Erdberg was
the chief. But green, well-watered valleys and mountains wooded to the
top lay all about us--a pleasant land, a fertile province, and, as the
Princess had said, a land in which the strong hand of Karl the Prince had
long made "the broom-bush keep the cow."

I had all along been possessed with great desire to meet the Prince of so
noble and well-cared-for a land, and perhaps also to see what manner of
man could be the husband of so extraordinary a Princess.

CHAPTER XXVI

PRINCE JEHU MILLER'S SON

Yet now, when she was in her own country, and as good as any queen
thereof, I found the Lady Ysolinde in no wise different from, what she
had been in the city of Thorn and in her father's house. She called me
often to ride beside her, Helene being on my other side, while the Lubber
Fiend, who had saved all our lives, gambolled about and came to her to be
petted like a lapdog of some monstrous sort. He licked his lips and
twisted his eyes upward at her in ludicrous ecstasy till only the whites
were visible whenever the Princess laid her hand on his head. So that it
was as much as the archers of the guard could do to hide their laughter
in their beards. But hide it they did, having a wholesome awe of the
emerald eyes of their mistress, or perhaps of the steely light which
sometimes came into them.

It was growing twilight upon the third day (for there were no adventures
worth dwelling upon after that among the cavern dwellings of Erdberg)
when for the first time we saw the towers of Plassenburg crowning a hill,
with its clear brown river winding slow beneath. We were yet a good many
miles from it when down the dusty road towards us came a horseman, and
fifty yards or so behind him another.

"The Prince--none rides like our Karl!" said Jorian, familiarly, under
his breath, but proudly withal.

"He comes alone!" said I, wonderingly. For indeed Duke Casimir of the
Wolfsberg never went ten lances' length from his castle without a small
army at his tail.

"Even so!" replied Jorian; "it is ever his custom. The officer who
follows behind him has his work cut out--and basted. Not for nothing is
our Karl called Prince Jehu Miller's Son, for indeed he rides most
furiously."

Before there was time for more words between us a tall, grim-faced,
pleasant-eyed man of fifty rode up at a furious gallop. The first thing I
noticed about him was that his hair was exactly the same color as his
horse--an iron-gray, rus