And there we played single-stick, smite-jacket, skittles, bowls--aye, and drank deep of the city ale--the very thinnest brew that was ever passed by a bribed and muzzy ale-taster.

All this was mightily pleasant to me.

For so soon as they knew that I had determined to be a soldier, and not the Red Axe of the Wolfmark, they complimented me greatly on my spirit.
Well, as I lay awake and waited for the chance to slip down a rope from my bedroom window, whose foot should I hear on the turret stairs but that of my Lord Duke Casimir! My very heart quailed within me.

For the fear of him sat heavy on every man and woman in the land.

And as for the children--why, as far as the Baltic shore and the land of the last Ritters, mothers frightened their bairns with the Black Duke of the Wolfsberg and his Red Axe.
So now the Duke and the Red Axe were to be in conference--as indeed had happened nearly every day and night since I could remember.