e last officer had passed in.

The guns and carriages were taken to the gun-park. The horses were
unharnessed, and the knapsacks unfastened from the guns. Then the
drivers made their way to the stables, and the gunners to their
barracks. The quartermaster had pointed out his place to every one, so
that each man had only to take possession of his cupboard and his bed.

The young soldiers, who had never been in camp before, gazed about with
much interest. Things, on the whole, looked very inviting. A wide road
with broad footpaths on either side traversed the whole camp, almost
further than the eye could see, and along it stood the barracks on the
left, and the stables on the right. The houses were all alike; in the
middle a square one-storied building, and running out from it a wing
containing lofty, airy rooms for the men, open to the wooden rafters
that supported the slated roof. At the back were covered verandas, in
which, during bad weather, instruction could be carried on and the roll
called. Beyond these outbuildings began the outskirts of the wood,
beautiful stately pines growing thick and close. The resinous scent of
pine-needles was wafted into the rooms through the open windows.

"Heinrich," said Vogt to Klitzing, "this is just like a summer holiday
for us, isn't it? Isn't this air splendid?"

The clerk stopped his unpacking for a moment and drew in a deep breath
of the invigorating odour.

"Oh yes," he answered; "we can do with this all right!"

However, it was not a "summer holiday" by any means, and the two
friends found that out soon enough. There was a lot of real hard work
to do during these weeks; but it was all done with a good will. Actual
gun-practice was a very different thing from that dull work in garrison
with blank cartridges.

The magazine where the ammunition was stored lay at some little
distance from the other buildings, near the gun-park, and was
surrounded by a thick high wall of earth. One realised from this how
dangerous were its contents. But the store-men, who gave out the
shrapnel-shells and the fuses, went about their work as if regardless
of the fact that in each one of these lurked death and destruction. And
yet in every shrapnel-shell were a couple of hundred bullets that could
easily put a whole company _hors de combat_.

The beginning of the gun-practice did not, however, seem likely to be
very dangerous. Only twenty-four shrapnel, _i.e._, six shots for each
gun, were gi