"I went on talking to him, and asked him how I should word his challenge, but still he did not answer me; and when we reached his apartments he threw himself upon a lounge and sobbed like a child. My brain reeled; I did not know what to think of his condition, for it never occurred to me that fear, pitiable disgraceful cowardice, could turn a Heydeck into a whining baby. I would not believe him when at last he composed himself sufficiently to tell me, his teeth chattering the while, that he could not fight,--could never summon sufficient courage to stand in front of a loaded pistol. He was beside himself, not with the thought of the insult that had been offered him, but with fear! "He was a coward, an infamous coward; he confessed it to me, and cried like a child, cursing his father's harshness that had forced him to enter the army against his will, and that now condemned him to dishonour, for he could not fight. "I stood as if turned to stone. I had never dreamed of the possibility of such cowardice. I left him with contempt, and I have never seen him since. The next morning I heard that he had sent in his resignation and was gone; whither I did not learn until long afterwards." The colonel paused in his story and bent his gaze gloomily upon the ground. Memory was a greater pain to him than he cared to show. For Leo his father's narrative possessed an absorbing interest. He had frequently heard allusions made to the irreconcilable quarrel that had existed for many years between his father and his uncle, but this was all he had ever known concerning it. Now the veil was lifted from the mystery; this explained the scorn and hatred with which the colonel mentioned the name of his brother, who was now a wealthy man, living somewhere in the Tyrol. But the story had produced upon Leo an effect which the narrator never intended. The young lieutenant was firmly convinced that his father had been mistaken. His uncle Ferdinand had never refused to fight a duel from cowardice; it was impossible! Had he not passed through the same struggle with himself which his uncle had formerly undergone? Small as was the old colonel's comprehension of his son's motives to-day, it must have been infinitely less with regard to his brother's motives in his hot-headed youth. Would he not have suspected Leo of cowardice if his colonel had not borne such enthusiastic testimony to the young officer's bravery?