Charrrgez! . . . Presentiments of death don't come to
a man for nothing, he thought at the very moment he put spurs to his
horse.

And therefore he was more than surprised when, at the very first set-to,
Captain Feraud laid himself open to a cut over the forehead, which
blinding him with blood, ended the combat almost before it had fairly
begun. It was impossible to go on. Captain D'Hubert, leaving his enemy
swearing horribly and reeling in the saddle between his two appalled
friends, leaped the ditch again into the road and trotted home with his
two seconds, who seemed rather awestruck at the speedy issue of that
encounter. In the evening Captain D'Hubert finished the congratulatory
letter on his sister's marriage.

He finished it late. It was a long letter. Captain D'Hubert gave reins
to his fancy. He told his sister that he would feel rather lonely after
this great change in her life; but then the day would come for him, too,
to get married. In fact, he was thinking already of the time when there
would be no one left to fight with in Europe and the epoch of wars would
be over. "I expect then," he wrote, "to be within measurable distance
of a marshal's baton, and you will be an experienced married woman. You
shall look out a wife for me. I will be, probably, bald by then, and a
little blase. I shall require a young girl, pretty of course, and with
a large fortune, which should help me to close my glorious career in the
splendour befitting my exalted rank." He ended with the information
that he had just given a lesson to a worrying, quarrelsome fellow who
imagined he had a grievance against him. "But if you, in the depths of
your province," he continued, "ever hear it said that your brother is of
a quarrelsome disposition, don't you believe it on any account. There
is no saying what gossip from the army may reach your innocent ears.
Whatever you hear you may rest assured that your ever-loving brother is
not a duellist." Then Captain D'Hubert crumpled up the blank sheet of
paper headed with the words "This is my last will and testament," and
threw it in the fire with a great laugh at himself. He didn't care
a snap for what that lunatic could do. He had suddenly acquired the
conviction that his adversary was utterly powerless to affect his life
in any sort of way; except, perhaps, in the way of putting a special
excitement into the delightful, gay intervals between the campaigns.

From this on there were, however, to b