yet, frank, jolly, and generous as he was in all intercourse with
his comrades, there was never a time when this young gentleman could be
brought to see that in such matters he was the arbiter of his own
destiny. Like the Irishman whose first announcement on setting foot on
American soil was that he was "agin the government," Billy McKay
believed that regulations were made only to oppress; that the men who
drafted such a code were idiots, and that those whose duty it became to
enforce it were simply spies and tyrants, resistance to whom was innate
virtue. He was forever ignoring or violating some written or unwritten
law of the Academy; was frequently being caught in the act, and was
invariably ready to attribute the resultant report to ill luck which
pursued no one else, or to a deliberate persecution which followed him
forever. Every six months he had been on the verge of dismissal, and
now, a fortnight from the final examination, with a margin of only six
demerit to run on, Mr. Billy McKay had just been read out in the daily
list of culprits or victims as "Shouting from window of barracks to
cadets in area during study hours,--three forty-five and four P.M."

There was absolutely no excuse for this performance. The regulations
enjoined silence and order in barracks during "call to quarters." It had
been raining a little, and he was in hopes there would be no battalion
drill, in which event he would venture on throwing off his uniform and
spreading himself out on his bed with a pipe and a novel,--two things he
dearly loved. Ten minutes would have decided the question legitimately
for him, but, being of impatient temperament, he could not wait, and,
catching sight of the adjutant and the senior captain coming from the
guard-house, Mr. McKay sung out in tones familiar to every man within
ear-shot,--

"Hi, Jim! Is it battalion drill?"

The adjutant glanced quickly up,--a warning glance as he could have
seen,--merely shook his head, and went rapidly on, while his comrade,
the cadet first captain, clinched his fist at the window and growled
between his set teeth, "Be quiet, you idiot!"

But poor Billy persisted. Louder yet he called,--

"Well--say--Jimmy! Come up here after four o'clock. I'll be in
confinement, and can't come out. Want to see you."

And the windows over at the office of the commandant being wide open,
and that official being seated there in consultation with three or four
of his assistants, and as M