ar. With much
deliberation of manner, Mr. Williams drew sabre and easily gave the
various orders for the showy manual of arms, the white-gloved hands
moving like clockwork in response to his command until, with
simultaneous thud, the battalion resumed the "order," certain
spectators with difficulty repressing the impulse to applaud.

[Illustration: CADETS AT DRILL, WEST POINT]

Then back to the centre stalked the young adjutant, Mrs. Graham
unconsciously drawing unflattering comparison between the present
incumbent, soldierly though he seemed, and her own boy's associate and
friend, Claude Benton, adjutant of the class graduated barely a
fortnight earlier, "her own boy," perhaps the most honored among them.
She was clinging to his arm now, her pride and joy through all his
years of sturdy boyhood and manly youth. She knew well that the hope
and longing of his heart was to be assigned to the cavalry regiment of
which Lieutenant McCrea was quartermaster, the regiment once stationed
at old Fort Reynolds, in the Rockies, when Dr. Graham was there as post
surgeon and Geordie was preparing for West Point. Indeed, Mr. McCrea
had "coached" her son in mathematics, and had been most helpful in
securing the appointment. And now here was the quartermaster on leave
of absence, the first he had had in years, spending several weeks of
his three months' rest at the scene of his own soldier school-days.

But it was "Bud," her younger son, who had come rushing down to the
surgeon's quarters only a few minutes before parade with the
all-important news. "Mither!--Geordie!" he cried, "Captain Cross says
the assignment order's come and will be published at parade. Hurry up!"

Dr. Graham could hardly believe it. As McCrea said, the War Department
seldom issued the order before mid-July. "Mac" even hoped to be in
Washington in time to say a word to the adjutant-general in Geordie's
behalf. It was known that many would be assigned to the artillery, to
which Cadet Graham had been recommended by the Academic Board. But all
his boyhood had been spent on the frontier; his earliest recollections
were of the adobe barracks and sun-dried, sun-cracked, sun-scorched
parade of old Camp Sandy in Arizona. He had learned to ride an Indian
pony in Wyoming before he was eight; he had learned to shoot in Montana
before he was twelve; and he had ridden, hunted, fished, and shot all
over the wide West before the happy days that sent him to the great
cade