at flicker of cloud and sun, and
the soft sweet breath of air that sometimes stole to us to relieve the
hot stillness; and all with that setting and background of cedars and
young foliage and bordering hills over which the cloud shadows swept.
Then came the mounting-guard business. By and by Preston came to me.

"Awfully hot, Daisy!" he said.

"Yes, you are out in it," I said, compassionately.

"What are _you_ out in it for?"

"Why, I like it," I said. "How come you to be one of the red sashes
this morning?"

"I have been an officer of the guard this last twenty-four hours."

"Since yesterday morning?"

"Yes."

"Do you like it, Preston?"

"_Like_ it!" he said. "Like guard duty! Why, Daisy, when a fellow has
left his shoe-string untied, or something or other like that, they put
him on extra guard duty to punish him."

"Did you ever do so, Preston?"

"Did I ever do so?" he repeated savagely. "Do you think I have been
raised like a Yankee, to take care of my shoes? That Blunt is just fit
to stand behind a counter and measure inches!"

I was very near laughing, but Preston was not in a mood to bear
laughing at.

"I don't think it is beneath a gentleman to keep his shoe-strings
tied," I said.

"A gentleman can't always think of everything!" he replied.

"Then you are glad you have only one year more at the Academy?"

"Of course I am glad! I'll never be under Yankee rule again; not if I
know it."

"Suppose they elect a Yankee President?" I said; but Preston's look
was so eager and so sharp at me that I was glad to cover my rash
suggestion under another subject as soon as possible.

"Are you going to be busy this afternoon?" I asked him.

"No, I reckon not."

"Suppose you come and go up to the fort with me?"

"What fort?"

"Fort Putnam. I have never been there yet."

"There is nothing on earth to go there for," said Preston, shrugging
his shoulders. "Just broil yourself in the sun, and get nothing for
it. It's an awful pull uphill; rough, and all that; and nothing at the
top but an old stone wall."

"But there is the view!" I said.

"You have got it down here--just as good. Just climb up the hotel
stairs fifty times without stopping, and then look out of the thing at
the top--and you have been to Fort Putnam."

"Why, I want you to go to the top of Crow's Nest," I said.

"Yes! I was ass enough to try that once," said Preston, "when I was
just come, and thought I must do everything; but if an