The days passed; the college used to drop out between recitations to watch them drilling on the football field; the uniforms arrived, and then the orders. There was a baseball rally that night, but when the enlisted men came into the Hall and word was passed that they were going on the morrow, the occasion was all theirs. Marion, who had been twice on the debating team, stood up, looking slimmer than ever in his plain blue, and spoke for them. He said only simple things; it was not like his speech of a year before, when his impassioned arguments turned defeat into victory at the Inter-Collegiate; but the crowd listened with their eyes on the floor and applauded with their hands only when he had done, because they couldn't trust their voices. They sang the terrible "Battle Hymn of the Republic" after that; Langdon led it. "Peg" could hardly carry a tune with that awful voice of his, but he sang the verses so that the chills ran down your back and you had to join in the chorus, "Our God is marching on." Next day they themselves were marching on, forty of them, with hardly a thought of what they were leaving behind, their minds fixed on the distant Isles of Philip. Tom had never expected to leave the campus in that spirit. He loved it all, from the quiet slopes by Frenchman's Lake to that lofty redwood treetop, first rampart of the smiling city to the eager Freshman, last long-watched glimpse of the land of his memories to the reluctant Senior. He had always felt that it would be a tug to say good-bye, yet he, too, his mind over-seas, had gone away to town with hardly a thought. He had time to reflect in that dreary fortnight at the Presidio when the unseasonable rains drenched his tent, and the wretched routine of beans and coffee hurt the romance of enlistment. The life had its compensating features. Every city girl he had ever met in College or town society came out to camp and asked for him at K Street--K Street with its saucy cardinal flag waving above the first tent to the left. Most of them brought candy; a vary few, with super-feminine understanding, made it beer; one, she was a genius, sent over on a drizzling evening a piping-hot steak. Then, too, he had three white angles on his sleeve and "Sergeant Ashley" sounded well. Cap Smith was not even a corporal; the emphasis with which Cap mentioned the fact showed anything but college spirit.