Eight strong hands took hold and two minutes later the boy lay on the flowered cover of her bed. It was far too short for him, but it stood, soft and comfortable, hidden by white mull curtains in a corner of her simple room. He was summoned back to full consciousness, tapped, auscultated and examined. Finally he confessed with a good deal of hesitation that his right foot hurt him a bit--that was all. "Are the boots your own, freshie?" asked one of the physicians. He blushed, turned his gaze to the wall and shook his head. Everyone smiled. "Well, then, off with the wretched thing." But all exertion of virile strength was in vain. The boot did not budge. Only a low moan of suffering came from the patient. "There's nothing to be done," said one, "little miss, let's have a bread-knife." Anxious and with half-folded hands she had stood behind the doctors. Now she rushed off and brought the desired implement. "But you're not going to hurt him?" she asked with big, beseeching eyes. "No, no, we're only going to cut his leg off," jested one of the by-standers and took the knife from her clinging fingers. Two incisions, two rents along the shin--the leather parted. A steady surgeon's hand guided the knife carefully over the instep. At last the flesh appeared--bloody, steel-blue and badly swollen. "Freshie, you idiot, you might have killed yourself," said the surgeon and gave the patient a paternal nudge. "And now, little miss, hurry--sugar of lead bandages till evening." Chapter II. Her name was Antonie. She was the inn-keeper Wiesner's only daughter and managed the household and kitchen because her mother had died in the previous year. His name was Robert Messerschmidt. He was a physician's son and a student of medicine. He hoped to fight his way into full fraternity membership by the beginning of the next semester. This last detail was, at present, the most important of his life and had been confided to her at the very beginning of their acquaintanceship. Youth is in a hurry. At four o'clock their hands were intertwined. At five o'clock their lips found each other. From six on the bandages were changed more rarely. Instead they exchanged vows of eternal fidelity. At eight a solemn betrothal took place. And when, at ten o'clock, swaying slightly and mellow of mood, the physicians reappeared in order to put the patient to bed properly, their wedding-day had been definitely set for the fifth anniversary of that day. Next morning the procession went on to celebrate in some other picturesque locality the festival of the breakfast of "the morning after." Toni had run up on the hill which ascended, behind her father's house, toward the high plateau of the river-bank. With dry but burning eyes she looked after the wagons which gradually vanished in the silvery sand of the road and one of which carried away into the distance her life's whole happiness.