Bang!
"Ow!" wailed Private Green. "It wasn't a dream, after all. I knew it would go off."
Sergeant Hupner, bending low like a flash, now picked up a revolver from the floor beside Hal's cot, while Hal himself sat up, staring rather dazedly at the weapon.
"How did this come to be in your bed, Corporal Overton?" demanded the sergeant.
"I don't know, Sergeant."
"But it was in your bed. You shook it out when you went to get up just now."
"That's the gun," insisted Private William Green. "I saw it poked into my face by some one prowling before my cot."
"Were you so scared that you didn't dare jump up or say anything?" demanded Hupner, turning upon Private Green, who had now reached the vicinity of Hal's cot.
"Scared, nothing!" grunted Private William. "I thought I must be dreaming, for there was no danger in this room. Then I heard something go smash down the room, like a stool being tipped over, and then I came altogether out of my doze, and time I did, too! For I put my hand under the mattress and my pouch and money were gone. Whoever poked that gun toward my head got my money!"
By this time more than half the men in the room were sitting up on the edges of their cots. A few more lay still, though wide awake, while a few of the hardest sleepers were still in the Land of Nod.