“What a pity that the country hasn’t a thousand such battalions of the flower of young American manhood!  Then what fear could we know in time of war?”

The girls looked on almost breathlessly, starting at the boom of the sunset gun, then thrilling with a new realization of what their country meant when the band crashed out in the exultant strains of the “Star Spangled Banner” and the Stars and Stripes fluttered down at West Point, to rise on another day of the nation’s life.

It was over, and the visitors took the stage to the railway station.

What a fearfully dull evening it seemed in camp!  Dick had never known the time to hang so heavily.  He would almost have welcomed guard duty.

Over in another tent near by a “soiree” was in full but very quiet blast, for that bumptious plebe, Mr. Briggs, had been caught in more mischief, and was being “instructed” by his superiors in length of service.

Prescott, however, didn’t even look in to see what was happening.

* * * * * * * *

“Isn’t West Point life glorious, Belle?” asked Laura eagerly as the West Shore train carried them toward New York.

“Fine!” replied Belle enthusiastically.  “But still—–­wait until we have seen Annapolis.”

At ten o’clock the next morning the young ladies and Mrs. Bentley were traveling in a Pullman car, on another stage of their journey.  “I wonder what our young cadets are doing?” Laura wondered aloud, as she leaned forward.

“Enjoying themselves, you may be sure,” Mrs. Bentley replied promptly, with a smile.

“That summer encampment seems like one long, huge lark,” put in Belle Meade.  “It must be great for young men to be able to enjoy themselves so thoroughly.”

“I wonder just what our young men are doing at this moment?” persisted Laura.

“Well, if they’re not dressing for something,” calculated Mrs. Bentley, “you may be sure they’re moving about looking as elegant as ever and making themselves highly agreeable in a social way.”

Ye gods of war!  At that very moment Dick, in field uniform, and dripping profusely under the hot sun, was carrying a long succession of planks, each nearly as long and heavy as he could manage, to other cadets who waited to nail them in place on a pontoon bridge out over an arm of the Hudson.  Greg Holmes was one of four young men toiling at the rope by which they were endeavoring to drag a mountain howitzer into position up a steep slope near Crow’s Nest, while Anstey, studying field fortification, was digging in a trench with all his might and main.

CHAPTER X

THE CURE FOR PLEBE ANIMAL SPIRITS

So the weeks slipped by.

Up at five in the morning, busy most of the time until six in the evening, the cadets of the first, third and fourth classes found ample time to enjoy themselves between dark and taps, at 10.30, except when guard duty or something else interfered.