It was just like the cross grain of human nature that without a sound but the singing of birds to rouse him, our young soldier should wake up at precisely reveille gun time. In fact he did it for three days, to his great disgust; and then, as he said of himself, learned to know how happy he was.

Of course, this first morning at home, with everything before him except drills and regulations, going to sleep again was impossible.

So with the sublime unconsciousness of other people's slumbers which marks young men of his age, Magnus lay still and began to whistle. And with that other line of forgetfulness which shows the inferiority of the feminine mind, there was not a woman in the house but would have given her best sleep to hear him.

They were not asleep, however, but up and stirring; and it was perhaps some closing door or opening window, or the long unheard voice of the coffee mill, which reminded Cadet Kindred that in these regions there was no preparatory drum; and that such a noise as he had been making would quite rule out the thought of any private suggestions at his door. Wherefore, he had better get up. But what fun—to dress as he liked, in what he liked, and be as long as he liked about it.

With these thoughts came another to hasten his motions: would Cherry come to breakfast? And if she did, then just when would she come? And here Magnus paused before a piquant illustration of the young lady herself, drawn from memory—or, as the real novelists put it, "which had been photographed on his heart in one brief moment." And thus it seemed:

A tall, delicately formed girl, with dark hair, which did not crinkle and curl like his own, but parted in shining waves and rings; a complexion colourless in general, but where the rosy tints came and went like a pink cloud, in swift pulsations. The eyes—no, Mr. Kindred thought he had not a fair look at her eyes last night, and that was one thing to do to-day. Also her hand was a soft and fresh thing to touch. And at this point Magnus opened his door and passed out.

On the way downstairs he peeped into his mother's room, but no one was there, and he went straight on to a small room on the first floor which was a sort of offshoot from the house, and hardly bigger than a good-sized bay window.

But the picture he found there Magnus never forgot.

The room had been his father's summer study. Too cold for winter use, but in June perfection, with every window open to the air. Roses and honeysuckles climbed up and ran across and strayed in; amid the tangle birds sang and twittered and builded. Further off were cattle and chickens, with an old drum major of a turkey cock strutting before the barnyard throng. The scent of hayfields was mingled with the yet rarer fragrance of new-mown grass.

If the room had been larger, the minister's old library would have made small show; but as it was, the strips of wall between the windows were quite well covered. It was a very old affair in every way; leather covers much worn with handling, shutting in truths that were but the brighter for much believing. Very old-fashioned books. You could not find a copy of "Why I am a Doubter"; nor a single treatise on "The Eternal Equilibrium of Things." The glad toiler in Christ's vineyard had had no use for "The Trammels of Faith, and how I Got beyond Them"; and as little for "The Proper Sphere and Limit of the Bible, Set Forth and Defined."

But there was Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted," which the minister himself had also preached; with Bunyan's "Holy War between Diabolus and the Town of Mansoul," the which he himself had also waged; there was "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," upon which he now had entered. There was also old Matthew Henry's "Commentary" in its six volumes, which gave people so much to do on the plane of the lower criticism, that they had small chance to wish for the higher; with Fox's "Book of Martyrs," and "Lives of the Port Royalists," and Doddridge's "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul."

Only two chairs were in the room: one, where inquirers had so often sat and troubled hearts found peace, was pushed back now, its service done; but the minister's chair still stood by the minister's table where lay the minister's Book of books; and in the chair sat the minister's widow.

She was not reading at the moment: I think she had been listening to the gay sounds upstairs; and a tender, happy smile was on her lips, in perfect keeping with the words on which her eyes had been. But everything in that room was in keeping, to Magnus: his mother's cap looked to him not a whit purer than her face; nor was the shine outside the windows more gladsome than the look she turned to him. The young cadet was at her side in an instant, down on his knees with his head on her shoulder.

"What waked you up so early, child?"

"The echo of that reveille gun came clear across the Continent for the express purpose."

"Hardly. I heard you whistling some time ago."

"Did I disturb you?"

"You could not do that," said the mother.

"But you were reading."

"Thoughts of you are never far away from the Bible, nor the Bible from thoughts of you. Where have you been reading this morning, Magnus?"

"I've not been reading anywhere. Mother, do you think I had better run up for Cherry? or will she be here all right on time?"

"Time for what?" said Mrs. Kindred, rather opening her eyes at this very rapid transit.

"Breakfast."

"Did she say she would come?"

"Why—no," said Magnus. "I took it for granted."

"Never take anything for granted about Cherry, except that she will do just what is right. She never goes anywhere, Magnus, until she has given her father his breakfast and seen to his morning comfort in every way."

"I should think she might come," Magnus said discontentedly. "It's my first morning home. He could get along for once."

The mother smiled a little at the wide space demanded by the young people in these days, and the side corner deemed enough for the elder; but the usurpers are too lovely and beloved to be resisted. And besides, there is a sort of "while they can"—that checks many a word; the tender, pathetic force of Dr. Bonar's thought:

"Cherry will not come, Magnus," she said. "She never gets free before ten or eleven o'clock. So tell me why you have done no reading to-day."

"Out of the habit," said Magnus. "I never do it in the morning."

"What is your Bible time?"

"Well, if I can be said to have one, it is more apt to be at night," said Magnus. "I don't always read then, but most generally I do."

"At night?" said the mother, carefully hiding all signs of the underground shock that made her heart tremble. "I like to read at night, too. But then, dear, if you do not read in the morning as well, you have no fresh heartful of the blessed words to live by through the day." And she looked round at Magnus with such eager, anxious, pleading eyes as went straight to his heart. Which truly was not far to seek, that morning. He jumped up and put himself in the other chair, drawing it up to her.

"Mammy," he said, "let me tell you about it. It's this way. The gun wakes me up. And I tumble downstairs half dressed, and declare at the top of my voice that I am myself, and nobody else. That is, the first sergeant calls 'Kindred!' and I yell back 'Here!' Then I rush in again, and tumble into bed, clothes and all, and get the very best nap you ever dreamed of."

"Another nap? For how long?"

"Two minutes and a quarter, drum time. Then I finish dressing and go to breakfast. And after breakfast, we don't have very much time before recitation."

"Cannot you read then?"

"Once in a while I do," said Magnus. "Not always. Maybe I do a little boning in math. Maybe I take a walk with the nicest girl there is round."

His mother could not help smiling.

"Can you always get the nicest?" she said.

"Oh, yes!" Magnus answered easily; "unless she happens to be somebody else's best. Sometimes then. You see, so long as she doesn't look me in the face, she can fancy I am her 'best' man."

"Why, Magnus!" his mother said, half laughing now, but really anxious; "how do you behave, to make that possible?"

Magnus laughed too, with great delight.

"Sure enough," he said, "how do I? Maybe I go through the motions."

And now it was Mrs. Kindred who, after a moment's pause, changed the subject.

"Look, dear," she said, laying her hand on the open Bible, "I was reading just here: the parable of the sower. And my thoughts had been going back and forth from the seed which the fowls of the air were let pick up, to that other which fell in an honest and good heart, and 'with patience,' brought forth an hundred-fold."

Magnus ran his eyes over the passage.

"There are lots of fowls of the air at the Academy," he said.

"Maybe no more than elsewhere. But they have no business in your life, Magnus."

"No, mammy, they haven't," he said, hesitating a little with the difficulty of making his case plain. "All the same, they come in. I'll go to a right down good prayer-meeting Sunday night, and come back meaning to be the joy of your heart from that time on. Think I'll go straight to bed, so as to be sure and keep good till morning. Well, the moon is coming up as I get back to camp, and there is Randolph with pink and white gowns in tow; and I stop to speak, and they all say: 'Oh, come for a little walk!' I don't want to, and I half turn away—and then I go. The prayer-meeting isn't all gone by the time I get back, but there has been more of it picked up than you'd like."

"Yes," the mother answered, thinking in her heart that she had not prayed half enough for her boy in his hard places.

"Why, I've seen a man stay to Communion," Magnus went on, "and when we came out, there was Pretty Newcomb waiting for him in the rain, at the foot of the Chapel steps. Just walked him off alongside of her umbrella—or under it. And what are you going to do?"

"I see. But, Magnus, you said 'Sunday' night. What sort of girls are at the Camp Sunday night?"

"Summer girls," said Magnus briefly.

"Well, dear," said the mother, the cheerful tone coming back to her voice, "the Lord is 'able to keep you from falling,' even in the most difficult places; and to make you 'fruitful to every good work,' in spite of all the fowls of the air that ever fluttered down. But remember, that on your part the word is: 'Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.'"

"I know." But then Magnus remembered something else, and was suddenly silent.

And now came a soft, imperative call to breakfast.

"Waffles!" cried Rose in the distance, and the talk ended. Only as the mother went out with her boy's arm round her waist, she looked up at him with her true eyes.

"Magnus, never 'go through the motions,' as you call it, with the wrong woman. Never, as a sham. It dishonours the woman and degrades the man, and robs the other woman—the right one—of somewhat that belongs to her alone."

"Well, I never really have, mammy," said Magnus gravely; "so make your mind easy. And I never shall—unless the right one throws me over. I don't know what I'll do then."

And in spite of all previous warning Magnus looked round the breakfast room for Cherry, and not finding her, felt very much aggrieved.

There was no lack of talk and laughter, however; the joy of those four people in being together was extreme, and of course, the others did not miss Cherry, not having expected her, but Magnus did. The reserved, dainty girl had taken him by storm. They had always been inseparable as children, and as true boy and girl, though never with any freedom on her part, even then, that passed the prettiest bounds. Now she had stepped off a little, regarding him from a safer grown-up distance, and Magnus was wild to annihilate both time and space, and whatever else came in his way. She had bloomed out into something much rarer than he knew could be in the world, and Cadet Kindred surrendered at discretion, and without a summons. I believe he found that last fact the crowning charm. If Cherry had held forth her little finger to draw him on, or had in any way shortened that new indefinable distance between him and her, I think Magnus would have struck off a percentage from her perfections. It vexed and bewitched him equally.

So the young man sat opposite the open window, where the smoke from the other house curled softly into view, and thought himself ill-used and happy in about half and half mixture. He watched the winding path, but it remained empty. Then he looked at his sisters; how handsome they were, too! Splendid girls, both of them; and wouldn't they make a stir in first-class camp? Of course his mother had always been perfection. And here his eyes came round to her, with a smile of such joyful love and content that poor Mrs. Kindred was very near making a goose of herself, as she would have phrased it. What it was to have her boy home again!

"But I cannot see why they don't move down here!" Magnus broke forth irrelevantly. "Living on there all by themselves in that stupid old house."

"Stupid?" cried Violet. "Why, it's the very prettiest house in all the State."

"You had best not let Cherry hear you say such things," remarked Rose. "She loves that house with all her heart."

"Stuff!" said Magnus. "She'll have to leave it some time."

"She will not while her father lives," said Mrs. Kindred.

"Why, mother, girls do it every day."

"Girls—but not Cherry," the mother answered; and Magnus was so charmed with the saying, and the fair little pedestal on which it placed his heart's delight, that he adopted it for a private phrase of his own; used many times afterwards, it may be said, when "girls—but not Cherry," were around.

"Then, when she will not come, you go to her?" he asked.

"Oh, she always comes," said Violet; "some time in the day."

"Some time in the day!"

"According to what she has to do. Only letter days she always came early, and left the work till she got back."

"Some of it," corrected Rose. "But there's no letter due from Magnus to-day, you know, so we cannot tell when she will be here."

"Now that is too bad!" said Mr. Kindred, pushing back his chair. "Coming to hear my letters, and not coming to see me!"

"Well, the letters were very interesting, you know——" Violet began, and then thought it prudent to vanish.

"But, my dear," said Mrs. Kindred, "as you must of course go up there this morning yourself before you pay any other visits, I do not see how it really matters." "No, of course," said Magnus briskly. "Oh, mammy, I wish you'd pick out a lot of such easy duties for me."

"We cannot go with you," said Rose, "because we also have something to do; but we will come after you. You must wear your cadet clothes for Mr. Erskine."

So Magnus put himself in trim, and charging his sisters not to hurry on his account, and promising faithfully to wait till they came, began to mount the hill. Good for him the girls were busy—and yet, suppose that other girl were hid away in some part of the house to which Rose and Violet could go, while he could not?

Magnus whistled his thoughts down the wind, as he went on, and then, with a sudden fancy to approach unnoticed, hushed his tones and even his steps, and went in, seeing nobody. Through the hall to the back door—and there got another picture to think of in barracks.