“A German and a German sympathizer!”

With that yell a dozen or so of time prisoners set upon the pair.  Some lively and perhaps nearly deadly punishment would have been handed out, had not several men of the guard rushed in, thrusting with their rifle butts and breaking up the unequal fight.

But Mock was reported for his utterance, and Wilhelm for his sympathies.  Both were brought up before Captain Greg Holmes, and Dick was sent for to join in questioning the men, which was done behind closed doors.  At the end of the hearing Mock and Wilhelm were returned to the guard-house looking much crestfallen.

“Did you hear what they said to me?” Mock was overheard to demand of Wilhelm.  “Said they’d have me tried for saying I’d desert, and that I’d be likely to get several years in prison for talking too much.  Oh, I’m sure sick of being in this man’s army!”

“Sure!” nodded Wilhelm, understandingly.  “It’s tough!”

“It’ll be tougher, I warrant ye, if we hear ye two blackguards using any more of your line of talk around here,” Riley broke in.  “The guar-rd won’t be forever stopping our pounding ye!”

After that Mock and Wilhelm were left severely alone by their fellow-prisoners in the bull-pen.  Most of these men were serving merely sentences of a day to a week for minor infractions of discipline.

The next morning Private Riley managed to get word to Greg that Private Brown, of the guard, had been talking with Mock at the barbed wire of the pen enclosure.

“Private Brown is supposed to be an all right soldier, but he’ll bear watching,” was Dick’s comment when he heard the report.

That afternoon it was reported that both Mock and Wilhelm had been talking with Private Brown at the barbed wire fence.  Dick smiled grimly when he heard it.

The next morning orders were read releasing Mock, Wilhelm, Riley and some of the other soldier prisoners ahead of time that they might not be deprived of too much instruction.  The released ones were cautioned to be extremely careful, in the future, not to fall under the disciplinary ban.

“Sure, I can understand some of us getting out, but not Mock,” declared Riley to a bunkie (chum).  “Him an’ his talk about deserting to the enemy!”

In the meantime Dick had given an accurate description of the carpenter who had tried to enlist Mock in some dangerous scheme of revenge.  The fellow had disappeared from among the gang of carpenters, and that was all that was known.  Secret Service men had been put on the trail, but had failed to find the fellow.

“Now, maybe a soldier sometimes says more than he means,” broke in Sergeant Kelly, who had come up behind the pair on the nearly deserted drill ground.  “Soldiers are like other people in that respect.”

“But not Mock,” Riley objected.  “He’s a bad egg.”

“I don’t say he isn’t,” Kelly rejoined.  “What I’m advising you is not to conclude that a man is worthless just because he talks.  For that matter, Riley, I believe that the men we have most to fear are spies who manage to get in the Army, talk straight and do their work well, and all the time they’re plotting all kinds of mischief.  Like the fellow or the chaps who put that powdered glass in the chow of F company not long ago.”