ell, we can't arrive any too soon for us, boys?" The Sergeant
looked over his shoulder, and they grinned, their teeth flashing
white in their red, perspiring faces. Claude didn't wonder that
everybody along the route, even the babies, came out to see them;
he thought they were the finest sight in the world. This was the
first day they had worn their tin hats; Gerhardt had shown them
how to stuff grass and leaves inside to keep their heads cool.
When they fell into fours, and the band struck up as they
approached a town, Bert Fuller, the boy from Pleasantville on the
Platte, who had blubbered on the voyage over, was guide right,
and whenever Claude passed him his face seemed to say, "You won't
get anything on me in a hurry, Lieutenant!"

They made camp early in the afternoon, on a hill covered with
half-burned pines. Claude took Bert and Dell Able and Oscar the
Swede, and set off to make a survey and report the terrain.

Behind the hill, under the burned edge of the wood, they found an
abandoned farmhouse and what seemed to be a clean well.

It had a solid stone curb about it, and a wooden bucket hanging
by a rusty wire. When the boys splashed the bucket about, the
water sent up a pure, cool breath. But they were wise boys, and
knew where dead Prussians most loved to hide. Even the straw in
the stable they regarded with suspicion, and thought it would be
just as well not to bed anybody there.

Swinging on to the right to make their circuit, they got into
mud; a low field where the drain ditches had been neglected and
had overflowed. There they came upon a pitiful group of humanity,
bemired. A woman, ill and wretched looking, sat on a fallen log
at the end of the marsh, a baby in her lap and three children
hanging about her. She was far gone in consumption; one had only
to listen to her breathing and to look at her white, perspiring
face to feel how weak she was. Draggled, mud to the knees, she
was trying to nurse her baby, half hidden under an old black
shawl. She didn't look like a tramp woman, but like one who had
once been able to take proper care of herself, and she was still
young. The children were tired and discouraged. One little boy
wore a clumsy blue jacket, made from a French army coat. The
other wore a battered American Stetson that came down over his
ears. He carried, in his two arms, a pink celluloid clock. They
all looked up and waited for the soldiers to do something.

Claude approached the woman,