"We're not going to be _here_ long. I mean at Camp Sterling," smiled Roger. "I expect any minute to get the order to pack." "We should worry," rejoined Bob. "We've stirring times ahead of us. We've had a few right in camp, too." "Gee whiz, Schnitz, you must feel great!" glowed Jimmy. "Think of all you've done already for your country. I thought I was some when I nabbed Bixton. Beside you--well--I'm not so much. What a shame there aren't any medals handed out in the Army. You ought to get enough to cover up your chest. You're due for a rise in ranks, though. Bet you my hat on that. Now you've got to tell us how you did it all. You've never peeped. We've been laying for you. Got you down here on purpose to-night. Now spill." "I intended to tell you fellows." Schnitzel's melancholy dark eyes wandered over the group. Ever since that eventful evening in the rain he had been the observed of all observers. As a result he had promptly retired into his shell, declining to be lionized. Even to the four Khaki Boys he had granted only the barest details of his exploit. "Somehow I couldn't bear to talk about it. It was all so sickening. But I don't mind telling you fellows now. There isn't much to tell. I never suspected Freidrich until after I got out of the guard-house. One day he came to me and started saying how sorry he'd been for me. He began asking me about myself and my people. What they thought about the war and if they had any relatives in it in Germany. He said many of the Germans were fine people who'd been misunderstood. He gave me a kind of a queer look and, I don't know why, but it somehow made me distrust him. So I said I didn't know how my folks felt about it because I hadn't seen them for several years. That wasn't true, but anyway it wasn't any of his business. I told him I didn't know if any of our relatives in Germany were in the war. That was true enough. I didn't say what I thought about the Germans themselves. "That was all he said that time. He kept coming around after me and sympathizing with me. I thought at first he was trying to get me to queer myself. Thought maybe headquarters had put him on my trail to see if I was really all O. K. So I was pretty careful. I found out he could speak German, too. I thought that was rather queer and said so. He explained that he'd learned it from a German overseer on his father's plantation in Cuba. I didn't believe it. He spoke it like a German. He had more of the way of a German than a Cuban. "All of a sudden I made up my mind not to go on in the dark. I went to the K. O. and asked him flat if Fernando had been set to watch me. He nearly had a fit until I told him a few things that I suspected. Then he gave me leave to spring a bluff on the fellow that I was down on the Army, just to see what he'd do.