e should not want for anything.

The two gunners settled down very quickly, and nothing could prevent
Franz from going round the fields the very first evening while his
father milked and fed the cows. He had almost hoped to find something
or other left neglected because he had not been there when it was put
in hand. But no, his father had allowed nothing to go wrong anywhere.

And now in the company of the two young soldiers the old
turnpike-keeper became quite a different creature. He realised suddenly
that the quiet, sluggish peasant's blood had not quite replaced in him
the old, quick-flowing blood of the soldier. He listened, fascinated,
to the tales told by the two gunners about their soldier's life. How
things had changed since his time! He could never hear enough about it
all.

Then Franz came to tell of his reflections during the gun-practice: how
through the fence he had seen the infantry battalion tormented with
drill for hours at a time; how the dried-up looking major had foamed
with fury; and how the poor devil of a private had been struck down
bodily and mentally in the middle of it all.

Old Vogt quietly heard his son out, although he was burning to speak.
Then he began: "Look here, youngster, you as a simple soldier can't
understand it all. But depend upon it, this drill is the most important
thing that every soldier must first be made to learn. For it alone
teaches military obedience, soldierly subordination, discipline. It
alone can give that unity which preserves a company from utter
demoralisation if one of your horrible new-fangled shrapnel bursts
among them. But for drill the cowards would turn tail without further
ceremony, and take to their heels; and in the end even the brave ones
would follow them. It is the drill that teaches them to stay on and
stick together."

He held to it, in spite of all his son could say about what he had seen
of the kind of drill that the troops were kept at.

"You could not have seen aright," said his father.

The elder Vogt would not allow his son to put his hand to anything in
the afternoons. He always insisted on sending the two young fellows out
by themselves.

"Be off with you, youngsters," he would say. "Take a walk, drink a
glass of beer somewhere or other--whatever you like. Enjoy your few
days of freedom!"

Then the two young men would march off and let the hot sun and the
fresh air burn them and brown them. Vogt had shown his friend his
favourite