For myself, I was in a state of utter bewilderment, and looked at the brawny, rough-voiced men like a dazed child.
The long-continued excitement and the dramatic close of the incident had for the time clouded my brain, and, beyond the fact that Ober was dead, I grasped nothing clearly.
Then above the babel of sounds I heard a voice ordering in tones of command that my arms should be bound afresh.
This the men did very willingly, and in their anger they tied the knots so tightly that the pain almost caused me to faint.
Then two of them led me into the next room, where Von Theyer sat, with a pair of pistols on the table beside him.
"That will do," he exclaimed harshly. "Leave him there. Now go outside and wait. Don't be frightened if you hear the report of a pistol. I'm in no danger."
The men saluted and withdrew, leaving me facing their colonel.
At the sight of that face with the hideous scar my senses and my manhood returned to me. I remembered that I came of a race of Magyar nobles, and resolved to show myself worthy to bear their name.
"George Botskay, once a so-called captain in the rebel army, but now an associate of thieves and murderers, I demand to know the name of the villain by whose aid you have stabbed an unoffending man to death."
At this implied accusation of a cowardly crime my face flushed, and I cried hotly,--