The clanking of a sword in the darkness calls him back to earth and to the realization that the dreaded inspection is at hand.
“Halt! Who goes there?” he quickly challenges.
“Corporal of the Guard,” answers a sepulchral voice from the shadows.
“Advance, Corporal of the Guard, with the countersign,” uncertainly commands the plebe. When within whispering distance, the corporal faintly breathes the countersign, “Saratoga,” or “Burgoyne” (or maybe Tannhäuser or Dumbguard, to test the sentinel), whereupon the corporal is allowed to pass by the sentinel’s order:
“Advance, Corporal of the Guard.”
In the eyes of the yearling corporal, a plebe is habitually wrong, so that for a few trying minutes the benighted sentinel endeavors to “take charge of his post and all government property in view,” while his preceptor picks him to pieces, his bearing, his accoutrements, his knowledge, admonishing him at intervals, to “Drag in his chin—way in.” But soon, the solitude of the night begins to work even upon the yearling corporal constraining him to indulge in a partial intimacy with the plebe, adding in softened tones:
“Mister, where are you from?”
“South Carolina, sir,” proudly responds the sentinel, touched by the upper-classman’s near-cordiality.
With a gruff “Pretty fine State, mister,” the corporal virtuously departs to interrogate his next victim.
How welcome now is the first faint tread of the relief as it makes its bi-hourly round to take the sleepy sentinel back to the guard tent where a bed of camp stools awaits his aching muscles.