The thought that Stangrave may kill him never crosses his mind.  Of course, out of six shots, fired at all distances from forty paces to fifteen, one may hit him:  but as for being killed!...

Tom’s heart is hardened; melted again and again this summer for a moment, only to freeze again.  He all but believes that he bears a charmed life.  All the miraculous escapes of his past years, instead of making him believe in a living, guiding, protecting Father, have become to that proud hard heart the excuse for a deliberate, though unconscious, atheism.  His fall is surely near.

At last Stangrave and his second appear.  Stangrave is haggard, not from fear, but from misery, and rage, and self-condemnation.  This is the end of all his fine resolves!  Pah! what use in them?  What use in being a martyr in this world?  All men are liars, and all women too!

Tom and Stangrave stand a little apart from each other, while one of the seconds paced the distance.  He steps out away from them, across the crater floor, carrying Tom’s revolver in his hand, till he reaches the required point, and turns.

He turns:  but not to come back.  Without a gesture or an exclamation which could explain his proceedings, he faces about once more, and rushes up the slope as hard as legs and wind permitted.

Tom is confounded with astonishment:  either the Bursch is seized with terror at the whole business, or he covets the much-admired revolver; in either case, he is making off with it before the owner’s eyes.

“Stop!  Hillo!  Stop thief!  He’s got my pistol!” and away goes Thurnall in chase after the Bursch, who, never looking behind, never sees that he is followed:  while Stangrave and the second Bursch look on with wide eyes.

Now the Bursch is a “gymnast,” and a capital runner; and so is Tom likewise; and brilliant is the race upon the Falkenhohe.  But the victory, after a while, becomes altogether a question of wind; for it was all up-hill.  The crater, being one of “explosion, and not of elevation,” as the geologists would say, does not slope downward again, save on one side, from its outer lip:  and Tom and the Bursch were breasting a fair hill, after they had emerged from the “kessel” below.

Now, the Bursch had had too much Thronerhofberger the night before; and possibly, as Burschen will in their vacations, the night before that also; whereby his diaphragm surrendered at discretion, while his heels were yet unconquered; and he suddenly felt a strong gripe, and a stronger kick, which rolled him over on the turf.

The hapless youth, who fancied himself alone upon the mountain tops, roared mere incoherences; and Tom, too angry to listen, and too hurried to punish, tore the revolver out of his grasp; whereon one barrel exploded—­

“I have done it now!”

No:  the ball had luckily buried itself in the ground.

Tom turned, to rush down hill again, and meet the impatient Stangrave.