Red Axe | Page 6

the young child
alive!"
So, without further word or question, they did so, and the man who had
carried the child kissed her once and separated gently the baby hands

that clung about his neck. Then he handed her to my father.
"Be gracious to Helene," he said; "she was ever a sweet babe."
Now by this time I was down hammering on the door of the Red Tower,
which had been locked on the outside.
Presently some one turned the key, and so soon as I got among the men
I darted between their legs.
"Give me the babe!" I cried; "the babe is mine; the Duke himself hath
said it." And my father gave her to me, crying as if her heart would
break.
Nevertheless she clung to me, perhaps because I was nearer her own
age.
Then the dismal procession of the condemned passed us, followed by
my father, who strode in front with his axe over his shoulder, and the
laughing and jesting men-at-arms bringing up the rear.
As I stood a little aside for them to pass, the hand of the man fell on my
head and rested there a moment.
"God's blessing on you, little lad!" he said. "Cherish the babe you have
saved, and, as sure as that I am now about to die, one day you shall be
repaid." And he stooped and kissed the little maid before he went on
with the others to the place of slaughter.
Then I hurried within, so that I might not hear the dull thud of the Red
Axe, on the block nor the inhuman howlings of the dogs in the kennels
afterwards.
When my father came home an hour later, before even he took off his
costume of red, he came up to our chamber and looked long at the little
maid as she lay asleep. Then he gazed at me, who watched him from
under my lids and from behind the shadows of the bedclothes.
But his quick eye caught the gleam of light in mine.

"You are awake, boy!" he said, somewhat sternly.
I nodded up to him without speaking.
"What would you with the little maid?" he said. "Do you know that you
and she together came very near losing me my favor with the Duke,
and it might be my life also, both at one time to-night?"
I put my hand on the maiden's head where it lay on the pillow by me.
"She is my little wife!" I said. "The Duke gave her to me out in the
court-yard there!"
And this is the whole tale of how the Little Playmate came to dwell
with us in the Red Tower.
CHAPTER III
THE RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK
Just as clearly do I remember the next morning. The Little Playmate lay
by me on my bed, wrapped in one of my childish night-gowns--which
old Hanne had sought out for her the night before. It was a brisk, chill,
nippy daybreak, and I had piled most of the bedclothes upon her. I lay
at the nether side clipped tight in my single brown blanket. It was
perishing cold. Out of the heaped coverings I saw presently a pair of
eyes, great and dark, regarding me.
Then a little voice spoke, sweetly and clearly, but yet strangely
sounding to me who had never before heard a babe speak.
"I want my father--tell him to send Grete, my maid, to attend on me,
and then to come himself to sit by the bed and amuse me!"
Alas! her father--well I knew what had come to him--that which in the
mercy of the Duke Casimir and in the crowning mercy of the Red Axe,
I had seen come to so many. The dogs did not howl at all that morning.
They, too, were tired with the hunting and sated with the quarry.

All the same, I tried to answer my companion.
"Little Maid!" said I, "let me be your maid and your father. I will gladly
get you all you want. But your good father has gone on a weary journey,
and it will be long ere he can hope to return."
"Well," she said, "send lazy Grete, then. I will scold her soundly for not
bringing the sop of hot milk-and-bread, which, indeed, is not food for a
lady of my age. But my father insists upon it. He is dreadfully
obstinate."
Now there was no one but our old deaf Hanne in the kitchen of the Red
Tower. She stayed only for cooking and keeping the house clean. My
father never paid her wages, and she never asked any. She did her work
and took that which she needed out of the household purse without
check or question. It was long before I guessed