So that day when the usual white bread and savouries were brought to him, he flung them all downstairs, telling the cook that the day he really became Duke he would have his head off if he ever dared to send him anything again but the common fare.
Hearing of it, the old Chief Constable picked up little Master Ninth Duke between finger and thumb, and laughed, holding him in the air. “With you alive,” said he, “we shall not have to wake Duke Jarl after all!” The little Duke asked when he would let him have a sword; and the Constable clapped his cheeks and ran back cheerfully at a call from the palisades.
But others carried heavy looks, thinking, “Long before his fair promise can come to anything our larders will be empty and our walls gone!”
It was no great time after this that the Duke’s Constable was the only man who saw reason in holding out. That became known all through the castle, and the cook, honest fellow, brought up little Jarl’s dinner one day with tears in his eyes. He set down his load of dainties. “It is no use!” said he, “you may as well eat to-day, since to-morrow we give up the castle.”
“Who dares to say ‘we’?” cried little Duke Jarl, springing to his feet.
“All but the Constable,” said the cook; “even now they are in the council-hall, trying to make him see reason. Whether or no, they will not let him hold on.”
Little Jarl found the doors of the great hall barred to the thunderings of his small fist: for, in truth, these men could not bear to look upon one who had in his veins the blood of old Duke Jarl, when they were about to give up his stronghold to the enemy.
So little Jarl made his way up to the bowery, where was a minstrel’s window looking down into the hall. Sticking out his head so that he might see down to where the council was sitting, “If you give up the castle, I will tell Duke Jarl!” he cried. Hearing his young master’s voice, the Constable raised his eyes; but not able to see him for tears in them, called out: “Tell him quick, for here it is all against one! Only for one day more have they promised to follow my bidding, and keep the carrion crows from coming to Jarl’s nest.”
And even as he spoke came the renewed cry of attack, and the answering shout of “Jarl, Jarl!” from the defenders upon the walls. Then all leapt up, over-turning the council-board, and ran out to the battlements to carry on with what courage was left to them a hopeless contest for one more day.
Little Duke Jarl remained like a beating heart in the great empty keep. He ran wildly from room to room, calling in rage and desperation on Old Jarl to return and fight. From roof to basement he ran, commanding the spirit of his ancestor to appear, till at last he found himself in the deepest cellars of all. Down there he could hear but faintly the sound of the fighting; yet it seemed to him that through the stone he could hear the slow booming of the sea, and as he went deeper into the castle’s foundations the louder had grown its note. “Does the sea come in all the way under the castle?” he wondered. “Oh that it would sap the foundations and sink castle and all, rather than let them give up old Jarl’s stronghold to his enemies!”