!' said the Englishman, lifting his hat, for he is a gentleman,
and of his manner, when insulted, noble. Hellmuth is but a Rhine
brute--though my cousin, for my sins.

"So Hellmuth went to the end of the Bridge, and, turning with his
corps-brothers to back him, he pushed the second time against your
Herr, and stepped back so that all might laugh as he took off his cap to
mock the Englishman's bow and curious way of saying 'Pardon!'

"But the Englander took him momently by the collar, and by some art of
the light hand turned him over his foot into the gutter, which ran
brimming full of half-melted snow. The light was bright, for, as I tell
you, it was underneath the lamps at the bridge-end. The moon also
happened to come out from behind a wrack of cloud, and all the men on
the bridge saw--and the girls with them also--so that you could hear the
laughing at the Molkenkur, till the burghers put their red night-caps
out of their windows to know what had happened to the wild Kerls of the
_cafes_."

"But surely that is no cause for a challenge, Excellenz?" said I. "How
can an officer of the Kaiser bring such a challenge?"

"Ach!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "is not a fight a fight, cause
or no cause? Moreover, is not Hellmuth after all the son of my mother's
sister, though but a Rhineland donkey, and void of sense?"

So I showed him up to the room of the English Herr, and went away again,
though not so far but that I could hear their voices.

It was the officer whom I heard speaking first. He spoke loudly, and as
I say, having been of the Intelligence Department, I did not go too far
away.

"You have my friend insulted, and you must immediately satisfaction
make!" said the young Officier.

"That will I gladly do, if your friend will deign to come up here. There
are more ways of fighting than getting into a feather-bed and cutting at
the corners." So our young Englander spoke, with his high voice, piping
and clipping his words as all the English do.

"Sir," said the officer, with some heat, "I bring you a cartel, and I am
an officer of the Kaiser. What is your answer?"

"Then, Herr Hauptmann," said the Englishman, "since you are a soldier,
you and I know what fighting is, and that snipping and snicking at noses
is no fighting. Tell your friend to come up here and have a turn with
the two-ounce gloves, and I shall be happy to give him all the
satisfaction he wants. Otherwise I will only fight him with pistols,