Then, when after a while I turned from the crowded roofs and looked down upon the gray, far-spreading plain of the Wolfmark, to the east I saw that which appeared like winking sparks of light moving among the black clumps of copse and woodland which fringed the river.  These wimpled and scattered, and presently grew brighter.  A long howl, like that of a lonely wolf on the waste when he calls to his kindred to tell him their where-abouts, came faintly up to my ears.

A hound gave tongue responsively among the heaped mews and doggeries beneath the ramparts.  Lights shone in windows athwart the city.  Red nightcaps were thrust out of hastily opened casements.  The Duke’s standing guard clamored with their spear-butts on the uneven pavements, crying up and down the streets:  “To your kennels, devil’s brats, Duke Casimir comes riding home!”

Then I tell you my small heart beat furiously.  For I knew that if I only kept quiet I should see that which I had never yet seen—­the home-coming of our famous foraying Duke.  I had, indeed, seen Duke Casimir often enough in the castle, or striding across the court-yard to speak to my father, for whom he had ever a remarkable affection.  He was a tall, swart, black-a-vised man, with a huge hairy mole on his cheek, and long dog-teeth which showed at the sides of his mouth when he smiled, almost as pleasantly as those of a she-wolf looking out of her den at the hunters.

But I had never seen the Duke of all the Wolfmark come riding home ere daybreak, laden with the plunder of captured castles and the rout of deforced cities.  For at such times my father would carefully lock the door on me, and confine me to my little sleeping-chamber—­from whence I could see nothing but the square of smooth pavement on which the children chalked their games, and from which they cried naughtily up at me, the poor hermit of the Red Tower.  But this night my father would be with the Duke, and I should see all.  For high or low there was none in the empty Red Tower to hinder or forbid.

As I waited, thrilling with expectation, I heard beneath me the quickening pulse-beat of the town.  The watch hurried here and there, hectoring, threatening, and commanding.  But, in spite of all, men gathered as soon as their backs were turned in the alleys and street openings.  Clusters of heads showed black for a moment in some darksome entry, cried “U-g-g-hh!” with a hateful sound, and vanished ere the steel-clad veterans of the Duke’s guard could come upon them.  It was like the hide-and-seek which I used to play with Boldo, my blood-hound puppy, among the dusty waste of the lumber-room over the Hall of Judgment, before my father took him back to the kennels for biting Christian’s Elsa, a child who lived in the lower Guard opposite to the Red Tower.