The return to his native air and his native costume, coupled with the gravity and danger of the situation, seemed to have raised him all at once from the music-hall level to the higher and nobler plane of the Tyrolese mountaineer. He looked and moved every inch a freeman—nay, more, he confronted Andreas with such haughty self-confidence that his enemy, surprised, drew back half-a-step and surveyed him critically. “That’s a very strange coincidence,” Andreas murmured, after a short pause. “It’s curious you should choose the exact moment to come when I happened to be at St Valentin.” Franz scowled at him yet again. “You can take it how you like,” he retorted, in German, with a toss of the head in his old defiant fashion. “If you choose to think I came here to follow you and fight you, you’re at liberty to think so. I’m ready, if you are. I’ve an old cause of quarrel against you, recollect, Andreas Hausberger. You robbed me by fraud long ago of the woman I loved; you married her by force; and you’ve made her life unhappy. If I dogged you, which I haven’t done, I’d have cause enough and to spare. You remember that first night when I saw you in London, in Mrs Palmer’s box at the Harmony Theatre? Well, if it hadn’t been for the presence of the woman I loved—the woman you stole from me—that very first night, you false cur, I’d have buried my knife in you.” Andreas drew back yet another pace. He was taller than Franz, very big and powerful. With a contemptuous look, he measured his enemy from head to foot. “Why, you couldn’t, you fool,” he answered, drawing himself up to his full height. “I never yet was afraid of you or of any man. Many’s the time I’ve turned you, drunk, out of this very room. I’ll turn you out again if you dare to speak so to me!” He was wearing a Tyrolese hat, just like Franz’s own; he had bought it at Jenbach on his eastward route, to return, as was his wont, at each fresh visit home, to the simplicity and freedom of his native mountains. Before Franz’s very eyes he removed it from his head, and, with a sneer on his face, turned the blackcock’s feather Robbler-wise as a challenge of defiance. No Robbler on earth could overlook such a wager of battle. Trembling with rage, Franz Lindner sprang forth, and leaped angrily towards him. His face was black as night; his brow was like thunder. He snatched the hat from Andreas’s head with a deft flank movement, and tore hastily from its band the offending emblem. “Was kost die Feder?” he cried, in a tone of angry contempt, holding it up triumphantly before its owner’s eyes. All the west was blotted out; Franz Lindner was himself again. He was a Robbler once more, with the hot blood of his Robblerhood boiling fierce within him. Quick as lightning, the familiar answer rang out in clear tones, “Fünf Finger und ein Griff!” Andreas brooked no such insult. “Five fingers and a grip”—he should have if he wanted them.