However, David is permanently lightened of one part of his equipment. Word went round that we were to have rifle-inspection, at which there rose in the tent a great clamor for patches, of which we had none, nor the store tent either. David was absent, and Knudsen, saying "I'll get patches," asked Clay for his surgical scissors, and going to David's cot, took from the great collection of conveniences which the boy still hoped to take with him, a set of his beautiful silk pajamas. The jacket Knudsen tore into strips (we all the while watching in pregnant silence) then cut them into squares, and when David returned we were all at work on our guns. "They tell me," he said, "that we're to have rifle inspection. Have you fellows any patches?" "Plenty," said Knudsen, and handed him some made out of the gaudiest part of the pattern. David, as he inspected these, first grew very red, then hastily demanded, "Who cut these up?" "I did," said Knudsen very serenely. "No pajamas on the hike, David." And the boy, who is still very proud of coming into his own name, laughed, asked for Clay's scissors, and cut up the rest of his suit. Then he stuffed into his trunk the other pair which he had intended to take with him on the hike. One last story, to show a different side of our Plattsburg activities. You know we have a cavalry camp here, and a medical department, where volunteers come exactly as to our infantry regiment. Well, Corder came back from the medicos lately, where he went to visit a friend, with a great tale of the mending of a cavalryman's broken jaw by one of the volunteer surgeons, a Boston dentist. Corder, being professor-like in appearance, was not detected as an impostor, and stood close at hand in the ring of doctors who watched the clinic. "It was done under field conditions," said he, "the operator using only an alcohol lamp, a small pair of nippers, and about eight inches of ordinary electric light wire, which happened to be handy. The insulation was scraped from the cable, and its various fine wires were burned clean in the flame of the lamp. The rookie was then put on a table in the company street, and the doctor took a turn with one of the fine wires around a tooth behind the break, twisting the ends together. The same was done with a tooth in front of the break; and then in the upper jaw wires were twisted around teeth above the lower two. An assistant then held the broken jaw in place, and the doctor twisted tight together the wires from the lower back tooth and the upper front tooth, and then those from the upper back tooth and the lower front tooth. He cut off the ends, made all smooth, and the work was done, all in a very few minutes. The jaw could not move, and was bound to heal perfectly. The doctors all said they never had seen anything so simple or so clever." We thought the same; Clay, as a budding doctor, was envious of Corder for having seen it. "Too bad for the chap to lose the hike," said Bannister.