No word of command was expected now; both duellists aimed steadily. Schwartz fired first and a terrible curse, hoarse and guttural, escaped him, as his ball whistled harmlessly past the left ear of Volhonski, whose face was now ghastly with pain, rage, and hatred. Drawing nearer and nearer, till the muzzle of his pistol was barely two feet from the forehead of Schwartz, he gave a grim and terrible smile for a moment. We were rooted to the spot; no one stirred; no one spoke, or seemed to breathe; and just as a cold perspiration flowed in beadlike drops over the face of the merciless Schwartz; it seemed to vanish with his spike helmet in smoke, as Volhonski fired and--blew his brains out! We sprang into the droski, and I felt as if a terrible crime had been committed when we drove at full speed across the neutral ground, called the Hamburgerburg, which lies between the city and the river gate of Altona, along a street of low taverns and dancing-rooms; and there, when past the sentinels in Danish uniform, the Lion of Denmark and the red-striped sentry boxes indicated that we were safe within the frontier of Holstein. So intense were our feelings _then_, that the few short fleeting moments crowded into that short compass of time seemed as an age, so full were they of fierce, exciting, and revolting thoughts; but these were past and gone; and _now_, as I recalled this merciless episode, times there were when I felt in my heart that I could freely risk my life in the same fashion to kill Guilfoyle, even as Volhonski killed the remorseless German bully Schwartz. CHAPTER XXV.--SURPRISES. Supposing her to have left Walcot Park, as her letter informed me, I rode in that direction no more; and though I knew the family address in London, I could neither write in exculpation of myself nor procure leave to follow her. All furloughs were now forbidden or withdrawn, as the new detachments for the East expected hourly the order to depart. Thus I passed my days pretty much as one may do those which precede or follow a funeral. I performed all my military duties, went to mess, rose and retired to bed, mechanically, my mind occupied by one thought--the anxious longing to do something by which to clear myself and regain Estelle; and feeling in Winchester Barracks somewhat as Ixion might have felt on his fabled wheel, or the son of Clymene on his rock; and so I writhed under the false position in which another's art and malice had placed me; writhed aimlessly and fruitlessly, save that, although tied up by my promise of secrecy to Estelle, I had written a full and candid detail of the whole affair to Sir Madoc, and entreated his good offices for me. Vainly did Price, little Tom Clavell (the 19th depôt had come in), Raymond Mostyn of the Rifles, and other friends say, when noticing my preoccupation, "Come, old fellow, rouse yourself; don't mope. Are you game for pool to-day?" "Pool with a recently-broken arm!" I would reply.