en hundred marks which he owed to Captain Koenig
lay on his conscience; but there were some other items that pressed
him hard, for they were "debts of honor," contracted with his equals
in the social scale; and the first of these, amounting to two thousand
three hundred marks, was due in about six weeks. How and where should
he raise these large amounts?

He began to reflect. The furniture had already been saddled with a
chattel mortgage, one of his horses even been mortgaged twice, and for
the other, his former charger, he probably would not get more than
three hundred marks, and that was nothing but a drop on a hot stone.
Of his comrades there was none remaining with whom an attempt to
borrow would have had the slightest prospect of success,--possibly
Koenig alone excepted. But should he go to him again with such a
request? It could not be easily done,--at least not before the old
item of seven hundred marks had been paid back. The only safety anchor
he could think of was a formal request for a large loan from a Berlin
usurer with a large clientele in the army. In fact, he had tried it;
but the fellow had not yet been heard from, although three weeks had
gone since this same individual had been furnished with a surety given
by First Lieutenant Leimann, and with a life insurance policy in the
amount of twenty thousand marks.

For the moment nothing could be done. He would try to pacify in some
way the most pressing of his creditors, and to pay in small
instalments only those who either should begin legal proceedings
against him, or lodge their complaints with the regiment. Perhaps--who
could tell?--an undiscovered source might open somewhere; perhaps luck
at the cards, so long unfaithful to him, would return, or one of his
many tickets in various state lotteries would draw a big prize. And
who could tell but what the biggest prize of all, a wealthy bride with
a good fat dowry, might not fall to his share? He had formal
applications of the kind on file with several of the most prominent
and successful marriage agencies at the capital and elsewhere, and
only recently one of these centres for the radiation of connubial
bliss, so much in vogue with his kind throughout the empire, had been
heard from to some apparent purpose.

"Quite a bundle of bright hopes," he said to himself, and with that
his plastic mind resumed its equilibrium. His good humor returned, he
lit himself a cigarette, and whistled a gay tune, while pac