the Red Axe to settle all accounts.