Whereupon the captain departed with outward decent gloom and inward premonitions of rejoicing, for when he had hit a nail on the head he had eyes to see. And the colonel betook himself, hot-foot, to the pompous old soldier in charge of the camp, who happened to be a man of fixed belief in himself, but, if he feared anything, was afraid of a newspaper reporter. The colonel gave him the facts, sparing no squalid detail; indeed, adding a few picturesque embellishments from his own observations. He cut short the other's contemptuous criticism of boy soldiers, and his comparison with the hardships endured during the Civil War, with a curt "I know they fooled away men's lives then; that is no reason we should fool them away now. The men are sickening to-day--they will be dying to-morrow; I'm desperate. If that camp is not changed by to-morrow I shall march my regiment out myself and pitch my own camp, and you may court-martial me for it if you like. I would rather stand a court-martial than see my men die, because I was afraid to speak out! The camp we have now is murder, as the reporters say! I don't wonder that young fellow from Chicago talks hard!" "You're excited, Colonel; you forget yourself." "I _am_ excited, Major; I'm desperate! Will you walk round the camp with me?" The end of the colloquy was that the captain saw the major and the colonel and told the first-lieutenant, who told, the first-sergeant, whose name was Spruce. "Captain's kicked to the colonel, I guess," says Spruce, "and colonel's kicked to the major. That's the talk. Git ready, boys, and pack." True enough, the camp was moved the very next day. "I guess captain will make an officer if he lives and don't git the big head," Spruce moralized. "It's mighty prevalent in the volunteers." The captain wrote the whole account home to one single confidant--his father--and him he swore to secrecy. The captain's father was the man who had committed Company G to Spruce's good offices. He sent a check to the company and a special box of cigars to Spruce. And Spruce, knowing nothing of the intermediary, felt a more brilliant pride in his adopted town, and bragged of its virtues more vehemently than ever. The camp was not moved soon enough. Pneumonia and typhoid fever appeared. One by one the boys of the regiment sickened. Presently one by one they began to die.