"Do you want to be killed?" asked Hugo, with profound interest.

"The bullet isn't made that will get me!" answered Eugene, throwing back
his broad shoulders.

"I don't know," mused Hugo, eying the giant up and down. "You're pretty
big, Gene, and a bullet that only nicked one of us in the bark might get
you in the wood. However, if you are sure that you are in no danger,
why, you don't count. But let's take a census while we are about it and
see who wants to be killed. First, you, Armand; do you?" he asked the
doctor's son, Armand Daution.

Armand grinned. The others grinned, not at him, but at the quizzical
solemnity of Hugo's manner.

"If so, state whether you prefer bullets or shrapnel, early in the
campaign or late, a la carte or table d'hote, morning or--" Hugo went
on.

But laughter drowned the sentence, though Hugo's face was without a
smile.

"You ought to go on the stage!" some one exclaimed.

"If it were as easy to amuse a pay audience as you fellows, I might,"
Hugo replied. "But I've another question," he pursued. "Do you think
that the fellows on the other side of the frontier want to be killed?"

"No danger! They'll give in. They always do," said Eugene.

"I confess that it hardly seems reasonable to make war over the Bodlapoo
affair!" This from the judge's son.

"Over some hot weather, some swamp, and some black policemen in Africa,"
said Hugo.

"But they hauled down our flag!" exclaimed the army officer's son.

"On their territory, they say. We were the aggressors," Hugo interposed.

"It was _our_ flag!" said Eugene.

"But we wouldn't want them to put up their flag on our territory, would
we?" Hugo asked.

"Let them try it!" thundered Eugene, with a full breath from the big
bellows in his broad chest. "Hugo, I don't like to hear you talk that
way," he added, shaking his head sadly. Such views from a friend really
hurt him; indeed, he was almost lugubrious. This brought another laugh.

"Don't you see he's getting you, Gene?"

"He's acting!"

"He always gets you, you old simpleton!" The judge's son gave Eugene an
affectionate dig in the ribs.

Eugene was well liked and in the way that a big Saint Bernard dog is
liked. At the latest manoeuvres, on the night that their division had
made a rapid flank movement, without any apparent sense that his own
load was the heavier for it, he had carried the rifle and pack of Peter
Kinderling, a valet's pasty-faced little son "Peterkin," as he