k on the right fell asleep immediately. Frielinghausen,
however, seemed wakeful. Vogt listened. No, he was not deceived: the
tall lad was weeping. For a moment he felt inclined to question his
comrade about his trouble; but he feared a repulse, so turned over on
the other side. After all, it was not for a man to weep, especially a
soldier!

Once more he started from incipient slumber; he thought he heard the
cow in her stall, clattering her chain. Surprised, he collected his
wits. "Of course," he then said to himself, "it is the tattoo. I am a
soldier."

CHAPTER II

"Every hour of every day,
Gunners, be ye blithe and gay!"
(_Old Artillery song._)

There was a good deal to do in the orderly-room. This new batch of
sixty recruits meant a large amount of work that must be seen to at
once, if the wilderness of papers were ever to be brought into some
sort of order.

Three men sat bending over their writing: a bombardier, a corporal, and
the sergeant-major.

The bombardier was doggedly filling in the lists, only glancing
occasionally to see if the pile of forms still to be got through were
not growing somewhat smaller.

Kaeppchen, the corporal, a lanky fellow with cunning eyes, grumbled from
time to time at the trouble, and consigned to perdition the dirty
rascals who caused it. Of course it was much pleasanter for him to sit
in the orderly-room than to be messing about with the idiots out of
doors; but he had never bargained for having to scribble away till he
nearly got writer's cramp. And to-day the sergeant-major didn't even
seem to be thinking of a pause for luncheon.

It therefore happened very opportunely when Captain von Wegstetten,
having scarcely listened to the sergeant-major's report, "Nothing new
in the battery," said: "Sergeant Schumann, I want to speak to you for a
minute."

No further intimation was needed; Kaeppchen and the bombardier
disappeared from the room instantly.

Sergeant Schumann stood by his table in the orthodox attitude of
respectful attention. As on every day of the eight years during which
Wegstetten had commanded the sixth battery, and he, Schumann, had been
its sergeant-major, he waited until the former by a gesture or a word
should permit him to assume an easier position. Nothing could alter
this; not even the confidence that