one.

"Don't you rookies go to take this squad-room for a vawdy-vill show,"
growled Corporal Shrimp, from the near distance, as he heard the three
laughing. Sergeant Brimmer had just stepped outside.

Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta! sounded a bugle again in the corridor.

"A little time to ourselves now," whispered the uniformed recruit.
"That's mess call."

The men in the room were quickly filing out. Outside of barracks A
Company was falling in, with B Company to the left of it.

"You un-uniformed recruits take your position at the rear, without
forming," ordered Sergeant Brimmer coming up. "As your company starts
Corporal Shrimp will instruct you how to form at the rear of the
company."

What followed was little understood by the two recruits. But presently
the two first sergeants gave their commands, and marched their companies
into the mess hall.

"Fall in lively, there, by twos!" growled Shrimp roughly. "Hurry up!
Don't get in the way of the head of B Company!"

To give emphasis to his orders Shrimp seized Hal and Noll each by an arm
and swung them into place.

Both recruits went in with flushed faces. Shrimp's treatment had been
such as to make them feel uncomfortably "raw." But as the men marched to
their seats at the long tables in the mess hall this feeling of
humiliation left both boys.

Hal's new friend occupied a seat at their right.

"All the corporals ain't Shrimps," he whispered. "We've probably got
one of the meanest corporals in the Army."

"He knows how to make everyone else feel as mean as himself," Hal
whispered back.

Then all hands fell to at the meal, which tasted uncommonly good. It
consisted of a stew, with plenty of meat and potatoes, and other
vegetables in it. There was also bread and butter. Pie and coffee
followed. Then the recruit companies were marched out again and were
dismissed.

"We have twenty minutes for relaxation now," laughed Hal's new friend,
who had introduced himself as Private Stanley. "After that I suppose
Shrimp will get you for the setting-up drills. He always has the new men
in our squad room. He----"

At this moment Sergeant Brimmer stepped up to the trio as they stood in
the open air chatting.

"Overton and Terry, you'll be under Corporal Shrimp's orders after the
recreation period. He'll instruct you in some of the first work of the
recruit. Go with him when he orders you to turn out."

"Very good, Sergeant."

No sooner had a bugle sounded than Corporal Shrim