Several of the men caught the frenzy of the sergeant, and at each command they ran, gritting and grinding their teeth, and grunted at the pieces of straw. From the terrific onslaught one of the dummies was severed from the scaffold, and the sergeant cried out: “That’s the first real spirit I’ve seen to-day. That’s the way to kill them!” he called to the man who had wrested the dummy from its place. “Come up here and show these dopes how to kill.” Exultant, the man left his place and strutted over to the sergeant. Taking a position before one of the dummies, he proceeded to show the rest of the platoon how really and frightfully to stab the dummies until their stuffing broke through the sacks. “He’s working to be a corporal, the dirty scut. And oh, if he does get to be a two-striper won’t he make us step around. Boy!” Hicks muttered to Pugh, who was standing next to him and whose bayonet had failed even to pierce the covering of the sack. “He won’t pull none of that old stuff on me. Ah’ll tell Lieutenant Bedford and he’ll make him be good or I won’t give him any more money to gamble with,” Pugh drawled. “You sure have got a stand-in with Bedford, Pugh. I often wondered how you did it.” “Hell, that’s easy. When he was down at St. Nazaire I lent him ’bout a thousand francs to gamble with, and he ain’t never paid me.” The platoon assembled and marched back to their billets. III Three days were spent by the platoon at the little village. On the evening of the third day, just as the men had formed in a long, impatient line before the field kitchen, with their aluminum food receptacles held out to catch the thin, reddish stew surlily thrown at them, the company commander walked among them bearing words of dour import. Captain Powers talked softly and gently, wringing the words from his heart, burnishing them with a note of sadness: “Stay close to your billets to-night after chow, men. We’re moving up to the front some time to-night.” He passed by them, and those whom he passed shuffled their feet, looking furtively at the ground. There was very little comment. The shuffling line was funereal. Men smiled at Captain Powers, but their smiles lacked certitude. When they had packed their belongings in the stipulated military manner the pall remained, vaguely hanging over them, drawing them together in their common aversion from the future. In the rooms they sat on their packs, nervously waiting to move. The moonlight streamed in through the window and showed the gray whitewashed walls of the deserted room. The fireplace was a black maw. Night fell in mysterious folds, giving the appearance of unfamiliarity to the squat French houses, the spired Gothic church, the trees which drooped their boughs in a stately canopy over the smooth gray road. The men, their feet striking against the cobblestones, clumped through the village streets and along the road.