lear and definite, dwarfing mere personal
aims.

In that dim room a sinister thought had seized upon him, oppressing and
paralysing him; a vague foreboding that his fate would resemble that of
this pale woman. But he chased the dark clouds away. His star did not
vary in its light as does the shifting and drifting human mind; it was
like the sun, steady, unchangeable, inspiring.

CHAPTER IV

"For oh! I had a comrade,
And a better could not be."
(_Uhland._)

During the first days of December Corporal Wiegandt would sometimes
observe, in a pause of the drill, that the recruits were beginning to
look a little like soldiers; and in the bar-rack-room, after drill was
over, he occasionally even went so far as to give them some praise.

When he was getting ready to go out in the evening, and, with sabre
buckled on and forage-cap stuck jauntily on his head, brushed his
moustache before the little looking-glass, he would say: "Boys, I am
almost pleased with you to-day. I shall tell my Frieda."

Whereupon the recruits would laugh, as in duty bound. They might all
hate the corporal; he would not dispense with a fraction of their
drill, and did not express himself in a complimentary way during the
exercises; but he made things easy for them as far as possible,
changing about from difficult to less difficult movements, and giving
them long intervals between those that were the most exacting. His
division never had to stand for minutes together with their knees bent,
like Heppner's. Moreover, despite his roughness, there was about him a
certain kind-heartedness which took the form of good-natured little
extra lessons to the least efficient after drill.

His Frieda was a merry industrious girl who sewed muslin in a frilling
factory, and hoarded up the groschen she earned in order to save enough
money to be married some day.

And Wiegandt, who, despite his martial appearance, was an ardent lover,
added the pfennigs of his pay, and deprived himself of his evening
beer, going for walks with his sweet-heart instead, and kissing her
over and over again.

"That tastes better than beer," he would say, "and costs nothing."

As the pair had not much to talk of except their lover-like wishes,
Wiegandt used to tell the girl about the recruits, so that by degrees
Frieda lear