From The Point To The Plains

: Starlight Ranch

CHAPTER I.



A CADET'S SISTER.





She was standing at the very end of the forward deck, and, with flushing

cheeks and sparkling eyes, gazing eagerly upon the scene before her.

Swiftly, smoothly rounding the rugged promontory on the right, the

steamer was just turning into the highland "reach" at Fort Montgomery

and heading straight away for the landings on the sunset shore. It was
/>
only mid-May, but the winter had been mild, the spring early, and now

the heights on either side were clothed in raiment of the freshest,

coolest green; the vines were climbing in luxuriant leaf all over the

face of the rocky scarp that hemmed the swirling tide of the Hudson; the

radiance of the evening sunshine bathed all the eastern shores in mellow

light and left the dark slopes and deep gorges of the opposite range all

the deeper and darker by contrast. A lively breeze had driven most of

the passengers within doors as they sped through the broad waters of the

Tappan Zee, but, once within the sheltering traverses of Dunderberg and

the heights beyond, many of their number reappeared upon the promenade

deck, and first among them was the bonnie little maid now clinging to

the guard-rail at the very prow, and, heedless of fluttering skirt or

fly-away curl, watching with all her soul in her bright blue eyes for

the first glimpse of the haven where she would be. No eyes on earth look

so eagerly for the grim, gray facade of the riding-hall or the domes

and turrets of the library building as those of a girl who has spent the

previous summer at West Point.



Utterly absorbed in her watch, she gave no heed to other passengers who

presently took their station close at hand. One was a tall, dark-eyed,

dark-haired young lady in simple and substantial travelling-dress. With

her were two men in tweeds and Derby hats, and to these companions she

constantly turned with questions as to prominent objects in the rich and

varied landscape. It was evident that she was seeing for the first time

sights that had been described to her time and again, for she was

familiar with every name. One of the party was a man of over fifty

years,--bronzed of face and gray of hair, but with erect carriage and

piercing black eyes that spoke of vigor, energy, and probably of a life

in the open air. It needed not the tri-colored button of the Loyal

Legion in the lapel of his coat to tell that he was a soldier. Any one

who chose to look--and there were not a few--could speedily have seen,

too, that these were father and daughter.



The other man was still taller than the dark, wiry, slim-built soldier,

but in years he was not more than twenty-eight or nine. His eyes, brows,

hair, and the heavy moustache that drooped over his mouth were all of a

dark, soft brown. His complexion was clear and ruddy; his frame powerful

and athletic. Most of the time he stood a silent but attentive listener

to the eager talk between the young lady and her father, but his kindly

eyes rarely left her face; he was ready to respond when she turned to

question him, and when he spoke it was with the unmistakable intonation

of the South.



The deep, mellow tones of the bell were booming out their landing signal

as the steamer shot into the shadow of a high, rocky cliff. Far aloft on

the overhanging piazzas of a big hotel, fluttering handkerchiefs greeted

the passengers on the decks below. Many eyes were turned thither in

recognition of the salute, but not those of the young girl at the bow.

One might, indeed, have declared her resentful of this intermediate

stop. The instant the gray walls of the riding-school had come into view

she had signalled, eagerly, with a wave of her hand, to a gentleman and

lady seated in quiet conversation under the shelter of the deck.

Presently the former, a burly, broad-shouldered man of forty or

thereabouts, came sauntering forward and stood close behind her.



"Well, Nan! Most there, I see. Think you can hold on five minutes

longer, or shall I toss you over and let you swim for it?"



For answer Miss Nan clasps a wooden pillar in her gray-gloved hands, and

tilts excitedly on the toes of her tiny boots, never once relaxing her

gaze on the dock a mile or more away up-stream.



"Just think of being so near Willy--and all of them--and not seeing one

to speak to until after parade," she finally says.



"Simply inhuman!" answers her companion with commendable gravity, but

with humorous twinkle about his eyes. "Is it worth all the long

journey, and all the excitement in which your mother tells me you've

been plunged for the past month?"



"Worth it, Uncle Jack?" and the blue eyes flash upon him indignantly.

"Worth it? You wouldn't ask if you knew it all, as I do."



"Possibly not," says Uncle Jack, whimsically. "I haven't the advantage

of being a girl with a brother and a baker's dozen of beaux in bell

buttons and gray. I'm only an old fossil of a 'cit,' with a scamp of a

nephew and that limited conception of the delights of West Point which

one can derive from running up there every time that versatile youngster

gets into a new scrape. You'll admit my opportunities have been

frequent."



"It isn't Willy's fault, and you know it, Uncle Jack, though we all know

how good you've been; but he's had more bad luck and--and--injustice

than any cadet in the corps. Lots of his classmates told me so."



"Yes," says Uncle Jack, musingly. "That is what your blessed mother,

yonder, wrote me when I went up last winter, the time Billy submitted

that explanation to the commandant with its pleasing reference to the

fox that had lost its tail--you doubtless recall the incident--and came

within an ace of dismissal in consequence."



"I don't care!" interrupts Miss Nan, with flashing eyes. "Will had

provocation enough to say much worse things; Jimmy Frazer wrote me so,

and said the whole class was sticking up for him."



"I do not remember having had the honor of meeting Jimmy Frazer,"

remarks Uncle Jack, with an aggravating drawl that is peculiar to him.

"Possibly he was one of the young gentlemen who didn't call, owing to

some temporary impediment in the way of light prison----"



"Yes; and all because he took Will's part, as I believe," is the

impetuous reply. "Oh! I'll be so thankful when they're out of it all."



"So will they, no doubt. 'Sticking up'--wasn't that Mr. Frazer's

expression?--for Bill seems to have been an expensive luxury all round.

Wonder if sticking up is something they continue when they get to their

regiments? Billy has two or three weeks yet in which to ruin his chances

of ever reaching one, and he has exhibited astonishing aptitude for

tripping himself up thus far."



"Uncle Jack! How can you speak so of Willy, when he is so devoted to

you? When he gets to his regiment there won't be any Lieutenant Lee to

nag and worry him night and day. He's the cause of all the trouble."



"That so?" drawls Uncle Jack. "I didn't happen to meet Mr. Lee,

either,--he was away on leave; but as Bill and your mother had some such

views, I looked into things a bit. It appears to be a matter of record

that my enterprising nephew had more demerit before the advent of Mr.

Lee than since. As for 'extras' and confinements, his stock was always

big enough to bear the market down to bottom prices."



The boat is once more under way, and a lull in the chat close at hand

induces Uncle Jack to look about him. The younger of the two men lately

standing with the dark-eyed girl has quietly withdrawn, and is now

shouldering his way to a point out of ear-shot. There he calmly turns

and waits; his glance again resting upon her whose side he has so

suddenly quitted. She has followed him with her eyes until he stops;

then with heightened color resumes a low-toned chat with her father.

Uncle Jack is a keen observer, and his next words are inaudible except

to his niece.



"Nan, my child, I apprehend that remarks upon the characteristics of the

officers at the Point had best be confined to the bosom of the family.

We may be in their very midst."



She turns, flushing, and for the first time her blue eyes meet the dark

ones of the older girl. Her cheeks redden still more, and she whirls

about again.



"I can't help it, Uncle Jack," she murmurs. "I'd just like to tell them

all what I think of Will's troubles."



"Oh! Candor is to be admired of all things," says Uncle Jack, airily.

"Still it is just as well to observe the old adage, 'Be sure you're

right,' etc. Now I own to being rather fond of Bill, despite all the

worry he has given your mother, and all the bother he has been to

me----"



"All the worry that others have given him, you ought to say, Uncle

Jack."



"W-e-ll, har-d-ly. It didn't seem to me that the corps, as a rule,

thought Billy the victim of persecution."



"They all tell me so, at least," is the indignant outburst.



"Do they, Nan? Well, of course, that settles it. Still, there were a few

who reluctantly admitted having other views when I pressed them

closely."



"Then they were no friends of Willy's, or mine either!"



"Now, do you know, I thought just the other way? I thought one of them,

especially, a very stanch friend of Billy's and yours, too, Nan, but

Billy seems to consider advisers in the light of adversaries."



A moment's pause. Then, with cheeks still red, and plucking at the rope

netting with nervous fingers, Miss Nan essays a tentative. Her eyes are

downcast as she asks,--



"I suppose you mean Mr. Stanley?"



"The very man, Nanette; very much of a man to my thinking."



The bronzed soldier standing near cannot but have heard the name and the

words. His face takes on a glow and the black eyes kindle.



"Mr. Stanley would not say to me that Willy is to blame," pouts the

maiden, and her little foot is beating impatiently tattoo on the deck.



"Neither would I--just now--if I were Mr. Stanley; but all the same, he

decidedly opposed the view that Mr. Lee was 'down on Billy,' as your

mother seems to think."



"That's because Mr. Lee is tactical officer commanding the company, and

Mr. Stanley is cadet captain. Oh! I will take him to task if he has

been--been----"



But she does not finish. She has turned quickly in speaking, her hand

clutching a little knot of bell buttons hanging by a chain at the front

of her dress. She has turned just in time to catch a warning glance in

Uncle Jack's twinkling eyes, and to see a grim smile lurking under the

gray moustache of the gentleman with the Loyal Legion button who is

leading away the tall young lady with the dark hair. In another moment

they have rejoined the third member of their party,--he who first

withdrew,--and it is evident that something has happened which gives

them all much amusement. They are chatting eagerly together, laughing

not a little, although the laughter, like their words, is entirely

inaudible to Miss Nan. But she feels a twinge of indignation when the

tall girl turns and looks directly at her. There is nothing unkindly in

the glance. There even is merriment in the dark, handsome eyes and

lurking among the dimples around that beautiful mouth. Why did those

eyes--so heavily fringed, so thickly shaded--seem to her familiar as old

friends? Nan could have vowed she had somewhere met that girl before,

and now that girl was laughing at her. Not rudely, not aggressively, to

be sure,--she had turned away again the instant she saw that the little

maiden's eyes were upon her,--but all the same, said Nan to herself, she

was laughing. They were all laughing, and it must have been because of

her outspoken defence of Brother Will and equally outspoken defiance of

his persecutors. What made it worse was that Uncle Jack was laughing

too.



"Do you know who they are?" she demands, indignantly.



"Not I, Nan," responds Uncle Jack. "Never saw them before in my life,

but I warrant we see them again, and at the Point, too. Come, child.

There's our bell, and we must start for the gangway. Your mother is

hailing us now. Never mind this time, little woman," he continues,

kindly, as he notes the cloud on her brow. "I don't think any harm has

been done, but it is just as well not to be impetuous in public speech.

Ah! I thought so. They are to get off here with us."



Three minutes more and a little stream of passengers flows out upon the

broad government dock, and, as luck would have it, Uncle Jack and his

charges are just behind the trio in which, by this time, Miss Nan is

deeply, if not painfully, interested. A soldier in the undress uniform

of a corporal of artillery hastens forward and, saluting, stretches

forth his hand to take the satchel carried by the tall man with the

brown moustache.



"The lieutenant's carriage is at the gate," he says, whereat Uncle Jack,

who is conducting her mother just in front, looks back over his shoulder

and nods compassionately at Nan.



"Has any despatch been sent down to meet Colonel Stanley?" she hears the

tall man inquire, and this time Uncle Jack's backward glance is a

combination of mischief and concern.



"Nothing, sir, and the adjutant's orderly is here now. This is all he

brought down," and the corporal hands to the inquirer a note, the

superscription of which the young officer quickly scans; then turns and,

while his soft brown eyes light with kindly interest and he bares his

shapely head, accosts the lady on Uncle Jack's arm,--



"Pardon me, madam. This note must be for you. Mrs. McKay, is it not?"



And as her mother smiles her thanks and the others turn away, Nan's

eager eyes catch sight of Will's well-known writing. Mrs. McKay rapidly

reads it as Uncle Jack is bestowing bags and bundles in the omnibus and

feeing the acceptive porter, who now rushes back to the boat in the nick

of time.



"Awful sorry I can't get up to the hotel to see you," says the

note, dolorously, but by no means unexpectedly. "I'm in confinement

and can't get a permit. Come to the officer-in-charge's office

right after supper, and he'll let me see you there awhile.

Stanley's officer of the day, and he'll be there to show the way.

In haste,

WILL."



"Now isn't that poor Willy's luck every time!" exclaims Miss Nan, her

blue eyes threatening to fill with tears. "I do think they might let

him off the day we get here."



"Unquestionably," answers Uncle Jack, with great gravity, as he assists

the ladies into the yellow omnibus. "You duly notified the

superintendent of your impending arrival, I suppose?"



Mrs. McKay smiles quietly. Hers is a sweet and gentle face, lined with

many a trace of care and anxiety. Her brother's whimsical ways are old

acquaintances, and she knows how to treat them; but Nan is young,

impulsive, and easily teased. She flares up instantly.



"Of course we didn't, Uncle Jack; how utterly absurd it would sound!

But Willy knew we were coming, and he must have told him when he asked

for his permit, and it does seem too hard that he was refused."



"Heartless in the last degree," says Uncle Jack, sympathetically, but

with the same suggestive drawl. "Yonder go the father and sister of the

young gentleman whom you announced your intention to castigate because

he didn't agree that Billy was being abused, Nan. You will have a chance

this very evening, won't you? He's officer of the day, according to

Billy's note, and can't escape. You'll have wound up the whole family by

tattoo. Quite a good day's work. Billy's opposers will do well to take

warning and keep out of the way hereafter," he continues, teasingly.

"Oh--ah--corporal!" he calls, "who was the young officer who just

drove off in the carriage with the lady and gentleman?"



"That was Lieutenant Lee, sir."



Uncle Jack turns and contemplates his niece with an expression of the

liveliest admiration. "'Pon my word, Miss Nan, you are a most

comprehensive young person. You've indeed let no guilty man escape."









CHAPTER II.



A CADET SCAPEGRACE.





The evening that opened so clear and sunshiny has clouded rapidly over.

Even as the four gray companies come "trotting" in from parade, and,

with the ease of long habit, quickly forming line in the barrack area,

some heavy rain-drops begin to fall; the drum-major has hurried his band

away; the crowd of spectators, unusually large for so early in the

season, scatters for shelter; umbrellas pop up here and there under the

beautiful trees along the western roadway; the adjutant rushes through

"delinquency list" in a style distinguishable only to his stolid, silent

audience standing immovably before him,--a long perspective of gray

uniforms and glistening white belts. The fateful book is closed with a

snap, and the echoing walls ring to the quick commands of the first

sergeants, at which the bayonets are struck from the rifle-barrels, and

the long line bursts into a living torrent sweeping into the hall-ways

to escape the coming shower.



When the battalion reappears, a few moments later, every man is in his

overcoat, and here and there little knots of upper classmen gather, and

there is eager and excited talk.



A soldierly, dark-eyed young fellow, with the red sash of the officer of

the day over his shoulder, comes briskly out of the hall of the fourth

division. The chevrons of a cadet captain are glistening on his arm, and

he alone has not donned the gray overcoat, although he has discarded the

plumed shako in deference to the coming storm; yet he hardly seems to

notice the downpour of the rain; his face is grave and his lips set and

compressed as he rapidly makes his way through the groups awaiting the

signal to "fall in" for supper.



"Stanley! O Stanley!" is the hail from a knot of classmates, and he

halts and looks about as two or three of the party hasten after him.



"What does Billy say about it?" is the eager inquiry.



"Nothing--new."



"Well, that report as good as finds him on demerit, doesn't it?"



"The next thing to it; though he has been as close to the brink before."



"But--great Scott! He has two weeks yet to run; and Billy McKay can no

more live two weeks without demerit than Patsy, here, without

'spooning.'"



Mr. Stanley's eyes look tired as he glances up from under the visor of

his forage cap. He is not as tall by half a head as the young soldiers

by whom he is surrounded.



"We were talking of his chances at dinner-time," he says, gravely.

"Billy never mentioned this break of his yesterday, and was surprised to

hear the report read out to-night. I believe he had forgotten the whole

thing."



"Who 'skinned' him?--Lee? He was there."



"I don't know; McKay says so, but there were several officers over there

at the time. It is a report he cannot get off, and it comes at a most

unlucky moment."



With this remark Mr. Stanley turns away and goes striding through the

crowded area towards the guard-house. Another moment and there is sudden

drum-beat; the gray overcoats leap into ranks; the subject of the recent

discussion--a jaunty young fellow with laughing blue eyes--comes tearing

out of the fourth division just in time to avoid a "late," and the

clamor of tenscore voices gives place to silence broken only by the

rapid calling of the rolls and the prompt "here"--"here," in response.



If ever there was a pet in the corps of cadets he lived in the person of

Billy McKay. Bright as one of his own buttons; jovial, generous,

impulsive; he had only one enemy in the battalion,--and that one, as he

had been frequently told, was himself. This, however, was a matter which

he could not at all be induced to believe. Of the Academic Board in

general, of his instructors in large measure, but of the four or five

ill-starred soldiers known as "tactical officers" in particular, Mr.

McKay entertained very decided and most unflattering opinions. He had

won his cadetship through rigid competitive examination against all

comers; he was a natural mathematician of whom a professor had said that

he "could stand in the fives and wouldn't stand in the forties;"

years of his boyhood spent in France had made him master of the

colloquial forms of the court language of Europe, yet a dozen classmates

who had never seen a French verb before their admission stood above him

at the end of the first term. He had gone to the first section like a

rocket and settled to the bottom of it like a stick. No subject in the

course was really hard to him, his natural aptitude enabling him to

triumph over the toughest problems. Yet he hated work, and would often

face about with an empty black-board and take a zero and a report for

neglect of studies that half an hour's application would have rendered

impossible. Classmates who saw impending danger would frequently make

stolen visits to his room towards the close of the term and profess to

be baffled by the lesson for the morrow, and Billy would promptly knock

the ashes out of the pipe he was smoking contrary to regulations and lay

aside the guitar on which he had been softly strumming--also contrary to

regulations; would pick up the neglected calculus or mechanics; get

interested in the work of explanation, and end by having learned the

lesson in spite of himself. This was too good a joke to be kept a

secret, and by the time the last year came Billy had found it all out

and refused to be longer hoodwinked.



There was never the faintest danger of his being found deficient in

studies, but there was ever the glaring prospect of his being discharged

"on demerit." Mr. McKay and the regulations of the United States

Military Academy had been at loggerheads from the start.



And yet, frank, jolly, and generous as he was in all intercourse with

his comrades, there was never a time when this young gentleman could be

brought to see that in such matters he was the arbiter of his own

destiny. Like the Irishman whose first announcement on setting foot on

American soil was that he was "agin the government," Billy McKay

believed that regulations were made only to oppress; that the men who

drafted such a code were idiots, and that those whose duty it became to

enforce it were simply spies and tyrants, resistance to whom was innate

virtue. He was forever ignoring or violating some written or unwritten

law of the Academy; was frequently being caught in the act, and was

invariably ready to attribute the resultant report to ill luck which

pursued no one else, or to a deliberate persecution which followed him

forever. Every six months he had been on the verge of dismissal, and

now, a fortnight from the final examination, with a margin of only six

demerit to run on, Mr. Billy McKay had just been read out in the daily

list of culprits or victims as "Shouting from window of barracks to

cadets in area during study hours,--three forty-five and four P.M."



There was absolutely no excuse for this performance. The regulations

enjoined silence and order in barracks during "call to quarters." It had

been raining a little, and he was in hopes there would be no battalion

drill, in which event he would venture on throwing off his uniform and

spreading himself out on his bed with a pipe and a novel,--two things he

dearly loved. Ten minutes would have decided the question legitimately

for him, but, being of impatient temperament, he could not wait, and,

catching sight of the adjutant and the senior captain coming from the

guard-house, Mr. McKay sung out in tones familiar to every man within

ear-shot,--



"Hi, Jim! Is it battalion drill?"



The adjutant glanced quickly up,--a warning glance as he could have

seen,--merely shook his head, and went rapidly on, while his comrade,

the cadet first captain, clinched his fist at the window and growled

between his set teeth, "Be quiet, you idiot!"



But poor Billy persisted. Louder yet he called,--



"Well--say--Jimmy! Come up here after four o'clock. I'll be in

confinement, and can't come out. Want to see you."



And the windows over at the office of the commandant being wide open,

and that official being seated there in consultation with three or four

of his assistants, and as Mr. McKay's voice was as well known to them as

to the corps, there was no alternative. The colonel himself "confounded"

the young scamp for his recklessness, and directed a report to be

entered against him.



And now, as Mr. Stanley is betaking himself to his post at the

guard-house, his heart is heavy within him because of this new load on

his comrade's shoulders.



"How on earth could you have been so careless, Billy?" he had asked him

as McKay, fuming and indignant, was throwing off his accoutrements in

his room on the second floor.



"How'd I know anybody was over there?" was the boyish reply. "It's just

a skin on suspicion anyhow. Lee couldn't have seen me, nor could anybody

else. I stood way back by the clothes-press."



"There's no suspicion about it, Billy. There isn't a man that walks the

area that doesn't know your voice as well as he does Jim Pennock's.

Confound it! You'll get over the limit yet, man, and break your--your

mother's heart."



"Oh, come now, Stan! You've been nagging me ever since last camp. Why'n

thunder can't you see I'm doing my best? Other men don't row me as you

do, or stand up for the 'tacks.' I tell you that fellow Lee never loses

a chance of skinning me: he takes chances, by gad, and I'll make his

eyes pop out of his head when he reads what I've got to say about it."



"You're too hot for reason now, McKay," said Stanley, sadly. "Step out

or you'll get a late for supper. I'll see you after awhile. I gave that

note to the orderly, by the way, and he said he'd take it down to the

dock himself."



"Mother and Nan will probably come to the guard-house right after

supper. Look out for them for me, will you, Stan, until old Snipes gets

there and sends for me?"



And as Mr. Stanley shut the door instantly and went clattering down the

iron stairs, Mr. McKay caught no sign on his face of the sudden flutter

beneath that snugly-buttoned coat.



It was noticed by more than one of the little coterie at his own table

that the officer of the day hurried through his supper and left the

mess-hall long before the command for the first company to rise. It was

a matter well known to every member of the graduating class that, almost

from the day of her arrival during the encampment of the previous

summer, Phil Stanley had been a devoted admirer of Miss Nannie McKay. It

was not at all to be wondered at.



Without being what is called an ideal beauty, there was a fascination

about this winsome little maid which few could resist. She had all her

brother's impulsiveness, all his enthusiasm, and, it may be safely

asserted, all his abiding faith in the sacred and unimpeachable

character of cadet friendships. If she possessed a little streak of

romance that was not discernible in him, she managed to keep it well in

the background; and though she had her favorites in the corps, she was

so frank and cordial and joyous in her manner to all that it was

impossible to say which one, if any, she regarded in the light of a

lover. Whatever comfort her gentle mother may have derived from this

state of affairs, it was "hard lines on Stanley," as his classmates put

it, for there could be little doubt that the captain of the color

company was a sorely-smitten man.



He was not what is commonly called a "popular man" in the corps. The son

of a cavalry officer, reared on the wide frontier and educated only

imperfectly, he had not been able to enter the Academy until nearly

twenty years of age, and nothing but indomitable will and diligence had

carried him through the difficulties of the first half of the course. It

was not until the middle of the third year that the chevrons of a

sergeant were awarded him, and even then the battalion was taken by

surprise. There was no surprise a few months later, however, when he was

promoted over a score of classmates and made captain of his company. It

was an open secret that the commandant had said that if he had it all to

do over again, Mr. Stanley would be made "first captain,"--a rumor that

big John Burton, the actual incumbent of that office, did not at all

fancy. Stanley was "square" and impartial. His company was in admirable

discipline, though many of his classmates growled and wished he were not

"so confoundedly military." The second classmen, always the most

critical judges of the qualifications of their seniors, conceded that he

was more soldierly than any man of his year, but were unanimous in the

opinion that he should show more deference to men of their standing in

the corps. The "yearlings" swore by him in any discussion as to the

relative merits of the four captains; but with equal energy swore at him

when contemplating that fateful volume known as "the skin book." The

fourth classmen--the "plebes"--simply worshipped the ground he trod on,

and as between General Sherman and Philip Stanley, it is safe to say

these youngsters would have determined on the latter as the more

suitable candidate for the office of general-in-chief. Of course they

admired the adjutant,--the plebes always do that,--and not infrequently

to the exclusion of the other cadet officers; but there was something

grand, to them, about this dark-eyed, dark-faced, dignified captain who

never stooped to trifle with them; was always so precise and courteous,

and yet so immeasurably distant. They were ten times more afraid of him

than they had been of Lieutenant Rolfe, who was their "tack" during

camp, or of the great, handsome, kindly-voiced dragoon who succeeded

him, Lieutenant Lee, of the --th Cavalry. They approved of this latter

gentleman because he belonged to the regiment of which Mr. Stanley's

father was lieutenant-colonel, and to which it was understood Mr.

Stanley was to be assigned on his graduation. What they could not at all

understand was that, once graduated, Mr. Stanley could step down from

his high position in the battalion of cadets and become a mere

file-closer. Yes. Stanley was too strict and soldierly to command that

decidedly ephemeral tribute known as "popularity," but no man in the

corps of cadets was more thoroughly respected. If there were flaws in

the armor of his personal character they were not such as to be

vigorously prodded by his comrades. He had firm friends,--devoted

friends, who grew to honor and trust him more with every year; but,

strong though they knew him to be, he had found his conqueror. There was

a story in the first class that in Stanley's old leather writing-case

was a sort of secret compartment, and in this compartment was treasured

"a knot of ribbon blue" that had been worn last summer close under the

dimpled white chin of pretty Nannie McKay.



And now on this moist May evening as he hastens back to barracks, Mr.

Stanley spies a little group standing in front of the guard-house.

Lieutenant Lee is there,--in his uniform now,--and with him are the tall

girl in the simple travelling-dress, and the trim, wiry, gray-moustached

soldier whom we saw on the boat. The rain is falling steadily, which

accounts for and possibly excuses Mr. Lee's retention of the young

lady's arm in his as he holds the umbrella over both; but the colonel no

sooner catches sight of the officer of the day than his own umbrella is

cast aside, and with light, eager, buoyant steps, father and son hasten

to meet each other. In an instant their hands are clasped,--both

hands,--and through moistening eyes the veteran of years of service and

the boy in whom his hopes are centred gaze into each other's faces.



"Phil,--my son!"



"Father!"



No other words. It is the first meeting in two long years. The area is

deserted save by the smiling pair watching from under the dripping

umbrella with eyes nearly as moist as the skies. There is no one to

comment or to scoff. In the father's heart, mingling with the deep joy

at this reunion with his son, there wells up sudden, irrepressible

sorrow. "Ah, God!" he thinks. "Could his mother but have lived to see

him now!" Perhaps Philip reads it all in the strong yet tremulous clasp

of those sinewy brown hands, but for the moment neither speaks again.

There are some joys so deep, some heart longings so overpowering, that

many a man is forced to silence, or to a levity of manner which is

utterly repugnant to him, in the effort to conceal from the world the

tumult of emotion that so nearly makes him weep. Who that has read that

inimitable page will ever forget the meeting of that genial sire and

gallant son in the grimy old railway car filled with the wounded from

Antietam, in Doctor Holmes's "My Search for the Captain?"



When Phil Stanley, still clinging to his father's hand, turns to greet

his sister and her handsome escort, he is suddenly aware of another

group that has entered the area. Two ladies, marshalled by his

classmate, Mr. Pennock, are almost at his side, and one of them is the

blue-eyed girl he loves.









CHAPTER III.



"AMANTIUM IRAE."





Lovely as is West Point in May, it is hardly the best time for a visit

there if one's object be to see the cadets. From early morn until late

at night every hour is taken up with duties, academic or military.

Mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, whose eyes so eagerly follow the

evolutions of the gray ranks, can only hope for a few words between

drill and dress parade, or else in the shortest half-hour in all the

world,--that which intervenes 'twixt supper and evening "call to

quarters." That Miss Nannie McKay should make frequent and unfavorable

comment on this state of affairs goes without saying; yet, had she been

enabled to see her beloved brother but once a month and her cadet

friends at intervals almost as rare, that incomprehensible young damsel

would have preferred the Point to any other place in the world.



It was now ten days since her arrival, and she had had perhaps three

chats with Willy, who, luckily for him, though he could not realize it,

was spending most of his time "confined to quarters," and consequently

out of much of the temptation he would otherwise have been in. Mrs.

McKay had been able to see very little more of the young man, but she

had the prayerful consolation that if he could only be kept out of

mischief a few days longer he would then be through with it all, out of

danger of dismissal, actually graduated, and once more her own boy to

monopolize as she chose.



It takes most mothers a long, long time to become reconciled to the

complete usurpation of all their former rights by this new parent whom

their boys are bound to serve,--this anything but Alma Mater,--the war

school of the nation. As for Miss Nan, though she made it a point to

declaim vigorously at the fates that prevented her seeing more of her

brother, it was wonderful how well she looked and in what blithe spirits

she spent her days. Regularly as the sun came around, before guard-mount

in the morning and right after supper in the evening, she was sure to be

on the south piazza of the old hotel, and when presently the cadet

uniforms began to appear at the hedge, she, and others, would go

tripping lightly down the path to meet the wearers, and then would

follow the half-hour's walk and chat in which she found such infinite

delight. So, too, could Mr. Stanley, had he been able to appear as her

escort on all occasions; but despite his strong personal inclination and

effort, this was by no means the case. The little lady was singularly

impartial in the distribution of her time, and only by being first

applicant had he secured to himself the one long afternoon that had yet

been vouchsafed them,--the cadet half-holiday of Saturday.



But if Miss Nan found time hanging heavily on her hands at other hours

of the day, there was one young lady at the hotel who did not,--a young

lady whom, by this time, she regarded with constantly deepening

interest,--Miriam Stanley.



Other girls, younger girls, who had found their ideals in the cadet

gray, were compelled to spend hours of the twenty-four in waiting for

the too brief half-hour in which it was possible to meet them; but

Miss Stanley was very differently situated. It was her first visit to

the Point. She met, and was glad to meet, all Philip's friends and

comrades; but it was plainly to be seen, said all the girls at Craney's,

that between her and the tall cavalry officer whom they best knew

through cadet descriptions, there existed what they termed an

"understanding," if not an engagement. Every day, when not prevented by

duties, Mr. Lee would come stalking up from barracks, and presently away

they would stroll together,--a singularly handsome pair, as every one

admitted. One morning soon after the Stanleys' arrival he appeared in

saddle on his stylish bay, accompanied by an orderly leading another

horse, side-saddled; and then, as by common impulse, all the girls

promenading the piazzas, as was their wont, with arms entwining each

other's waists, came flocking about the south steps. When Miss Stanley

appeared in her riding-habit and was quickly swung up into saddle by her

cavalier, and then, with a bright nod and smile for the entire group,

she gathered the reins in her practised hand and rode briskly away, the

sentiments of the fair spectators were best expressed, perhaps, in the

remark of Miss McKay,--



"What a shame it is that the cadets can't ride! I mean can't

ride--that way," she explained, with suggestive nod of her curly head

towards the pair just trotting out upon the road around the Plain. "They

ride--lots of them--better than most of the officers."



"Mr. Stanley for instance," suggests a mischievous little minx with

hazel eyes and laughter-loving mouth.



"Yes, Mr. Stanley, or Mr. Pennock, or Mr. Burton, or a dozen others I

could name, not excepting my brother," answers Miss Nan, stoutly,

although those readily flushing cheeks of hers promptly throw out their

signals of perturbation. "Fancy Mr. Lee vaulting over his horse at the

gallop as they do."



"And yet Mr. Lee has taught them so much more than other instructors.

Several cadets have told me so. He always does, first, everything he

requires them to do; so he must be able to make that vault."



"Will doesn't say so by any means," retorts Nannie, with something very

like a pout; and as Will is a prime favorite with the entire party and

the centre of a wide circle of interest, sympathy, and anxiety in those

girlish hearts, their loyalty is proof against opinions that may not

coincide with his. "Miss Mischief" reads temporary defeat in the circle

of bright faces and is stung to new effort,--



"Well! there are cadets whose opinions you value quite as much as you do

your brother's, Nannie, and they have told me."



"Who?" challenges Miss Nan, yet with averted face. Thrice of late she

has disagreed with Mr. Stanley about Willy's troubles; has said things

to him which she wishes she had left unsaid; and for two days now he has

not sought her side as heretofore, though she knows he has been at the

hotel to see his sister, and a little bird has told her he had a long

talk with this same hazel-eyed girl. She wants to know more about

it,--yet does not want to ask.



"Phil Stanley, for one," is the not unexpected answer.



Somebody who appears to know all about it has written that when a girl

is beginning to feel deep interest in a man she will say things

decidedly detrimental to his character solely for the purpose of having

them denied and for the pleasure of hearing him defended. Is it this

that prompts Miss McKay to retort?--



"Mr. Stanley cares too little what his classmates think, and too much of

what Mr. Lee may say or do."



"Mr. Stanley isn't the only one who thinks a deal of Lieutenant Lee," is

the spirited answer. "Mr. Burton says he is the most popular tactical

officer here, and many a cadet--good friends of your brother's,

Nannie--has said the same thing. You don't like him because Will

doesn't."



"I wouldn't like or respect any officer who reports cadets on

suspicion," is the stout reply. "If he did that to any one else I would

despise it as much as I do because Willy is the victim."



The discussion is waxing hot. "Miss Mischief's" blood is up. She likes

Phil Stanley; she likes Mr. Lee; she has hosts of friends in the corps,

and she is just as loyal and quite as pronounced in her views as her

little adversary. They are fond of each other, too, and were great chums

all through the previous summer; but there is danger of a quarrel

to-day.



"I don't think you are just in that matter at all, Nannie. I have heard

cadets say that if they had been in Mr. Lee's place or on

officer-of-the-day duty they would have had to give Will that report you

take so much to heart. Everybody knows his voice. Half the corps heard

him call out to Mr. Pennock."



"I don't believe a single cadet who's a friend of Will's would say such

a thing," bursts in Miss Nan, her eyes blazing.



"He is a friend, and a warm friend, too."



"You said there were several, Kitty, and I don't believe it possible."



"Well. There were two or three. If you don't believe it, you can ask Mr.

Stanley. He said it, and the others agreed."



Fancy the mood in which she meets him this particular evening, when his

card was brought to her door. Twice has "Miss Mischief" essayed to enter

the room and "make up." Conscience has been telling her savagely that in

the impulse and sting of the moment she has given an unfair coloring to

the whole matter. Mr. Stanley had volunteered no such remark as that she

so vehemently quoted. Asked point blank whether he considered as given

"on suspicion" the report which Mrs. McKay and Nannie so resented, he

replied that he did not; and, when further pressed, he said that Will

alone was blamable in the matter: Mr. Lee had no alternative, if it was

Mr. Lee who gave the report, and any other officer would have been

compelled to do the same. All this "Miss Mischief" would gladly have

explained to Nannie could she have gained admission, but the latter "had

a splitting headache," and begged to be excused.



It has been such a lovely afternoon. The halls were filled with cadets

"on permit," when she came out from the dining-room, but nothing but

ill-luck seemed to attend her. The young gentleman who had invited her

to walk to Fort Putnam, most provokingly twisted an ankle at cavalry

drill that very morning, and was sent to hospital. Now, if Mr. Stanley

were all devotion, he would promptly tender his services as substitute.

Then she could take him to task and punish him for his disloyalty to

Will. But Mr. Stanley was not to be seen: "Gone off with another girl,"

was the announcement made to her by Mr. Werrick, a youth who dearly

loved a joke, and who saw no need of explaining that the other girl was

his own sister. Sorely disappointed, yet hardly knowing why, she

accepted her mother's invitation to go with her to the barracks where

Will was promenading the area on what Mr. Werrick called "one of his

perennial punishment tours." She went, of course; but the distant sight

of poor Will, duly equipped as a sentry, dismally tramping up and down

the asphalt, added fuel to the inward fire that consumed her. The

mother's heart, too, yearned over her boy,--a victim to cruel

regulations and crueler task-masters. "What was the use of the

government's enticing young men away from their comfortable homes," Mrs.

McKay had once indignantly written, "unless it could make them happy?"

It was a question the "tactical department" could not answer, but it

thought volumes.



But now evening had come, and with it Mr. Stanley's card. Nan's heart

gave a bound, but she went down-stairs with due deliberation. She had

his card in her hand as she reached the hall, and was twisting it in her

fingers. Yes. There he stood on the north piazza, Pennock with him, and

one or two others of the graduating class. They were chatting laughingly

with Miss Stanley, "Miss Mischief," a bevy of girls, and a matron or

two, but she knew well his eyes would be on watch for her. They were. He

saw her instantly; bowed, smiled, but, to her surprise, continued his

conversation with a lady seated near the door. What could it mean?

Irresolute she stood there a moment, waiting for him to come forward;

but though she saw that twice his eyes sought hers, he was still bending

courteously and listening to the voluble words of the somewhat elderly

dame who claimed his attention. Nan began to rebel against that woman

from the bottom of her heart. What was she to do? Here was his card. In

response she had come down to receive him. She meant to be very cool

from the first moment; to provoke him to inquiry as to the cause of such

unusual conduct, and then to upbraid him for his disloyalty to her

brother. She certainly meant that he should feel the weight of her

displeasure; but then--then--after he had been made to suffer, if he was

properly contrite, and said so, and looked it, and begged to be

forgiven, why then, perhaps she might be brought to condone it in a

measure and be good friends again. It was clearly his duty, however, to

come and greet her, not hers to go to the laughing group. The old lady

was the only one among them whom she did not know,--a new arrival. Just

then Miss Stanley looked round, saw her, and signalled smilingly to her

to come and join them. Slowly she walked towards the little party, still

twirling the card in her taper fingers.



"Looking for anybody, Nan?" blithely hails "Miss Mischief." "Who is it?

I see you have his card."



For once Nannie's voice fails her, and she knows not what to say. Before

she can frame an answer there is a rustle of skirts and a light

foot-fall behind her, and she hears the voice of a girl whom she never

has liked one bit.



"Oh! You're here, are you, Mr. Stanley! Why, I've been waiting at least

a quarter of an hour. Did you send up your card?"



"I did; full ten minutes ago. Was it not brought to your room?"



"No, indeed! I've been sitting there writing, and only came down because

I had promised Mr. Fearn that he should have ten minutes, and it is

nearly his time now. Where do you suppose they could have sent it?"



Poor little Nan! It has been a hard day for her, but this is just too

much. She turns quickly, and, hardly knowing whither she goes, dodges

past the party of cadets and girls now blocking the stairway and

preventing flight to her room, hurries out the south door and around to

the west piazza, and there, leaning against a pillar, is striving to

hide her blazing cheeks,--all in less than a minute.



Stanley sees through the entire situation with the quick intuition of a

lover. She has not treated him kindly of late. She has been capricious

and unjust on several occasions, but there is no time to think of that

now. She is in distress, and that is more than enough for him.



"Here comes Mr. Fearn himself to claim his walk, so I will go and find

out about the card," he says, and blesses that little rat of a bell-boy

as he hastens away.



Out on the piazza he finds her alone, yet with half a dozen people

hovering nigh. The hush of twilight is over the beautiful old Point. The

moist breath of the coming night, cool and sweet, floats down upon them

from the deep gorges on the rugged flank of Cro' Nest, and rises from

the thickly lacing branches of the cedars on the river-bank below. A

flawless mirror in its grand and reflected framework of cliff and crag

and beetling precipice, the Hudson stretches away northward unruffled by

the faintest cat's-paw of a breeze. Far beyond the huge black

battlements of Storm King and the purpled scaur of Breakneck the night

lights of the distant city are twinkling through the gathering darkness,

and tiny dots of silvery flame down in the cool depths beneath them

reflect the faint glimmer from the cloudless heaven where--



"The sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."



The hush of the sacred hour has fallen on every lip save those of the

merry party in the hall, where laugh and chatter and flaring gas-light

bid defiance to influences such as hold their sway over souls brought

face to face with Nature in this, her loveliest haunt on earth.



Phil Stanley's heart is throbbing as he steps quickly to her side. Well,

indeed, she knows his foot-fall; knows he is coming; almost knows why

he comes. She is burning with a sense of humiliation, wounded pride,

maidenly wrath, and displeasure. All day long everything has gone agley.

Could she but flee to her room and hide her flaming cheeks and cry her

heart out, it would be relief inexpressible, but her retreat is cut off.

She cannot escape. She cannot face those keen-eyed watchers in the

hall-ways. Oh! it is almost maddening that she should have been so--so

fooled! Every one must know she came down to meet Phil Stanley when his

card was meant for another girl,--that girl of all others! All aflame

with indignation as she is, she yet means to freeze him if she can only

control herself.



"Miss Nannie," he murmurs, quick and low, "I see that a blunder has been

made, but I don't believe the others saw it. Give me just a few minutes.

Come down the walk with me. I cannot talk with you here--now, and there

is so much I want to say." He bends over her pleadingly, but her eyes

are fixed far away up the dark wooded valley beyond the white shafts of

the cemetery, gleaming in the first beams of the rising moon. She makes

no reply for a moment. She does not withdraw them when finally she

answers, impressively,--



"Thank you, Mr. Stanley, but I must be excused from interfering with

your engagements."



"There is no engagement now," he promptly replies; "and I greatly want

to speak with you. Have you been quite kind to me of late? Have I not a

right to know what has brought about the change?"



"You do not seem to have sought opportunity to inquire,"--very cool and

dignified now.



"Pardon me. Three times this week I have asked for a walk, and you have

had previous engagements."



She has torn to bits and thrown away the card that was in her hand. Now

she is tugging at the bunch of bell buttons, each graven with the

monogram of some cadet friend, that hangs as usual by its tiny golden

chain. She wants to say that he has found speedy consolation in the

society of "that other girl" of whom Mr. Werrick spoke, but not for the

world would she seem jealous.



"You could have seen me this afternoon, had there been any matters you

wished explained," she says. "I presume you were more agreeably

occupied."



"I find no delight in formal visits," he answers, quietly; "but my

sister wished to return calls and asked me to show her about the post."



Then it was his sister. Not "that other girl!" Still she must not let

him see it makes her glad. She needs a pretext for her wrath. She must

make him feel it in some way. This is not at all in accordance with the

mental private rehearsals she has been having. There is still that

direful matter of Will's report for "shouting from window of barracks,"

and "Miss Mischief's" equally direful report of Mr. Stanley's remarks

thereon.



"I thought you were a loyal friend of Willy's," she says, turning

suddenly upon him.



"I was--and am," he answers simply.



"And yet I'm told you said it was all his own fault, and that you

yourself would have given him the report that so nearly 'found him on

demerit.' A report on suspicion, too," she adds, with scorn in her tone.



Mr. Stanley is silent a moment.



"You have heard a very unfair account of my words," he says at last. "I

have volunteered no opinions on the subject. In answer to direct

question I have said that it was not justifiable to call that a report

on suspicion."



"But you said you would have given it yourself."



"I said that, as officer of the day, I would have been compelled to do

so. I could not have signed my certificate otherwise."



She turns away in speechless indignation. What makes it all well-nigh

intolerable is that he is by no means on the defensive. He is patient,

gentle, but decidedly superior. Not at all what she wanted. Not at all

eager to explain, argue, or implore. Not at all the tearful penitent she

has pictured in her plans. She must bring him to a realizing sense of

the enormity of his conduct. Disloyalty to Will is treason to her.



"And yet--you say you have kept, and that you value, that knot of blue

ribbon that I gave you--or that you took--last summer. I did not suppose

that you would so soon prove to be--no friend to Willy, or----"



"Or what, Miss Nannie?" he asks. His face is growing white, but he

controls the tremor in his voice. She does not see. Her eyes are

downcast and her face averted now, but she goes on desperately.



"Well, never mind that now; but it seems to me that such friendship

is--simply worthless."



She has taken the plunge and said her say, but the last words are spoken

with sinking inflection, followed instantly by a sinking heart. He makes

no answer whatever. She dares not look up into his face to see the

effect of her stab. He stands there silent only an instant; then raises

his cap, turns, and leaves her.



Sunday comes and goes without a sight of him except in the line of

officers at parade. That night she goes early to her room, and on the

bureau finds a little box securely tied, sealed, and addressed to her in

his well-known hand. It contains a note and some soft object carefully

wrapped in tissue-paper. The note is brief enough:



"It is not easy to part with this, for it is all I have that was yours

to give, but even this must be returned to you after what you said last

night.



"Miss Nannie, you may some time think more highly of my friendship for

your brother than you do now, and then, perhaps, will realize that you

were very unjust. Should that time come I shall be glad to have this

again."



It was hardly necessary to open the little packet as she did. She knew

well enough it could contain only that



"Knot of ribbon blue."









CHAPTER IV.



"THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME."





June is here. The examinations are in full blast. The Point is thronged

with visitors and every hostelrie in the neighborhood has opened wide

its doors to accommodate the swarms of people interested in the

graduating exercises and eager for the graduating ball. Pretty girls

there are in force, and at Craney's they are living three and four in a

room; the joy of being really there on the Point, near the cadets,

aroused by the morning gun and shrill piping of the reveille, saluted

hourly by the notes of the bugle, enabled to see the gray uniforms half

a dozen times a day and to actually speak or walk with the wearers half

an hour out of twenty-four whole ones, being apparent compensation for

any crowding or discomfort. Indeed, crowded as they are, the girls at

Craney's are objects of boundless envy to those whom the Fates have

consigned to the resorts down around the picturesque but distant

"Falls." There is a little coterie at "Hawkshurst" that is fiercely

jealous of the sisterhood in the favored nook at the north edge of the

Plain, and one of their number, who is believed to have completely

subjugated that universal favorite, Cadet McKay, has been heard to say

that she thought it an outrage that they had to come home so early in

the evening and mope away the time without a single cadet, when up there

at Craney's the halls and piazzas were full of gray-coats and bell

buttons every night until tattoo.



A very brilliant and pretty girl she is, too, and neither Mrs. McKay nor

Nannie can wonder at it that Will's few leisure moments are monopolized.

"You are going to have me all to yourself next week, little mother," he

laughingly explains; "and goodness knows when I'm going to see Miss

Waring again." And though neither mother nor sister is at all satisfied

with the state of affairs, both are too unselfish to interpose. How many

an hour have mothers and, sometimes, sisters waited in loneliness at the

old hotel for boys whom some other fellow's sister was holding in silken

fetters somewhere down in shady "Flirtation!"



It was with relief inexpressible that Mrs. McKay and Uncle Jack had

hailed the coming of the 1st of June. With a margin of only two demerits

Will had safely weathered the reefs and was practically safe,--safe at

last. He had passed brilliantly in engineering; had been saved by his

prompt and ready answers the consequences of a "fess" with clean

black-board in ordnance and gunnery; had won a ringing, though

involuntary, round of applause from the crowded galleries of the

riding-hall by daring horsemanship, and he was now within seven days of

the prized diploma and his commission. "For heaven's sake, Billy,"

pleaded big Burton, the first captain, "don't do any thing to ruin your

chances now! I've just been talking with your mother and Miss Nannie,

and I declare I never saw that little sister of yours looking so white

and worried."



McKay laughs, yet his laugh is not light-hearted. He wonders if Burton

has the faintest intuition that at this moment he is planning an

escapade that means nothing short of dismissal if detected. Down in the

bottom of his soul he knows he is a fool to have made the rash and

boastful pledge to which he now stands committed. Yet he has never

"backed out" before, and now--he would dare a dozen dismissals rather

than that she should have a chance to say, "I knew you would not come."



That very afternoon, just after the ride in the hall before the Board of

Visitors, Miss Waring had been pathetically lamenting that with another

week they were to part, and that she had seen next to nothing of him

since her arrival.



"If you only could get down to Hawkshurst!" she cried. "I'm sure when

my cousin Frank was in the corps he used to 'run it' down to Cozzens's

to see Cousin Kate,--and that was what made her Cousin Kate to me," she

adds, with sudden dropping of the eyelids that is wondrously effective.



"Easily done!" recklessly answers McKay, whose boyish heart is set to

hammer-like beating by the closing sentence. "I didn't know you sat up

so late there, or I would have come before. Of course I have to be

here at 'taps.' No one can escape that."



"Oh,--but really, Mr. McKay, I did not mean it! I would not have you run

such a risk for worlds! I meant--some other way." And so she protests,

although her eyes dance with excitement and delight. What a feather this

in her cap of coquetry! What a triumph over the other girls,--especially

that hateful set at Craney's! What a delicious confidence to impart to

all the little coterie at Hawkshurst! How they must envy her the

romance, the danger, the daring, the devotion of such an adventure--for

her sake! Of late years such tales had been rare. Girls worth the

winning simply would not permit so rash a project, and their example

carried weight. But here at "Hawkshurst" was a lively young brood,

chaperoned by a matron as wild as her charges and but little older, and

eager one and all for any glory or distinction that could pique the

pride or stir the envy of "that Craney set." It was too much for a girl

of Sallie Waring's type. Her eyes have a dangerous gleam, her cheeks a

witching glow; she clings tighter to his arm as she looks up in his

face.



"And yet--wouldn't it be lovely?--To think of seeing you there!--are you

sure there'd be no danger?"



"Be on the north piazza about quarter of eleven," is the prompt reply.

"I'll wear a dark suit, eye-glass, brown moustache, etc. Call me Mr.

Freeman while strangers are around. There goes the parade drum. Au

revoir!" and he darts away. Cadet Captain Stanley, inspecting his

company a few moments later, stops in front and gravely rebukes him,--



"You are not properly shaved, McKay."



"I shaved this morning," is the somewhat sullen reply, while an angry

flush shoots up towards the blue eyes.



"No razor has touched your upper lip, however, and I expect the class to

observe regulations in this company, demerit or no demerit," is the

firm, quiet answer, and the young captain passes on to the next man.

McKay grits his teeth.



"Only a week more of it, thank God!" he mutters, when sure that Stanley

is beyond ear-shot.



Three hours more and "taps" is sounded. All along the brilliant facade

of barracks there is sudden and simultaneous "dousing of the glim" and a

rush of the cadets to their narrow nests. There is a minute of banging

doors and hurrying footsteps, and gruff queries of "All in?" as the

cadet officers flit from room to room in each division to see that

lights are out and every man in bed. Then forth they come from every

hall-way; tripping lightly down the stone steps and converging on the

guard-house, where stand at the door-way the dark forms of the officer

in charge and the cadet officer of the day. Each in turn halts, salutes,

and makes his precise report; and when the last subdivision is reported,

the executive officer is assured that the battalion of cadets is present

in barracks, and at the moment of inspection at least, in bed.

Presumably, they remain so.



Two minutes after inspection, however, Mr. McKay is out of bed again and

fumbling about in his alcove. His room-mate sleepily inquires from

beyond the partition what he wants in the dark, but is too long

accustomed to his vagaries to expect definite information. When Mr.

McKay slips softly out into the hall, after careful reconnaissance of

the guard-house windows, his chum is soundly asleep and dreaming of no

worse freak on Billy's part than a raid around barracks.



It is so near graduation that the rules are relaxed, and in every first

classman's room the tailor's handiwork is hanging among the gray

uniforms. It is a dark suit of this civilian dress that Billy dons as

he emerges from the blankets. A natty Derby is perched upon his curly

pate, and a monocle hangs by its string. But he cannot light his gas

and arrange the soft brown moustache with which he proposes to decorate

his upper lip. He must run into Stanley's,--the "tower" room, at the

north end of his hall.



Phil looks up from the copy of "Military Law" which he is diligently

studying. As "inspector of subdivision," his light is burned until

eleven.



"You do make an uncommonly swell young cit, Billy," he says,

pleasantly. "Doesn't he, Mack?" he continues, appealing to his

room-mate, who, lying flat on his back with his head towards the light

and a pair of muscular legs in white trousers displayed on top of a pile

of blankets, is striving to make out the vacancies in a recent Army

Register. "Mack" rolls over and lazily expresses his approval.



"I'd do pretty well if I had my moustache out; I meant to get the start

of you fellows, but you're so meanly jealous, you blocked the game,

Stan."



All the rancor is gone now. He well knows that Stanley was right.



"Sorry to have had to 'row' you about that, Billy," says the captain,

gently. "You know I can't let one man go and not a dozen others."



"Oh, hang it all! What's the difference when time's so nearly up?"

responds McKay, as he goes over to the little wood-framed mirror that

stands on the iron mantel. "Here's a substitute, though! How's this for

a moustache?" he asks, as he turns and faces them. Then he starts for

the door. Almost in an instant Stanley is up and after him. Just at the

head of the iron stairs he hails and halts him.



"Billy! You are not going out of barracks?"



Unwillingly McKay yields to the pressure of the firm hand laid on his

shoulder, and turns.



"Suppose I were, Stanley. What danger is there? Lee inspected last

night, and even he wouldn't make such a plan to trip me. Who ever heard

of a 'tack's' inspecting after taps two successive nights?"



"There's no reason why it should not be done, and several reasons why it

should," is the uncompromising reply. "Don't risk your commission now,

Billy, in any mad scheme. Come back and take those things off. Come!"



"Blatherskite! Don't hang on to me like a pick-pocket, Stan. Let me go,"

says McKay, half vexed, half laughing. "I've got to go, man," he says,

more seriously. "I've promised."



A sudden light seems to come to Stanley. Even in the feeble gleam from

the gas-jet in the lower hall McKay can see the look of consternation

that shoots across his face.



"You don't mean--you're not going down to Hawkshurst, Billy?"



"Why not to Hawkshurst, if anywhere at all?" is the sullen reply.



"Why? Because you are risking your whole future,--your profession, your

good name, McKay. You're risking your mother's heart for the sport of a

girl who is simply toying with you----"



"Take care, Stanley. Say what you like to me about myself, but not a

word about her."



"This is no time for sentiment, McKay. I have known Miss Waring three

years; you, perhaps three weeks. I tell you solemnly that if she ha



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