“I think you’re right,” he said, “it won’t be long now until we, also, will be ‘going in’.” “What else could all this mean?” was Harper’s way of reply. His arm swept the whole horizon, north, westward, south, and then up toward the east. “Haven’t you noticed the immense numbers of the Engineering Corps that are being brought up? Thousands upon thousands of them.” “And the truck trains,” Tom supplemented. “Buck Granger told me last night that he heard a captain and a lieutenant talking, and how many of those trucks do you think they said already are here?” “Don’t know. Couldn’t even guess. How many?” “More than three thousand, and they’re still coming in by scores every hour.” “It means business,” Harper assented, nodding his head vigorously. “It means business, and on a tremendous scale. Why, just this morning—” But just at that moment their conversation was interrupted. Their school chum and army pal, Ollie Ogden, burst in upon them, wrathful to the point of pitched battle, and at the time too breathless to speak. “Have you seen—,” he demanded, and then gasped for another breath. “Have you seen—.” “Yes,” ventured Tom, in friendly mockery, winking at Harper, “We’ve seen a lot. But just what do you refer to?” “MAUD!” almost shrieked the angered Ollie. “Have you seen that gol darned mule?” George Harper and Tom Walton went into gales of uncontrollable laughter. Had they seen Maud? They sure had. Harper saw her on her way—whither it led she refused to say—and Tom had encountered her on the journey. “Well, what are you two standing there guffawing about?” Ollie demanded, his rage in no way abated by the evident amusement of his friends. “You hee-haw like that beast itself.” This was too much for Harper, and with his arms folded across his stomach he doubled up like a jack knife in his mirth. But his position was rather unfortunate. He had his back to, and was directly in front of, the outraged Ollie, who hauled off and gave Harper his boot with a force that straightway brought him upright. “Look here,” he ejaculated in pained surprise. “Look here!” repeated Ollie. “I’ve looked here, I’ve looked there, I’ve looked all over this blamed camp for that ornery offspring of Satan. I guess you fellow’s would like to see me get a couple of days in the guard for letting her get away.” “Could anybody ever keep her when she made up her mind to go?” Tom asked, now laughing as well at Harper as at Ogden. “Well, I couldn’t, anyway, and it’s not my fault,” Ollie asserted. “Just because a fellow’s doing stable police he can’t be personal valet to a beast like that all day. She—he—say, what is a mule, anyway? A he or a she?” “A mule is what America was before Germany tested her too far,” Harper advised him. “What do you mean?” asked Ollie, with a blank look. “Neutral.” “Oh, no. You’ve got Maud wrong. She’s never neutral. She’s belligerent all the time.”