CHAPTER IV LIEUTENANT BOB LIEUTENANT BOB It didn't seem possible to Lucy that Bob's graduation was but a few days off, and the long four-year course, that had seemed never ending, shortened to three years and already over. And before she had got used to thinking about it the day before graduation had come and they were on their way. The island had seemed almost deserted without the men of the Twenty-Eighth, though some companies of Infantry from Fort Slocum had already arrived to replace them, together with a new lot of recruits in such great numbers that the temporary barracks on the new land were filled to overflowing. But still the regiment was sadly missed, even among these new activities, by many besides the families belonging to it, and the war once more was brought nearer home to the people of the post. P 60 P 60 West Point, in the whirl of graduation week, was brimming with activity and alive with visitors from every part of the country. Hardly a first classman but had some member of his family come to see him receive his diploma, and many had a little crowd made up of parents and young brothers and sisters, full of eager pride and interest in their son's and brother's new honors. All over the broad parades and along the shady paths by the river cadets were walking with their friends from home, or friends from near at hand, enjoying their day or two of comparative leisure after the hard laborious grind of their daily lives. Officers, visiting officials, women and girls in their brightest summer finery, mingled with the ever-present gray, brass-buttoned coat and white trousered uniform of the corps, but in the midst of the life and gayety of a lot of young people gathered together many minds this year were thoughtful, and many hearts anxious and heavy. Bob Gordon, in four months risen from second classman to first classman and now to second lieutenant, was too enormously interested in all these changes, with their strange and wonderful possibilities, to feel serious all the time, especially with his long three years at West Point over, graduation so suddenly come and his family there to see it and to hear the hundred things he had not had time to write about. "It's great to see you all here," he said twenty times a day. P 61 P 61 It was true that when
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