"I'm really sorry for the old fellow," said McCrea; "he's so thoroughly earnest and honest in his convictions. It isn't his fault, either. It is part of the stock in trade of many politicians to make their constituents believe that for the benefit of their special friends they have it in their power to set aside laws, rules, or regulations. I haven't a doubt that Pierce has made the old man believe he 'stands' in with the Secretary of War and the Superintendent of the Academy, and that Fritz will go through West Point with flying colors. It will cost Breifogle nearly a thousand dollars to find out his mistake."
This was several years ago, it must be remembered, in the days when all candidates were required to present themselves for examination at the Point instead of appearing before boards of army officers at convenient garrisons throughout the country, as is the case to-day.
"No, Geordie, my boy," said McCrea, in conclusion, "I don't like to take comfort in another man's misfortunes, but there is no chance whatever for young Breifogle and every chance for you. All you have to do is study and you'll win. I have said as much to the old man, for he stopped me at the bank the other day and asked what I thought of the case, and I told him frankly. For a moment he looked downcast; then he brightened up all of a sudden, laid his finger alongside his nose, and winked at me profoundly. 'Vell, you yust vait a leetle,' he said, and turned away. I've no doubt he thinks I'm only trying to bluff him out in your interest."
Two days more, and George, standing on the rear platform of the Pullman, looking down with no little awe upon the swollen, turbid, ice-whirling waters of the Missouri, far beneath the splendid spans of the great railway bridge. Another day, and his train seemed to be rolling through miles of city streets and squares before it was finally brought to a stand under the grimy roof of the station at Chicago. Here from the windows of the rattling omnibus that bore him across the town to the depot of the Michigan Central he gazed in wonderment at the height of the buildings on every side. Early the next morning he was up and dressed, and just before sunrise stepped out on the wooden staging at Falls View, listening to the voice and seeing for the first time the beauty and grandeur of Niagara. A few minutes later, looking from the car window, he seemed to be sailing in mid-air over some tremendous gorge, in whose depths a broad torrent of deep green water, flecked with foam and tossing huge crunching masses of ice, went roaring away beneath him. Such a letter as he wrote to mother that morning, as hour after hour he sped along eastward over bands of glistening steel, flying like the wind, yet so smoothly that his pen hardly shook. Think what a revelation it must have been to that frontier-bred boy, whose whole life had been spent among the mountains or prairies of the Far West, to ride all the morning long through one great city after another, through the heart of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and Albany. The Mohawk Valley seemed one long village to him, so unaccustomed were his eyes to country thickly settled. The Hudson, still fettered with ice above the railway bridge and just opening below, set his heart to beating, for now West Point lay but a hundred miles away. How the train seemed to whiz along those bold, beautiful shores, undulating at first, but soon becoming precipitous and rocky! Many people gazed from the westward windows at the snow-covered Catskills as the afternoon began to wane; but Geordie had seen mountains beside which these were but hillocks. The clustering towns, the frequent rush of engines and cars, the ever-increasing bustle, however, impressed him greatly. Every now and then his train fairly shot past stations where crowds of people stood waiting.
"Didn't they want to get on?" he asked the Pullman porter.
"Oh yes, sir, wanted to bad 'nough; but, Lord bless you, dis train don't stop for them: they has to wait for the locals. We runs a hundred trains a day along here. Dis train don't even stop where you gets off, sir; that's why you have to change at Poughkeepsie, the only place we stop between Albany and New York."
Surely enough, they rolled in presently under lofty bluffs under a bridge so high in the air that its trusses looked like a spider-web, and then stopped at a station thronged with people; and Pops, feeling not a little bewildered, found himself standing with his hand luggage, looking blankly after the car that had borne him so comfortably all the way from Chicago, and now disappeared in the black depths of the stone-faced tunnel to the south, seeming to contract like a leaking balloon as it sped away. Hardly was it out of sight when another train slid in to replace it, and everybody began tumbling aboard.
"This for Garrisons?" he asked a bearded official in blue and brass buttons.
A nod was the answer. Railway men are too busy to speak; and Pops followed the crowd, and took a seat on the river-side. The sun was well down to the westward now; the Hudson grew broader, blacker, and deeper at every turn; the opposite shores cast longer shadows; the electric lights were beginning to twinkle across the wide reach at Newburg; then a rocky islet stood sentinel half-way across to a huge rounded rock-ribbed height. The train rushed madly into another black tunnel, and came tearing forth at the southern end, and Pops's heart fairly bounded in his breast. Lo! there across the deep narrow channel towered Crow's Nest and Storm King. This was the heart of the Highlands. Never before had he seen them, yet knew them at a glance. What hours had he not spent over the photograph albums of the young graduates? Another rush through rocky cuts, and then a smooth, swift spin around a long, gradual curve, lapped by the waters of the Hudson, and there, right before his eyes, still streaked with snow, was West Point, the flag just fluttering from its lofty staff at the summons of the sunset gun.
Ten minutes later and the ferry-boat was paddling him across the river, almost the only passenger. The hush of twilight had fallen. The Highlands looked bare and brown and cheerless in their wintry guise. Far away to the south the crags of Dunderberg were reverberating with the roar of the train as it shot through Anthony's Nose. The stars were just beginning to peep out here and there in the eastern sky, and a pallid crescent moon hung over against them in the west. All else was dark and bleak. The spell of the saddest hour of the day seemed to chill the boy's brave heart, and for the first time a homesick longing crept over him. This was the cheery hour at the army fireside, far out among the Rockies – the hour when they gathered about the open hearth and heaped on the logs, and mother played soft, sweet melodies at the piano, often the songs of Scotland, so dear to them all. Pops couldn't help it; he was beginning to feel a little blue and cold and hungry. One or two passengers scurried ashore and clambered into the yellow omnibus, waiting there at the dock as the boat was made fast in her slip.
"Where do you go?" asked the driver of the boy.
"Send my trunk up to the hotel," said Geordie, briefly. "I'm going to walk."
They had figured it all out together before he started from home, he and Mr. McCrea. "The battalion will be coming in from parade as you reach the Point, Geordie, if your train's on time." And the boy had determined to test his knowledge of topography as learned from the maps he had so faithfully studied. Slinging his bag into the 'bus, he strode briskly away, crossed the tracks of the West Shore Road, turned abruptly to his right, and breasted the long ascent, the stage toiling behind him. A few minutes' uphill walk, and the road turned to the left near the top of the bluff. Before him, on the north, was the long gray massive façade of the riding-hall; before him, westward, another climb, where, quitting the road, he followed a foot-path up the steep and smoothly rounded terrace, and found himself suddenly within stone's-throw of the very buildings he sought. At the crest of the gentle slope to the north, the library with its triple towers; to its left, the solid little chapel; close at hand to his right front, the fine headquarters' building; beyond that, dim and indistinct, the huge bulk of the old academic building; and directly ahead of him, its great windows brilliantly lighted, a handsome gray stone edifice, with its arched doorway and broad flight of steps in the centre – the cadet mess-hall, as it used to be termed, the Grant Hall of to-day. His pulses throbbed as he stepped across the road and stood on the flag-stones beneath the trees. A sentry sauntering along the walk glanced at him keenly, but passed him by without a word.
Suddenly there rose on the still evening air the tramp of coming soldiery, quick and alert, louder and louder, swifter than the bounding of his heart and far more regular. Suddenly through the broad space between the academic and the north end of the mess-hall, straight as a ruler, came