A New England Home Coming The Man in Gray The Launch Boys' Cruise in the Deerfoot CHAPTER I Between Two Fires Between Two Fires I once heard the bravest officer I ever knew declare that the height of absurdity was for a person to boast that he did not know the meaning of fear. "Such a man is either a fool or the truth is not in him," was the terse expression of the gallant soldier. Now it would have been hard to find a more courageous youth than Alvin Landon, who had just entered his seventeenth year, and yet he admits that on a certain soft moonlit night in summer he felt decidedly "creepy," and I believe you and I would have felt the same in his situation. He was walking homeward and had come to a stretch of pine forest that was no more than an eighth of a mile in length. The road was so direct that when you entered the wood you could see the opening at the farther side, where you came again upon meadows and cultivated fields. The highway was so broad that only a portion of it was shaded and there was no excuse for one losing his way even when the moon and stars failed to give light. All you had to do was to "keep in the middle of the road" and plod straight on. But when the orb of night rode high in the sky and the course was marked as plainly as at midday, there was always the deep gloom on the right and left, into which the keenest eye could not penetrate. A boy's imagination was apt to people the obscurity with frightful creatures crouching and waiting for a chance to pounce upon him. Alvin was a student in a preparatory school on the Hudson, where he was making ready for his admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point. The appointment had been guaranteed his father, a wealthy capitalist, by one of the Congressmen of his district, but nearly two years had to pass before the lad would be old enough to become a cadet, and pass the rigid mental and physical examination required of every one enrolled in the most admirable military institution in the world.
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