grouting
peace, when men become like penned pigs, waking up only at feeding-time,
they have no knowledge of how swiftly life went when every day brought a
new living friend or a new dead enemy, when love and hate awakened fresh
and fresh with each morrow's sun--and when I was young.

Perhaps that last is the true reason. But when the Baltic norther snorts
without, and mine ancient thigh-wound twinges down where my hand rests,
naturally I have no better resource than to fall to the goose-quill. And
lo! long ere I am done with the first page, and have the ink no more than
half-way to the roots of my hair, I am again in the midst of the ringing
hoofs of the foray. I hear the merry dinting of steel on steel; the
sullen _chug-chug_ of the wheels of Foul Peg, the Margrave's great
cannon, which more than once he lent our Prince; the oaths of the
men-at-arms shouldering her up, apostrophizing most indecently her fat
haunches, and the next moment getting tossed aside like ninepins by her
unexpected lurches. Ah, the times that were when I was young!

I see these gallants about our later courts--Lord help them, sons of mine
own, too, some of them--year in and year out, crossing their legs and
staring at the gilded points of their shoon. All are grown so tame--none
now to ride a-questing in the Baltic forest for border brigands
--indeed, there be no brigands to quest for.

But I forget. Time was when I looked love, and I too had shoon, aye, with
golden tips to match the armor of honor which the Prince gave me after I
had led my first regiment to victory--even as the Lady Ysolinde had said.
And noble shoes of price they were.

And I could make love, too, when I had the chance. But, nevertheless, not
more than one day in six--spending the rest in the new training of my
men, the perfecting of their equipment, the choosing of their horses, and
the providing for their stores.

God wot--it was a good time. I mind me the year when the Prince fell out
with Duke Casimir, and we played over again the old tricks with him.

Never was I gladder of any quest than that to ride within sight of the
Red Tower, and wave the blue and yellow of my master under the very
ramparts of the Wolfsberg, and almost within hearing of the inhuman
howling of its blood-hounds.

"Singe his beard!" said my master. And with a hundred riders I did it
too. For though the burghers clattered to their gates, I rode to the very
walls of the Wolfsberg, which for brava