By this time we have already reached the bridge by the Town Hall, with the two big triple lamps.... Who is standing there by the railing of the bridge, and gazing down into the canal so motionlessly? It's a woman. She must have run straight out of the kitchen, for her apron-strings are hanging to the ground behind her anyhow. And all of a sudden her red-striped skirt strikes me as so familiar, and as I pass behind her she turns round without a word, and looks at me wild-eyed. "Dora, is that you?" Then she bows her face, streaming with tears, and says dully to herself: "They have shot my husband dead." "But, Dora," I shout to her anxiously--for it suddenly flashes upon me that she is ill--"why, here I am! Don't you know me any more?" But she shakes her head, and turns away from me comfortless, and passes me by like a stranger. "Dora!" I shout aloud, "Dora!" and stretch out my arms toward the vanishing figure. A sob chokes my throat.... Then I start, and am sitting up in bed, resting on my elbow. Through the window sounds the long-drawn reveille. Dawn is peeping through the panes. So I did nod off after all, and I did not have a pleasant dream. But I have no time to be grumpy over it, for footsteps are ringing along the corridor. Hobnail boots clatter across the floor. The door is flung open. "Turn out!" a cheery voice shouts in. It is the sergeant on duty. By this time he has already reached the next door. And sleepy figures are rising from their cots, yawning and stretching their arms; are turning out and slipping, shivering with cold, into their clothes. Yawning, they stretch their limbs and flap their arms until the second more welcome morning signal, "Breakfast rations," lends life and animation to fasting men. CHAPTER V THE DEPARTURE We are already drawn up in the barrack-yard in service kit. We have stacked our rifles and have fallen out. No one thinks of kit inspection or anything of that kind today. Everything is now being pushed on at racing pace. "Fall in!" "Stand by your packs!" How heavy the full knapsack weighs in one's hands, and yet as soon as it is settled in the small of your back you do not notice it so very much. "Stand by arms!" "Slope arms!" As if we were marching out for parade, the Captain's orders sound as crisp as that. We shoulder arms as smartly as if we were moving out on parade. "Form sections! Right about turn! Quick march!" And we swing round smartly in four at the command. "Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth company!" shouts the Major, who has pulled up in the middle of the yard. We are the eighth company, and are following on the heels of the seventh. The gates of the barrack-yard are open. We are marching out. Our legs mark time on the pavement of the street in the goose-step of grand parade. "March at ease!" And the muscles of our legs relax and advance at more natural gait.