&ldquo;Turned up his toes! By the god of war, that was a shot!&rdquo; he exulted mentally. &ldquo;Got it through the head, no doubt, just where I aimed, staggered behind that tree, rolled over on his back, and died.&rdquo; </p> <p> And he stared! He stared, forgetting to move, almost awed, almost sorry. But for nothing in the world would he have had it undone. Such a shot!&mdash;such a shot! Rolled over on his back and died! </p> <p> For it was this helpless position, lying on the back, that shouted its direct evidence at General Feraud! It never occurred to him that it might have been deliberately assumed by a living man. It was inconceivable. It was beyond the range of sane supposition. There was no possibility to guess the reason for it. And it must be said, too, that General D&rsquo;Hubert&rsquo;s turned-up feet looked thoroughly dead. General Feraud expanded his lungs for a stentorian shout to his seconds, but, from what he felt to be an excessive scrupulousness, refrained for a while. </p> <p> &ldquo;I will just go and see first whether he breathes yet,&rdquo; he mumbled to himself, leaving carelessly the shelter of his tree. This move was immediately perceived by the resourceful General D&rsquo;Hubert. He concluded it to be another shift, but when he lost the boots out of the field of the mirror he became uneasy. General Feraud had only stepped a little out of the line, but his adversary could not possibly have supposed him walking up with perfect unconcern. General D&rsquo;Hubert, beginning to wonder at what had become of the other, was taken unawares so completely that the first warning of danger consisted in the long, early-morning shadow of his enemy falling aslant on his outstretched legs. He had not even heard a footfall on the soft ground between the trees! </p> <p> It was too much even for his coolness. He jumped up thoughtlessly, leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of an average man (unless totally paralyzed by discomfiture) would have been to stoop for his weapons, exposing himself to the risk of being shot down in that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its very definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing whether in reflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are not affected by the customary mode of thought. In his young days, Armand D&rsquo;Hubert, the reflective, promising officer, had emitted the opinion that in warfare one should &ldquo;never cast back on the lines of a mistake.&rdquo; This idea, defended and developed in many discussions, had settled into one of the stock notions of his brain, had become a part of his mental individuality. Whether it had gone so