At three paces from the general they halted, and Colonel Silsbee gave the military salute. General Brede answered it, and motioned to the boy to pass out with him at the opened door. No word was spoken.
On the threshold Brede turned, and looked back for an instant into the room on the rigid ranks, the stony faces of his old companions. Then his pride, his bravado, his whole heart, gave way; he put his hands to his face, and cried out in agony.
The father and son passed out into the darkness; the carriage-door was closed, and the sound of receding wheels was drowned in the roaring of the storm.
No one who saw that white and frightened face against the background of the night or heard that cry has ever forgotten it. It was sad, it was just, it was terrible! It was a lesson that burned itself indelibly on the heart of every boy who witnessed it.
They sent for Brightly’s mother, and she came; but the prompt medical attention and the unremitting care of good Mrs. Silsbee had brought on a favorable change, and on her arrival she found her boy already on the road to recovery.
She stayed with him for a time. One day during his early convalescence, Brightly had been talking to his mother of the troubles at the school, and of his own faults and mistakes and recent resolutions.
It was then that she told him the secret of the appointments. Colonel Silsbee had intimated to her at the beginning of the year that he intended to make her son his ranking cadet-commander; but after she had thought upon the matter, she requested him not to do so. She wanted Brightly to have still another year at Riverpark, and had made the request in the belief that the hope of future honors and the opportunity to win higher rank would be an incentive to his ambition, and that their attainment would add zest and variety to his last year at school.
Colonel Silsbee, in compliance with her request, had appointed to the two ranking offices cadets who would certainly leave at the end of the year, and had given to Brightly the third position. When the lad heard this he turned his face away and was silent; but the expression of his countenance told the story of regret and humility better than words could have told it.
Time passed at Riverpark. May melted softly into June, and June’s days, too, were now almost at an end. One by one she had counted them out, tinted with emerald, glowing with sunshine, jewelled with raindrops. Indeed, there were scarcely ten more of them left in her rose-clasped girdle.