"Prepare himself?" Mr. Ironwood brought his chair down on all-fours with considerable force. "If that boy wants to get ready for West Point, let him do every blessed thing he _don't_ want to do and not one that he _does_, between now and next June. Good-morning: I'll attend to it." "He's an old buzzard!" said Magnus as they walked away. "A little sudden, sometimes," said his mild uncle. "But he's a smart man--a very smart man. And now I think of it, he was there once himself, and didn't get through. That's what makes him so down on the place." "Must have been a very smart man if he couldn't get through West Point," Magnus said, with a boy's easy contempt. But smart or not, Mr. Ironwood was as good as his word. And so in due course it was set forth in the _Army and Navy Journal_, that among the candidates for the Military Academy the following June would be found one Charlemagne Kindred. And the local paper of Barren Heights (albeit not generally concerning itself with West Point) got hold of the item and copied it out in full. And so astonishing was it to see Charlemagne's name in print that the family copy of said paper would have been quite worn out with much study and handling, if Mrs. Kindred had not rescued it, and laid it safe away among the family archives. As for Cherry, after first privately breaking her heart because Magnus was going away, she then plucked up courage and common sense, and became the proudest little maiden that could be found among all the patient readers of the _Barren Heights View_. It is safe to say that Magnus reversed Mr. Ironwood's wise counsel at every point and every time. Having himself been a failure at West Point, the Congressman's opinion was counted a failure too; would have been, anyhow, I fancy; and Charlemagne Kindred got ready for West Point by doing every possible thing he wanted to do, and letting the things he did not want to do, alone. Even when the rainy days of May went weeping by, and the fateful June was close at hand, what that boy did--and was allowed to do--would not bear telling. "He is going away," hushed every reproof; and "when I am gone," forestalled criticism. Refuse him? scold him?--the three gentle hearts at home were quite beyond all that. To be sure, he ought to have studied hard, the whole time; but then Magnus was so quick and bright it could not be really needful. And if Mrs. Kindred now and then sighed, and wondered what the end would be, if the beginning was so lawless, and what her husband the minister would have said to his only son becoming a soldier--the girls had the answer ready. "Why mother, it is to defend the Country! My father went to the war once, himself." "Yes, in time of need," said Mrs. Kindred. "But Magnus says that when there is no danger is the time to prepare," said Rose.