Arrived at the station our Khaki Boys were marshaled with the rest into the waiting "48 Men, Eight horses," which had been used to convey so many Allied soldiers to the fighting district. Entering these cheerless and highly uncomfortable box-cars, they were leaving behind them the comparative ease and safety they had enjoyed since landing in France. From now on the Glory Road would mean a succession of trials and hardships, with death always lurking in the foreground. Every mile the train ran meant a nearer approach to the goal for which they had so long striven. At last they were on the way to strike their first definite blow in the big war. CHAPTER VII "AT HOME" "This is certainly some ride," grumbled Corporal Bob Dalton to Sergeant Jimmy Blaise. "I've had enough of old Eight Horses and goodness knows how many men to last me for a while. There are supposedly forty-eight Sammies in this band-box. I should say there were nearer ten thousand. I'd have sure croaked standing up, if you hadn't been along to take the curse off." "I'm glad we got in the same car, shoe-box I mean." Sergeant Jimmy's voice sounded decidedly weary. Luckily for himself and Bob, they had been assigned to the same car, Bob being corporal of a squad in Jimmy's platoon. Roger, Schnitzel and Ignace were scattered somewhere through the train, though neither Bob nor Jimmy knew which car their bunkies were in. "Well, it'll soon be over." Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief. "We've been two days and two nights on the road. It's now five o'clock, we ought to be out of this dump soon. I never believed I could sleep standing up, but I know it now." "Here, too. I hope we get a night's rest stretched out before we hit the trenches," was Bob's wistful reply. "Oh, we won't go straight to the trenches in this train. We'll probably be in rest billets several days before we're called to take our turn." "Wonder how the fellows like it," mused Bob. "I'll bet Iggy's slept most of the way. Nothing fazes him when he wants to sleep. He could pound his ear standing on his head." Both Khaki Boys snickered a little as they imagined Ignace turned upside down and sleeping peacefully, nevertheless. "It seems a long while since we left Sterling, doesn't it?" Jimmy broke the silence that had fallen upon both, succeeding Bob's humorous remark concerning his Polish Brother. "It certainly does. I had a funny standing-up nightmare about old Sterling last night." Bob grinned reminiscently. "I'd braced my back against the wall of this box and was taking forty winks. I'd been thinking about that Bixton affair and old Schnitz, and I dreamed that good old Major Stearns was a Boche spy, and that he was trying to finish me with a bayonet. He'd just given me an awful punch in the chest and I was yelling: 'What's eating you, you rough neck!'