I had all along been possessed with great desire to meet the Prince of so noble and well-cared-for a land, and perhaps also to see what manner of man could be the husband of so extraordinary a Princess.
CHAPTER XXVI
PRINCE JEHU MILLER'S SON
Yet now, when she was in her own country, and as good as any queen thereof, I found the Lady Ysolinde in no wise different from, what she had been in the city of Thorn and in her father's house. She called me often to ride beside her, Helene being on my other side, while the Lubber Fiend, who had saved all our lives, gambolled about and came to her to be petted like a lapdog of some monstrous sort. He licked his lips and twisted his eyes upward at her in ludicrous ecstasy till only the whites were visible whenever the Princess laid her hand on his head. So that it was as much as the archers of the guard could do to hide their laughter in their beards. But hide it they did, having a wholesome awe of the emerald eyes of their mistress, or perhaps of the steely light which sometimes came into them.
It was growing twilight upon the third day (for there were no adventures worth dwelling upon after that among the cavern dwellings of Erdberg) when for the first time we saw the towers of Plassenburg crowning a hill, with its clear brown river winding slow beneath. We were yet a good many miles from it when down the dusty road towards us came a horseman, and fifty yards or so behind him another.
"The Prince—none rides like our Karl!" said Jorian, familiarly, under his breath, but proudly withal.
"He comes alone!" said I, wonderingly. For indeed Duke Casimir of the Wolfsberg never went ten lances' length from his castle without a small army at his tail.
"Even so!" replied Jorian; "it is ever his custom. The officer who follows behind him has his work cut out—and basted. Not for nothing is our Karl called Prince Jehu Miller's Son, for indeed he rides most furiously."
Before there was time for more words between us a tall, grim-faced, pleasant-eyed man of fifty rode up at a furious gallop. The first thing I noticed about him was that his hair was exactly the same color as his horse—an iron-gray, rusty a little, as if it had been rubbed with iron that has been years in the wet.
He took off his hat courteously to the Princess.