. Afterward there was a
momentary tussle. Now Paul Vanderhoffen stood erect and flourished the
loaded pistol. "If you go on this way," he said, with some severity,
"you will presently be neither loved nor respected. There was a time,
though, when you were an excellent shot, Herr Heinrich Obendorf."

"I had my orders, highness," said the other stolidly.

"Oh yes, of course," Paul Vanderhoffen answered. "You had your
orders--from Augustus!" He seemed to think of something very far away.
He smiled, with quizzically narrowed eyes such as you may yet see in
Raeburn's portrait of the man. "I was remembering, oddly enough, that
elm just back of the Canova Pavilion--as it was twenty years ago. I
managed to scramble up it, but Augustus could not follow me because he
had such short fat little legs. He was so proud of what I had done
that he insisted on telling everybody--and afterward we had oranges for
luncheon, I remember, and sucked them through bits of sugar. It is not
fair that you must always remember and always love that boy who played
with you when you were little--after he has grown up to be another
person. Eh no! youth passes, but all its memories of unimportant
things remain with you and are less kind than any self-respecting viper
would be. Decidedly, it is not fair, and some earnest-minded person
ought to write to his morning paper about it. . . . I think that is
the reason I am being a sentimental fool," Paul Vanderhoffen explained.

Then his teeth clicked. "Get on, my man," he said. "Do not remain too
near to me, because there was a time when I loved your employer quite
as much as you do. This fact is urging me to dangerous ends. Yes, it
is prompting me, even while I talk with you, to give you a lesson in
marksmanship, my inconveniently faithful Heinrich."

He shrugged. He lighted a cheroot with hands whose tremblings, he
devoutly hoped, were not apparent, for Prince Fribble had been ashamed
to manifest a sincere emotion of any sort, and Paul Vanderhoffen shared
as yet this foible.

"Oh Brutus! Ravaillac! Damiens!" he drawled. "O general compendium
of misguided aspirations! do be a duck and get along with you. And I
would run as hard as I could, if I were you, for it is war now, and you
and I are not on the same side."

Paul Vanderhoffen paused a hundred yards or so from this to shake his
head. "Come, come! I have lost so much that I cannot afford to throw
my good temper into the bar