re's anything I can do."

"Much obliged," said Shorty, "but I'm all right, and I oughtn't to need
any standing by from anybody. That old fly-up-the-crick ought to be
ashamed to even speak to a man who's bin fightin' at the front, while he
was playin' off around home."

"He'll have plenty to say all the same," returned the Sergeant. "He's
got one o' these self-acting mouths, with a perpetual-motion attachment.
He don't do anything but talk, and mostly bad. Blame him, it's his fault
that we're kept here, instead of being sent to the front, as we ought to
be. Wish somebody'd shoot him."

The Provost-Marshal was found in his office, dealing out sentences
like a shoulder-strapped Rhadamanthes. It was a place that just suited
Billings's tastes. There he could bully to his heart's content, with
no chance for his victims getting back at him, and could make it very
uncomfortable for those who were disposed to sneer at his military
career. With a scowl on his brow, and a big chew of tobacco in his
mouth, he sat in his chair, and disposed of the cases brought before him
with abusive comments, and in the ways that he thought would give the
men the most pain and trouble. It was a manifestation of his power that
he gloated over.

"Take the position of soldiers, you slouching clodhoppers," he said,
with an assortment of oaths, as the squad entered the office. "One'd
think you a passel o' hawbucks half-drunk at a log-rollin', instead o'
soldiers in the presence o' your superior officer. Shut them gapin'
mouths, lift up them shock-heads, button up your blouses, put your hands
down to your sides, and don't no man speak to me without salootin'. And
mind what you say, or I'll give you a spell on bread and water, and
send you back in irons. I want you to understand that I'll have no
foolishness. You can't monkey with me as you can with some officers.

"Had your pocket picked, and your furlough as well as your money taken,"
he sneered to the first statement. "You expect me to believe that, you
sickly-faced yallerhammer. I'll just give you five days' hard labor
before sending you back, for lying to me. Go over there to the left, and
take your place in that police squad."

"No," he said to the second, "that sick mother racket won't work.
Every man we ketch now skulking home is goin' to see his sick and dying
mother. There wouldn't be no army if we allowed every man who has a
sick mother to go and visit her. None o' your back talk, or I'l