columns of four, had executed the right oblique in
double time, and halted amid cheers; then formed left front into line
without halting. The next movement was one looked forward to with much
anxiety on account of its difficulty. The order was marching by fours to
fix or unfix bayonets. They were going at a quick step, but the boys'
hands were steady--hope was bright in their hearts. They were doing it
rapidly and freely, when suddenly from the ranks there was the bright
gleam of steel lower down than it should have been. A gasp broke from
the breasts of company "A's" friends. The blue and white dropped
disconsolately, while a few heartless ones who wore other colors
attempted to hiss. Someone had dropped his bayonet. But with muscles
unquivering, without a turned head, the company moved on as if nothing
had happened, while one of the judges, an army officer, stepped into the
wake of the boys and picked up the fallen steel.

No two eyes had seen half so quickly as Hannah and "little sister's" who
the blunderer was. In the whole drill there had been but one figure for
them, and that was Bud,--Bud, and it was he who had dropped his
bayonet. Anxious, nervous with the desire to please them, perhaps with a
shade too much of thought of them looking on with their hearts in their
eyes, he had fumbled, and lost all he was striving for. His head went
round and round and all seemed black before him.

He executed the movements in a dazed way. The applause, generous and
sympathetic, as his company left the parade ground, came to him from
afar off, and like a wounded animal he crept away from his comrades, not
because their reproaches stung him, for he did not hear them, but
because he wanted to think what his mother and "little sister" would
say, but his misery was as nothing to that of the two who sat up there
amid the ranks of the blue and white, holding each other's hands with a
despairing grip. To Bud all of the rest of the contest was a horrid
nightmare; he hardly knew when the three companies were marched back to
receive the judges' decision. The applause that greeted company "B" when
the blue ribbons were pinned on the members' coats meant nothing to his
ears. He had disgraced himself and his company. What would his mother
and his "little sister" say?

To Hannah and "little sister," as to Bud, all of the remainder of the
drill was a misery. The one interest they had had in it failed, and not
even the dropping of his gun by