nn; they had not been able to move him, you know.'

'Well,' urged all three voices at once.

'Insermann's dead. He died last night at dinner time.'

The men's eyes shot for a second at Insermann's empty place, which he
was never to occupy again.

'Ah, I told him that scooping pass of his was a mistake,' commented
Adiron. 'And the worst of it is that his death breaks the line of the
Xanthal Insermanns. Poor old Insermann! he was the last of a good stock,
and I, for one, don't like new blood. What have you to say about that
pass now, Colendorp? If I am not mistaken, you defended it?'

'Insermann was by three inches too tall,' replied the individual
addressed. 'For a short man one would be hard put to it to discover a
more useful----Hullo!'

The folding doors had been flung open with a crash, and a man of fifty
or thereabouts, dressed in the gorgeous green and gold of the Guard,
strode in tempestuously. He was short and heavily built, with a
weather-red face and a coarse, overhanging moustache, which gave him
rather the expression of an angry walrus. So angry, indeed, was he that
his words came volleying out inarticulately. In his hand he held a
crumpled sheet of parchment.

The men rose as he took his place at the head of the table.

'Insermann's dead, and Selpdorf says----' The Colonel's choked
ejaculations broke, his voice failed him, and he sent the paper
fluttering from his hand across the silver and glass till little Adolf
picked it up. In another moment Colonel Wallenloup was more coherent.

'I am afraid I must have walked up the hill rather too quickly,' he said
apologetically, after draining a great goblet of beer. 'However, it is
not to be denied that M. Selpdorf begins to take too much upon himself.
The entire administration of the State is in his hands, and yet he is
not satisfied with that position! No, he aims even higher; he desires
to nominate the officers of his Highness's Guard!'

Every man present had his own peculiarity. The Colonel's reputation
would not have stood so high as it actually did but for his insensate
temper. Perhaps the anecdote told of him that, when discussing the point
of having been ruled out of action during certain army manoeuvres he
became so enraged that he pursued the umpire in question with a wooden
tent hammer, had added more to his popularity than all his thirty odd
years of service and his immense genius for fortification.

Some of the Continental armies are always