And, for this night, the Western pleb was unmolested. Not a stray ghost crossed his beat. Up and down, up and down, in company with his shadow, the slow, measured step leaving his thoughts free: and they had all gone home. And so it was, that by degrees Magnus Kindred fell into one of his desperate fits of lonely homesickness, ready to fire off his musket, or do any lawless thing, if only so he might be arrested and dismissed to freedom, mother, and the girls. And on post you cannot throw your arms into the air and yourself down on the ground; not get even the smallest bit of any such slight relief.
As Magnus turned on his beat, pacing now towards the western hills, the exceeding beauty of the bit of star-spangled sky to the north was full in view. The Great Bear and his associates held on their shining way, despite the moon, calm, high, lifted above all of earth's tears and turmoils. What was that his mother used to sing?
"Ye stars are but the shining dust
Of my divine abode;
The pavement of those heavenly courts
Where I shall see my God."
Magnus remembered with another of his sharp twinges.
"All right for her!" he thought, pacing back again to meet the moon, "all right for them all! But the folks that tread those pavements have gotten the victory."
"I do not think, myself," Cadet Kindred went on candidly, eyeing the stars once more, "that I am fighting for it hard enough to hurt, just at present. 'Gotten the victory,'" he repeated to himself, "won it, and kept it."
The dear folks at home might not even be thinking of him, just then; they were doubtless all peacefully asleep, each having laid down her heart's desire at the feet of Him "that keepeth Israel," so leaving the far-off young sentinel in His tender care. But Magnus knew, almost as if he had heard them, the prayers sent up for him that night.
A sharp, resonant cry brought him suddenly back to Camp Hard and duty. From the post in front of the camp the sentinel gave the hour.
"Number One! Half-past ten o'clock and all's--well!"
Then it came to Magnus.