Thenceforward, all through the days and nights which followed, one of these men stood ever at my window to see I worked with speed, worked on the locket and not upon my chains.
Count Raoul came many times as the work progressed, but the guards were alway at too great a distance to tell in what quaint form my beaten gold was fashioned.
Many, many lockets I made of cunning workmanship and design, of curious chasings and most marvelous wrought intertwinings, yet none suited my lord. One after one they returned to the melting pot and my labors re-commenced.
During the long months I was thus engaged, I saw the Count often, nay, more than daily, for his whole feverish life seemed in-woven with the yellow and white metals I was busy interlacing and rounding and polishing up.
At times an abject fear sat upon his countenance, and he mumbled of strange sights he saw, of communings with the Prince of Darkness, of specters gaunt and hideous that glided through the deserted court-yard, and stood beside his chair even in the noisy banquet chamber.
For that the Count was mad I could not doubt.
Yea, of all these things he spake as he urged me on as a lazy horse under whip and goad, to finish, finish.
I inquired of this at great risk of one of the men who stood guard; he tapped his forehead, and replied:
"He does all things so. It is so in camp, on the field, in the hall. Aye, but he's a very fiend in battle," and the fellow's eye brightened with a fierce pleasure at the thought of his lord's well-known prowess—for Count Raoul had wandered much in foreign lands, and deeds of blood followed in whispers to his door.
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