Her great, innocent, childish eyes looked elfishly through the black socket holes, sparkling with a fairy merriment, and her tangled floss of sunny hair escaped from the string at the back and fell tumultuously upon her shoulders.
And even as I looked, standing silent and trembling, with a little balancing step she danced up to the Red Axe itself where it stood angled against the block, and seizing it by the handle high up near the head she staggered towards the bed with it.
Then came my words back to my mouth with a rush.
"For the Holy Virgin's sake, little maid, put the Red Axe down!" I cried, whisperingly.

"You know not what you do!" Then even as I spoke I saw that my father had drawn himself up in bed, and that he too was staring at the strange, elfish figure.

Gottfried Gottfried, as I remember him in these days, was a tall, dark, heavily browed man, with a shock of bushy blue-black hair, of late silvering at the temples--grave, sombre, quiet in all his actions.
But what was my surprise as the little maid came nearer to the bed with her pretty dancing movement, carrying the axe much as if it had been an over-heavy babe, to see the Duke's Justicer suddenly skip over the far side of the bedstead and stand with his red cloak about him, watching her..