"Go to thy couch, madman!" replied the junker, with gloomy harshness, and with his hand on his sword. "You dream as yet it seems to me, and might deserve to be wakened by my good sword--One should bind and shut up a visionary and dreamer like you when one would have a quiet night:" so saying, he hastily snatched his candle, which Count Henrik had taken up from the floor and lighted, and the junker went with rapid strides through the next side door into his own sleeping apartment. "I have a fearful suspicion," whispered Aagé to Count Henrik; "but I was ill and over-excited--I may be wrong: it is too dreadful to think of--Let it not disturb the king's peace." "What you mean, Drost, I am also loth to think of," answered the count, "though after what hath here happened, almost every thing is possible. Come, let us stay here together to-night." They then both entered the door between the pillars, and all was soon perfectly quiet at the castle. The next morning early the king and his men rode out of the burnt and dilapidated gate of Kallundborg castle. Count Henrik, Margrave Waldemar, and Junker Christopher accompanied him on horseback, together with his fifty knights, and a numerous troop of lancers. Drost Aagé followed slowly behind in a litter, borne by two horses. He was far from recovered from the effects of his dangerous fall, but was not to be kept back. The king and his brother rode in silence through the town, at some distance from their train. "Thou hast surely wished to take from me the desire of being oftener thy guest at Kallundborg, Christopher!" said the king in a gloomy, dissatisfied mood, as they rode slowly up the hill to St. George's hospital, and looked back on the castle and town. "I have used thy fair castle gate badly it is true; some broken pates, too, I have left behind me; but neither didst _thou_ prepare me any fair spectacle at my mattins." "What! the criminal on the wheel?" muttered Christopher. "Hath his head said good morning to you from the stake? The fault was not mine: that unpleasant sight would have been kept from your eyes, but you yourself chose your sleeping apartment with that unsightly prospect. To say truth, my royal brother," he added in an upbraiding tone, "you seemed to me to require _proof_ that there was no manner of doubt in this case." "That word then sounded ill to thee," answered the king. "Understood'st thou me not? There might be a doubt of the criminal's sanity, but not of his miscreant deed; there might be a doubt of the ambiguity of thy commands to him, without there being the slightest doubt of thy meaning, as thou didst explain it to me on thy knightly word. Only on that ground did I make over to thee my privilege of pardon, together with the power of confirming the sentence: there was no need, either, to hasten with the execution of the bloody doom."