When Wiegandt had gone, the officer turned to the sergeant-major and said with a sigh, "Damned nuisances they are! Now we've got two of these fellows, Wolf and Weise, we must see they don't get together. How is Wolf doing?" "No fault to find with him, sir." Wegstetten walked to the window and looked out silently. This was not the lightest part of an officer's duty, this supervision of the suspicious political element among the men. A perfect task of Sisyphus, indeed! After all, one could do nothing more than prevent the fellows from spouting their wisdom as long as they were soldiers, make them keep to the beaten track, give them "patriotism and the joys of a soldier's life" for their watchword. What sort of a fanatic was this Wolf? A man who had been handed over to him labelled "Poison!" with four cross-bones and a death's-head; who put on an expressionless face when his opinions were alluded to, and to the question "Are you a social-democrat?" answered with a stereotyped, almost sarcastic, "No, sir," and always went about looking as dark as a regular conspirator! He turned round and began again: "Do you know, Schumann, I shall be glad when Wolf is off our hands. The man strikes me as almost uncanny. And then that Sergeant Keyser; he's a revengeful, resentful kind of fellow. He'll never forgive Wolf the six weeks he had on his account. Just see to it that the two have as little to do with one another as possible. Of course he'd never really do anything to a fellow like that; but it's always as well to be on the safe side. I'm not going to have another rumpus in my battery, with the whole lot of them had up as witnesses for three days on end! And that Keyser must mind what he's about. After all, we can't have the army turned into a big incubator for social-democrats." "Very good, sir. And as Keyser has got charge of the kit-room now, that's easily arranged."