et it!" laughed Jerry. "It isn't a thing you can
forget so easily. But let it go at that. Only it did look funny,
Chunky, and you'd have said so yourself if you had seen it--it
certainly did look funny to see you rushing along with the sack on the
end of your gun."

"Didn't you feel the weight of it?" asked Ned Slade.

"Oh, Chunky's getting so strong, since he has his three square meals a
day, regular, that he doesn't mind a little extra weight," commented
another lad who stood in line near the three chums.

The drilling sergeant turned to his men again, and once more sent them
through the bayonet charge. Then came other drills of various sorts,
designed to make the young soldiers sturdy and strong, to fit them for
the strenuous times that loomed ahead in France--times to try men's
souls and bodies. But to these times the lads looked forward eagerly,
anxious for the days to come when they could go "over there."

"Whew!" whispered Bob to Jerry and Ned, between whom he stood as they
marched across the parade ground. "If this keeps up much longer I'm
going to be a wreck!"

"Oh, some chow will set you up all right," commented Ned.

"Oh, say that again!" sighed the stout lad. "Them words fill me with
mad desire!"

"Yes, and you'll fill the guardhouse if you don't stop talking so loud
in the ranks," warned a lad behind Bob. "Cut it out. The lieutenant is
looking this way," he added, speaking from the corner of his mouth so
the motion of his lips would not be observed.

Rapidly the young soldiers marched across the grass-grown parade
ground, in orderly array, in the last of the drills that morning. The
company to which Ned, Bob and Jerry belonged were drawn up near their
barracks, and Captain Theodore Martin, after a glance over the two
trim lines, turned the dismissing of the group over to the first
lieutenant.

The breechblocks of the guns were opened, clicked shut again, and then
came the welcome words:

"Comp _sissed_!"

That is what the lieutenant snapped out. But what he really meant, and
what the members of it understood, was:

"Company dismissed!"

Ned, Bob and Jerry, with sighs of relief, which were echoed by their
comrades, turned to stack their rifles and then prepared for "chow,"
or, in this case, the dinner mess.

As the three chums were heading in the direction of the mess hall
where, every day, two hundred or more hungry lads and men were fed,
they saw some members of their company turn and ru