"Bore!" That darling of Berlin salons a bore! "Look here, you shrewish, homely little brute, I've nothing to do with you!" he blurted. "Tell your sister I'm here--if she is your sister. I think you're only a servant." Still Helen was looking him over with cool, superior eyes. "Very bad-mannered, too!" she remarked. "But perceptions correct. Shrewish and homely, yes!" Nobody on earth had ever spoken to him in this fashion before. He did not think such disrespect was possible. He was red-faced and stuttering as he took a step toward her, raising his gloves as if he would strike her as he often had struck his soldier servant; but his hand dropped in face of her unflinching stare. "Look here! Do you know that I am an officer on the staff of the army in possession of this village? I'm going to be billeted here and I propose to choose my room." He moved toward the door that led to the stairs. "Certainly!" she answered, passing through it ahead of him. He was dumbfounded at her compliance and suspicious of its promptness. "Henriette, the beast is going to billet himself here!" she shouted up the stairs. "You pass through the other way and I will meet you outside and we'll go to the curé, who will speak to the General in command about it. The General may be a decent, respectable man." Von Eichborn drew back from the doorway. Again he tried to fasten his eyeglass in his eye; again it would not stick. As Helen looked around at him after her call to her sister, with that in her stare which made him appear the most ridiculous little puppy that ever left a kennel, he mumbled: "Unnecessary!" Then she saw Phil hurrying across the grounds. She only knew how glad she was to see him and that she felt limp in her relief as he appeared in the room, looking so strong and ready for any eventuality. It was another picture of him that she would never forget. Von Eichborn, as he turned in surprise and stood there between the two, was sheepish and confused as a human being, before his sense of authority and position vented its truculence with a snarling irony of inference. "You seem not to have been looking after your cousins," he said. "I judge that the pretty one is quite devoted to you and the shrew here keeps guard in your absence." Something carried Phil a step nearer to von Eichborn involuntarily; and what came into his eyes was distilled of that old blood and tempered by three years in the Southwest. "And you, I judge," he replied, "are a cowardly beast, going about sneaking into homes when no men are present and others in your uniform are under fire!" Cowardly was the word that sent von Eichborn out of his head with anger. He struck at Phil's face with his gloves, but missed. The rest was very simple. Von Eichborn went sprawling. His descent was rapid and unexpected and the stunning effect of the impact was accentuated by the way his head hit the floor.