edily died
away--almost to silence--ere he, too, turned and followed. "Good-by,
fellows! God bless you!" shouted Willett, as though in final triumph.
He had had the last word; had "taken the call," and the dramatic
success of the day was his, or might have been, but for a most
unprecedented incident.

"Hush! hush! Shut up!" were the stern, sudden words with which the
elders repressed the juniors who, impulsively, would have broken forth
again. "Wait! Wait, you fellows!" was the cry, for on a sudden half a
dozen stalwart gray coats had sprung from the door, regardless of the
corporal on duty, disdainful of demerit, had hurled themselves on
wet-eyed Harris, had heaved him up on their shoulders, with pinioned,
arm-locked, helpless legs, and frantic, impotently battling fists, and
borne him struggling up the steps and once more within the massive
portals, and then pandemonium broke loose, for this was no divided
honor--there was none to share it now. They bore him, vainly
protesting, into the midst of the now risen battalion. They bore him
forth into the June sunshine without. They surged about him under the
trees and along the roadway, his halted classmates gazing back from the
brow of the bluff, a swarm of spectators looking on, a stupefied group
surging out from the officers' mess, conceiving that fire alone could
account for the tumult. Then, over the uproar, could be heard the
orders of the new captain. "Form your companies!" the shouts of the
sergeants: "Fall in, men, fall in!" And then the demand: "March us
back, Hefty! Take command once more!" "Start 'em back, Harris, for
God's sake! I can never straighten 'em out," cried his half-laughing,
half-sobbing successor, his first sergeant of the year gone by. He
stood there prisoner, held by the staff and special duty men. He could
not get away. Even the saturnine officer in charge stood a smiling
observer, and, catching the young graduate's eye, waved approval and
encouragement, and so there was no help for it. With a voice
half-broken through emotion, he gave the old familiar commands that,
three times a day for nearly ten long months previous, had sent them
striding back through the gap between the old "Academic" and the gray
gables of the Mess, and so on to the broad area of barracks beyond.
Then, breaking away, he sprang over the eastward edge of the road,
joined the waiting group of classmates at the crest of the hill, and
with one long look at the disappearing gra