The Boy and the Baron

One sunny forenoon in the month of May, something over six hundred years ago, some children were playing under the oak-trees that grew in little companies here and there in a pl...

The children had scarcely gone from the plateau when there came down the defile from the castle a figure unlike, in manner and attire, any that had but shortly before gone that...

Big Karl the armorer was busy at his forge, next morning, long before his wee guest awakened from the deep sleep of childhood, which he slept upon a pile of pelts in a corner of...

For a matter of nine or ten years Wulf dwelt with Karl at the forge, and knew no other manner of finding than if he had been indeed the armorer’s own grandson, as he was known t...

It was maybe a week after Wulf’s visit to the Swartzburg that Herr Banf rode through the forest to the smithy. He was mounted upon the great stallion that had been so wild that...

It was perhaps a matter of six weeks after Wulf’s coming to the Swartzburg that he sat, one day, in a wing of the stables, cleaning and shining Herr Banf’s horse-gear. He was al...

Good as his word had Herr Werner been in finding Wulf the chance to show that other stuff dwelt in him than might go to the making of a mere stable-lad. For the next three years...

One bright morning, not long after Wulf had climbed the ivy tower, there came to the Swartzburg a herald bearing a message whereat Baron Everhardt laughed long and loud. So also...

Baron Everhardt sat beside a table in the great hall of the castle, scowling blackly at a pile of weighty-seeming papers that lay before him. The baron could himself neither rea...

It was a little past midnight, and the air was black and soft as velvet when two figures crept across the inner bailey and gained the outer court of the castle. Not easy was the...

“Art resting?” he asked. “That were a sharp tug to do again, winded as we are; but, please God, naught further will misadventure us. We may abide here until we are minded to go...

“Thou’rt to get up, lad,” he said, with gruff kindness. “Eat this and make thyself ready to go an errand. When thou’rt ready, go to the lady superior in her audience-room.”

Once Karl was gone, Wulf set to work to cook some food for himself over the forge fire, and when he had eaten he barred the smithy door of heavy bolted planks, and threw himself...

Now were Wulf’s anxieties well over; for this great company of riders and foot-soldiers was none other than the main part of the Emperor Rudolf’s army, that had ridden on that d...

It was high noon when the last of the knights of the Swartzburg laid down his arms at the feet of the emperor and swore fealty to him. Of the castle’s company Herr Banf was miss...