ur champion was driven
back a step, and then another. You must know that it is a lasting
disgrace to be forced over one's own line. It seemed as if we could not
bear the agony. And then, while we counted out the last seconds of the
half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's
pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as
it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still
clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He
pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count
was smiling as he put up his sword, his friends crowding around him, when
Ebhardt cried out that his man could fight the second mensur,--though the
wound was three needles long. Then Kalbach cried aloud that he would kill
him. But he had not seen Carl's eyes. Something was in them that made us
think as we washed the cut. But when we spoke to him he said nothing. Nor
could we force the pipe stems from his teeth.

"Donner Schock!" exclaimed Herr Korner, but reverently, "if I live to a
hundred I never hope to see such a sight as that 'Mensur'. The word was
given. The Schlager flew so fast that we only saw the light and heard the
ring alone. Before we of the Burschenschaft knew what had happened the
Count von Kalbach was over his line and had flung his Schlager into a
great tree, and was striding from the place with his head hung and the
tears streamin down his face."

Amid a silence, Herr Korner lifted his great mug and emptied it slowly. A
wind was rising, bearing with it song and laughter from distant groups,
--Teutonic song and, laughter. The moonlight trembled through the shifting
leaves. And Stephen was filled with a sense of the marvelous. It was as
if this fierce duel, so full of national significance to a German, had
been fought in another existence, It was incredible to him that the
unassuming lawyer he knew, so wholly Americanized, had been the hero of
it. Strange, indeed, that the striving life of these leaders of European
Revolution had been suddenly cut off in its vigor. There came to Stephen
a flash of that world-comprehension which marks great statesmen. Was it
not with a divine purpose that this measureless force of patriotism and
high ideal had been given to this youngest of the nations, that its high
mission might be fulfilled?

Miss Russell heard of Stephen's speeches. She and her brothers and Jack
Brinsmade used to banter