But, before they reached that point, the commanding officer halted his command.
"Boys," was his informal suggestion, "we're about to pass thet-there new-fangled college. I reckon we mout es well give them folks a treat. Let's fall in an' march by there like shore-'nough soldiers."
Newt Spooner happened to be the file of his four, and as they trailed by the cheering little group of students, the ex-convict saw "Clem's gal" leaning on the palings, and though he did not know why, he felt something akin to pride and excitement, and straightened his shoulders, and bore his rifle more jauntily. Minerva leaned forward, waving her sun-bonnet, and called out, "Newt, I hope you boys win," and the lad marched on, strangely pleased.
In that picture of men marching in ordered ranks, and wearing the uniform which denoted service, she thought she saw a long step toward conversion, and an approach to a better standard, and Minerva, too, felt a flutter of pleasure as she watched the column disappear around the curve of the road with its yellow dust-cloud clinging in its wake.
The militia officer from the bluegrass, who had come to act as umpire, masked his smile as he judged that contest. Then the amusement died, and he remembered Napoleon's criterion: "The best soldier is he who can bivouac shelterless, throughout the year."
A temporary rifle-range had been established, and in the improvised pit, with a fifty-year-old sergeant acting as target-marker, sat the officer from "down below." The mountaineer squatted like a clay effigy on his heels, and smoked a cob pipe.
"Sergeant," suggested the officer in a pause, during the overhead shrieking of rifle-bullets, "in case trouble started down here in the hills—I mean if soldiers were called out—what do you think these men would do? Could they be relied on?"
The mountaineer drew a long puff from his pipe, and smiled grimly.
"Wall, now, lew-tenant," he drawled thoughtfully, "I'll jest tell ye ther truth. Ef thar was ter be trouble somewhars else these-here fellers would be all right; but jest right round hyar—well, I hain't so plumb shore."
"Then you think—?" The officer left the question unfinished, and the target-marker again grinned.