as all over long ago. You will
never, never see me do it again."

"My brave girl!" he said, embracing her and kissing her wet cheek, a
liberty he very seldom ventured to take. "I am glad you still care a
little for your old uncle. But now, go to bed, for it has grown so
late--"

"To bed!--in this terrible state of anxiety? What are you thinking of,
uncle? Will it be possible for you to sleep?"

"Why not, you little goose? Ay, the sleep of the righteous, for I have
done my duty to-day, and have shown how our race can shoot--"

"And you can deep before you know how he is?--and what the doctor has
said? I should have sent over to inquire before this, but the people of
the house are all asleep, and my maid Louisa is a stranger here and
would not be able to find the place."

"And you think I myself--well, I must confess!--at one o'clock at
night, tired to death by all my laurels--"

"Uncle, unless you want to see me die of anxiety--"

She threw herself into his arms, and clung to him in such helpless
entreaty that he could not resist. Sighing, and bitterly cursing in his
heart the feminine caprice which could first cast off a fine young
fellow and then make her life hang on his, he left the house once more.

She called down to him from the balcony, gave him the directions for
finding the nearest way to the physician's house, and then stood there
motionless, in the cool night air, waiting for his return.

He came back in a quarter of an hour, but brought no comforting
intelligence. The physician had not yet returned from Rossel's villa,
and would, in all probability, spend the night there. He had made the
physician's wife, whom he had routed up out of her sleep, promise
faithfully to send news the first thing in the morning.

So there was no help for it, the night had to be passed in the most
agonizing state of uncertainty.

But before the sun had long been shining across the lake, the physician
came in proper person; led, not only by the message that had been left
for him the night before, but also by a note that Schnetz had
commissioned him to deliver to his old comrade and brother-in-arms. In
this missive, in his own odd style, he supplemented the physician's
bulletin by all sorts of details. The wound in the hand, he said, in
conclusion, was, it was to be hoped, of no great account; a sinew had
been grazed, but not cut through, so that the determination of this
noble youth to augment the number of breadless s