;
but I also thought the most queenly thing I could do was to take the
offered civility, and I sat down. My eyes were bewildered with the
beauty; they turned from one point to another with a sort of
wondering, insatiable enjoyment. There, beneath our feet, lay the
little level green plain; its roads and trees all before us as in a
map, with the lines of building enclosing it on the south and west. A
cart and oxen were slowly travelling across the road between the
library and the hotel, looking like minute ants dragging a crumb
along. Beyond them was the stretch of brown earth, where the cavalry
exercises forbade a blade of grass to show itself. And beyond that,
at the farther edge of the plain, the little white camp; its straight
rows of tents and the alleys between all clearly marked out. Round all
this the river curved, making a promontory of it; a promontory with
fringed banks, and levelled at top, as it seemed, just to receive the
Military Academy. On the other side the river, a long sweep of gentle
hills, coloured in the fair colours of the evening; curving towards
the north-east into a beautiful circle of soft outlines back of the
mountain which rose steep and bold at the water's edge. This mountain
was the first of the group I had seen from my hotel window. Houses and
churches nestled in the curve of tableland, under the mountain. Due
north, the parapet of the fort rising sharply at its northern angle a
few feet from where I sat, hindered my full view. Southerly, the hills
swept down, marking the course of the river for many a mile; but again
from where I sat I could not see how far. With a sigh of pleasure my
eye came back to the plain and the white tents.

"Is guard duty very disagreeable?" I asked, thinking of Preston's talk
in the morning.

"Why at mid-day, with the thermometer at 90 deg., it is not exactly the
amusement one would choose," said Mr. Thorold. "I like it at night
well enough."

"What do you do?"

"Nothing, but walk up and down, two hours at a time."

"What is the use of it?"

"To keep order, and make sure that nothing goes in or out that has no
business to do it."

"And they have to carry their guns," I said.

"Their muskets--yes."

"Are they very heavy?"

"No. Pretty heavy for an arm that is new to it. I never remember I
have mine."

"Mr. Caxton said," (Mr. Caxton was the cadet who had introduced Mr.
Thorold to me)--"Mr. Caxton told Mrs. Sandford that the new cadets are
sometim