woman in her magnificent robes had opened the flood-gates of
her soul and poured out to this comparative stranger the story of her
son's depravity. Aloft, two women listened awe-stricken to her sobs.
Cranston brought her water, made her drink a little wine, and bade her
take comfort, and amazed her by saying that at last her boy had shown a
gleam of manhood, a promise of redemption. She looked up through her
tears in sudden amaze. How was that possible? He must have been drunk
when he did it, and couldn't have been anything but drunk ever since.
Cranston patiently explained that so far from being drunk, the boy must
have been perfectly sober or they couldn't have taken him. He had been
frequently to the recruiting office, according to her account, and must
have been sober at such times, or they would have discouraged his coming
again. He couldn't have been drinking to any extent since enlistment or
he could not be where she said he was, and knew he was, on daily duty as
clerk in the office of the adjutant at the barracks. So far from its
indicating downfall, degradation, it was the one ray of hope of better
days. She looked at him, joy and incredulity mingling in her swimming
eyes. "Then why does everybody I've consulted, even our rector, urge me
to leave no stone unturned to get him out of it, even if we have to buy
him a place at West Point?" was her query. And again Cranston found it
hard to control his muscles--and his temper. Had it come to this?--that
here in his old home the accepted idea of the regular soldier was that
of something lower than the refuse of the prisons and reformatories? He
could only tell her that it was because they knew no better. Up to the
time of her boy's determination to enter the army had there been one
single moment in the last five years when he had been free from his
habits of drinking? asked Cranston. No, not one. And yet that step was
her conception of final degradation. What had occurred, he asked, to
make her feel renewed anxiety, to cause her to seek a cadetship for him?
Because the boy had written that recruits were soon to be sent to
cavalry regiments out on the plains, and he had asked to go. The thought
was terror. And Mrs. Barnard had learned that a congressman from the
interior of the State had a cadetship to dispose of, but he lived at
Urbana, the very place where poor Harry had spent his two months in the
retreat, and then had disbehaved so afterwards. And Mr. Goss, the
cong