That command dispersed the young soldiers and sent them off to fun of their own making, just as the order to assemble for drill had found them, scattered here and there. It had not been a regular “school day” and none of them had been in the vast schoolroom in the main building, busy with books. At the moment when the military instructor’s whistle had sounded, a brisk game of base ball had been going on in the ball ground, next to the parade-ground. On that itself, a number of knots of boys had been skylarking. Most of them had been indoors, however, and of these, some had been in the conservatory, learning to be gardeners; others in the printing shop; in the tailor-shop; in the shoe-shop; in the stocking factory; in the carpenter shop; in the rope and matting shop; and so on. It was not the season for farm work and none had been away outside, on the island farm learning to be farmers as they soon were to be, later in the spring. Moreover, the model ship, in front of the main building, toward the East River, had a deserted look, but it was waiting for the boys to come, crew after crew, and play sailors under the nautical instructor. In that way many of them were to get themselves ready to go to sea, really some day. Jim, the boy who had hated the wall, had been in the printing shop, and he had walked out of it with a look on his face as if he did not care much for drill or for printing or for anything else. He was a tall, wiry looking boy, of not much over fourteen, and he might have seemed even good looking if he had not been so downcast. That was hardly the right word for it, either, for right along with what some people might have mistaken for sullenness was another look that was full of the most determined pluck. It had stuck to his face during drill-time and had grown stronger when he stared at the wall. It was there now, as he walked along with the other boys, toward the entrance of the shop buildings. “I don’t belong here!” came out in another whisper, that nobody heard. “I never did it! I never did it! I’ve been here long enough! I won’t stay any longer. I’m going to climb that wall, somehow. I’m going to be free and go where I choose!” That was it. He was struggling with a sense of injustice, in some way done him, and it was stirred up to unusual bitterness by a longing for freedom. It was as natural as breathing to hate to be shut in and to hate the wall and to study how it could be climbed over, and to dream of all the wonderful things beyond it. “Jim!” said a boy of his own size who was walking with him. “You can’t do it!--You can’t even get a chance to try.--Then, if you did get out, there’s the East River to cross and we never could swim it. What’s more, if we got to New York, we’d be known by our clothes and the cops would catch us and send us back. It’s no use!” “I will, though,” said Jim. “You see if I don’t. I don’t belong here!” And then he added, in his hot and angry thoughts, but not aloud: