From early morn to deepening shadows of twilight, I busied myself with superintending the packing of my boxes. It was a labor of love with me.
I never was born for a calm life beneath the time-stained tiles of paternal halls! My heart was filled with redder, warmer blood than ordinary mortals. My brain never slept. Night and day, shadowy forms of men and things, strange and curious, swept along before me in never-ending files.
One morning, while at work with my boxes, a low knock at my chamber door fell upon my ear. Bulger, scenting an enemy, gave a low growl. I swung the door open. It was the elder baron.
“Honored father,” I cried gayly, “act as if thou wert master here! Be sad, be gay; sit, stand, drink, eat, or fast!”
“Little baron,” began my father in a solemn voice, “I beseech thee give over thy jesting. When thou hast heard the object of my visit, grief will chase every vestige of mirth from thy light heart.”
“Speak baron!”
“Art thou a dutiful and loving son?” asked my father, fixing his dark, mournful eyes full upon me.
“I am!”
“’Tis well!” he replied, “then arrest this making ready to abandon thy parents in their hour of misfortune. Put an end to all this unseemly hurlyburly, and to thy longing to be gone from beneath the paternal roof.”
The clouded face, trembling and tear-filled eyes of the elder baron shocked me. I could feel the blood leaving my cheeks, where, till then, it had bloomed like the glow of ripening fruit.