detachment, I shoved it into her hand, an' said, 'Keep that, girl, an' don't you forgit me.' An' what did she do but pull out a five-pound box o' candy from behind her back an' say, 'Don't make yerself sick, Dan.' An' she'd had it all the time without my knowin' it. Ain't girls clever?”
“Yare,” said the tall youth vaguely.
Along the rows of cots, when Fuselli got back to the barracks, men were talking excitedly.
“There's hell to pay, somebody's broke out of the jug.”
“How?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Sergeant Timmons said he made a rope of his blankets.”
“No, the feller on guard helped him to get away.”
“Like hell he did. It was like this. I was walking by the guardhouse when they found out about it.”
“What company did he belong ter?”
“Dunno.”
“What's his name?”
“Some guy on trial for insubordination. Punched an officer in the jaw.”
“I'd a liked to have seen that.”
“Anyhow he's fixed himself this time.”
“You're goddam right.”
“Will you fellers quit talkin'? It's after taps,” thundered the sergeant, who sat reading the paper at a little board desk at the door of the barracks under the feeble light of one small bulb, carefully screened. “You'll have the O. D. down on us.”
Fuselli wrapped the blanket round his head and prepared to sleep. Snuggled down into the blankets on the narrow cot, he felt sheltered from the sergeant's thundering
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