Corporal Goddard saluted at the door and introduced with a wave of his hand the latest applicant for Uncle Sam’s service.  The applicant was as young as Lieutenant Claflin, and as good-looking; but he was dirty and unshaven, and his eyes were set back in the sockets, and his fingers twitched at his side.  Lieutenant Claflin had seen many applicants in this stage.  He called it the remorseful stage, and was used to it.

“Name?” said Lieutenant Claflin, as he pulled a printed sheet of paper towards him.

The applicant hesitated, then he said,

“Walker—­John Walker.”

The Lieutenant noticed the hesitation, but he merely remarked to himself, “It’s none of my business,” and added, aloud, “Nationality?” and wrote United States before the applicant answered.

The applicant said he was unmarried, was twenty three years old, and had been born in New York City.  Even Corporal Goddard knew this last was not so, but it was none of his business, either.  He moved the applicant up against the wall under the measuring-rod, and brought it down on his head.

So he measured and weighed the applicant, and tested his eyesight with printed letters and bits of colored yarn, and the lieutenant kept tally on the sheet, and bit the end of his pen and watched the applicant’s face.  There were a great many applicants, and few were chosen, but none of them had quite the air about him which this one had.  Lieutenant Claflin thought Corporal Goddard was just a bit too callous in the way he handled the applicant, and too peremptory in his questions; but he could not tell why Corporal Goddard treated them all in that way.  Then the young officer noticed that the applicant’s white face was flushing, and that he bit his lips when Corporal Goddard pushed him towards the weighing-machine as he would have moved a barrel of flour.

“You’ll answer,” said Lieutenant Claflin, glancing at the sheet.  “Your average is very good.  All you’ve got to do now is to sign this, and then it will be over.”  But he did not let go of the sheet in his hand, as he would have done had he wanted it over.  Neither did the applicant move forward to sign.

“After you have signed this,” said the young officer, keeping his eyes down on the paper before him, “you will have become a servant of the United States; you will sit in that other room until the office is closed for to-day, and then you will be led over to the Navy-yard and put into a uniform, and from that time on for three years you will have a number, the same number as the one on your musket.  You and the musket will both belong to the government.  You will clean and load the musket, and fight with it if God ever gives us the chance; and the government will feed you and keep you clean, and fight with you if needful.”

The lieutenant looked up at the corporal and said, “You can go, Goddard,” and the corporal turned on his heel and walked downstairs, wondering.