"I am ready to do that which you have asked."
He seemed to be on the point of saying something else. But, changing his mind, he touched a little silver bell.
The usher appeared.
"Show the Hereditary Justicer of the Mark to the Red Tower. Give him all that is necessary to eat and drink. Bid a man-at-arms attend him, and set a sufficient guard at the door!"
So I went out from the presence, and the Duke and the Duke's new Justicer bowed to each other gravely as I stood a moment on the threshold.
"Till we meet again, Red Axe of the Wolfmark!" said Duke Otho.
"Till we meet again!" said I, countering him like blade meeting blade.
In little more than ten minutes after I had entered them, I stood outside the Duke's apartments, and with my escort I strode across to the empty Red Tower, the home of so many memories. My head was reeling, and with the overpress of excitement I could not sleep. So, bribing the soldier, my companion—who had been charged by the Duke not to lose sight of me—to accompany me, I went up to my father's garret.
There I found all things as they had been when my father died.
I set the windows wide, cast the tumbled bedclothes out upon the dust-heap beneath, and bared the whole to the clean, large, wholesome breezes of the night. I saw the fateful Red Axe lean as usual against the block, and, taking it up, I found it keen as a razor. It was spotless, and the edge gave back the long low room and our one glimmering candle like a mirror. It must have been my father's last work in this world to polish it.