The boy began patting the broad neck of the charger 53 Wulf could naught but fend and parry with his stick 77 Lowering himself farther, he came upon a narrow casement nearly overgrown with ivy 97 Then the baron gripped her by the arm 125 With the head of his battle-ax he struck it a blow that sent it inward 177 The emperor laid drawn sword across his bowed shoulders 207 THE BOY AND THE BARON CHAPTER I WHAT THE CHILDREN SAW FROM THE PLAYGROUND ON THE PLATEAU 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 pleasant meadow on a high plateau. This meadow was part of a great table-land overlooking a wide stretch of country. It was hedged along the west with white-thorn, setting it off from the tillage on the other side, and on the east it dipped to the bank of a little stream fringed with willows and low bushes. The south side descended in a steep cliff, and up and down its slope the huts of a little village seemed to climb along the stony path that led to the plateau. Farther away lines of dark forest stretched off out of sight, in solid walls that looked almost black over against the bright green of meadow and field and the rich brown of the tilled land. On all sides were mountains, covered with trees or crowned with snow, from which, when the sun went down, the wind blew chill. Beyond the stream a highway climbed the valley, and the children could see, from their playground, the place where it issued from the edge of the wood. They could not follow its windings very far beyond the plateau, however, for it soon bent off to the left and wound up a narrow pass among the hills. Toward the north, and far overhead, rose the grim walls and towers of the great castle that watched the pass and sheltered the little village on the cliffside. Those were rude, stern times, and the people in the village were often glad of the protection which the castle gave from attacks by stranger invaders; but they paid for their security, from time to time, when the defenders themselves sallied forth upon the hamlet and took toll from its flocks and herds.