“As you will, sir; my number is 34.”  And the two fools turned on their respective heels, and walked off.

At sunrise next morning Tom and his second are standing on the Falkenhohe, at the edge of the vast circular pit, blasted out by some explosion which has torn the slate into mere dust and shivers, now covered with a thin coat of turf.

“Schoene aussicht!” says the Bursch, waving his hand round, in a tone which is benevolently meant to withdraw Tom’s mind from painful considerations.

“Very pretty prospect indeed.  You’re sure you understand that revolver thoroughly?”

The Bursch mutters to himself something about English nonchalance, and assures Thurnall that he is competently acquainted with the weapon; as indeed he ought to be; for having never seen one before, he has been talking and thinking of nothing else since they left Bertrich.

And why does not Tom care to look at the prospect?  Certainly not because he is afraid.  He slept as soundly as ever last night; and knows not what fear means.  But somehow, the glorious view reminds him of another glorious view, which he saw last summer walking by Grace Harvey’s side from Tolchard’s farm.  And that subject he will sternly put away.  He is not sure but what it might unman even him.

The likeness certainly exists; for the rock, being the same in both places, has taken the same general form; and the wanderer in Rhine-Prussia and Nassau might often fancy himself in Devon or Cornwall.  True, here there is no sea:  and there no Moselkopf raises its huge crater-cone far above the uplands, all golden in the level sun.  But that brown Tannus far away, or that brown Hundsruck opposite, with its deep-wooded gorges barred with level gleams of light across black gulfs of shade, might well be Dartmoor, or Carcarrow moor itself, high over Aberalva town, which he will see no more.  True, in Cornwall there would be no slag-cliffs of the Falkenley beneath his feet, as black and blasted at this day as when yon orchard meadow was the mouth of hell, and the south-west wind dashed the great flame against the cinder cliff behind, and forged it into walls of time-defying glass.  But that might well be Alva stream, that Issbach in its green gulf far below, winding along toward the green gulf of the Moselle—­he will look at it no more, lest he see Grace herself come to him across the down, to chide him, with sacred horror, for the dark deed which he has come to do.

And yet he does not wish to kill Stangrave.  He would like to “wing him.”  He must punish him for his conduct to Marie; punish him for last night’s insult.  It is a necessity, but a disagreeable one; he would be sorry to go to the war with that man’s blood upon his hand.  He is sorry that he is out of practice.

“A year ago I could have counted on hitting him where I liked.  I trust I shall not blunder against his vitals now.  However, if I do, he has himself to blame!”