For I had posted the men myself, making sure that Plassenburg should not again be taken by surprise.

On the other hand, I had determined that the spoiler should now be made despoiled, and that the foul den of the Wolf should be cleansed as by fire.
Then, like the breaking up of the Baltic ice in spring, the thought ran through me--my father and the maid of the Red Tower, what of them?
Why, at the very first (so I told myself), I should set a guard of the best troops in Plassenburg about the Red Tower, and carry them all--Helene, my father, and old Hanne--to a safe place till Prince Karl and I had made an end.

With our stark veterans swarming in Thorn, that would easily be done.

And so the plan abode to be altered, broidered, and recast in the imagination of my heart.
We were soon out on the darksome, unguarded road, and after that I steered chiefly by the lights of the palace behind me, Dessauer saying no word, but riding like a man-at-arms close behind me.
We had reached the crown of the green hill over whose slopes the path to the Wolf markwinds--the path by which, doubtless, Helene had travelled the night of the duel.
As I came to the summit, mounting the steepest part slowly, I was aware of a figure dark against the sky, no more apparent than a blacker patch of night where all was dark.

It was in shape as of a horseman sitting his steed on the crest of the hill.
Instantly I drew my pistol, in which I had become expert.
"Your name and business ?" cried I to the shape on the hill-side.