It seemed rather small business to take all the sweets he could get: compliments, flattery, and boodle, from girls to whom he neither would, could, nor should, give more in return than a walk or two; perhaps only the convenient phrase: "Thanks, awfully." And that very phrase was his mother's aversion. And it was no end mean, to laugh at a thing and then afterwards score it sharply. Was he still "training with the wrong crowd"--only of girls this time? Then he changed his ground and came up on the other side. How far had he been a power for good in all those weeks? How much stronger or purer had any company been for his presence? Who had learned to think sweeter things of religion for his glad life? Whose doubts had weakened in the light of his faith? Was anyone more ready to swear fealty to Christ for _his_ constant witnessing to the blessedness of the service? Nay, Cadet Kindred knew, now that he took time to think, what had ailed some of the merrymaking. It jarred his conscience. And sometimes he had felt it at the time. That Sunday afternoon, when he had walked about with Miss Dangleum, and smiled at her vapid infidelities, the twinge had been so sharp, as he thought of his mother in the old porch at home, drawing strength and knowledge from her open Bible, that he never did _that_ thing again. But he had laughed at Miss Beguile's jests about church and church service, and the very next day, in chapel, had taken the sugar plums she offered under cover of her fan. He had been indignant when some girl, displeased with the sermon, shook her fist at the preacher then and there. But perhaps she had never been taught any better--and what had been his own criticisms of that very sermon? Just as open as he dared make them. Cadet Kindred felt rather sick of himself, on the whole. "That's a large place in which to keep your colours!" he said, looking down into his grey sleeve. In some things he had stood firm. The first brandy snap he got hold of at Mrs. Beguile's picnic went over the cliffs at Fort Putnam, to the great excitement of a nest of young squirrels. And the first bonbon drugged with rum followed: first, and last. "But, easy and cheap!" he repeated to himself. "I was not going to be tricked into taking that stuff. I had said I wouldn't." What else had he "said"? Coming off next morning with O. G. P., Magnus got leave to go to the trunkroom, and hunted out a little copy of the Church covenant which he knew his mother had packed in with his other things. Then, under one of the shadowing trees of Fort Clinton, he lay on the grass and read it over. "Unto Him, the Lord, you do now give yourself away, in a covenant never to be revoked, to be His willing servant forever."