“Long K, who had become quite red from the exertion, was raising his arm again for the fourth blow, but with one accord, three or four threw themselves between him and Big L, tore the rattan from his grasp, and thrust him back. “The execution was at an end. “The cadet aforesaid raised his voice once more, but only half aloud. “‘Now, the affair is over with and buried,’ said he, ‘let each one give his hand to L No. I, and let him that breathes even a word of the matter be accounted a rascal.’ “A general ‘Yes, yes,’ showed that he had spoken entirely in accord with the mind of the others. They stepped up to Big L and stretched out their hands to him, but then, as at a word of command, they threw themselves upon Little L. There formed a regular knot about the lad, first one and then another wished to grasp him by the hand and shake it. Those standing at the back stretched out their hands ’way across those in front, some even climbed on to the table to get at him; they stroked his head, patted him on the shoulder, and with it all was a general whispering: ‘Little L, you glorious rascal, you superb Little L.’” The old colonel lifted his glass to his mouth--it was as if he were forcing something down behind it. When he set it down again, he drew a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart. “Boys like that,” said he, “they have instinct--instinct and sentiment. “The lights were turned out, all stole hushed through the corridor back to their rooms. Five minutes later every boy was lying in his bed, and the affair was ended. “The captain and the other officers had heard not a sound of the whole matter. “The affair was ended”--the voice of the speaker grew thick; he had buried both hands in his trousers’ pockets and was gazing before him through the fumes of the smoking cigar. “So we thought that night, as we lay in bed.--Did Little L sleep that night? In the days following, when we assembled in class, it did not seem so. Before, it had been as if an imp were sitting in the place where the lad sat, and, like a rooster, had crowed it over the whole class--now it was as if there were a void in the place--so still and pale he sat in his place. “As when a man flicks the dust from the wings of a butterfly--so was it with the little lad--I can not describe it otherwise. “On afternoons one always saw him now walking with his brother. He may have felt that Big L would now find less companionship than ever among the others--so he provided company for him. And there the two went, then, arm in arm, always around about the Karreehof and across the court with the trees in it, one as well as the other with head bent to the ground, so that one scarcely saw that they ever spoke a word.” Again there came a pause in the narrative, again I had to fill the empty glass of the colonel, who smoked his cigar faster and faster. “But all this,” he continued, “would perhaps have worn itself out in course of time and everything have gone on as before--but for people!”