obe thoughtfully over his
knee as if turning the matter over in his mind. "What think you of
Plassenburg and the service of Prince Karl?" he said at last.

"The place is too near and the man a usurper," I replied, brusquely.

"I am not so sure," Master Gerard mused, slowly, "that it might not be
advantageous to bide near home. Duke Casimir is mortal, after all--long
and prosperously may he live!" (Here he inclined his head piously, while
naming his master.) "But who knows how long he may be spared to reign
over a loving people. And after that, why, there may be more usurpers.
For by the name 'usurper' the ignorant mostly mean men of the strong
heart and sure brain, who can hold that which they have with one hand and
reach out for more with the other."

While he spoke thus he looked at me with his green eyes half closed.

"But," said I, calmly enough, though my heart beat fast, "I am but a lad
untried. I may never rise beyond a private soldier. I may be killed at
the first assault of my virgin campaign."

Master Gerard looked up quickly. He beckoned to his daughter. For though
by no faintest gesture had he betrayed his knowledge of her presence, he
had yet clearly known it all the time.

"Ysolinde," he said, "bring hither thy crystal!"

The maid disappeared and presently returned with a ball in her hand of
some substance which looked like misty glass.

"I have been looking in it already," she said, "ever since Hugo Gottfried
came out of the Red Tower."

Her voice was soft and even, with the same sough in it as of the wind
among poplar-trees which I had heard in the rustle of her silken dress as
she came up the stair.

"And what," asked her father, "have you seen in the crystal, child of
my heart?"

He looked up at me with some little shamefacedness, or so I imagined.

"I am a dry old man of the law," he went on, "dusty of heart as these
black books up yonder--books not of magic but of fact, of crime and pain
and penalty. But this my daughter Ysolinde, wise from a child, solaces
herself with the white, innocent magic, such as helps man and brings him
nearer that which is unseen."

The maid knelt by her father's knee, and held the crystal ball in the
hollow of her hands against the sable of his velvet robe. She passed one
hand swiftly twice or thrice over her brow, as though to clear away some
cobwebs, gossamer thin, that had folded themselves across her vision.
Then, in the same wistful, wind-soft voice, sh