Some people will say he could have had no time to look after anyone but himself, but you never know how much you have, till you divide it up with needy people. And I doubt if helping takes more time than hazing. It is rather a question of which word you will say, what look you will give. And there had come to Cadet Kindred the wholesome perception that he could be a power for good or for evil, with all these younger boys. Consciously or unconsciously, they were watching the upper classmen, and taking tone from them. "What is in the way of your living just as earnest Christian lives here, as at home?" he had said one day to some plebs who were gradually sliding back from all their good home habits. And one answered: "Because we are so far from home, sir, and can't go to church so often, and can't keep Sunday as we have been taught." But another said boldly: "Because the first classmen are so different in camp from what they are in prayer-meeting." And it set Magnus to thinking. His own pleb days were not so long past that he could forget how he used to watch Mr. Upright, to see what all his brave words in the prayer meeting came to in the week; finding the first captain's straight everyday walk a constant help. And just such service he himself was called upon to render to these new men. It had been a doubt with Mr. Kindred, as the holidays drew on, whether after all he would use his Christmas leave. He had it, easy enough, but what should he do with it? Home was too far away to be even thought of, and short of home, what was there he cared for? Magnus rather thought he would stay at the Post. However, as the time drew near, and Mrs. Newcomb renewed her invitation, and Mrs. Beguile sent up hers, Magnus yielded to the prospective charms of the Metropolitan Museum, Central Park, and New York harbour; and joined the gay party that were going to town. Five days' escape from the reveille gun was, after all, worth something. Busy, gay days! In their quiet "cit" dress the cadets roamed about all day, and then at night, in correct cadet costume, went to dinner here and supper there, until Magnus thought he must have been presented to all the pretty girls in town. Rooms were full of floating sashes and falling lace and skirts that could "stand alone": and the men in grey moved about among the airiest kind of clouds and billows; a maze of bewildering scents and sounds and visions, with old friends and new on every hand.