n equal the end of poor Hans Pulitz--of whom they found
neither bone nor hair, took up no fragment of skin or nail, save the
golden chain only, tooth-scarred and beslavered, which he wore about his
waist. And the belt you may see for yourselves any day if you give me
your company within the Red Tower."

Now, as may well be understood, if the Society of the White Wolf was
angry before, it was both angry and frightened now, which is a thing
infinitely more dangerous.

"Let him die straightway! Let the taunting blasphemer die!" they cried.
And again, for the third time, the hollow voice pronounced my doom.

"It is well," I shouted amid the din. "It is thrice well. But look ye to
it. By the morrow's morn there shall not be one of you in your
beds--aye, and those whose heads are rolled in the dust shall count
yourselves the fortunate ones. For they at least will escape the fate of
poor Hans Pulitz."

Now sorely do I wonder, at this distance of time, that they did not slay
me in good earnest. But I have learned from that night in the Inn of the
Swan that when defiance has to be made, it is ever best to deal in no
half-measures. And, besides, coming from the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg,
their precious Society of the White Wolf, with its mummery and flummery,
filled me with a hot contempt.

"Kneel down!" cried the judge; "lay your head on the block! It has often
been wet with the blood of traitors, never with that of a blacker traitor
than Hugo Gottfried!"

So with that those about me thrust me forward and forced my head down. I
was obliged to clasp the block with both my hands. As I did so I felt it
well all over. Then I laughed aloud, with a laugh that must have appeared
strange and mad to them.

For this their mock tribunal could not deceive one who had been brought
up within the hum of judges of life and death, and with a father who as
his daily business propounded the Greater and Lesser Questions. And their
precious block, as smooth as sawn and polished timber, with never a notch
from side to side, could not take in Hugo Gottfried, who had made a
playmate and a printed book of the worn blocks of a hundred
executions--to whom each separate chip made by the Red Axe had been a
text for Gottfried Gottfried to expatiate upon concerning his own prowess
and that of his fathers.

Nevertheless, it certainly gave me a strange turn when ice-cold steel was
laid across my neck-bone. It burned like fire, turning my very marrow t