Cadet Days. Charles King

from camp had Benny become possessed with the longing to cruise thither. Old cadets couldn't cross sentry posts and nab them, he argued. "We'll just aggravate them by coming so near, and yet keeping aloof." Poor, crestfallen, indignant Benny! He and Connell had sallied forth, had gone strolling over the plain and along the south side of camp, between the field battery and the tents, had smilingly declined the eager invitation of the yearlings, who crowded down along the post of the sentry on Number Five, urging them to enter and make themselves at home. In the consciousness of his superior wisdom Benny had even ventured upon an expressive gesture with his thumb at the tip of his nose, his fingers wiggling in air. Poor boy! There were instant and stentorian shouts for the corporal of the guard. Down at a run from the guard-tent came a patrol. Eager hands pointed the way; eager voices clamored for their arrest. Benny and Connell were surrounded in an instant. Glistening bayonets were levelled at their throbbing hearts. "March!" was the order, and amid the jeers and rejoicing of a hundred young scamps in gray and white the two poor plebes were sternly marshalled to the guard-tents, and into the awful presence of the cadet officer of the day, charged with having disobeyed the sentinel's order not to pass between the guns, and, far worse, of having made insulting gestures to a sentry in the solemn discharge of his duty. It was an impressive moment. There stood the stern young cadet captain in his tall plume and crimson sash and gold-laced sleeves, astounded at the effrontery of these young yet hardened reprobates.

      "Is this possible?" he demanded, slowly, impressively. "Who and what are you who have dared to insult the sacred office of the sentinel, the soldier to whose lightest word even the commander-in-chief must show respect? Who and what are you?"

      "We didn't mean any harm," whimpered Benny. "We're only new cadets."

      "What!"

      And here every one in the surrounding group—officer of the day, officer of the guard, corporals and privates, awed spectators—all fell back into attitudes expressive of horror and dismay.

      "What!" exclaimed the cadet captain. "Are you mad? Mad!" he continued. "Is it credible that you, chosen by the deluded Representatives of your States to represent a proud community in an honorable profession—you dared to signalize your admission here by one of the most flagrant offences known to military law? Send at once for the Superintendent, Officer of the Guard. This is beyond my powers. Into the guard-tent with them! Batten down the walls. Station sentries at each side, Mr. Green. Put two of your most reliable men at the door, with orders to shoot them dead if they stir a muscle. Orderly, go at once for the commandant, and warn the officers that mutiny has broken out among the new cadets."

      And so in another instant the luckless boys were bundled into the guard-tent, with bristling bayonets at every opening, with sentries on every side discussing in awe-inspiring tones the probable fate of the mutineers. And here might they have been held in limbo for hours had not Cadet Corporal Loring found them absent at inspection, and learned from Mr. Winn, sole representative of the quartet, that Frazier had invited Connell to take a walk, and shrewdly suspecting that they had been trapped over at camp, had reported matters to Mr. Merrick, his immediate superior, and was sent over to the rescue. Of course, on hearing the nature of their crime, he too was properly shocked, and could find no words to express his consternation. All the same, he got them out of the guard-tent and over to barracks before the army officer on duty as commandant of new cadets happened in, and had barely time to get them to their room before that gentleman came to inquire if their charges were all safe for the night. Pops found Connell grievously alarmed, but Frazier was only loudly indignant.

      "All I'm afraid of is that now I won't get in the first squad to have muskets," he said. "We were going to have 'em in the morning."

      But when morning came it was Geordie, not Frazier, who was put in the first squad, and Benny couldn't understand it. He who had been the best soldier of the high-school cadets was left behind.