t of the road back of the
Kaiserburg.

No one at Drachenhausen could read but Master Rudolph, the steward,
who was sand blind, and little Otto. So the boy read the summons to his
father, while the grim Baron sat silent with his chin resting upon his
clenched fist and his eyebrows drawn together into a thoughtful frown as
he gazed into the pale face of his son, who sat by the rude oaken table
with the great parchment spread out before him.

Should he answer the summons, or scorn it as he would have done under
the old emperors? Baron Conrad knew not which to do; pride said one
thing and policy another. The Emperor was a man with an iron hand, and
Baron Conrad knew what had happened to those who had refused to obey the
imperial commands. So at last he decided that he would go to the court,
taking with him a suitable escort to support his dignity.

It was with nearly a hundred armed men clattering behind him that Baron
Conrad rode away to court to answer the imperial summons. The castle was
stripped of its fighting men, and only eight remained behind to guard
the great stone fortress and the little simple-witted boy.

It was a sad mistake.

Three days had passed since the Baron had left the castle, and now the
third night had come. The moon was hanging midway in the sky, white and
full, for it was barely past midnight.

The high precipitous banks of the rocky road threw a dense black shadow
into the gully below, and in that crooked inky line that scarred the
white face of the moonlit rocks a band of some thirty men were creeping
slowly and stealthily nearer and nearer to Castle Drachenhausen. At the
head of them was a tall, slender knight clad in light chain armor, his
head covered only by a steel cap or bascinet.

Along the shadow they crept, with only now and then a faint clink or
jingle of armor to break the stillness, for most of those who followed
the armed knight were clad in leathern jerkins; only one or two wearing
even so much as a steel breast-plate by way of armor.

So at last they reached the chasm that yawned beneath the roadway, and
there they stopped, for they had reached the spot toward which they had
been journeying. It was Baron Henry of Trutz-Drachen who had thus come
in the silence of the night time to the Dragon's house, and his visit
boded no good to those within.

The Baron and two or three of his men talked together in low tones, now
and then looking up at the sheer wall that towered above