ded Hal Overton. "Mr. Prescott's
superior officers think so highly of him that he usually doesn't have
to beg very hard to get what he wants. And--what is it?"

"Why, old fellow, I'm to be relieved from most other duties and placed
in charge of the telegraph office. You know, there are two soldiers
stationed there as day operators, and one as night operator. And I'm to
be there in charge night and day."

"Good business," nodded Hal, "if you don't have to keep up night and day
as well."

"Oh, no; I'm to be merely responsible to the lieutenant for the proper
management of the office. I'm not to be tied down so very closely, after
all, and I'm to have the proper amount of leave for recreation and all
that sort of thing."

"When do you begin?"

"Day after to-morrow, at nine in the morning."

"You won't be on guard duty while this other detail lasts?"

"No."

"Too bad," muttered Hal. "Of course I may be wrong, but to me the
thorough study of real guard duty is one of the most important things in
a soldier's profession."

"Oh, I've mastered guard duty pretty well," broke in Corporal Noll.

"Then I congratulate you," was Hal Overton's dry rejoinder. "I feel that
I'm only beginning to see the real niceties of the work of the guard."

"We've an hour left before the next drill," resumed young Corporal
Terry, after glancing at his watch. "Shall we go over and see if
Sergeant Hupner is ready to start breaking us in at wig-wagging?"

"That's what I've been waiting to do," Hal Overton rejoined.

"You don't seem to be a bit glad over my success in getting into
telegraphy," complained Noll.

"If it seemed that way, then it's because our tongues were too busy
otherwise," Hal answered. "Noll, I congratulate you from the bottom of
my heart, for you're plumb wild to know all about telegraphing."

"Only because it's of use in the military world," explained Corporal
Terry. "I wouldn't care a straw about being a telegraph operator in
civil life."

"You wouldn't care about being anything else in civil life, would you?"

"No," Corporal Noll admitted promptly. "After a taste of real soldiering
in the regular Army I don't see how on earth a fellow can be satisfied
with any other kind of life. That is, if a fellow has life, spirit and
red blood in him."

Sergeant Hupner proved not only to be disengaged, but ready to begin
the instruction of the aspiring young wig-waggers immediately.

It is really no part of an infantry sol