ped quickly back, fearful
of attracting her lad's attention at a moment when he must give his
whole thought to his soldier duties.

"My noble, manly boy!" thought the mother, with moistening eyes.
"I wonder if I do wrong to think him the noblest of them all?"

Dick had caught that one swift glance, but did not again see his
mother, for his eyes were straight ahead.

When the time came for his particular company to wheel and swing
into the now moving line of gray, Mrs. Prescott heard his measured,
manly voice: "Fours left---march!"

When the last company of cadets had fallen into line, Mrs. Prescott
was one of the two dozen or so civilians who fell in at some distance
to the rear, climbing the slope behind the moving line of gray.
Wholly absorbed in the corps, Dick's mother had forgotten to
board the stage that would have carried her to the hotel.

After the visitors had been left at the hotel, the corps marched
away. Barely half an hour later, however, the two battalions
again marched on to the plain. Then the most fascinating, the
most inspiring of all military ceremonies was gone through with
by the best body of soldiery in the world. The cadets of the
United States Military Academy went through all the solemnity
of dress parade. It is a sight which, once seen at West Point,
can never be forgotten by a lover of his flag.

One bespectacled young spectator there was who found his breath
coming in quick, sharp gasps as he looked on at this magnificent
display. He was tall, yet with a slight stoop in his shoulders.
His face was covered with a bushy, sandy beard. He was neither
particularly well nor very badly dressed, and would have attracted
little attention in any crowd.

Yet this stranger was not looking on a new sight. For nearly four
years it had been as the breath of life to him.

Stoop-shouldered as a matter of disguise, and with beard and
spectacles adding to his security from recognition, this slouching
young man bent most of his gaze upon the stalwart, erect figure of
Cadet Captain Prescott.

"You drove me out of here! You cheated me of all the glory of
this career, Prescott! Have you been fool enough to think that
I'd forget---that I could forget? You are close to your diploma,
now---but before that moment arrives I shall find the way to spoil
your chances of a career in the Army. And I can get away again
without anyone recognizing in me the man who was once known as
Cadet Jordan, of the