"Truly spoken," said Karl, for as the ex-maid-of-honour caught sight of her lord and master she quickened her footsteps to a bovine canter, and hurled herself enthusiastically on to the General's breast.
"My brave, brave Heinrich!" she gasped.
"Not at all, at all!" murmured the warrior, disengaging himself gently from the overpowering embrace. "I have done literally nothing. Now, if there had been a ski-charge——"
At this moment Meyer returned from the telephone.
"I have sent to recall Hügelweiler," he said; "but I must say I think the policy of mercy is being over-done. My forbears of Palestine were not half so kind when they got the Amalekites on the run."
"We are not dealing with Amalekites," said Karl, "but with Grimlanders, who happen to be our fellow-countrymen. But come, ladies and gentlemen, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for the storm is over and the sun is already gleaming through the thin edges of the cloud-wrack."
"I am not a weather prophet," said Meyer, "nor did Providence assign to me a sanguine temperament. We have hit the enemy hard, and we have drawn most of his teeth, but until Bernhardt's dead body is discovered stiffening in the snow I have no intention of celebrating a decisive victory."
"Don't do so, then, dear raven," laughed Karl, "but at least take food for your strength's sake. At any rate, I hear that Bernhardt was wounded in the attack on Sanatorium Hill."
"A wounded tiger is not a particularly innocuous beast," returned the Commander-in-Chief, "and there is a certain friend of Herr Saunders who has the unpleasant gift of rising superior to difficulties, and whom I fear is not even wounded."
The meal at the Brunvarad was neither very long nor very festive. Meyer's taciturn refusal to admit premature victory had a distinctly damping effect on the spirits of the company. Noises of revelry and jubilation were audible from the world without, feux de joie, rockets, songs of carousal and bursts of cheering broke in on the desultory conversation that flowed fitfully round the royal dining-table. But these sounds of jubilation only brought a deeper frown to the features of Von Bilderbaum, an added sneer to the lips of the Commander-in-Chief; even the King began to lose the exaltation that had so illumined his countenance.