"I think I will not write any more to-day, because I cannot talk of anything but this; and it is not best to say too much. But we are fighting in the same field, Magnus, even if we are out of sight of each other, and we get our orders from the same King. How I have thought over and over, the seeing you at parade! I felt sure I could always pick you out from all the three hundred. Good-bye.--Your Cherry." It was well for Magnus that he had little time to brood over his disappointment. June was near at hand, some few "planks" of the Board of Visitors already arriving, and some last study to be done. "You bone straight on through the year," Randolph said to him one day. "Why, in life, man, don't you let up, now and then?" "I'm after another bone," Magnus answered him. But he did not say that when the "standing" roll came to the hand he loved best, her eyes must find the name of Charlemagne Kindred as high as it could possibly be. "Just as high as I can put it," he told himself, with a fresh rush at everything. For faith does not spoil a man, nor holy living mar his scholarship. So Magnus studied, and played tennis, and ran races; did exploits on the poles and ropes, and threw everybody who dared wrestle with him; won his marks, kept his chevrons, and did not lose his popularity. But disappointments are said to hunt in couples. The next week after Cherry's letter of bad news, came one from Mrs. Kindred, with addition to the same. For she, too, must stay at home. "Cherry wants my help in every way," wrote the mother. "I must stay with her. And it is really better, dear, on all accounts. For if I live till next June, I must go then to see you graduate,--and two such journeys cost." Magnus sat back in great gloom, and declared that June was "fizzling out." "I suppose the next word will be that Viola and Rose have some sort of a previous at the North Pole," he said. XLVII MRS. CONGRESSMAN Pure was her mind and simple her intent, Good all she sought and kindness all she meant. --CRABBE. But no such climax followed. The girls wrote that they were to leave home on such a day, in charge of the wife of that very Congressman who had given Magnus his appointment. A true woman of the world in some things, but kindly, and not wanting in sense and tact. People said she liked uniforms herself, and was glad of a train of girls because it drew on a train of cadets. But neither thing was so very exceptional and unheard of that people needed to be hard on her. And she chose her girls well; always, if she could, some hid-away damsel whose one chance of getting to the Point this might be. And now, when the boy owed his place to her husband's good offices, it was her delight to take his sisters. The one stipulation was that she should have her own way about the bills.