The cartridges having been distributed and the company brought to close order, it was marched out of the armory and down the stairs. When the other students saw it preparing to move, they rushed out in a body, ran to the gate, and drawing themselves up in line on each side of the walk, stood ready to give their friends a good “send off.” When the company marched through their ranks, led by the band which was to accompany it to the depot, they broke out into deafening cheers, which Captain Mack and his men answered with a will. Don caught just one glimpse of his brother’s face as he passed. It was whiter than his own.
The students followed the company as far as the gate, and then ran along the fence to keep it in view as long as they could; but all they could see of it were the bayonets, the young soldiers themselves being wholly concealed by the crowd of citizens who had assembled to see them off. The men cheered them lustily, the ladies waved their handkerchiefs, and the girls threw flowers at them until a bend in the road hid them from sight. Then the boys who were left behind turned away from the fence, and walked slowly toward the academy.
“I’d much rather be here than with them,” said Jones to his friend Lester, and the latter did not doubt it, for Jones was one of the boys who had been found in the cellar. Lester had hidden his head under the bed-clothes when he heard the bugle, and pleaded sickness when Bert Gordon and his squad came to pull him out. “I suppose the teachers think I feel very much disgraced because I was left behind, but I don’t. I didn’t come here to fight, and when my father hears of this, he will tell me to start for home at once. But I shan’t go until I get a good ready, and then I am going in my own way. I am going to do something that will make these fellows remember me. I said it long ago, and I mean it.”
“It is my opinion that this day’s work will break up this school,” observed Enoch Williams. “I know my father will not allow me to stay here after he hears of it.”
“Wouldn’t this be a good time to go off on our cruise?” inquired Lester.
“I am afraid not,” answered Jones. “I should like to go this very night; but as things look now, I am of the opinion that we shall have to wait until next month. We don’t want to fail when we make the attempt, for if we do, we shall be watched closer than we are now.”
“I don’t want to stay here,” said Lester. “Suppose they should need more help in the city, and that my company should be ordered down there?”
“You need not waste any time in worrying over that,” was the encouraging reply. “Your company is composed of nothing but raw recruits; and even if it should be ordered there, you wouldn’t go. You would be told to stay behind, as I was.”
Lester found some satisfaction in this assurance, but he found none whatever in being snubbed as he was. Even the boys in his own company—those who had promptly responded when ordered to fall in the night before—would not look at him. If two of them were talking and Lester came up to hear what they were saying, they would turn their backs upon him without ceremony and walk away. All the boys who had concealed themselves or played off sick when the false alarm was sounded, were treated in the same way by their fellows, and all the companionship they could find was in the society of students who were as timid as they were. This had at least one good effect, so Lester thought. It brought many friends to the boys who intended to desert the academy and run away in the yacht, and before the day was over Lester, Jones and Enoch had revealed their scheme to half a dozen or more new fellows, who heartily approved of it and promised to aid them by every means in their power. But after all they did not take as much interest in, or show as much enthusiasm for, the scheme, as Lester and the rest thought they ought to. The strike was the all-absorbing topic of conversation, and the possible fate of the boys who had gone down to the city to confront the mob, made many an anxious face.
Although all study was over for the day, everything else was done as usual, but nothing was done well. The students were thinking of something beside their duties, and made blunders and received reprimands without number. As the hours wore on, the excitement gave place to alarm. The third company ought to have reached Hamilton at eight o’clock, if everything had gone well with them, and now it was long after ten and not a despatch had been received.