arrange for you to go to Captain
Cortland and make regular complaint against me."

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" jeered Hinkey.

"On that point I decline to commit myself."

"Fine to go and complain against an officers' pet and boot-lick,"
laughed Hinkey sullenly. "No, sir! I'll go to no officer with a charge
against a favored boot-lick!"

"That's the only way in which you can get redress."

"Is it?" demanded Private Hinkey, with a sudden, intense scowl that made
his ill-featured face look satanic. "Well, you wait and see, my fine
young buck doughboy!"

"Don't fail to report to Sergeant Gray for hospital permission,"
Corporal Hal Overton called after the fellow. "If you do, you'll be up
against disobedience of orders."

Private Hinkey, moving away, made a derisive gesture behind his back,
but the boyish young corporal turned on his heel, stepping off in
another direction.

"If that kid thinks he can lord it over me," snarled Private Hinkey
under his breath, "he's due to wake up before long."

Nevertheless Private Hinkey had already learned enough of Army life to
feel certain that he was obliged to go to Sergeant Gray.

"Sure thing! Go over to hospital and have that head dressed at once,"
ordered the first sergeant. "How did it happen?"

"The fellow who did it said it was an accident," replied Hinkey, with an
ugly leer.

"Then report him," urged the first sergeant of B Company. "I can take
care of the offender if it was done on purpose."

"That's all right," snapped Private Hinkey. "So can I."

"If Hinkey is telling the truth, then there's the start of a nice little
row in that sore head," thought Gray, glancing after the man headed for
hospital.

And, indeed, Sergeant Gray was wholly right.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST BREATH AGAINST A SOLDIER'S HONOR

THE night was so quiet, the air so still, that the single, distant
stroke of the town clock bell over in the town of Clowdry was distinctly
audible.

Dong! boomed the bell, the vibration reaching the ears of two or three
of the lighter sleepers, and causing them to stir lightly in their sleep
in Sergeant Hupner's squad room.

Out on the post, not far away, a dog chose to bark at that town-clock
bell.

Some one gliding swiftly through the squad room upset a stool with a
loud crash. Yet few of the soundly sleeping soldiers bothered their
heads about such a series of trivial noises.

Now, a series of hails began, starting down at the gu