The next day Harrod Summers and I drove over to the cavalry camp to see Amory. It was a crisp, cheery morning, just enough wintry rime in earth and air and sky to make rapid motion a keen delight. As we neared the spot, the mellow notes of the trumpet came floating on the breeze, and as we rounded a bend in the road, we came in sight of the troop itself trotting across a broad open field. Mars was taking advantage of the glorious weather to brush up on company drill, and we had arrived just in time to see it. It was a very pretty, stirring sight to my eyes; for the dash and spirit of the manoeuvres were new to a man whose martial associations had been confined to the curbstones of Broadway, barring that blistering march from Annapolis to the railway, and the month of _fêted_ soldiering at the capital and Camp Cameron in '61. Harrod gazed at it all with professional calm; occasionally giving some brief and altogether too technical explanation of evolutions that were beyond my comprehension. But the one thing which struck me most forcibly was that, though frequently trotting or galloping close to where we sat in the buggy, Mr. Frank Amory never took the faintest notice of us. His whole attention was given to his troop and the drill; and with flashing sabre and animated voice, he darted here and there on his big chestnut sorrel, shouting, exhorting, and on occasion excitedly swearing at some thick-headed trooper; but for all the notice he took of us we might as well have been back at home. "Rather a cool reception," said I, "considering the youngster was so anxious we should come over." "Why, that's all right," said Harrod. "It is a breach of military propriety to hold any kind of communication with lookers-on when a fellow's at drill or on parade." And yet to my civilian notions this struck me as being uncivil. Less than a month afterwards I saw the same young fellow sit like a statue on his horse, and never give the faintest sign of recognition when the girl I knew he--well, that's anticipating--when a party of ladies were driven in carriages past his troop, so close to his horse's nose as to seriously discomfit that quadruped, and one of the young ladies was Miss Carrington. To my undisciplined faculties that sort of thing was incomprehensible. I looked on at the drill for a while, wondering how in the world those fellows could manage to keep their seats in the saddle without grabbing the pommel, when Harrod remarked that he believed he would go on into the village to attend to some business, and leave me at Amory's tent until he returned. Of course I could only assent; and in another moment I was landed in front of the tent which had become so fixed a picture "in my mind's eye" since the afternoon Mr. Stiggins rode in to inquire where the lieutenant and his people had gone. A darky boy officiously brushed off the seat of a camp-chair, saying that "Mos' like drill'd be over in ten minutes." So I sat me down under the canvas to wait.