[Illustration: "ONE FOURTH OF THE ENTIRE PELHAM FIELD ARTILLERY PASSED
OVER MY BODY"]

This remark gave me the strength to rise, but not gracefully. My
intention was to address a few handpicked words to this P.O. of mine,
but fortunately for my future peace of mind I was beyond utterance.
Weakly I tottered in the direction of the gun, hoping to support
myself upon it.

"Hey, come away from that gun!" howled the P.O. "Don't let him touch
it, fellers," he pleaded. "Don't let him even go near it. He'll spoil
it. He'll completely destroy it."

"Say, Buddy," said the Chief to me, and how I hated the ignominy of
the word, "I guess I'll take you out of the game for to-day. I'm
responsible for Government property, and you are altogether too big a
risk."

"What shall I do?" I asked, huskily. "Where shall I go?"

"Do?" he repeated, in a thoughtful voice. "Go? Well, here's where you
can go," and he told me, "and this is what you can do when you get
there," and as I departed rather hastily he told me this also. The
entire parade ground heard him. How shall I ever be able to hold up my
head again in Camp? I departed the spot, but only under one boiler;
however, I made fair speed. Like a soldier returning from a week in
the trenches, I sought the comfort and seclusion of the Y.M.C.A. Here
I witnessed a checker contest of a low order between two unscrupulous
brothers. They had a peculiar technique completely their own. It
consisted of arts and dodges and an extravagant use of those
adjectives one is commonly supposed to shun.

"Say, there's a queen down at the end of the room," one of them would
suddenly exclaim, and while the other brother was gazing eagerly in
that direction he would deliberately remove several of his men from
the board. But the other brother, who was not so balmy as he
looked, would occasionally discover this slight irregularity and
proceed to express his opinion of it by word of mouth, which for sheer
force of expression was in the nature of a revelation to me. It was
appalling to sit there and watch those two young men, who had
evidently at one time come from a good home, sit in God's bright
sunshine and cheat each other throughout the course of an afternoon
and lie out of it in the most obvious manner. The game was finally
discontinued, owing to a shortage of checkermen which they had
secreted in their pockets, a fact which each one stoutly denied with
many weird and rather indelicate vows. I left them e