All through the summer the town watched the growing cantonment to see how things were going. The highway which ran within a short distance of the selected land was worn smooth with the cars which went back and forth. The Sunday trains were often crowded with workmen and their wives and sweethearts, and all they saw increased their skepticism. So far as they could make out, it was only a great confusion of lumber, ditches, turned-up earth, scattered skeletons of buildings; no evidence of planning. More than one observer came back to say, sagely, "They don't know what they are about. It will never be a place in which men can live. And as to being ready in September, that is nonsense." But ready or not, they found that the cantonment was to be occupied at the time set, and to their anxiety over the incompleteness of the camp, there now was added a new concern--a doubt which was hardly voiced but which gave the keenest anxiety. It was the doubt of the recruits that began to appear. "How could you ever make soldiers of such material?" It was her own first contingent that had awakened this alarm. The town had made an effort to do the proper thing when the boys went off. They were to leave on an afternoon train, and there was a luncheon given them and a little parade through the streets. But the pathetic thing was that these lads, who so often shambled, so many of whom were poorly dressed, all of whom were a little shamefaced at this effort to do them honor, did not look like soldiers. Sabinsport had had so little experience with armies that she could not visualize these country lads, these stooped clerks, these slouching workmen, as soldiers. She went back home not a little unhappy. How were we ever going to make an army from such stuff in time to do anything? That was becoming her engrossing thought. How are we ever going to do anything in time? Her pride was touched. And there was a real but unspoken fear in Sabinsport's heart lest we were not going to come up to the mark before the world. There were just two people in Sabinsport--that is, two who talked and were listened to, that were not worried about the camp or the making of an army--Captain Billy and Nancy Cowder. To Uncle Billy, all these boys were the boys of '61, and every train load side-tracked on the numerous switches that the main line had provided on the edge of Sabinsport in preparation for the handling of men and materials for the camp--every train load filled him with more and more confidence. "You'll see," he said. "We were like that--just you wait."