"I'm sorry, Hansen, but I must do it. You are confined to quarters for two days." And Stone retired, grieved that Hansen, of all men, should have been the one to suffer for the sake of an example. "Gee!" said Brown, "I never thought Stone'd do that!" "Wouldn't he, though?" rejoined Ryan. "You bet your boots, a sergeant looks all-same buck to the Top." "Hansen'll lay it up to him, you see," said Hickey, looking at the big man now sprawled out on his bunk in noisy slumber. "Not on yer life, Dope," said Brown. "Hansen's too much sense fer that. He'll see the Top's side of it." And so it proved, for, after a few half-laughs, half-apologetic words from his first sergeant, Hansen agreed that there had been no other course to pursue. "And, anyway," he said, with a grin, "I'll get a goot rest, yess. It iss about time I loafed some. I shall sleep." Now, sleep was all very well for that day and part of the next, but by the afternoon of the second day Sergeant Knudt Hansen's active mind and body became saturated with rest and extremely bored. He had read everything he could lay his hands on, even including a vagrant copy of "Edgeworth's Moral Tales" that had wandered, Heaven knows how, into the troop library. While affording him food for sarcastically profane comment in the slimy sediment of at least six different languages, this estimable work had, if anything, increased his ennui. His body began actually to ache for action of some sort; almost anything would do at a pinch. Strolling disconsolately through the hall, whom should he chance to see but Corporal Ryan, who was in charge of quarters for that day, busily cleaning his saber (for the next day was Saturday), and singing cheerfully, "'You're in the army now.'" "Let up on that musical, you gamin; it iss not to the ear pleasant," growled Hansen. Besides his other grievance that Ryan's cheerfulness flicked on the raw, the little corporal had cut out the big sergeant several times lately with Cora. "Ah, g'wan an' soak yer swelled head!" retorted Ryan respectfully, and, bending to his work, began to carol forth the delectable ballad of the "Rubber Dolly." Hansen advanced into the room. "See here, Meester Freshie, that iss no way to speak to your sergeant! Oh, yess; I am knowing what you mean. You t'ank, because Cora go with you a leetle, you can come it ofer me here, too--not?" "You leave her name out o' that," said Teddy, straightening up and reddening. "She's got nothin' ter do with it, an' you leave her be." "Oho! The leetle man tank she iss so sweet and innocent a leetle girl, I am not fit to speak of her--yess? Why, she--" And Hansen started in to enumerate in no very choice language certain fabricated insinuations against the character of the popular Miss Cora Sheean. But they were barely out of his mouth before Teddy Ryan's fist was in it. Blindly the big Swede struck back, catching Ryan on the nose and drawing the blood; and then they started in in earnest.