Red Axe

Red Axe, by Samuel Rutherford Crockett

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Title: Red Axe
Author: Samuel Rutherford Crockett
Release Date: April 29, 2004 [EBook #12191]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE RED AXE
By S.R. Crockett
1900

CONTENTS
I. DUKE CASIMIR RIDES LATE
II. THE LITTLE PLAYMATE COMES HOME
III. THE RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK
IV. THE PRINCESS HELENE
V. THE BLOOD-HOUNDS ARE FED
VI. DUKE CASIMIR'S FAMILIAR
VII. I BECOME A TRAITOR
VIII. AT THE BAR OF THE WHITE WOLF
IX. A HERO CARRIES WATER IN THE SUN
X. THE LUBBER FIEND
XI. THE VISION IN THE CRYSTAL
XII. EYES OF EMERALD
XIII. CHRISTIAN'S ELSA
XIV. SIR AMOROUS IS PLEASED WITH HIMSELF
XV. THE LITTLE PLAYMATE SETTLES ACCOUNTS
XVI. TWO WOMEN--AND A MAN
XVII. THE RED AXE IS LEFT ALONE
XVIII. THE PRIME OF THE MORNING
XIX. WENDISH WIT
XX. THE EARTH-DWELLERS OF NO MAN'S LAND
XXI. I STAND SENTRY
XXII. HELENE HATES ME
XXIII. HUGO OF THE BROADAXE
XXIV. THE SORTIE
XXV. MINE HOST RUNS HIS LAST RACE
XXVI. PRINCE JEHU MILLER'S SON
XXVII. ANOTHER MAN'S COAT
XXVIII. THE PRINCE'S COMPACT
XXIX. LOVES ME--LOVES ME NOT
XXX. INSULT AND CHALLENGE
XXXI. I FIND A SECOND
XXXII. THE WOLVES OF THE MARK
XXXIII. THE FLIGHT OF THE LITTLE PLAYMATE
XXXIV. THE GOLDEN NECKLACE
XXXV. THE DECENT SERVITOR
XXXVI. YSOLINDE'S FAREWELL
XXXVII. CAPTAIN KARL MILLER'S SON
XXXVIII. THE BLACK RIDERS
XXXIX. THE FLAG ON THE RED TOWER
XL. THE TRIAL OF THE WITCH
XLI. THE GARRET OF THE RED TOWER
XLII. PRINCESS PLAYMATE
XLIII. THE TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT
XLIV. SENTENCE OF DEATH
XLV. THE MESSAGE FROM THE WHITE GATE
XLVI. A WOMAN SCORNED
XLVII. THE RED AXE DIES STANDING UP
XLVIII. HUGO GOTTFRIED, RED AXE OF THE WOLFMARK
XLIX. THE SERPENT'S STRIFE
L. THE DUNGEON OF THE WOLFSBERG
LI. THE NIGHT BEFORE THE MORN
LII. THE HEADSMAN'S RIGHT
LIII. THE LUBBER FIEND'S RETURN
LIV. THE CROWNING OF DUKE OTHO
LV. THE LADY YSOLINDE SAVES HER SOUL
LVI. HELENA, PRINCESS OF PLASSENBURG

THE RED AXE
CHAPTER I
DUKE CASIMIR RIDES LATE
Well do I, Hugo Gottfried, remember the night of snow and moonlight when first they brought the Little Playmate home. I had been sleeping--a sturdy, well-grown fellow I, ten years or so as to my age--in a stomacher of blanket and a bed-gown my mother had made me before she died at the beginning of the cold weather. Suddenly something awoke me out of my sleep. So, all in the sharp chill of the night, I got out of my bed, sitting on the edge with my legs dangling, and looked curiously at the bright streams of moonlight which crossed the wooden floor of my garret. I thought if only I could swim straight up one of them, as the motes did in the sunshine, I should be sure to come in time to the place where my mother was--the place where all the pretty white things came from--the sunshine, the moonshine, the starshine, and the snow.
And there would be children to play with up there--hundreds of children like myself, and all close at hand. I should not any longer have to sit up aloft in the Red Tower with none to speak to me--all alone on the top of a wall--just because I had a crimson patch sewn on my blue-corded blouse, on my little white shirt, embroidered in red wool on each of my warm winter wristlets, and staring out from the front of both my stockings. It was a pretty enough pattern, too. Yet whenever one of the children I so much longed to play with down on the paved roadway beneath our tower caught sight of it he rose instantly out of the dust and hurled oaths and ill-words at me--aye, and oftentimes other missiles that hurt even worse--at a little lonely boy who was breaking his heart with loving him up there on the tower.
"Come down and be killed, foul brood of the Red Axe!" the children cried. And with that they ran as near as they dared, and spat on the wall of our house, or at least on the little wooden panel which opened inward in the great trebly spiked iron door of the Duke's court-yard.
But this night of the first home-coming of the Little Playmate I awoke crying and fearful in the dead vast of the night, when all the other children who would not speak to me were asleep. Then pulling on my comfortable shoes of woollen list (for my father gave me all things to make me warm, thinking me delicate of body), and drawing the many-patched coverlet of the bed about me, I clambered up the stone stairway to the very top of the tower in which I slept. The moon was broad, like one of the