He was so a-quiver with excitement and joy and expectation and pride that his mother, pale and tremulous as she made up his little bundle of long-delayed clothes, was a trifle surprised to hear him protest that he could not leave without bidding farewell to the Noakes family, who lived at the Notch in the mountain, and especially his old crony, Delia; yet Captain Bertley’s trumpets would sound “boots and saddles” at the earliest glint of dawn. Delia was near his own age, and he had always magnanimously pitied her for not being a boy. Formerly she had meekly acquiesced in her inferiority, mental and physical, especially in the matter of running, although she made pretty fair speed, and in throwing stones, which she never could be taught to do with accurate aim. But of late years she had not seemed to “sense” this inferiority, so to speak, and once in reference to the war she had declared that she was glad to be a girl, and thus debarred from fighting, “fur killing folks, no matter fur whut or how, always seemed to be sinful!” When argued with on this basis she fell back on the broad and uncontrovertible proposition that “anyhow bloodshed war powerful onpleasant.” To see these friends once again Hilary had no time to waste. As he made his way along the sandy road with the stars palpitating whitely in the sky above the heavy forest, which rose so high on either hand as to seem almost to touch them, this deep, narrow passage looked when the perspective held a straight line to rising ground, ending in the sidereal coruscations, like the veritable way to the stars, sought by every ambitious wight since the days of the Cæsars. Hilary had never heard an allusion to that royal road, but as he walked along with a buoyant, steady step, his hat in his hand that the breeze might cool his hot brow and blow backward his long masses of fair hair, he followed indeed an upward path in the sentiments that quickened his pulses, for he was resolved upon duty and thinking high thoughts that should materialize in fine deeds. He was to do and dare! He would be useful and faithful and brave--brave! He had a reverence for the quality of courage--not for the sake of its emulous display, but for the spirit of all nobly valiant deeds. He had rejoiced in the very expression of the captain’s eyes--so true and tried! He, too, would meet the coming years fairly. The raw recruit could see his way to the stars at the end of that mountain vista.