The boy glanced desperately around in search of some way of escape from his predicament, but finding none finally went reluctantly into the cottage. "Here's where retribution falls on him," said Frank with a grin. He was not mistaken, for the boy had scarcely entered when there issued forth the sound of several lusty smacks. Then came a high-pitched scolding which showed that Anatole had had recourse to moral as well as physical suasion. "I don't know but what I'd rather have the licking than the scolding," chuckled Bart as they listened to the voluble eloquence of the chef. "Either one's bad enough," laughed Frank. "I guess our young red-headed friend has got all that was coming to him." Now the intensive training of the boys began in earnest. And training now had a meaning that it had never had while they were still on American soil. For at that time they had not fully grasped the fact that they were actually at war. There had been a certain dream-like quality about it that had been like a scene from a play. The only cannon they had heard were those fired in salute or at practice. The zip of a bullet had only meant that that bullet was speeding toward a wooden target. But now the roar of cannon, multiplied a thousand fold above everything they had heard before, meant that deadly missiles were seeking out human life in an effort to maim and destroy. And soon--how soon they did not know, but still soon--they themselves would be the target for whining bullets and shrieking shells. Practice now meant something. Expertness might mean the difference between saving life or losing it. A new spirit ran through the men like an electric current. No need now for their officers to urge them on. If anything, they had to hold the young soldiers back, lest they burn up their vitality and exhaust their strength before they were put to the final test. As far as possible, the camp became a mimic battlefield. Trenches were dug, precisely like those that they would soon be holding against the attacks of the enemy. Barbed wire fences were built by one regiment and cut through and beaten down by another, which, for the time being, was chosen to play the part of the enemy. The bayonet practice was no longer against dummies but against a picked squad of their own comrades. And each side in these mimic battles was so eager to win that at times they almost forgot themselves, with slight wounds and bruises as a result before their officers could intervene. "We're getting there, Bart!" cried Frank, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow, after a particularly strenuous encounter. "I'd back our boys right now to hold their own against any bunch of equal size that the Boches can send against them." "We sure are doing dandy work," assented Bart. "I wonder when they're going to put us on the firing line?"