and weariness from crossing his lips.

"Could you reach this flask if I threw it over to you?" asked Ulrich
suddenly; "there is good wine in it, and one may as well be as
comfortable as one can. Let us drink, even if to-night one of us dies."

"No, I can scarcely see anything; there is so much blood caked round my
eyes," said Georg, "and in any case I don't drink wine with an enemy."

Ulrich was silent for a few minutes, and lay listening to the weary
screeching of the wind. An idea was slowly forming and growing in his
brain, an idea that gained strength every time that he looked across at
the man who was fighting so grimly against pain and exhaustion. In the
pain and languor that Ulrich himself was feeling the old fierce hatred
seemed to be dying down.

"Neighbour," he said presently, "do as you please if your men come first.
It was a fair compact. But as for me, I've changed my mind. If my men
are the first to come you shall be the first to be helped, as though you
were my guest. We have quarrelled like devils all our lives over this
stupid strip of forest, where the trees can't even stand upright in a
breath of wind. Lying here to-night thinking I've come to think we've
been rather fools; there are better things in life than getting the
better of a boundary dispute. Neighbour, if you will help me to bury the
old quarrel I--I will ask you to be my friend."

Georg Znaeym was silent for so long that Ulrich thought, perhaps, he had
fainted with the pain of his injuries. Then he spoke slowly and in
jerks.