got a good one from two fellows of the Browns whom I met on
the road the first day we arrived. They were reservists. We were soon
talking together and so peaceably that I was sceptical if they were
Browns at all. So I determined on a test. I told them I was from a
distant province and hadn't travelled much and wouldn't they please take
off their hats. They consented very good-naturedly."

"Oh, good old Hugo! He got one on the Browns!"

"I'd like to have been there to see it!"

"And when they took off their hats, what then?"

"Why, I said: 'This isn't convincing at all.'" Hugo's drawl paused for a
second while interest developed. "'You haven't any horns! Haven't you
any forked tails, either? Or are they curled up nicely inside your
trousers' legs?'"

"Whew! But they must have felt cheap to have been got in that way!"

"And old Hugo looking so solemn!"

"Just like he does now!"

But the judge's son said under his breath, "Very pretty!" and the
doctor's son, who was next him in the ranks, nodded understandingly.

"It seems they had checked their horns and tails at the frontier," Hugo
continued, "and, as I had left mine hanging in the rifle racks at the
barracks, we got on together like real human beings. I found they could
speak my language better than my lesson-book try at theirs--yes, as well
as I can speak it myself--and that made it all the easier. After a while
I mentioned the war. They were very amiable and they didn't begin to
call me a swill-eating land-shark or any other of the pretty names I've
heard they are so fond of using. 'We want to keep what is ours,' they
said. 'Your side will have to start the fight by crossing the line. We
shall not!"'

"Because they know they'll be licked!" put in Pilzer hotly.

"No, we may beat them in fighting," agreed Hugo, "but these two fellows
had me beaten on the argument!"

"They hauled down our flag! They insulted us in their despatches! They
quibble! They're the perfidious Browns!" cried big Eugene Aronson,
speaking the lesson taught him by the newspapers, which had it from the
premier.

"There, he's got you again, Gene!"

"Yes, you funny old simpleton! You are almost too easy!"

There was something of the vivacity of the barrack-room banter in the
exclamations at Eugene's expense. Yet they were not the same. The look
on no man's face was the same. The humorist was silent.

"What next, Hugo?"

He half stared at them, and his mask was not solemn but tragic