Ross and Jennings did not attend the hop that night. Before they had had time to array themselves in fresh white trousers and their best uniform coats, Mr. Glenn, the adjutant, had returned from the commandant's tent and gone straight to his own. Presently he emerged, girt with sash and sword-belt, and that meant business. No use for any one to run and hide; that merely deferred matters.
"Mr. Ross, you are hereby placed in close arrest, and confined to your tent. Charge—promoting a fight. By order of Lieutenant-Colonel Hazzard," was the pithy address he delivered to his class-mate, with precisely the same amount of emotion which he might have displayed had he informed him he was detailed for guard duty on the morrow. And yet seconders or promoters of cadet fights were by regulations regarded as challengers, and, as such, subject to court-martial and dismissal. Then he went in search of Jennings, and though that worthy did for a moment contemplate the possibility of hiding somewhere, he was too slow about it. Those who heard Mr. Glenn this time declare he threw a little more emphasis into the curt order.
"'MR. ROSS, YOU ARE HEREBY PLACED IN CLOSE ARREST'"
And so, when tattoo sounded that night, Cadet Lieutenant Ross and Cadet Corporal Jennings were grumbling at their fate in close arrest at their respective tents, for, being chevron-wearers, they were exempt from confinement with the common herd at the guard-tents, where by this time were Pops and Connell, by long odds the two most popular and important members of the plebe class.
And there for one mortal week the boys remained, having a very comfortable time of it, barring the nuisance of being turned out with the guard every time it was inspected at night. They were exempt from all the annoyance of their comrades down in the body of camp. They attended all drills, and lost neither instruction nor exercise. They had the unspeakable delight of being allowed, every warm evening, to raise their tent walls after taps, and sit and watch class-mate after class-mate taking his first lessons in sentry duty out on the posts of Two and Six.
Especially Benny, when at last it came his turn; and that self-sufficient young soldier, in just about one hour's active deviling, had perhaps the liveliest experience of a lifetime. The officers in charge—for some reason that has never yet been explained—seemed particularly deaf that night. The commandant and others were not disturbed by the racket, and Benny's instruction, coaching, and testing—above all, the testing—were left entirely to the cadet officers and non-commissioned officers of the guard, and, at odd times, to certain volunteers from the tents of Companies C and D, whose costumes were so confusing that their own comrades couldn't know them, much less could Benny.
And so the crack captain of the Beanton Battalion was kept hurrying from one end to the other of his post, challenging an array of mock generals and colonels, armed parties, patrols, grand rounds, reliefs, friends with the countersign or enemies without it, that would have been simply incredible anywhere but on a plebe's post at West Point. In less than twenty minutes poor confident Benny, who had guard duty at his tongue's end and wasn't going to be fooled with, had made every blunder a sentry could possibly make, had lost every item of arms and equipments, nerve and temper, and had been bawling for the corporal of the guard, Post Number Six, in accordance with the methods of the Beanton camp, and in defiance of the laws and customs of the regular service, all to the mischievous delight of the entire corps, until finally he could bawl no longer. He had sneered at Pops for being ducked in the ditch and overwhelmed in the darkness, yet he, occupying an open post, had been so utterly bewildered, so completely overcome, that the poor fellow would have been thankful for a ditch wherein to hide his diminished head.
They had been sent for, both Pops and Connell, and questioned at the colonel's tent as to the other participants in the interrupted fight, but respectfully declined to say anything on that score; and finally, just as it was noised about camp that the plebes were to be put in the battalion, and they were fearing their punishment might keep them back, they heard with beating hearts the order of the superintendent read in Glenn's clear and ringing tones at dress parade. Even to them, in the ranks of the guard, with a crowd of hundreds of gayly-dressed spectators interposing between them and the silent battalion, every word seemed distinct.