"The Elector of Treves should do you justice, master." "The elector has his hands full with his quarrels with his neighbours, and would not care to take up arms against a powerful vassal. It would need a strong force indeed to take Goldstein, and there are many who, although they love not the baron, would not care to war against him in a quarrel which did not greatly concern them. Had I been at home I do not think that the baron would have dared thus to attack our castle without further pretext than that our families had always been on bad terms; but when the emperor called upon all honourable gentlemen to aid him in his struggle with the Turks I had no thought that harm might come in my absence, or that death would take away my father, the bravest and best knight in the province, and that my sister Minna would be left unprotected. Had I received the news earlier of my father's death I might have been home in time, but if a messenger was sent to tell me, which I doubt not was the case, some harm befell him on the way, and it was not until four months later that a knight from Treves, joining the army, told me the news. Then, as we fortunately defeated the Turks with heavy loss, the emperor permitted me to return home, but before I left the army this blow came: the castle was destroyed, most of the retainers on the estate killed, and Minna carried away." The speaker, Count Conrad von Waldensturm, was a young man some twenty-five years old. His father's castle stood on a steep hill above the Moselle. When he had left two years before it was strong and shapely--as fair a castle as any in the valley--now it was a ruin. The stonework was for the most part but little injured, but the interior had been gutted by fire, and the empty windows looked mournfully out on the fair prospect. The gate was gone, and in several places the battlements had been demolished; the moat was empty, the drawbridge had disappeared. This was the work of Baron Wolff von Goldstein, whose castle lay some twelve miles lower down the river. It was a much larger and stronger place than the abode of Conrad's ancestors. For nigh a century there had been little friendship between the lords of Waldensturm and those of Goldstein; they had taken different sides in the troubles of that time, and the enmity thus created had never died out. The Baron von Goldstein had been on the winning side and had been rewarded by the gift of fully half the lands of Waldensturm.