The three men looked at each other in silence. They began to divine for what reasons this duel had been provoked; but none gave utterance to his thoughts. They felt that at yonder spot, where the adversary knelt by the side of his fallen foe, a scene was being enacted which had nothing in common with the ordinary circumstances of a duel; and, respecting the young doctor's request, they remained reverentially at a distance.
Brunnow had passed one arm round the wounded man, whose head lay on his breast, and supported him, while with the other hand he pressed the handkerchief to the bleeding part. Whether it were the pain of this touch, or the bitter cry "Arno!" which brought him back to consciousness, Raven opened his eyes and made a faint, deprecatory gesture.
"Let that be," he said. "You aimed well. I was sure of it."
"Arno, why have you done this thing to me?" groaned Brunnow. "Must it be my hand, none but mine? Oh! I see now, I understand why you drove me to it."
There was such anguish in his tone that it affected even the dying man. He tried to hold out his hand to the speaker.
"Forgive me, Rudolph," he said, but half audibly. "Do not reproach yourself. I thank you."
His voice forsook him, but with a supreme effort he raised himself, and his roving eyes seemed to search for something in the distance, Brunnow supported him, striving with mortal anxiety to stem the flow of blood, the red life-stream which his own hand had let loose; yet his science told him that here no exertions could avail to succour or to save.
Suddenly the sun broke through the veil of mist. Yonder, on the heights, stood the Castle, illuminated by the morning splendour. Its walls and towers gleamed in the rosy flood, and its windows flashed swift lightning greetings over to the valley beneath. Arno's eyes were fixed intently on one spot; his last look was for the "sunbeam" which even now sent a bright message to him from thence. In another moment the picture paled, the shining vision receded farther and farther from view. Dark shadows gathered about the dying man. Before his dimmed eyes came as the eddy of cool water closing in upon him, and he was drawn down, down into mysterious, glimmering depths where all earthly sounds were hushed, where all the striving and the strife, the happiness and sorrow of life, died away into one long continuous dream; while, intermingling with this dream, there ran ever an unvarying far-off murmur, the low spirit-singing of a spring borne faintly below from some immeasurable distance.
Brunnow laid the dead man gently down. He himself would have risen, but his strength abandoned him, and he sank unconscious to the ground beside the lifeless body of the comrade, the friend of his youth.