The chief captain was silent. He had wholly dropped his jeering mood.
"There is nothing else that I can see for it," the young Dane went on, finding that Werner did not speak. "Our Joan will never go to Courtland alive. She will not be carried off on Prince Louis' saddle-bow, as a Cossack might carry off a Circassian slave!"
"But how," said Von Orseln, meditating, "will you prevent her absence being known? The passage of so large a party may easily be traced and remembered. Though our folk are true enough and loyal enough, sooner or later what is known in the Castle is known in the town, and what is known in the town becomes known to the enemy!"
Maurice von Lynar leaned forward towards his chief captain and whispered a few words in his ear.
"Ah!" he said, and nodded. Then, after a pause for thought, he added, "That is none so ill thought on for a beardless younker! I will think it over, sleep on it, and tell you my opinion to-morrow!"
The youth tramped to and fro on the terrace, muttering to himself.
"Good-night, Sparhawk!" said Von Orseln, from the top of the corkscrew stair, as he prepared to descend; "go to bed. I will send Alt Pikker to command the house-guard to-night. Do you get straightway between the sheets as soon as maybe. If this mad scheme comes off you will need your beauty-sleep with a vengeance! So take it now!"
"At any rate," the chief captain growled to himself, "you have set a pretty part for me. I may forthwith order my shroud. I shall never be able to face my lady again!"