it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood.  He pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles.  The Count was smiling as he put up his sword, his friends crowding around him, when Ebhardt cried out that his man could fight the second mensur,—­though the wound was three needles long.  Then Kalbach cried aloud that he would kill him.  But he had not seen Carl’s eyes.  Something was in them that made us think as we washed the cut.  But when we spoke to him he said nothing.  Nor could we force the pipe stems from his teeth.

“Donner Schock!” exclaimed Herr Korner, but reverently, “if I live to a hundred I never hope to see such a sight as that ‘Mensur’.  The word was given.  The Schlager flew so fast that we only saw the light and heard the ring alone.  Before we of the Burschenschaft knew what had happened the Count von Kalbach was over his line and had flung his Schlager into a great tree, and was striding from the place with his head hung and the tears streamin down his face.”

Amid a silence, Herr Korner lifted his great mug and emptied it slowly.  A wind was rising, bearing with it song and laughter from distant groups, —­Teutonic song and, laughter.  The moonlight trembled through the shifting leaves.  And Stephen was filled with a sense of the marvelous.  It was as if this fierce duel, so full of national significance to a German, had been fought in another existence, It was incredible to him that the unassuming lawyer he knew, so wholly Americanized, had been the hero of it.  Strange, indeed, that the striving life of these leaders of European Revolution had been suddenly cut off in its vigor.  There came to Stephen a flash of that world-comprehension which marks great statesmen.  Was it not with a divine purpose that this measureless force of patriotism and high ideal had been given to this youngest of the nations, that its high mission might be fulfilled?

Miss Russell heard of Stephen’s speeches.  She and her brothers and Jack Brinsmade used to banter him when he came a-visiting in Bellefontaine Road.  The time was not yet come when neighbor stared coldly upon neighbor, when friends of long standing passed each other with averted looks.  It was not even a wild dream that white-trash Lincoln would be elected.  And so Mr. Jack, who made speeches for Breckenridge in the face of Mr. Brinsmade’s Union leanings, laughed at Stephen when he came to spend the night.  He joined forces with Puss in making clever fun of the booby Dutch, which Stephen was wise enough to take good-naturedly.  But once or twice when he met Clarence Colfax at these houses he was aware of a decided change in the attitude of that young gentleman.  This troubled him more than he cared to admit.  For he liked Clarence, who reminded him of Virginia—­at once a pleasure and a pain.