A still more trying injustice befell the luckless Jack.  For a long time he had, as senior, acted as orderly sergeant of Company K. This officer is virtually the executive functionary in the company.  It is his place to form the men in rank, make out details, and prepare everything for the captain.  The orderly sergeant is to the company what the adjutant is to the regiment.  He carries a musket and marches with the ranks, but in responsibility is not inferior to an officer.  One evening when it was known that orders had come for the regiment to march, Jack, having formed the company for parade, received a paper from the captain’s orderly to read.  He opened it without suspicion, and, among other changes in the corps, read, “Thomas Trask to be first sergeant of Company K, and he will be obeyed and respected accordingly.”  Jack read the monstrous wrong without a tremor.  The men flung down their arms and broke into a fierce clamor of rage and grief.  Many of them were Jack’s classmates.  These swarmed about him.  One, assuming the part of spokesman, cried out: 

“It’s an infamous outrage.  They cheated you out of your captaincy; they have put every slight they could upon you.  But we have some rights.  We won’t stand this.  There are thirty of your classmates who will do whatever you say to show these people that they can’t act like this.”

There were mutiny and desperation in the air.  It needed but a spark to destroy the usefulness of the company.  But, as is often the case with impetuous, hot-headed spirits, Jack cooled as his friends grew hot.  He was the more patient that the injustice was his injury alone.  He remained in his place at the right of the company, and confronted the rebellious group with amazing self-control.  Then loud above the murmuring his voice rang out: 

“Company, attention! fall in, fall in!  Any man out of the ranks will be sent to the guard-house.  Eight dress, steady on the left.”

Many a time afterward these angry mutineers heard that sonorous, clear, boyish treble in stern and determined command; but they never heard it signalize a more heroic temper than at that moment, when, himself deeply wronged, he forced them to go back in the ranks to receive the interloper.  They “dressed up” sullenly as Jack called the roll for the last time, and received Trask, the new orderly, at a “present,” which, though not in the tactics, Jack exacted as a penitence for the momentary revolt.  Poor Trask looked very unhappy indeed as his displaced rival stepped back to the rear and left the new orderly to march the company out from the narrow way to take its place in the parade.  It was easy to see that he would have been very glad to postpone or evade his new honors, on any pretext, for the time.  He was so confused that Jack, from the flank, was obliged to repeat the few commands needed to get the company to the field.

Fortunately for the efficiency of the raw army, as this public discontent reached its most acute stage orders came to march the troops to Washington.  The Caribees were the first body of soldiers sent from Warchester, and there was a memorable scene when the jaunty ranks filed through the streets to the station.  By the time the men reached the train they discovered that they could never make war laden down as they were by knapsacks filled with the preposterous impedimenta feminine foresight had provided.