ctioned, but not under the
conditions proposed by Kahle. Perhaps it was feared that a fatal
ending to the duel, such as the very stringent conditions seemed to
make almost unavoidable, would raise too much dust. For quite recently
there had been several cases of a similar nature, and the death of one
of the duellists had had the most disagreeable consequences for those
high-commanding officers who had neither attempted to modify the
conditions of combat nor endeavored to bring about reconciliation.

Thus it was that the new terms of the challenge were: thirty-five
paces distance and one exchange of bullets; ordinary pistols.

Kahle, then, was to be given no opportunity to punish as he deserved
the disturber of his domestic peace, because superior officers did not
wish to bring unpleasant consequences upon themselves; for the duel,
as now arranged for under these altered terms, he regarded as a mere
farce, and a possible fatal issue could be nothing but the work of
blind accident.

Borgert had been requested by Kolberg to serve as his second, and the
former readily agreed to this; for on the one hand he liked to play
the role of an onlooker in such an affair, and on the other he deemed
it prudent to put Kolberg under a new obligation; all the more as the
repaying of his loans seemed as far off as ever.

On the eve of his leaving for that city in South Germany where the
meeting was to take place, Kolberg once more assembled his faithful
admirers in his quiet little garden-house. His invitations had been
for a banquet, washed down with some of his choicest wines. The
drinking on that occasion was so hard that Kolberg himself became
completely intoxicated, and when his guests left he was snoring in a
drunken stupor on his lounge. The train left early, and Kolberg's man
had a hard task in rousing his master sufficiently at the proper time
to hastily prepare him for his long journey.

Borgert had been in a similar plight. As he stood on the station
platform a few minutes before the train rolled in, he felt as if he
had only just now risen from his chair at the festive board.

As he confided this impression to his principal, Kolberg, he did not
forget to mention incidentally that, "of course," he had forgotten to
take his purse along. With a show of assumed indifference he stuffed
the two "blue rags" into his watchpocket, Kolberg having fished the
bills with trembling fingers out of his own wallet, and a silent
pressure