My sister, to be sure, who kept house for me then--the dear good soul has been dead, too, these many years--had had things put into some sort of order, the bier removed, and so on. But not much could be done in such a hurry. I gave orders for her to be driven home, fetched a bottle of Puetz's best port, and sat down opposite Lothar, who had taken a place on the sofa and was poking at the sole of his shoe with the point of his sword. As I said, he was a superb fellow, tall, stalwart, just what a dragoon should be--thick moustache, heavy eyebrows, and eyes like two wheels of fire. A fine head, but his forehead a bit wild and low, because his hair grew down on it. But that sort of thing suits young people. He had the dash characteristic of the Guards, to which we all once so ardently aspired. Neither the Tilsit nor the Allenstein Dragoons could come up to it. The devil knows what the secret of it is. We clinked glasses--to my old friend's memory, of course--and I asked him: "Well, what next?" "Do _I_ know?" he muttered between his teeth, and glared at me desperately with his burning eyes. So that was the state of affairs. My old friend's circumstances had never been brilliant. Added to that his love for everything in the shape of drink. Well--and you know where there's a swamp, the frogs will jump in--especially the boy, who had been going it for years, as if the stones at Doebeln were nuggets of gold. "The debts are mounting?" I asked. "Sky high, uncle," he said. "Pretty bad juncture for you," I said. "Mortgages, first, second, third--way over the value of the property, and a lot of rebuilding required, and there's nothing to be earned from farming on the estate. The very chickens know that." "Then good--bye to the army?" he asked, and looked me full in the face, as if expecting to hear sentence pronounced by the judge of a court martial. "Unless you have a friend to pull you out of the hole." He shook his head, fuming. "Then, of course." "And suppose I should have Doebeln cut up into lots, what do you think I'd realise?" "Shame on you, boy," I said. "What! Sell the shirt from off your back, chop your bed into kindlings?" "Uncle," he replied, "you are talking through your hat. I am dead broke." "How much is it?" I asked. He mentioned a sum. I'll not tell what it was because I paid it. I laid down my terms. Firstly, immediate withdrawal from the army. Secondly, his personal management of the estate. Thirdly, the settlement of the lawsuit. This lawsuit was against Krakow of Krakowitz, and had been going on for years. It had been my old friend's favourite sport. Like all such things, it turned, of course, upon a question of inheritance, and had swallowed up three times as much as the whole business was worth.