Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle (best e reader for academics .TXT) 📖
- Author: Howard Pyle
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“God forbid!” said Otto, and then lay for a while with his hands clasped. “Dost thou love me, Pauline?” said he, after a while.
“Yes,” said Pauline, “for thou art a good child, though my father says that thy wits are cracked.”
“Mayhap they are,” said Otto, simply, “for I have often been told so before. But thou wouldst not see me die, Pauline; wouldst thou?”
“Nay,” said Pauline, “I would not see thee die, for then thou couldst tell me no more stories; for they told me that uncle Frederick could not speak because he was dead.”
“Then listen, Pauline,” said Otto; “if I go not away from here I shall surely die. Every day I grow more sick and the leech cannot cure me.” Here he broke down and, turning his face upon the couch, began crying, while little Pauline sat looking seriously at him.
“Why dost thou cry, Otto?” said she, after a while.
“Because,” said he, “I am so sick, and I want my father to come and take me away from here.”
“But why dost thou want to go away?” said Pauline. “If thy father takes thee away, thou canst not tell me any more stories.”
“Yes, I can,” said Otto, “for when I grow to be a man I will come again and marry thee, and when thou art my wife I can tell thee all the stories that I know. Dear Pauline, canst thou not tell my father where I am, that he may come here and take me away before I die?”
“Mayhap I could do so,” said Pauline, after a little while, “for sometimes I go with Casper Max to see his mother, who nursed me when I was a baby. She is the wife of Fritz, the swineherd, and she will make him tell thy father; for she will do whatever I ask of her, and Fritz will do whatever she bids him do.”
“And for my sake, wilt thou tell him, Pauline?” said Otto.
“But see, Otto,” said the little girl, “if I tell him, wilt thou promise to come indeed and marry me when thou art grown a man?”
“Yes,” said Otto, very seriously, “I will promise.”
“Then I will tell thy father where thou art,” said she.
“But thou wilt do it without the Baron Henry knowing, wilt thou not, Pauline?”
“Yes,” said she, “for if my father and my mother knew that I did such a thing, they would strike me, mayhap send me to my bed alone in the dark.”
IX. How One-eyed Hans came to Trutz-Drachen.
Fritz, the swineherd, sat eating his late supper of porridge out of a great, coarse, wooden bowl; wife Katherine sat at the other end of the table, and the half-naked little children played upon the earthen floor. A shaggy dog lay curled up in front of the fire, and a grunting pig scratched against a leg of the rude table close beside where the woman sat.
“Yes, yes,” said Katherine, speaking of the matter of which they had already been talking. “It is all very true that the Drachenhausens are a bad lot, and I for one am of no mind to say no to that; all the same it is a sad thing that a simple-witted little child like the young Baron should be so treated as the boy has been; and now that our Lord Baron has served him so that he, at least, will never be able to do us ‘harm, I for one say that he should not be left there to die alone in that black cell.”
Fritz, the swineherd, gave a grunt at this without raising his eyes from the bowl.
“Yes, good,” said Katherine, “I know what thou meanest, Fritz, and that it is none of my business to be thrusting my finger into the Baron’s dish. But to hear the way that dear little child spoke when she was here this morn—it would have moved a heart of stone to hear her tell of all his pretty talk. Thou wilt try to let the red-beard know that that poor boy, his son, is sick to death in the black cell; wilt thou not, Fritz?”
The swineherd dropped his wooden spoon into the bowl with a clatter. “Potstausand!” he cried; “art thou gone out of thy head to let thy wits run upon such things as this of which thou talkest to me? If it should come to our Lord Baron’s ears he would cut the tongue from out thy head and my head from off my shoulders for it. Dost thou think I am going to meddle in such a matter as this? Listen! these proud Baron folk, with their masterful ways, drive our sort hither and thither; they beat us, they drive us, they kill us as they choose. Our lives are not as much to them as one of my black swine. Why should I trouble my head if they choose to lop and trim one another? The fewer there are of them the better for us, say I. We poor folk have a hard enough life of it without thrusting our heads into the noose to help them out of their troubles. What thinkest thou would happen to us if Baron Henry should hear of our betraying his affairs to the Red-beard?”
“Nay,” said Katherine, “thou hast naught to do in the matter but to tell the Red-beard in what part of the castle the little Baron lies.”
“And what good would that do?” said Fritz, the swineherd.
“I know not,” said Katherine, “but I have promised the little one that thou wouldst find the Baron Conrad and tell him that much.”
“Thou hast promised a mare’s egg,” said her husband, angrily. “How shall I find the Baron Conrad to bear a message to him, when our Baron has been looking for him in vain for two days past?”
“Thou has found him once and thou mayst find him again,” said Katherine, “for it is not likely that he will keep far away from here whilst his boy is in such sore need of help.”
“I will have nothing to do with it!” said Fritz, and he got up from the wooden block whereon he was sitting and stumped out of the house. But, then, Katherine had heard him talk in that way before, and knew, in spite of his saying “no,” that, sooner or later, he would do as she wished.
Two days later a very stout
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