"I am sure I don't know, but if recruits keep coming in as rapidly as they have during the last few days, the lieutenant will probably take a squad off next week."
"Where will he take it?"
"That's a conundrum. A private never knows where he is going until he gets there."
"Where do you eat and sleep?"
"We take our meals at the restaurant next door, and having no bunks we sleep on the benches in the office. You can go about the city as much as you please, but you must be sure and report at meal-time. If you fail to do that, you will have the police after you."
"Why will I?" asked Bob in surprise.
"Because the lieutenant will think you have deserted."
Bob was beginning to feel the tight rein of military discipline already. At home he had always been accustomed to go and come when he pleased, and he did not like the idea of having his liberty restricted or of being obliged to obey without question the orders of a boy scarcely older than himself. But it was too late to think of that now. The youthful officer was backed up by the entire military and police force of the United States, and there was no such thing as getting out of reach of his authority.
"I am in for it," thought Bob as he rolled up his clothes and started for the little Jew store around the corner, "but I don't know that I could have done anything else. I shall have plenty to eat and a place to sleep, and at the same time I shall be earning money to pay off that debt I owe Dave Evans. What an idiot I was to keep that money! To pay for that one act of folly and dishonesty I am compelled to waste some of the best years of my life in the army. I hope I shall get a chance to show them that I am no coward, if I am a greenhorn."
It was little indeed that Mose gave Bob for the articles he had to offer for sale—just four dollars for clothing that had cost over thirty; but those four dollars made him feel a little more independent. They brought him a few delicacies to supplement the plain fare that was served up to him and his companions at the cheap restaurant at which they took their meals, and were the means of gaining him the friendship of one of the recruits, Bristow by name, who stuck to him like a leech until the last cent had been expended.