On the same new year's day on which the outlawed knight was captured, Marsk Stig's youngest daughter slumbered, evidently disturbed by agitating dreams, in the tower called the Maiden's Tower, in Vordingborg castle, while her sister rose ready dressed from the prie-dieu, and listened with folded hands to the sound of mattins from the chapel of the castle. A faint ray of daylight fell on them through the tower window. "Help! help!" shrieked Ulrica, starting up; "sleepest thou, Margaretha? Oh, it was fearful! Yet it was, after all, but a foolish dream." "What ails thee, dear sister?" asked the placid Margaretha, taking her sister lovingly by the hand; "thou must surely have dreamt again of that unhappy knight, Kagge?" "Thou mightest be rather more courteous, sister. So _very_ unhappy he cannot be, when _I_ am dreaming of him. Did I but know he was safe!" "Pray to the Lord and our Lady that his grim image may be effaced from thy soul!" continued Margaretha; "he can never come to a good end. All the greatness and splendour he hath promised thee are but empty castles in the air, with nought of truth in them." "Truth here, and truth there, sister! What you call our castles in the air are nevertheless far better than this much too real prison; and how can'st thou call Sir Kagge grim? I think his bold, wolf-like eye-brows are perfectly lovely. Alas! sweet sister! I dreamed he was in distress and in peril of his life. He stood in chains before me, and bade me entreat the king for his life." "He is assuredly thy bad angel, Ulrica!" answered Margaretha; "it is his fault that we are now here. Would thou hadst never believed his flatteries and false tongue, he loves no one in the world save himself." "How can'st thou say so, sister? Did'st thou not hear thyself how solemnly he swore to free us, or lose his life?" "But when it was time to keep his word, like a true and manly knight, his own pitiful revenge and his own life were dearer to him than our peace and freedom," answered Margaretha. "He, in truth, sharpened the arrow our faithful squire shot from the bow, but ere it flew from the string he took himself off, and abandoned us to our fate." "But he followed us, though, at peril of his life, close to the castle gate, and had not the Drost been dearer to thee than both I and thyself we should not now have been here." "If our freedom could only be gained by treachery and assassination, it were better we stayed here captive all our life-time," answered Margaretha. "Had the noble Drost Aage been as much our enemy as he showed himself to be our friend--I would not even then have left him in that condition to bleed to death, without help and care. I would rather remain in prison until my dying day than flee with a cowardly assassin, and be suspected by the noble Drost of having had the least part or lot in such crime."