“Not now, but he gits the hell started in me, the way he teases me. Ah pulled ma knife on him yisterday. You wasn't there. Didn't ye notice Ah looked sort o' upsot at drill?” “Yes... but how old are you, Chris!” “Ah'm twenty. You're older than me, ain't yer?” “I'm twenty-two.” They were leaning against the wall of their barracks, looking up at the brilliant starry night. “Say, is the stars the same over there, overseas, as they is here?” “I guess so,” said Andrews, laughing. “Though I've never been to see.” “Ah never had much schoolin',” went on Chris. “I lef school when I was twelve, 'cause it warn't much good, an' dad drank so the folks needed me to work on the farm.” “What do you grow in your part of the country?” “Mostly coan. A little wheat an' tobacca. Then we raised a lot o' stock.... But Ah was juss going to tell ye Ah nearly did kill a guy once.” “Tell me about it.” “Ah was drunk at the time. Us boys round Tallyville was a pretty tough bunch then. We used ter work juss long enough to git some money to tear things up with. An' then we used to play craps an' drink whiskey. This happened just at coan-shuckin' time. Hell, Ah don't even know what it was about, but Ah got to quarrellin' with a feller Ah'd been right smart friends with. Then he laid off an' hit me in the jaw. Ah don't know what Ah done next, but before Ah knowed it Ah had a hold of a shuck-in' knife and was slashin' at him with it. A knife like that's a turruble thing to stab a man with. It took four of 'em to hold me down an' git it away from me. They didn't keep me from givin' him a good cut across the chest, though. Ah was juss crazy drunk at the time. An' man, if Ah wasn't a mess to go home, with half ma clothes pulled off and ma shirt torn. Ah juss fell in the ditch an' slep' there till daylight an' got mud all through ma hair.... Ah don't scarcely tech a drop now, though.” “So you're in a hurry to get overseas, Chris, like me,” said Andrews after a long pause. “Ah'll push that guy Anderson into the sea, if we both go over on the same boat,” said Chrisfield laughing; but he added after a pause: “It would have been hell if Ah'd killed that feller, though. Honest Ah wouldn't a-wanted to do that.” “That's the job that pays, a violinist,” said somebody. “No, it don't,” came a melancholy drawling voice from a lanky man who sat doubled up with his long face in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees. “Just brings a living wage... a living wage.” Several men were grouped at the end of the barracks. From them the long row of cots, with here and there a man asleep or a man hastily undressing, stretched, lighted by occasional feeble electric-light bulbs, to the sergeant's little table beside the door. “You're gettin' a dis-charge, aren't you?” asked a man with a brogue, and the red face of a jovial gorilla, that signified the bartender. “Yes, Flannagan, I am,” said the lanky man dolefully. “Ain't he got hard luck?” came a voice from the crowd.