My heart beat a little faster; but, after all, I had been brought up with sights and sounds more terrible than these, and, more than that, I had within the hour seen Michael Texel, the high-priest of these mysteries, turn all manner of rainbow colors at the howling of our blood-hounds and a simple question from my father.

So I judged that these mighty terrifications could portend no great ill to one who was the son of the formidable Red Axe of the Wolfsberg.
Sometimes it is a mighty comfortable thing to have a father like mine.
I did not hear the question which was asked of my guide, but I heard the answer.
"First in charge," said Michael Texel, "and with him one of the Wolf's litter." So we were allowed to proceed.

But in the bare room which received us I was soon left alone, for, with another question as briefly asked and answered, the click of swords crossed and uncrossed before and behind him, and the screechy grind of bolts, Michael passed out of sight within.
While as for me, I was left to twirl my thumbs, and wish that I had stayed at home to watch the nimble fingers of the Playmate busy at her sewing, and the rounded slenderness of her sweet body set against the light of evening, which would at that hour be shining through the windows of the Red Tower.
Nevertheless, it was no use repining or repenting.

Here was I, Hugo Gottfried, the son of the Red Axe, at the inner port of a treasonable society.

It was certainly a curious position; but even thus early I had begun to consider myself a sort of amateur of strange situations, and I admit that I found a certain stimulus in the thought that in an hour I might have ceased to be heir to the office of Hereditary Justicer of the ducal province of the Wolfmark.
Presently through the door there came one clothed in the long white garments of a Brother of Pity, the eye-holes dark and cavernous, and the eyes shining through the mask with a look as if the wearer were much more frightened than those who looked upon him.
"Child of the White Wolf," he said, in a shaking voice, "would you dare all and become one of the companions of the mysteries ?" But the accent of his voice struck me, the son of Gottfried Gottfried, the dweller in the enclosure of the Red Tower, as painfully hollow and pretentious.