“Sit down, Major,” I told him, and I’ll swear the “Major” just slipped out naturally. He relaxed, but did not subside on the tool chest next to him. His eyes, which popped out so far they could have been knocked off with a stick, met mine steadily. We had instinctively hated each other, I think, from the first time we met. “Well, this is a rather peculiar situation, Marston,” I told him as I ignited a cheroot. “The man that tried to break me is now under me.” “And about to be broken himself,” Marston interrupted me. His face seemed to me to have changed since the time I had seen him before. He looked as if he’d gone through ---- and had become a sullen enemy of life in general. His light blue eyes, staring into mine, were glowing dully. He seemed to be daring me to do my worst as he looked at me. And all of a sudden I hated myself because I had even considered using my strategic position to get back at him for what he had done to me. “No, you’re not going to be broken, Marston,” I told him as he stood there like a lion at bay. He simply looked at me, without saying a word. My particular and peculiar type of beauty did not appeal to him at all, and as for him, I didn’t like anything about him and never had. In a personal sense, I mean. “You can make my life a ---- on earth, of course,” he said after a lengthy silence. His voice had a deep husk in it. “Sure,” I agreed. “Listen, Marston. You always were a good soldier, as far as I know; leaned over backward to live up to regulations, and a hound on discipline. But you were without exception the rottenest officer I ever saw, and the nastiest and most unfair man a poor cadet ever had over him. You were enough all by yourself to ruin the morale of every cadet at Donovan Field. You’ll make a ---- sight better sergeant than you did an officer.” “And you were about the funniest sample of a soldier that any army, including the Mexican, ever had,” he told me doggedly, and in his brooding light eyes that glow burned brighter. “You came lounging in as though you didn’t give a ---- for any orders or discipline whatever, and tried to do just what you ---- pleased. And you’re no more an army man right now than you were before. “Oh, I’ve heard plenty about you. You’ve pulled off a few good flying stunts, but you’re not a soldier and never will be. And by ---- if you think I’m going to lick your boots because you, a young squirt who never had any responsibility about him, is an officer and I’m only a sergeant----” “Pull in your neck, Marston; you’re stretching it,” I advised him. “You’d better thank your lucky stars that I’m not going to try to get even with you for what you put me through. I’m a flyer now, but I can still look back at the months when I was bound up in the effort to get to be a flyer, and the stuff you put me through.