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 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 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 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 And now on this moist May evening as he hastens back to barracks, Mr. Stanley spies a little group stand "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 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. |