I shall be long forgetting my first impressions of the man. I had been looking for a dry, spectacled student, or a stiff young autocrat of the thoroughly Prussian type, which I, like many other Germans, thoroughly disliked and inwardly laughed at. Instead, I found another chum. Franz was an engaging young man of slight build but very vigorous and athletic. I found him frank, friendly, unassuming, apparently wholly carefree and full of quiet drollery. From his first greeting any prejudice that I might have formed from hearing my chum, Willi, chant his excellencies, was quite wiped away. And as the days passed I found myself drawn to seek Franz’s company constantly. I have no doubt it flattered my vanity—always awake since my exploit in St. Petersburg—to find this older man treating me as a mental equal. It seemed to me that he differentiated between me and Willi, who was quite young in manner as well as years. At times the impulse was very strong for me to confide in Franz, to let him know that I was not a mere cadet, that I had been in Russia for my government. Luckily for myself I suppressed that impulse. Luckily for me, but very unluckily for Lieutenant Franz von Heiden—as it turned out. One sunny December morning we were all three going out rabbit shooting. While Willi counted out shells in the gun room, I went to summon Franz from the bedroom he was using as his study. It was characteristic of him that without any assumption of importance, he gave a few hours to work early every morning, even while on leave. I found him intent upon some large sheets of paper, but he pushed them aside. “Time to start now?” he asked. “Good! Wait a minute, while I dress.” He stepped into the adjoining dressing-room. And then, as if Fate had taken a hand in the moment’s activities, I did a thing which I have never ceased to regret. Fate! Why not? What is the likelihood that by mere vague chance I, of all the cadets of Gross Lichterfelde, should have become Willi von Heiden’s chum and shared his holidays? That by mere chance I should have been an inmate of his home when Franz was there, three days out of the whole year? That by mere chance, I, with my precocious knowledge and thirst for yet more knowledge, should have entered his study when he was occupied with a particular task? Why did I not send the servant to call him? And why, instead of doing any one of the dozen other things I might have done while I was waiting for Franz to change his clothes, should I have stepped across and looked at the big sheets of paper on his table?