A STRANGE BET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8183, 14 July 1906, Page 7

A STRANGE BET.

(Specially written for the Age by * Raht Belah.) ' ' '' J PART 1. s In a German University town three ' •eooentriu oharaoterj, two of them * royatering blades, the third their s hamble shadow, kept the disciples l of Alma Mater on the "qui vive." i They were originals in their various l ways. Lord Fastfoot was a rioh English- ' man of energetic betting propensities. Like the Yankee who was wont to bet on the tick of his watch, when no other pretext for betting was available, his lordship was ever ready to give or take the odds at any j time. His friends bad rather a good joke about this mania of his: Greatly smitten with the charm of a plump German damsel, he was enjoying with ner Oupid's sweet dalliance, in a reoess of the fine pleasure grounds, the favourite haunts of the students, while the i gentle cooing of other lovers, ensconced in adjacent bowers was pervading the atmopshere and the fusion of their fervid hearts rapidly ap proiohing the oritioal point, when a deep voice was heard to exclaim: I "It is going to rain 1" A trivial remark, surely! We all make it oasoally in a most indifferent manner, aad it rains or does not, as the cas« may be—that is all. { In the present oase those four words were portentous! They suspended the 'pop of the question' that already hovered on the lordly lover's lips; they electrified bim into a sporting tet of ten to one with the owner of the deep voice that it would not rain; they drove his indignant companion into a storm of tears and into preoipitious flight. And after ail his bet was not taken. Von Nix was a German baron and nob—for a German. He wad also ugly—very ugly. He was ugly from the tip of his toes to the crown of bis head; but it was the marvellous composition of his nose that gave bim a claim to be called the ugliest man between Elbe and Rhine. No description could do justice to his nose I Bennie, nick-named the "Beautiful Child," was a very poor Jew, very handsome, very servile, and so alternately pet or spacegoat of "my lord and "Dene Guadigen." Many an artist 1 he bad served as a model of Christ or one of the Apostles for afex eyes of a deep brown, soft and melting, lips and complexion of oriental richness, and a nose! the despair of sculptor and painter! Marble and canvas were too gross to do justice to that etheral feature. Poetry alone could do so. , Being poor and a Jew, Bennie was slavishly servile to rioh Nix and richer Fastfoot, yet, differently so. He admired the bar on and kowtowed to bim, beoause that, noble, indifferent to bis own physical shortcomings, waß frankly impressed with Bonnie's superior oharms; he also readily responded to occasional appeals on his well-filled purse, made by bis humble follower,, without expecting repayment, and be was Bennie's countryman. The lord Bennie admired, but hated and feared as well; because, .though not mean, he made the reoipient of bis bounty feel the obligations he conferred, beoause be exhibited, perhaps unconsciously, an overweening opinion of bis personality, his rank and his uountry—ah, there was the rub—he was an Englishman all over. Ye, who live in days when to be English is a password, and "open sesame" in any country and condition of life, cannot understand the deep dislike, the reluctant and dobutful homage, which a typical Englishman in the days of my story evoked in the B'atherland. The English and the German nobles respected and liked each other vastly; probably they were anti-types, the one seeing in the other what he himself lacked. Sworn allien in many a mad freak and gamble, no casual observer would have imagined that they should become foes, a far-seeing observer might have perceived that pecuniarily the Englishman came always out on top and that so onesided a condition of affairs could only end in a splitting tiff. And eo it did. During a run of bad luck at cards the baron acoused his lordship of, say, sbarp practice. A challenge was the result. In Germany students solve such little problems promptly with rapiers. Our men belonged to students' clubs, and "fighting olubs" at that. Both were noted swordsmen, both were champions of their respected "Buderschaft. "Often they had tried their-mettle one each otner without advantage to either. Yet, now, the few hours between challenge and fight, made a marked difference in the trim of the combatants. Pastfoot having taken a cold bath and a dose.of quinine, went to bed early to tone himself down; Nix, without the bath took sundry more "seidels" of Baiersoh than usual to tone himself up. At 6 a.m. tbey measured swords, bets running high on the issue of the combat. At the third bout the Englishman's rapier touched the German's nose. All who know anything about the keen edge of a fighting rapier will understand what that means. The surgeon at the 'function' performed the necessary ofHoe of plastering the injured organ as deftly as medicos of the Fatherland are wont to do on such occasions —not without dubious beadshaking. "I am doing my best, my baron," he said, "but with—pardon me for saying so—with such a complicated a beak as yours is a symmetrical restoration of its shape is —er, doubtful, yes—er, deoidedly doubtful. Bennie's now. would be as good as new in no time." "Ob, I know my nose was ugly," interrupted the patient, impatiently, "always ugly, even, say, inflamed still, I could before this call it one, ha. ha, and inadvisable, while now H "It may, perhaps, claim the distinction of being called bipartite, chuckled the surgeon. "Like a bulldog's nose," growled, the wounded man. "What of that," exclaimed Bennie, who, though funky, bad been the 'baron's second. "You need not mind if your nose turn out to be so. You are rioh and needn't oare. If I