“Oh, I don’t think we should take these young radicals seriously, Mr. Barriscale. They make liberalism an outlet for intellectual exuberance. They’ll all get over it in time. Besides, we have only a few of them in the company anyway. Not enough to do us any harm.”
“That may be true, Captain; but you should not have one. Such men are a menace to society, and distinctly dangerous in a military organization. If we cannot depend on our organized militia in times of emergency, then indeed we will be at the mercy of the mob. As one having the best interests of the Guard at heart, permit me to urge that you rid your company of such disturbing elements. Weed out every man of radical tendencies without delay. I shall be more than happy to assist you in such a task.”
Captain Murray thanked the mill-owner for his consideration and his interest and withdrew. But the relief he had felt in having the issue relating to the prize indefinitely postponed was now turned into a feeling of anxiety concerning some of his best men. He knew that Mr. Barriscale’s offer of assistance was no more nor less than a veiled threat; and while Halpert McCormack’s name had not been mentioned in the interview, there was no doubt that that young soldier would be made to suffer for his temerity at the company meeting, so far as it lay in the power of the millionaire manufacturer and his son to bring such suffering about.
[CHAPTER VII]
It had been nearly two years since Halpert McCormack and Ben Barriscale enlisted for service in the National Guard. They had one more year to serve, yet neither of them had a thought of leaving the service when the period of their enlistment expired. They had not only not tired of the militiaman’s life with its duties and its tasks, they had found pleasure and profit in it. For each of them, in a different way, it had had its compensations and its satisfactions.
And each of them had merited and received promotion. First they had been advanced to the grade of corporal. And when, by reason of contemporaneous enlistment, the terms of the first and second sergeant expired simultaneously, and it became known that they would not reënlist, it was generally conceded that the two places would go to McCormack and Barriscale. But which one of them he would make his first sergeant was still a problem in the mind of Captain Murray. Both young men were excellent soldiers. Both of them had mastered every detail of company drill, and there were few movements, exercises or duties for the enlisted man to perform with which both men were not entirely familiar.
But the office of first sergeant is a most important one. A well-known military authority has written: