He was tall, yet with a slight stoop in his shoulders.
His face was covered with a bushy, sandy beard.

He was neither particularly well nor very badly dressed, and would have attracted little attention in any crowd.
Yet this stranger was not looking on a new sight.

For nearly four years it had been as the breath of life to him.
Stoop-shouldered as a matter of disguise, and with beard and spectacles adding to his security from recognition, this slouching young man bent most of his gaze upon the stalwart, erect figure of Cadet Captain Prescott.
"You drove me out of here! You cheated me of all the glory of this career, Prescott! Have you been fool enough to think that I'd forget---that I could forget?
You are close to your diploma, now---but before that moment arrives I shall find the way to spoil your chances of a career in the Army.

And I can get away again without anyone recognizing in me the man who was once known as Cadet Jordan, of the first class!" Yes; it was Jordan, back at West Point, sure of escaping recognition, and bent on a desperate errand of wrecking Dick Prescott's promising career.
But Dick performed all his duties through that dress parade conscious only of the glory of the soldier's life.

He thought he had caught a fleeting glimpse of his mother once, in the crowd, as his company executed a wheeling, and he was happy in what he knew her happiness to be.
Then, when it was all over, and the corps again marched from the field, Mrs.Prescott, who knew the ways of West Point, went and stood at the edge of the grassy plain, nearly opposite the north sally-port.