“Thanks, many thanks, for your sympathy and aid in this sorry business,” the junior mumbled, and surreptitiously wiped a briny drop out of the corner of his eye. Borgert left, very much satisfied with himself. He had now among the younger officers of the regiment another one who would henceforth swear by him. He noisily clanked down the shaky wooden stairs of the humble house wherein Pommer occupied narrow quarters. And Frau Kahle, too, was now in his power, he gleefully reflected. Besides all that, there was something positively piquant about the little adventure,--something which would frequently hereafter furnish him with pleasant innuendoes and hints, understood only by those immediately concerned, and which would supply him, Borgert, with an endless fund of amusement. He intensely enjoyed this propitious ending to his machinations. Humming a tune, and feeling in the best of spirits, he went home, gave his servant sabre, cloak, and helmet, and mounted the stairs leading up to Frau Leimann’s apartments. She was not alone. The adjutant was present. Müller, in fact, had shirked his duties to-day, the colonel being off on a hunting trip in the adjacent extensive forest, having been invited thereto by the royal head forester commanding that district. Frau Leimann greeted Borgert warmly, and while the latter and the adjutant stepped to the window, looking at the wife of Captain König and Lieutenant Bleibtreu, who were riding past the house on horseback, Borgert seized the opportunity and deftly appropriated the pretty woman’s hands, which he kissed passionately. Then he told them of his interview with Pommer,--told it in such droll terms and with such an abundance of mimicry, that his two hearers could not help laughing immoderately. The picture of ungainly, rough Pommer being in the sentimental stage and a prey to a lacerated conscience was too exquisitely ludicrous. Meanwhile Pommer sat at his desk, laboriously inditing a letter to his mother, to whom he opened his whole heart, as in duty bound. Several of the strongest passages in his letter were panegyrics on his new-won friend, Borgert, whom he limned in colors so brilliant that the original would indeed have had great trouble in recognizing himself in the portrait.