As soon as Colonel Wray reached Truesdale, he established himself in the inhospitable warehouse which in reports was called an armory. Before midnight the local company was collected, uniformed, and in order. Later special trains arrived, and squads and companies marched through the echoing streets, to sit dozing about the armory. At three-thirty a train came in from the southern counties bringing the second battalion, three hundred husky farm lads who glowed with responsibility as they stacked arms and awaited orders. Then came a telephone message that McNally's relief train had left for the North. Colonel Wray waited no longer but marched over to the station, seized the telegraph office and the telephone, placed guards at each entrance and about the train shed, ordered the yard master to make up another train, levied on the station restaurant for six hundred cups of coffee, and tore fly-leaves from the news-stand books to write special orders for the waiting adjutant. Meanwhile Porter was feverish. He tried to bulldoze the sergeant in the telegraph office only to be hustled off by a corporal's guard. He finally reached the Colonel's ear, but was heard in courteous silence. He made an effort to call up the Oakwood Club to send a message to McNally, but the sunburned young fellow in the 'phone box leaned on his rifle and shook his head. The same thing happened when he tried to get out of the building--“Sorry, sir. Captain's orders”--and the baffled magnate paced up and down the waiting room between long files of light-hearted boys in blue. It was humiliating to consider that he had subscribed heavily toward fitting up the Truesdale armory, that half the officers knew him and feared his influence. While he was racking his brain sudden orders were shouted through the building. The lounging groups came up with a jerk, there was a rattle of arms, and in ten seconds the farm boys had resolved into a machine, a set of rigid blue lines that reached the length of the waiting room. There was another order, and one after another the companies broke into columns of twos and swung through the glass doors, which were held open by a couple of scared but admiring waiters. Porter followed the last company and stood in the doorway behind two crossed rifles watching the troops climb into the cars. The Colonel stood at the track gate as the men marched through, talking with his aids. Porter thought for a moment of calling to him, but realized the futility of it after the treatment he had just received. Besides, even a railroad president could hardly keep his dignity with those ridiculous guns under his nose. So he turned and walked slowly to his temporary headquarters in the station agent's office, but to find that the young captain left in command by Colonel Wray had made himself at home and was issuing orders to a snub-nosed lieutenant.