After being relieved he watched two comrades who were playing at _skat_ in the guard-room with dreadfully dirty cards. Suddenly he had a kind of waking vision. It was like the taking of the oath, when each man stretched out an arm to swear. The tattooed letters on Weise's arm, where the sleeve had slipped off, began suddenly to glow as brightly and clearly as if the sun were shining on them. Fraternity! that was not merely an empty word, then, not simply talk? If all men, Germans, French, Russians, and all others, stretched forth their arms and swore to be brothers, then--yes, then--there would be no more war. But would that ever happen? The card-players brought his reflections on the question of fraternity to a hasty close; they began to quarrel furiously, and wound up by throwing the cards at each other's heads in a very unbrotherly manner. The recruit had to pick up the scattered cards, and when a king and a ten were missing there was nearly a fight. Finally the corporal in charge angrily stopped the noise. When Vogt returned from his sentry-duty between eleven and one, he found his comrade Klitzing singularly depressed, and after a time the clerk confided to him that he had been very unlucky all the day before. "You see, Franz," he said, "I can't get on at all without you. If you are my neighbour at foot-drill, I know just where I am. But yesterday you were absent, and I was a regular blockhead. Just because of me the drill lasted nearly an hour longer than usual." "Well, now I shall be back again," Vogt replied. Klitzing continued: "Yes, but this morning it was the same thing; and after drill the deputy sergeant-major said that slack fellows like me should be given a lesson by the other men, and so----" Here he was silent, and nothing more could be got out of him, so that Vogt was quite angry over this lack of confidence. By and by the fat brewer (who, however, was no longer fat) joined them, and said: "Well, mate, aren't you a bit dense to-day? The 'old gang,' especially the drivers, mean to be at him, to do for him, all because of that little bit of extra drill." Vogt could not but smile at his comrade's good-nature. Truchsess, the most easy-going of them all, whose clothes after drill were as wet with perspiration as if they had been in water, Truchsess called it "a little bit of extra drill"! But before he could speak, Klitzing began again: "Franz, you mustn't mix yourself up in this. If they mean to do it you can't prevent it. The best thing will be for me to submit quietly." And with a little bitterness he added: "The most they can do is to beat me to death." But Vogt interrupted: "Don't talk such nonsense! I don't know what they are thinking of doing, but I can tell you it shall be prevented. I promise you that. Don't be afraid. I shall find a way out." He began to ponder how he could protect his friend from the roughness of the "old gang."