"Your father is almost as great a man as my father," said the Princess Helene, who, however, was rapidly forgetting her dignity. Indeed, already it had become little more than a fairy-tale to her. And that was perhaps as well.
One day, when I was about thirteen, or a little older, my father came out with a new short mantle in his hand, red like his own.
"Come hither, Hugo Gottfried!" he said, for he had learned the trick of the name from Helene.
I went to him tardy-foot, greatly wondering.
"Here, chick," he said, in his kindly fashion, "it is time you were beginning to learn your duties. Come with me to-day into the kennels of the blood-hounds."
But I hung back, shifting the new mantle uneasily on my shoulders, yet not daring to throw it off.
"I do not want to go, father," said I, edging away in the direction of the Playmate.
"What, lad!" he cried, slapping me on the shoulder; "they will not hurt thee with that cloak on. They know their masters better—as their fathers and mothers knew our fathers. Have we, the Gottfrieds, been the Hereditary Justicers of the Wolfmark for six hundred years to be afraid now of the blood-hounds that are kept to hunt the Duke's enemies and to feed on the Duke's carrion?"
"It is not that I am afraid of the dogs, father," I made answer to him. "I would quickly enough go among them, if only you would let me go without this scarlet cloak."
My father laughed heartily and loudly—that is, for him. A quick ear might have heard him quite three feet away.