ted. The
regiment really isn't anywhere near fit for foreign service."

"It won't be so many weeks before we're ordered abroad," Dick
insisted. "Wait and see whether I'm right."

Wonderful indeed was the speed with which buildings were erected.
The record time for constructing a two-story building with an
office, supply room, mess-room and sleeping quarters for two hundred
and fifty men was ninety minutes!

Fast, too, was the work done by the Regular Army regiments, which
had this advantage over the National Army regiments, that most of
their officers were trained regulars and a large proportion of them
West Point graduates.

Of the sixteen men made ill by eating powdered glass not one died,
for the glass had been ground too fine to do the utmost mischief.
However, the camp was alarmed, and all food was kept under close
guard and was regularly examined with care before being served.

Soldiers bearing German names were in some instances suspected,
and unjustly. Officers tried to undo this harm by talking among
the men. Yet all wondered what would be the next outbreak of
spy work in camp.

Private Mock, sentenced to two weeks' arrest for being off the
reservation without leave, served his sentence moodily, usually
refusing to talk with his fellow-prisoners.

One Private Wilhelm was also serving a term in arrest at the bull-pen.
His name was held against him Wilhelm as a brand-new man in the
regiment, and one of the few with whom Mock would talk.

One morning the latter was overheard to say:

"I'm sick of this war already. I hope the Germans win. If I'm
sent over to France I'll watch my chance to desert and get over
to the Germans."

"Oh, ye will, will ye?" demanded Private Riley, another prisoner
in the bull-pen. "Ye dir-rty blackguard!"

Buff! The Irish soldier's fist caught Mock squarely on the jaw,
sending him squarely to earth, though not knocking him out. After
a moment Mock was on his feet again, quivering with rage. He
flew at Riley, who was a smaller man, hammering him hard. Other
soldier-prisoners interfered on behalf of Riley, whereupon Private
Wilhelm, a heavily built fellow, rushed to Mock's aid.

"A German and a German sympathizer!"

With that yell a dozen or so of time prisoners set upon the pair.
Some lively and perhaps nearly deadly punishment would have been
handed out, had not several men of the guard rushed in, thrusting
with their rifle butts and breaking up the unequal fig