"Oh, was it!" said Magnus ironically. "Did you think to bring home-doings in your pocket when you came to West Point?" "No, sir," said Renwick, with a sigh. "I suppose not." "If you had all you wanted at home, why didn't you stay there?" "I had _not_ all I wanted," said the boy, rousing up. "I wanted an education, and we were too poor for me to get it anywhere else." "My case precisely. And to-day you think home is worth all the education that ever was heard of. So have I, a thousand times. But it isn't, for all." "Did _you_ ever feel so, Mr. Kindred?" said the boy, changing his seat for one a little nearer. "Everybody says you've had a clear run of luck, straight through." "Stuff!" Magnus answered him. "Are you a Christian, Mr. Renwick?" "I hope so, sir." "Hope so! Well, are you an American?" "Why, of course I am." "How do you know? You may be a Chinese." "Well, I know--whether I can tell how or not," said the boy. "Certain sure where you belong in this world, and not sure at all where you belong in the next. Unsound business, Mr. Renwick." Renwick looked at him. "You are a queer man!" he said. "My one distinction. Found I couldn't lead off in anything else, here. What are _you_ going to be?" "A success--if I can, sir." "Well, the only way to success is, to succeed." "I know as much as that myself, sir." "Practise it then. You might as well try to take that hill at one jump, as think to be a success in January and June, and a failure all the rest of the time. Unless you're a fine mixture of laziness and mathematics. I am not myself." "Very little mathematics about me," said Renwick; "and they speak as if that was everything here. So I don't see what I am to do." "Do?" Magnus said. "Why, dig like a prairie dog! Things are not so deep down that they _can't_ be routed out. And get all the help you can, and take all you can get." "Do you mean 'ponies'?" said Renwick with a doubtful look. "I do _not_ mean 'ponies'!" "But they say _you_ are always so busy?" "O yes, I'm busy enough; have to look out for my own scalp, you know. My advice is always at your service, but my time most generally not." "Then I don't see what you mean, sir." "Have you a Bible, Mr. Renwick?" "Yes, sir, of course." "Read it?" "Sometimes." "Well, at one of those rare intervals," said Magnus, "put three marks in it. A red one here: "'Call upon me here in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee.'" The boy drew a long sigh. "Mother's verse," he said. "But that will not bring me home." "No, and you don't want to go. Then a long blue one here: "'What time I am afraid I will trust in thee.'" "Hold on there," said Renwick. "I'm not afraid, sir, and I don't expect to be." "You will be, quite unexpectedly, some day, when you get into the section room and find you have left your wits in barracks. But put a broad white mark here, and _keep_ it white: "'Walk in the light.'"