e and
the boy in whom his hopes are centred gaze into each other's faces.

"Phil,--my son!"

"Father!"

No other words. It is the first meeting in two long years. The area is
deserted save by the smiling pair watching from under the dripping
umbrella with eyes nearly as moist as the skies. There is no one to
comment or to scoff. In the father's heart, mingling with the deep joy
at this reunion with his son, there wells up sudden, irrepressible
sorrow. "Ah, God!" he thinks. "Could his mother but have lived to see
him now!" Perhaps Philip reads it all in the strong yet tremulous clasp
of those sinewy brown hands, but for the moment neither speaks again.
There are some joys so deep, some heart longings so overpowering, that
many a man is forced to silence, or to a levity of manner which is
utterly repugnant to him, in the effort to conceal from the world the
tumult of emotion that so nearly makes him weep. Who that has read that
inimitable page will ever forget the meeting of that genial sire and
gallant son in the grimy old railway car filled with the wounded from
Antietam, in Doctor Holmes's "My Search for the Captain?"

When Phil Stanley, still clinging to his father's hand, turns to greet
his sister and her handsome escort, he is suddenly aware of another
group that has entered the area. Two ladies, marshalled by his
classmate, Mr. Pennock, are almost at his side, and one of them is the
blue-eyed girl he loves.

CHAPTER III.

"AMANTIUM IRAE."

Lovely as is West Point in May, it is hardly the best time for a visit
there if one's object be to see the cadets. From early morn until late
at night every hour is taken up with duties, academic or military.
Mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, whose eyes so eagerly follow the
evolutions of the gray ranks, can only hope for a few words between
drill and dress parade, or else in the shortest half-hour in all the
world,--that which intervenes 'twixt supper and evening "call to
quarters." That Miss Nannie McKay should make frequent and unfavorable
comment on this state of affairs goes without saying; yet, had she been
enabled to see her beloved brother but once a month and her cadet
friends at intervals almost as rare, that incomprehensible young damsel
would have preferred the Point to any other place in the world.

It was now ten days since her arrival, and she had had perhaps three
chats with Willy, who, luckily for him, though he could not realize it,
was spend