Out in the yard the sunlight only touched the upper storey of one of the wings, and within the high walls the air felt icy cold. As from the bottom of a shaft they looked up to the clear sky overhead, and then stepped out into the real sunshine and felt the warmth of the bright rays.
During the time of the autumn manœuvres, and until the early part of the new year, the enormous parade-ground was deserted. The drilling of the troops went on in the barrack-yard, and it was only after the inspection of recruits was completed that exercises took place in the big ground.
The prisoners were ordered to get the place tidy for the spring and repair any damages that had occurred during the summer. The principal work, however, was the banking up of a high obstacle wall, and beyond it to dig a deep ditch; both for use in the artillery driving-exercises. This was an unspeakably fatiguing business. The soil, to a depth of several feet, consisted of light fine sand. In this they stood ankle deep, loading their wheelbarrows; yet the ditch never seemed to grow any deeper, nor the wall any higher. It was like working with water which continually flowed in again.
Whilst work was going on it was easy for one man to approach another. When Vogt and Wolf passed each other for the first time, one pushing his wheelbarrow before him, the other trotting with his empty barrow down into the ditch, they exchanged melancholy nods. Later it came about that they were standing next each other shovelling the loose sand into their barrows. True, speaking was forbidden; but it was possible to murmur words almost without moving the lips, yet so as to be perfectly intelligible.
"How do you come to be here?" was Wolf's first question.
Vogt related his story, often interrupted by the progress of their work; but when he had deposited his barrowful up above, he always managed to return to the neighbourhood of his erstwhile comrade in the regiment, and at last he had told the whole history of his crime.
Wolf gave a short bitter laugh. He was heartily sorry for this poor fellow, but was not this a new example of the fact that socialists had no need to work hard at propaganda? The ripe fruit was ready to drop into their laps without any co-operation of their own. This Vogt, the bravest of soldiers, the most amenable of men, fitted for a post in the royal body-guard, was wheeling his barrow here amongst thieves and ruffians of all sorts. And beside him the blood-red social-democrat!
And then he listened as Vogt went on to tell of his other acquaintances in the battery; each day, of course, his narrative was interrupted, and sometimes they had only time for a few words.
Weise had been promoted to be non-commissioned officer! That everlasting chatterer, who only owed it to his gift of the gab that he had been able to boast of himself as confidential agent of his union!
Was not this a topsy-turvy world?