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 first class!”

Yes; it was Jordan, back at West Point, sure of escaping recognition, and bent on a desperate errand of wrecking Dick Prescott’s promising career.

But Dick performed all his duties through that dress parade conscious only of the glory of the soldier’s life.  He thought he had caught a fleeting glimpse of his mother once, in the crowd, as his company executed a wheeling, and he was happy in what he knew her happiness to be.

Then, when it was all over, and the corps again marched from the field, Mrs. Prescott, who knew the ways of West Point, went and stood at the edge of the grassy plain, nearly opposite the north sally-port.  Five minutes after the last of the corps had marched in under the port, Dick, his dress uniform changed for the fatigue, came out with bounding step and crossed the road.