For, seated on it, his bare head bent forward on his breast while his limbs presented an appearance which combined at one and the same time an extraordinary suggestion of extreme lassitude and extreme rigidity, was the figure of a man. The man's garments, even in the full noontide heat, looked as though they were soaked with wet; a man on whose breast there hung down a long, iron-grey beard. "Who is that?" whispered Bevill, as he halted for an instant at this sight, and the next went swiftly forward. "It is Sparmann! Is he asleep--or dead?" His closer approach determined for ever any doubts he might have entertained. One touch of his finger on the man's wrist--a wrist that was pierced through and through, and, in the sunshine that peeped through and danced on the quivering leaves, was as red as if painted--told him that he was already cold. "Dead!" he whispered solemnly, fearfully, since, used as he had been to the sight of and acquaintance with death in his campaigns, that had at least been open death and not death dealt out in the darkness of midnight. "Dead! Yet, I thank thee, Heaven, not at my hands. But how has it come to him? How? That wound, bad as it is, would not slay, or, at least, not so soon." Looking farther, however, at the dead man, he learnt whence his death had come. Beneath the rusty beard he saw that Sparmann's poor, common linen frills--doubtless he had been very poor of late--were all torn asunder as though in the agony of some mortal spasm, and in his chest he saw a great gaping wound that was enough to tell all. "So," Bevill whispered as he stood there gazing on his dead foe and observing (as we so oft observe the most trivial matters in our most solemn moments) how a butterfly settled on the dead man's hand for an instant, as well as how the nether lip was caught between his teeth in some final paroxysm of pain, and how wet and soaked his poor, shabby garments were. "So this is the end of you--poor, broken soldier! Alas! whate'er your failings you were a brave man once; none knew it better than I who have crossed swords with you. Ah, well! you risked your life last night to slay me--as I must think--and lost it, though not by my hand, God be praised! Farewell. Death wipes out all bitterness." As the young man stood before the poor, dead thing, while feeling naught but compassion for his end, there did spring to his mind the recollection that, with Sparmann gone, one of two bitter foes was swept from out his path. Yet, had he but known what a few hours were to bring forth, had he but been able to peer but a little way into the future, he would have recognised that Sparmann dead might work him even more ill than Sparmann alive and seeking to slay him in the deserted Weiss Haus in the darkness of the night. Now, however, his thoughts turned to present things, and he was wondering, even as he still gazed on the dead man, what it was best for him to do.