For the last time in camp adjutant's call sounded on the color-line, and the band had to take station beyond the sentry on Number Two, in order to leave room for the re-enforced battalion.
"Guides posts!" rang out the adjutant's command.
"Keep your eyes to the front, plebe," ordered the red-sashed first sergeant, returning to his station through the gap on the right, when he found two Fourth Class men gazing obliquely at him in mingled awe and admiration.
Clash! went the rifles into the gloved left hands as the battalion presented arms to Colonel Hazzard.
"Take your post, sir," was that eminent soldier's response to Glenn's superb salute. Back to his station on the right fluttered the adjutant's plumes as the companies wheeled into column, tossed the light rifles to the shoulder, and then, to the merriest, blithest of music, strode buoyantly away in the wake of the band, the drum-major boring with his tasselled baton a hole through the heart of the crowd.
Geordie's pulses beat high with every stride. Welcome hard work, hard study, even the long gloomy wintry weeks and months, for plebe camp and palms-of-the-hands-to-the-front were now things of the past.
That night Glenn read the list of sections to which the classes were assigned. Great was the importance of certain Fourth Class men designated in orders as section marchers, and by no means inconsiderable was the jealousy among their class-mates inspired by this purely accidental and temporary gift of authority. The Fourth Class for instruction in mathematics was divided in alphabetical order into eight sections, Cadet Abbott being detailed as marcher of the first, Dillon of the second, Griggs of the third, Kenney of the fourth, and so on down the list. Frazier, who had been very meek for several days, asked Graham if he didn't think it extraordinary that they should be ordered around by a fellow like Dillon?
"Why, I don't believe I've ever heard him speak ten words. What makes them put such galoots in command of sections when there's others, like you, for instance, that know how to handle 'em?"
Pops grinned. He understood what Benny was thinking of.
"It's all part and parcel of the system of teaching fellows like me, as you put it, that obedience is the first thing we have to learn," said he, good-naturedly, and then went busily on with the work of getting the room in the prescribed order.