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the March wind. When they re-formed for tramping in to prep he walked off. He just walked off. A couple of officers looked up, Johannes walked on. A sentry called a question, Johannes walked by—across the square,

    past the guardhouse, through the gate, down the hill, into the town—
    He did not last long. He was picked up a few hours later at an inn as he was trying to get them to let him have a meal and advance the money for a telegram home, and was rather impressively arrested. The town of course was out of bounds, though permission was usually given to spend an hour with a visiting relative. It was one of those quaint German market towns, all scrape-and-bow and nook-and-beam, and the inhabitants were making quite a good thing out of the hungry cadets, yet their hearts were with the authorities and the band, and the streets were full of cakeshops, sausage butchers and spies. Johannes's full intentions were not grasped. The charge was absence without leave, and as he was new, and probably a halfwit, they let it go at that. He was arraigned at rollcall, caned and locked up for forty-eight hours in a cell. When they let him out he sprang at the lieutenant and bit him through the uniform. He was handcuffed, tried, sentenced and locked up again. After that he became more tractable. As he could not spell and could hardly write, they put him in the lowest form and he held himself very quiet. The small boys never managed to keep all the rules, they were always having something buttoned the wrong way or staying in bed ten seconds after bell or dropping the soap because their hands were cold, and they were always being punished, and among them Johannes was rather less conspicuous. Even so discretion was not his strong suit: he yet had much to learn. He betrayed himself into an argument—disinterested, as he was not slow— against the Benzheim custom of penalizing every day and on all occasions the boy who happened to be last in any move. Johannes though under-educated was rational and he was struck by the point that someone or other had to be last through any door, and he pressed it. And when at the fortnightly half-hour he was told to write his letter home, he covered a copybook page with his laborious scrawl in utter confidence. One can imagine what followed. Later the letter was put into a dossier and the poor scrap survived.
    Ce Dimanche 28 Mars i8y . . . Cher Papa, Je suis fort malheureux. Tous le monde ici est fou. Mes earnerades sont des me chant. Quand je suis parti ils mon prit et fat fait de la prison. IL FAUT EN-VOYER ME CHERCHER TOUS DE SUITE je vous embrasse Embrassez pour moi Jules, Ursus et Ulysse, Zoro et le Petit Gabriel votre bien malheureux
    Fils Jean
    All in all he was much in trouble. His reputation had become bad and he was watched. And so it took him several weeks before he got away again.
    Julius meanwhile did not fare too badly at his crammer's. The work surprised and bored him—"at my age!"— and there was rather an amount of it. Unlike his brother's, his hand was formed and ornamental; but like Johannes's it was illegible, and like Johannes he had never learnt to spell. He was also vexed by the necessity impressed upon him to become correct in German, pointing out that as he was supposed to be sent en poste elsewhere it would surely be more sensible to learn languages. There were compensations. Bonn was not at the end of the world, and there was an excellent train service. Every week he spent a day or two in Holland or in Belgium, looking at Bruges and Ghent, eating oysters at Amsterdam, gutting antique shops, walking evening streets in Brussels and waterfronts at Antwerp and Delft. He looked: he picked up things: he learnt. It was still a time of finds, and he developed an eye and a shrewd manner with the dealers. At

    Liege he stalked a table for three weeks. "Quel dommage" cried the shopman, "qu'un homme si elegant puisse etre aussi radin."
    I did not hear much about the crammer and his family,