aid the top, "you're not
to go beyond battalion bounds."

"Am I in arrest?" demanded Mock, his face set in ugly lines.

"You're confined within battalion bounds. Remember that," saying
which First Sergeant Lund turned and strode away.

Nor was Mock a happy man. Holmes arranged that a regimental surgeon
should come over to B company barracks later and make a careful
examination of Sergeant Mock's feet. For some reason the surgeon
did not come promptly. The evening meal was eaten, and darkness
settled down over Camp Berry. Mock, still limping and looking
woeful, kept out in the open air.

"Psst!" came sharply from somewhere, and Mock, turning, saw a
man in civilian garb standing in the shadow of a latrine shed.

"Come here," called the stranger. Still surly, but urged by curiosity,
Mock obeyed the summons.

"I don't want to be seen talking with you," murmured the stranger,
in a low voice, "but I want to offer you my sympathy. Say, but
a man gets treated roughly in the Army. That captain of yours---"

As the stranger paused, looking keenly at Mock, the disgruntled
sergeant finished vengefully:

"The captain? He's a dog!"

"Dog is right," agreed the stranger promptly. "Will he do anything
more to you?"

"I expect he'll bust me," said Sergeant Mock.

To "bust" is the same as to "break." It means to reduce a non-com
to the ranks.

"Are you going to stand it?" demanded the stranger.

"Fat chance I'll have to beat the captain's game!" declared Mock
angrily.

"But are you going to pay him back?"

"How?"

"Listen. I was in the Army once, and I don't like these officer
boys. Maybe I've something against your captain, too. Anyway,
keep mum and take good advice, and I'll help you to make him wish
he'd never been born."

"Not a chance!" dissented Sergeant Mock promptly. "Captain Holmes
isn't afraid of anything, and besides he was born lucky. Besides
that, do anything to hurt him, and you've got Captain Prescott
against you, too, and ready to rip you up the back."

"It's as easy to put 'em both in bad as it is to do it to either,"
promised the stranger. "Now, listen. You-----"

CHAPTER III

BAD BLOOD COMES TO THE SURFACE

Later in the evening the surgeon came around. After examining
Sergeant Mock's feet for twenty minutes, and testing the skin as
well, he pronounced Mock a shammer.

Mock was sent to the guard-house for twenty-four hours. The next
morning an order was published