“And I have the nerve!” retorted Dick defiantly. “But how about Laura? She would discover, within a few minutes, that I am on strained terms with the other fellows. That would do worse than spoil her evening.”
“Well,” demanded Greg thoughtfully, “why do you need to take her to the hop?”
“Because she says that’s what the girls have come for.”
“Bother! Do you suppose it’s you, or the hop, that Laura comes for?”
But Dick, instead of being cheered by this view, turned very white.
“I’ve got to tell her,” he muttered hoarsely, “that I’m in eclipse. That the fellows have voted that I am not a fit associate for gentlemen.”
“And I’ll tell her a heap more,” retorted Cadet Holmes. “Dick, do you think either of the girls would go back on you, just because a lot of raw, half-baked cadets have got you sized up wrong? Is that all the faith you have in your friends? And, especially, such a friend as Laura Bentley? Was that the way she acted when you were under charges of cribbing? You were in disgrace, then, weren’t you? Did Laura look at you with anything but sympathy in her eyes?”
“No; heaven bless her!”
“Now, see here, Dick. If the girls are up here this evening, we won’t take ’em to the hop. Instead, we’ll sit out on the north porch at the hotel, with Mrs. Bentley near by. We’ll have such a good old talk with the girls as we never could have at a hop.”
“Everything in life would be easy, Greg, if you could explain it away,” laughed Dick Prescott, but his tone was bitter.
“Well, as you can’t take the girls to the hop, with any regard for their comfort, my plan is best of all, isn’t it?”
“I—I suppose so.”
“So make the best of it, old ramrod. There’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be a lot worse.”
There was a long tour of work with the field battery guns that afternoon. For once Prescott found his mind entirely off his work. Nor could he rally his senses to his work. He got a low marking, indeed, in the instructor’s record for that afternoon’s work.
Then, hot, dusty and tired, this detachment of cadets came in from work.
In the visitors’ seats, near headquarters, Dick and Greg espied Mrs. Bentley and the girls. How lovely the two latter looked!
The instant that ranks were broken Laura. and Belle were on their feet, glancing eagerly in the direction of their cadets. Dick and Greg had to go over, doff their campaign hats and shake hands with Mrs. Bentley and the girls.
“We’ve given you a surprise, this time,” laughed Laura. “I hope you’re pleased.”
“Can you doubt it?” asked Dick so absently, so reluctantly, that Laura Bentley shot a swift, uneasy look at the handsome young cadet captain.
“You don’t seem over delighted,” broke in Belle Meade. “Gracious! I hope we haven’t been indiscreet in coming almost unannounced? See here, you haven’t invited any other girls to to-night’s hop, have you?”
Both girls, flushed and rather uneasy looking, were now eyeing the two ill-at-ease young first classmen.
“No; we haven’t invited anyone else. But there’s something to be explained,” replied Dick lamely. “Greg, you explain, won’t you? And you’ll all excuse me, won’t you, while I hurry away to tog for dress parade?”
Laura’s face was almost as white as Dick’s had been at noon, as she gazed after the receding Prescott.
Then Greg, in his bluntest way, tried to put it all straight, and quickly, at that.
“Oh, is that all?” asked Belle with a sniff of contempt. “Why couldn’t Dick remain and tell us himself? You cadets are certainly cowards in some things—sometimes!”
But the tears were struggling for a front place in Laura’s fine eyes.
“Is this ‘silence’ going to affect Dick very much in his career in the Army?” she asked with emotion.
“Not if his staunchest friends can prevent it,” replied Greg almost fiercely. “And old ramrod has a host of friends in his class, at that.”
“It’s too bad they’re not in the majority, then,” murmured Miss Meade.
“They will be, in the end,” asserted Greg. “We’re working things around to that point. You should have heard the fierce row we put up at the class meeting last night.”
When it was too late Greg could have bitten his tongue.
“Class meeting?” asked Laura. “Then has there been further action taken?”
Greg nodded, biting his lips.
“What was last night’s meeting held for?” persisted Laura.
“To try to oust Dick from the class presidency,” confessed Cadet Holmes.
“Did they do it?” quivered Laura Bentley.
“No!”
“Ah! Then the attempt was defeated. Dick is to retain the presidency of his class?”
“Action was deferred,” replied Greg in a low voice.
He wished with all his heart he could get away, for he saw that, no matter how he tried to hedge the facts about, these keen-witted girls realized that Dick Prescott’s plight was about as black as it could be for a young man who wanted, with all his soul, to remain in the military service of his country.
CHAPTER VII
JORDAN MEETS DISASTER
Belle, with her combination of impulsive temperament, good judgment and bluntness, came to the temporary rescue.
“Greg is trying to conceal the fact that he’ll have a desperate rush to get into his dress uniform in time for parade,” Miss Meade interposed. “Anyway, there’s far more about this matter than we can understand in a moment. Greg, you and Dick can call on us at the hotel this evening, can’t you?”
“We most surely can.”
“Then come, as early as you can. We’ll eat the earliest dinner we can get there, and be prepared for a long evening. Now, hurry to your tent, for I don’t want to see you reported for being late at formation.”
Between her visits to West Point, and her trips to Annapolis to see Dave Darrin, as related in the Annapolis Series, Belle had by this time a very considerable knowledge of formations, and of other incidents in the lives of Army and Navy cadets.
“This evening, then,” replied Greg, shifting his campaign hat to the other hand and feeling like a man who has secured a reprieve.
“And give my love to Dick,” Belle went on hastily, “and tell him that the President of the United States couldn’t, if he wanted to, change our opinion of dear old Dick in the least.”
“Thank you,” bowed Greg, gratitude welling up in his heart.
“And you send him your love, don’t you, Laura?” insisted Belle swiftly.
Laura recoiled quickly, flushing violently.
It was all right for Belle Meade to send her “love” to Prescott, for they were old friends, and Belle was known to be Dave Darrin’s loyal sweetheart.
With Laura the situation was painfully different. She and Dick had been schoolboy and schoolgirl sweethearts, after a fashion, but Dick had never openly declared his love for her.
Would he misunderstand, and think her unwomanly?
She trembled with the sudden doubt at the thought.
Besides, another, a prosperous young merchant back in Gridley, had been ardent in his attentions to Miss Bentley.
“Of course Laura sends her love,” broke in Greg promptly. “Who wouldn’t, when the dear old fellow is in such a scrape? And I’ll deliver the message of love from you both—and from Mrs. Bentley, too?”
Greg looked inquiringly, but expectantly at Laura’s mother, who nodded and smiled in ready sympathy.
Then Greg made his best soldier’s bow and hastened off to his chum, whose heart he succeeded in gladdening somewhat while the two made all haste to get ready for parade call.
When the corps marched on to the field that afternoon, Mrs. Bentley and the girls were there among the eager spectators. Dick saw them almost instantly, and his heart bounded within him. It was Laura’s mute message of sympathy and hope to him! He held up his head higher, if that were possible, and went through every movement with even more than his usual precision.
As the corps was marching off the field again, however, Dick’s heart sank rapidly within him.
“If I have to leave the Army, I can never ask Laura for her love,” he groaned wretchedly. “If I go from West Point as anything but a graduate and an officer, I shall have to start life all over again. It will take me years to find my place and get solidly on my feet I could never ask a girl to wait as long as that!”
In the early evening Laura, Belle and Mrs. Bentley were on the veranda near the hotel entrance. Cadets Jordan and Douglass made their appearance. Jordan had obtained official permission to present Douglass to his sister, who was to go to the hop that evening.
“By Jove, there’s a spoony femme (pretty girl) over there,” breathed Jordan in Douglass’ ear. “You don’t happen to know her, do you?”
“Why, yes, that’s Miss Bentley, and the other is Miss Meade. The chaperon is Miss Bentley’s mother,” replied Cadet Douglass.
“You know them?” throbbed Jordan, his eyes resting eagerly on Laura’s face. “What luck! Present me, old chap!”
So Douglass, who, in some respects, had a bad memory, piloted his classmate over to the ladies and halted.
“Good evening, ladies,” greeted Douglass, raising his uniform cap in his most polished manner. “Mrs. Bentley, Miss Bentley, Miss Meade, will you permit me to present my friend and classmate Mr. Jordan?”
Belle, who was nearest, bowed and held out her hand.
But Laura drew herself up haughtily. “Mr. Douglass,” she answered coldly, “my apologies to you, but I don’t wish to know—Mr. Jordan!”
Belle caught the name again, and remembered.
“Oh!” she cried, snatching her hand away ere Jordan could touch it.
“I’m sorry, ladies,” stammered Douglass. But they found themselves confronted by rear views of two shapely pairs of young shoulders, while Mrs. Bentley had the air of looking through the young men without being able to see either.
Two very much disconcerted cadets, and very red in the face, stiffly resumed their caps and marched away.
“Great Scott, what did that mean?” gasped Jordan, struck all in a heap by his strange reception.
Cadet Douglass gasped.
“Jordan,” he exclaimed contritely, “I’m the greatest ass in the corps!”
“You must be!” exploded Dick’s enemy. “But what was the cause of it all?”
“Why, Jordan, you—you see—–“
“Who is Miss Bentley?”
“Jordan, she’s Prescott’s girl!”
“What?” gasped the other cadet, staring at his classmate.
“Fact!”
“Prescott’s—girl?”
“Yes.”
“Jove, a puppy like Prescott has no business with a superb girl like that.”
“All the same, Jordan, the fact will prevent you from knowing her.”
“Now, I’m not so sure of that!” cried Jordan suddenly, with strange fire in his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” mumbled Jordan, suddenly recovering himself.
Then, under his breath, he chuckled gleefully:
“Miss Bentley is just struck on the uniform, of course. A girl like that couldn’t care for a misfit like Prescott. Well, he won’t be in the uniform much longer. I won’t lose sight of Miss Bentley. I’ll find her again when Prescott is out of the uniform for good!”
Now, aloud, he asked:
“Doug, do you happen to remember Miss Bentley’s first name?”
“Larry,” answered Cadet Douglass absently.
“Stop that!” cried Jordan almost fiercely.
“Oh, a thousand pardons, Jordan. I’m so rattled I don’t know what I’m doing or saying. The girl’s first name is Laura. Peach, isn’t she?”
“Laura! That’s a sweet name,” murmured Jordan to himself. His mind was now running riot, not only with plans to drive Dick Prescott out of the Army, but also to win the heart of Laura Bentley.
“Hold on, Jord,” begged Douglass, halting and leaning against a post in the veranda structure. “Don’t take me to your sister just yet. Let me get my breath, my nerves, my wits back again.”
“Take an hour,” advised Jordan laconically. “You need it. Didn’t you know Miss Bentley was Prescott’s girl?”
“Yes; but it had slipped my memory. It’s mighty hard, when you come to think of it, to remember the girls of so many hundreds of fellows,” explained Cadet Douglass plaintively.
Ten minutes later Dick and Greg appeared, greeting the ladies. Mrs. Bentley assented to their going around to the north side of the porch, whence they could look up the river to the lights of Newburgh.
“We very nearly had an adventure, Dick,” laughed Belle.
“Yes?”
“We very nearly shook hands with Mr. Jordan. It was Laura’s quick cry that saved me, just in the nick of time, from touching hands with the fellow.”
Miss Meade then related their experience, and the discomfiture of Cadets Douglass and Jordan.
“That’s just about like Doug,” observed Greg Holmes. “I’ll bet he never thought until Laura called off the signal for the kick.”
“What’s that?” demanded Miss Bentley.
“Pardon me,” apologized Greg. “I think in football terms altogether too often. But I’m glad Jordan saw the goal and then lost it.”
“I think Dick wants to tell us something about the fellow Jordan, and some of the other cadets,” Belle hinted.
Between them the chums told the story of how the “silence” had come to be imposed. Prescott did not, however, tell his feminine visitors how he had happened to catch Jordan outside the guard line.
“How did that happen?” asked Laura innocently.
“Now, I’d tell you before I would any one else on earth,” protested Dick with warmth, “but I haven’t told Greg or anyone else. I had good military reasons, not personal ones.”
“Oh!” replied Laura. And, not understanding, she felt more than a little hurt by Dick’s failure to answer frankly.
Both girls, however, talked very comfortingly, and Mrs. Bentley very sensibly aided their efforts. All three tried to make it quite plain to Dick Prescott that no amount, or consequence, of lack of understanding by his classmates could make any difference with his standing in their eyes.
Presently Mrs. Bentley consented to the girls strolling down the road between the hotel and cadet barracks. Dick, of course, walked with Laura, while Greg and Belle remained at a discreet, out-of-earshot distance.
At last they stood again by the gateway through the shrubbery at the edge of the hotel grounds.
“Dick—–” began Laura hesitatingly.
“Yes?” asked the young cadet captain.
“Dick, no matter how far your classmates push this matter,” begged Laura, her eyes big and earnest, “don’t let their acts force you out of the Army. No matter what happens—stick!”
Cadet Prescott shook his head wearily. “I can’t stick,” he replied firmly, “if I am shown that my presence in the Army is not going to be for the good and the harmony of the service!”
Laura sighed. Another keen pang of disappointment, was hers.
She now believed that her influence over Dick Prescott was not anywhere near as strong as she had hoped it would be.
A very wretched girl rested her head on a pillow that night, and slept but poorly.
In the forenoon, while the corps was absent on an infantry practice march, Laura, her mother and her friend went dejectedly away from West Point.
CHAPTER VIII
FATE SERVES DICK HER MEANEST TRICK
The furloughed second class returned, the encampment ended and the corps marched back into cadet barracks.
The new academic year had begun, with new text-books, new studies, new intellectual torments for the hundreds of ambitious young soldiers at the United States Military Academy.
By this time both Dick and Greg had acquired the habits of study so thoroughly that neither any longer feared for his standing or markings.
To Prescott there was one big comfort about being back in the old, gray cadet barracks.
The silence put upon Dick was not now quite as much in evidence. With long study hours, Prescott had not so much need to meet his classmates.
In the section rooms nothing in the deportment of the other cadets could emphasize the silence.
It was only in the authorized visiting hours that Prescott noted the change keenly.
Of course, according to the traditions of the Military Academy, Anstey and all the other loyal friends who ached to call were barred from so doing.
While taps sounds at ten o’clock, and members of the three lower classes must be in bed, with lights out, at the first sound of taps, first classmen are privileged, whenever they wish, to run a light until eleven at night, provided the extra time be spent in study.
One evening in early September, Dick and Greg were both busy at study table, when Dick chanced to look over some papers connected with his studies. As he did so, he drew out an officially backed sheet, and started.
“Jupiter!” he muttered. “I should have turned this in before supper formation.”
“Who gets the report?” asked Greg, looking up.
“It goes to the officer in charge,” Dick answered.
“Oh, well, he’s up yet. You can slip over to his office with it,” replied Greg easily.
“And I’ll do it at once. It may mean a demerit or two, for lack of punctuality, but I’m glad it’s no worse.”
Jumping up and donning his fatigue cap, Prescott thrust the neglected official report into the breast of his uniform blouse, soldier fashion.
Then he walked slowly out, halting just inside the subdivision door.
“I don’t mind a few demerits, but I don’t like to be accused of unsoldierly neglect,” mused the young cadet captain. “Let me see if I can think up a way of presenting my statement so that the O.C. won’t scorch me.”
As Dick stood there in the gloom, a quick, soft step sounded outside. Then the door was carefully opened, and a young man in citizen’s dress entered.
Civilians rarely have a right, to be in cadet barracks at any time of the day. It is wholly out of the question for one to enter barracks after taps.
“What are you doing in here, sir?” Dick questioned sternly, putting out his hand to take the other’s arm.
Then the young cadet captain drew back in near-horror.
“Good heavens! Durville?” he gasped.
“Yes. Sh!” whispered the other cadet, slinking back, a frightened look in his eyes.
No cadet, while at West Point, may, without proper permission, appear in any clothing save the uniform of the day or of the tour. No cadet ever attempts to don “cits.” unless he is up to some grave mischief, such as leaving the post.
“Don’t say a word! Let me reach my room!” whispered Durville hoarsely.
Dick Prescott wished, with all his heart, to be able to comply with the other cadet’s frenzied request.
But duty stepped in with loud voice. As a cadet officer, as captain of Durville’s company, Prescott had no alternative within the lines of that duty. He must report Cadet Durville.
“Now, don’t look at me so strangely,” begged Durville. “Let me go by, and tell me you’ll keep this quiet. By Jove, Prescott, you know what it means to me if I’m placed on report for—this!”
“Yes, I know,” nodded Dick, dejectedly, and speaking as hoarsely as did the other man. “Oh, Durville, I wish I could do it, but—–“
Dick had to clench his fists and gulp hard. Then the soldier in him triumphed.
“Mr. Durville”—he spoke in an impassive official tone, now—“you will accompany me to the office of the officer in charge, and will there make such official explanation as you may choose.”
“Prescott, for the love of—–” began the other over again, in trembling desperation.
“About face, Mr. Durville. Forward!”
Now, all the gameness in the other cadet came to the surface. He wheeled about, head up, his clenched fists seeking the seams of his condemning “cit.” trousers. Durville marched defiantly out into the quadrangle, across and into the cadet guard house, up the flight of stairs and into the office of the officer in charge.
Lieutenant Denton was again O.C. that night.
Both cadets saluted when they entered after knocking.
Lieutenant Denton glanced in sheer dismay at the “cit.” clothes worn by Durville.
“Sir,” began Dick huskily, “I regret being obliged to report that I just discovered Mr. Durville entering the sub-division in citizen’s dress.”
“Have you any explanation to offer, Mr. Durville?” asked Lieutenant Denton in his official tone.
“None, sir.”
“Very good, Mr. Durville. You will go to your room and remain in close arrest until you receive further official communication in this matter.”
“Very good, sir.”
Durville spoke in steady, if icy tones, as he saluted and made this response.
“That is all, Mr. Durville.”
“Very good, sir.”
Like one frozen, the cadet in unfamiliar attire turned and left the office.
“How did you happen to make the discovery, Mr. Prescott?” gasped the O.C.
“I discovered, sir, that I had overlooked this report, which I now turn in, sir,” Dick replied rather hoarsely. “It was just as I was about to leave the sub-division that Mr. Durville came in. I had no alternative but to report him, sir.”
“You are right, Mr. Prescott. As a cadet officer you had no alternative.”
Then, with a memory of his own West Point days, Lieutenant Denton unbent enough to remark feelingly:
“You have unassailable courage, too, Mr. Prescott.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Is that all?”
“You have finished your official business?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good night,” Mr. Prescott.
“Good night, sir.”
Saluting, Dick turned from the office. As he pushed open the door and reentered the subdivision, he beheld Durville, standing there with arms folded.
“Possibly at the risk of being reported for breaking my arrest, Mr. Prescott,” began Durville, “I have lingered here to say to you that you have succeeded in wreaking a most complete revenge upon one who led a bit in having the silence conferred upon you.”
All Dick’s reserve melted for an instant.
“Durville, man—you—don’t believe I did this for—for revenge?” Prescott demanded.
Cadet Durville smiled sarcastically.
“I shall undoubtedly be broken for this night’s affair, Mr. Prescott, and you and the rest will continue to believe that I was absent merely on some vulgar escapade! I go, now, to my arrest, which is doubtless the last military service I shall be called upon to render. Mr. Prescott, I congratulate you, sir, upon your ability to spy upon other men and to serve your highest ideas of suitable vengeance.”
Gloomily Durville turned to his room. Dick almost stumbled to his own quarters.
Greg Holmes’s face blanched when he heard the news.
“There’ll be fine class ructions by to-morrow!” he told himself with unwonted grimness.
CHAPTER IX
THE CLASS TAKES FINAL ACTION
By the time the corps of cadets was seated at breakfast, in the great mess hall, the following morning, the news began to circulate rapidly.
It was discussed in low tones at every table save that at which the silence against Prescott prevailed.
The silence by this time had ceased to be literal, except so far as it applied to Dick. Other cadets at his table talked among themselves, though never to Prescott. Greg, being Dick’s roommate, was the sole cadet exempted from this rule.
But the men at Prescott’s table restrained their curiosity until the two battalions had marched back to barracks and had been dismissed.
After the dismissal of the companies Dick and Greg strolled along slowly. Wherever they passed backs were turned to them, though this would not have happened to Holmes had he been alone.
Though the news was discussed, no class action was taken. This must not be done until Durville’s fate had overtaken him. Otherwise, the Military Academy authorities might take such action as defiant and visit a more severe penalty upon Cadet Durville.
For five days Durville remained in close arrest. This meant, to the initiated, that the Superintendent had taken up the matter with the War Department at Washington.
On the sixth day Durville was once more sent for by the commandant of cadets. His sentence was handed out to him. On account of an academic reputation of high grade, and a hitherto good-conduct report, Mr. Durville was not dropped from the corps. Had the offender, before leaving West Point in “cits.,” gone to the cadet guard house and made any false report concerning his absence, nothing could have saved him from dismissal for making a false official report. All things being taken into consideration, Cadet Durville was “let off” with loss of privileges up to the time of semi-annual examinations, with, in addition, the walking of punishment tours every Saturday afternoon during the same period.
Now the gathering wrath broke loose upon Dick. A class meeting was called, that neither Prescott nor Holmes could attend with propriety.
Durville, as a matter of policy, did not attend, but there were not wanting first classmen who looked upon Durville as a sacrifice, and who were fully capable of presenting his side of the case at the meeting.
Upon Anstey, as on a former occasion, fell the task of making Prescott’s side clear.
The class meeting had not been in session many minutes when Dick’s accusers had made it rather plain that Mr. Prescott, following his previous course with Jordan, had revenged himself also on Durville, who had taken an active part in securing the imposition of the silence.
Anstey took the floor in a fiery defence. He brought forth the statement that Prescott had not made any attempt to pry into the goings or comings of the unlucky Durville. The Virginian declared that Prescott had happened to be abroad in time to “catch” Mr. Durville, simply because Prescott had started for the office of the officer in charge with an official paper that he had been tardy about turning in.
Though Anstey dwelt upon this side of the case with consummate oratory, the defence was regarded as “too transparent.” Anstey’s good faith was not questioned, but Prescott’s was.
In the turmoil the office of class president was declared vacant. Anstey was nominated for the office just made vacant, but, with cold politeness, he refused what, at any other time, would have been a high honor.
Cadet Douglass was presently elected class president.
Then further action was taken with regard to Cadet Richard Prescott. Without further debate a motion was carried that Prescott be sent to Coventry for good and all.
The class meeting adjourned, and upon Greg Holmes, who was informed by Anstey, fell the task of carrying the decision to Dick.
“I expected it, Holmesy,” was Dick’s quiet reply.
“Buck up, anyway, old ramrod,” begged Greg. “This terrible mess will all be straightened out before graduation.”
“Not in time to do me any good,” replied Dick gloomily.
“Now what do you mean?”
But Dick closed his jaws firmly.
Greg knew better than to press his questioning further, just then. He contented himself with crossing the room, resting both hands on Dick’s shoulders.
“Now, old ramrod, just remember this: Into every life a good deal of trouble comes. It is up to each fellow, in his own case, to show how much of a man he is. The fellow who lies down, or runs away, isn’t a man. The fellow who fights his trouble out to a grim finish, is a man every inch of his five or six feet! The class is wild, just now, but on misinformation. Fight it out! Enemies of yours have brought you to this pass. Don’t run away! All your friends are with you as much as ever they were.”
Dick was a good deal affected.
“Believe me, Greg, whatever I decide on doing won’t be in the line of running away. Whatever I decide upon will be what I finally believe to be for the best good of the service.”
“Humph!” muttered Greg, looking wonderingly at his chum.
In the closing period of the next forenoon Dick’s section did not recite. Greg’s did. So Prescott was left alone in the room with his books.
Despite himself, Greg was so worried, during that recitation, that he “fessed cold”—that is, he secured a mark but a very little above zero.
As soon as the returning section was dismissed Cadet Holmes, his heart beating fast, hurried to his room.
There sat Dick, at the study table, as Greg had left him. But Prescott had pushed his textbooks aside. Before him rested only a sheet of paper. With pen in hand Prescott wrote something at the bottom just as Holmes entered the room. Then Dick looked up with a half cheery face.
“I’ve done it, Greg,” he announced simply, in a hard, dry voice.
“Done it?” echoed Cadet Holmes. “What?”
“I have written my resignation as a member of the corps of cadets, United States Military Academy.”
“Bosh!” roared Cadet Holmes in a great rage. “The resignation is written, signed, and—it sticks!” returned Dick Prescott with quiet emphasis.
CHAPTER X
LIEUTENANT DENTON’S STRAIGHT TALK
“Let me have that paper!” demanded Greg, darting forward.
There was fire in Cadet Holmes’s eyes and purpose in his heart as he reached forward to snatch the sheet from the desk.
Yet Dick Prescott stepped before him, thrusting him quietly aside with a manner that was not to be overridden.
“Don’t touch it, Greg!” he ordered in a low voice that was none the less compelling.
“But you shan’t send that resignation in!” quivered Greg.
“My dear boy, you know very well that I shall!”
“Have you no thought for me?” Cadet Holmes demanded.
“My going may put you in a blue streak for a week, old fellow, but it will put me in a blue streak for a lifetime. Yet there’s no other way for me. What’s the use of being an ostracized officer in the service? With you, Greg, old chum, it is different. You will, after a little, be very happy in the Army.”
“Happy in the—nothing!” exploded Greg. “I told you, weeks ago, that if you quit the service, I would do the same thing.”
“But you won’t,” urged Dick. “In these weeks you have had time to reflect and turn sensible.”
“Do you suppose I care to go on, old chum, if you don’t?”
“Yes,” answered Dick quietly. “And if the case were reversed, and you were resigning, I should go on just the same and stick in the service. Why, Greg, if we both went on into the Army, and under the happiest conditions, we wouldn’t be together, anyway. You might be in one regiment, down in Florida, and I in another out in the Philippines. When I was serving in Cuba, you’d be in Alaska. Don’t be foolish, Greg. I’ve got to leave, but there’s no earthly reason why you should. Your resigning would be mistaken loyalty to me, and would cast no rebuke or regret over the cadet corps or the Army. The fellows who are going to stick would simply feel that one weak-kneed chap had dropped by the wayside. They’d merely march on and forget you.”
“There goes the first call for dinner formation,” cried Holmes, wheeling and beginning his hasty preparations.
“That’s better,” laughed Dick, as he shoved his resignation into the drawer of the table.
Then Dick, too, made his hurried preparations. Second call found them ready to watch the forming of A company. At the command Dick gave his own company order:
“Fours right! Forward—march!”
Away went A company, at the head of the corps, the whole long line giving forth the rhythmic sound of marching feet.
No outsider could have guessed that the young senior cadet captain was utterly discredited by the majority of his class, and that he was about to drop hopelessly out of this stirring life.
On the return from dinner Dick went at once to his room.
“What are you going to do?” demanded Greg impatiently, as Prescott seated himself at the study table.
“I am going to address an envelope to hold the sheet of paper of which you so much disapprove.”
Greg knew it was useless to expostulate. Instead, he hurried out, found Anstey, and called the Virginian so that both could stand in the place where they would be sure to see Prescott if he attempted to come out.
Feverishly, in undertones, Greg confided the news to Anstey.
“I don’t just see what we can do, suh,” answered the southerner with a puzzled look.
“Prescott is doing, suh, just what I reckon I’d do myself, suh, if I were in his place.”
“But we can’t lose him,” urged Greg.
“I know we’ll hate like thunder to, suh. But what can we do? Can we beg Prescott to stay, and face the cold shoulder, suh, all the time he is here, and in the Army afterwards?”
“I’m not getting much comfort out of you, Anstey,” muttered Greg grimly.
“And that, suh, is because I don’t see where the comfort comes in. Holmesy, don’t think I’m not suffering, suh. It’ll break my heart to see old ramrod drop out of the corps.”
“Then you don’t think we can stop Prescott?”
“I reckon I don’t Holmesy. This is the kind of matter, suh, that every man must settle for himself. If I were a much older man, Holmesy, with much more experience in the Army, I reckon I might be able to give him some very sound advice. But as it is, suh, I know I can’t.”
When Greg returned to the room he found Dick preparing books and papers to march to the next section recitation.
“What have you done with that resignation of yours?” growled Greg.
“It’s in that drawer,” replied Dick, with a weary smile, “and I rely on you, old fellow, not to do anything to it. It would only give me all the pain over again if I had to rewrite it.”
“Dick, can nothing change your mind?”
“I have thought it all over, old friend.”
The call for section formation sounded, and both hurried away.
Later, Dick’s section returned a full minute and a half ahead of the one to which Holmes belonged.
“Now’s the time!” muttered Dick, opening the drawer and slipping the envelope into the breast of his blouse.
Then he hurried out, crossing the quadrangle to the cadet guard house. Cadet Holmes, in section ranks, marched into the quadrangle in time just to catch a glimpse of Prescott’s disappearing back.
Going up the stairs, Dick knocked on the door of the office of the O.C.
“Come in!” called the officer in charge, who proved to be none other than Lieutenant Denton again.
“What is it, Mr. Prescott?” inquired the Army officer, as Prescott, saluting, advanced to the officer’s desk, then halted, standing at attention.
“Sir, I have come to ask for some information.”
“What is it, Mr. Prescott?”
“Sir, I have a paper, addressed to the superintendent. I do not know whether I should take it to the adjutant’s office, or whether I should forward it through this office.”
“I thought you understood your company paper work, Mr. Prescott,” smiled Lieutenant Denton.
“I think I do, sir; but this kind of paper I have never had to put in before.”
“What kind of paper is it?”
“My resignation, sir,” replied Dick quietly. Lieutenant Denton looked almost as much astonished as he felt.
“What?” he choked. Then a slight smile came into his face.
“Oh, I think I begin to understand, Mr. Prescott. You wish more time for your studies, and so you are resigning your post as captain of A company.”
“This is my resignation, sir, from the corps of cadets.”
Lieutenant Denton looked utterly nonplussed.
“Oh, very good, Mr. Prescott. If you are bent on leaving the Military Academy, I presume I have no right to demand your reasons. But—won’t you sit down?”
The lieutenant pointed to a chair near his own.
“Thank you, sir,” nodded Prescott. Taking off his fatigue cap, he dropped into the chair, though he sat very erect.
“Now,” smiled Mr. Denton, “perhaps we can drop, briefly, some of the relation between officer and cadet. We may be able to talk as friends—real friends. I trust so. May I feel at liberty to ask you, Mr. Prescott, whether there are any urgent family reasons behind this sudden move of yours?”
“None, sir.”
“Then is it—but I don’t wish to be intrusive.”
“I certainly don’t consider you intrusive, Mr. Denton, and I appreciate your sympathy and friendship. But I am resigning from the corps for the best of good reasons.”
“May I question you, Mr. Prescott?”
“If you care to, sir.”
“I do wish it, very much,” rejoined Lieutenant Denton, “though I have asked your consent because, in what I am now seeking to do, I am going rather beyond my place as a tactical officer of the Military Academy. If you are sure, however, that you do not find me intrusive, and if you would like to talk this matter over—not as officer and cadet, but as between a young man and a somewhat older one, and as friends above all, then I am going to ask you a few questions.”
“Although I am certain that you cannot help me, Mr. Denton, I am very grateful for every sign of interest that you may show in me. It is something of balm to me to feel that I shall leave behind some who will regret my going.”
“Prescott,” asked the officer abruptly, “you have been sent to Coventry, haven’t you? You needn’t answer unless you wish.”
“I have, sir,” Dick assented.
“Twice it has happened, when I have been on duty, that you have had to report classmates to me. Now, I’m not going to step over the line by asking you whether those reports were the basis of your being sent to Coventry. But, to please myself, I’m going to assume that such is the case.”
To this Dick made no reply. It was an instance in which a cadet could not, with propriety, discuss class action with an officer on duty at the Military Academy.
“Now, Prescott, I’m not going to ask you whether my surmise is a correct one, but I’m going to ask you another question, as a friend only, and in no official way. Of course, in a friendly matter you may suit yourself about answering it. Have you done anything else that could excuse the class in punishing you?”
“Nothing whatever, sir.”
“Mr. Prescott, aren’t you wholly satisfied with your conduct?”
“I don’t quite know how to answer that, Mr. Denton,”
“Have you done anything that you wouldn’t repeat if the need arose?”
“I have not, sir,” replied Dick with great earnestness.
“Do you feel, in your own soul, that you have done anything to discredit the splendid old gray uniform that you wear?”
“I do not, sir.”
“Answer this, or not, as you please. Don’t you feel wholly convinced that your class has done you an injustice which it would reverse instantly if it knew all the circumstances?”
“I feel certain that my classmates would restore me at once to their favor, if they knew the full circumstances.”
“Have you felt obliged to refuse them any information for which a class committee had asked, Prescott?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me do some hard thinking, my lad. Ah, now, as I look back to the night when you were obliged to report Mr. Jordan for being outside the guard lines, I had myself that night assigned you to official duty near the guard lines. You were to intercept plebes who might try to run the guard, and to send them back to their tents.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That was special duty,” resumed Lieutenant Denton. “Now, if you had been asked, by a class committee, to explain how you happened to be out there at the right time to catch Mr. Jordan, you would have felt bound to refuse to reveal your orders from me?”
“I certainly would have felt so bound, Mr. Denton.”
“Ah! Now I think I understand a good deal, Prescott. Then, at another time, very recently, you forgot, until late, to turn in an official report to me. You started to hurry over here, and, in so doing, you must have accidentally encountered a certain cadet returning in “cit.” clothes. As his company commander, you surely felt bound to report him for so flagrant a breach of discipline. Yet, if your class did not fully understand or credit the fact that only an oversight of yours had thrown you in that cadet’s way, it would make the class feel that you had deliberately trapped the man, after having spied on his actions earlier in the evening.”
Dick remained silent, but Lieutenant Denton was a clear headed and logical guesser.
“In my cadet days,” smiled the lieutenant, “such a suspicion against a cadet officer would certainly have resulted in ostracism for him.”
“Now, Prescott,” asked the officer in charge, leaning over and resting a friendly hand on the cadet’s arm, “you feel that you have been, throughout, a gentleman and a good soldier, and that you have not done anything sneaky?”
“That is my opinion of myself, Mr. Denton.”
“And yet, feeling that your course has been wholly honorable, you are going to throw up your career in the Army, and waste some twenty thousand dollars of the nation’s money that has been expended in giving you your training here?”
“It sounds like a fearful thing to do, Mr. Denton, but I can see no way out of it, sir. If I am to go on into the Army, and be an ostracized officer, I should be of no value to myself or to the service. Wherever I should go, my usefulness would be gone and my presence demoralizing.”
“Now, if that ostracism continued, your usefulness would be gone, Prescott, beyond a doubt, and the Army would be better off without you. But if justice should triumph, later, you would be restored to your full usefulness, and to the full enjoyment of your career. Now, Prescott, my boy”—here the officer’s voice became tender, friendly, earnest—“you have been attending chapel every Sunday?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have listened to the chaplain’s discourses, and I take it that you have had earlier religious instruction, also. Prescott, do you or do you not believe that there is a God above who sees all, loves all and rights all injustice in His own good time?”
“Assuredly I believe it, sir.”
“And yet, in your own case, you have so little faith in that justice that, though you feel your course has been honorable, you cannot wait for justice to be done. Prescott, isn’t that kind of faith almost blasphemy?”
Dick felt staggered. Although his lot had been cast with Army officers for more than three years, he had never heard any of them, save the chaplain, discuss matters of Christian faith. Yet he knew that Denton, who sat beside him, smiling with friendly eyes, was talking from full conviction.
“You’ve made me see my present predicament in a somewhat different light, sir,” Dick stammered.
“Prescott, I have knocked about in a good deal of rough life since I was graduated from here, but I have full faith that every upright and honorable man is ultimately safe under Heaven’s justice. So have you, or I am mistaken in you. Why not buck up, and make up your mind to go through your hard rub here firm in the conviction that this is only a passing cloud that is certain to be dispelled? Why not stick, like a man of faith and honor? Now, as officer in charge, I will inform you that you should take a letter of resignation to the adjutant’s office, and hand it to that officer in person.”
As your friend, I suggest that you give me your letter, with your permission to destroy it.”
“Here is the letter, Mr. Denton.”
“Thank you, my boy. You may see what I do with it.”
Rising, Lieutenant Denton crossed to an open fire that was burning low. He laid the envelope across the embers.
Prescott, too, rose, feeling that the interview was at an end.
“Just a moment more of friendly conversation, Prescott,” continued the lieutenant, coming forward and taking the cadet’s hand. “I want you to remember that you are not to write or send in any other letter of resignation until you have first talked it over with me. And I want you to remember that a soldier should be a man of faith as well as of honor. Further, Prescott, you may feel yourself wholly at liberty to explain, at any time, what your orders from me were that led to your catching and reporting Mr. Jordan.”
“Thank you, sir; but I’m afraid I shan’t be asked for any further explanations.”
“Seek me, at any time, if there is anything you wish to ask me, or anything that puzzles you.”
“Yes, sir; thank you.”
Dick had again placed his fatigue cap on his head, and was standing rigidly at attention. They were once more tactical officer and cadet.
“That is all, Mr. Prescott, and I am very glad that you came to see me,” continued the officer in charge.
Prescott saluted, received the officer’s acknowledging salute, turned and left the office.
A minute later he was allowing good old Greg to pump the details of that interview out of him.
“Say,” muttered Cadet Holmes, staring soberly at his chum, “an officer like Lieutenant Denton can put a different look on things, can’t be?”
“He certainly can, Greg.”
“I’m not going to be fresh, while I’m a cadet,” continued Holmes. “But when I’m an officer I’m going to seek Mr. Denton and ask him to be my friend, too!”
CHAPTER XI
THE NEWS FROM FRANKLIN FIELD
Though Dick was firmly resolved on his new course, life none the less was bitter for him.
The Army football team was now being organized and drilled in earnest. Douglass captained it this year, and was doing excellent work, though his material was not as good as he could have wished.
Anstey was developing speed and strategy in the position of quarterback, and, in football matters, was a close confidant of Douglass.
“This Prescott muss has given us a bad setback this year,” growled Douglass.
“It certainly has, suh,” agreed the Virginian. “We’re certainly going to feel the loss of Prescott and Holmes when we come to face the Navy eleven with such men as Darrin and Dalzell.”
“Hang it, yes. I’m shivering already,” growled Douglass. “Now, of course, we can’t ask Prescott to join.”
“And he wouldn’t come in, suh, while in Coventry, if we asked him.”
“But Holmes, who is almost as good a man, ought not to hold back where the Army’s credit and honor are at stake. Holmes ought to stand for the Army, asleep or awake!”
“If I were in Holmesy’s place, I wouldn’t come in,” rejoined the Virginian. “I’d stay out, just as Holmesy is doing.”
“But you were one of Prescott’s thick friends, too.”
“I’m not his roommate, or his schoolboy chum, suh. Holmesy is.
“It’s hard to lose either of them,” sighed Douglass, “and fierce to lose both of them. We’ve worked like real heroes, but I can’t see any such team coming on as the Army had last year. And the Navy eleven will undoubtedly be better this year than it was last.”
“The Army must stand to lose by the action of the first class,” insisted Anstey doggedly.
Though every man in the corps would have thrown up his cap at the announcement that Prescott and Holmes were to play again this year, the leaders of first-class opinion could see no reason to alter their judgment of Dick. So he continued in Coventry.
The football season came on with a rush at last. The Army won some of its games, from minor teams, but none from the bigger college elevens.
Then came the fateful Saturday when the corps went over to Philadelphia. Dick and Greg were the only two members of the corps, not under severe discipline, who remained behind at the Military Academy.
Late that afternoon Greg, with a long face, brought in the football news from Franklin Field.
“The Navy has wiped us up, ten to two,” grumbled Holmes.
“I’m heartily sorry,” cried Dick, and he spoke the truth.
“Well, it’s our class’s fault,” growled Greg. “The Army can thank our class.”
“We might not have been able to save the game,” argued Prescott.
“We could have rattled Dave and Dan a lot,” retorted Greg. “My own belief is we could have saved the day.”
“You might have played, Greg. I wouldn’t have resented it.”
“No; but I’d have felt a fine contempt for myself,” retorted Cadet Holmes scornfully. “Besides, Dick, though I have done some fairly good things in football, I don’t believe I’d be worth a kick without you. It was playing with you that made me shine, always.”
Late that evening the cadet corps returned, in the gloomiest frame of mind.
“I can just see the blaze of bonfires at Annapolis,” groaned Douglass. “Say, the middies just fairly tore our scalps off. I always had an ambition to captain the Army eleven, but I never thought I’d be dragged down so deep under the mire!”
The details of that sad game for the Army need not be gone into here. All the particulars of that spiritedly fought disaster will be found in the fourth volume of the Annapolis Series, entitled “_Dave Darrin’s Fourth Year At Annapolis_.”
A lot of the cadets who felt sorry for “Doug” came to his room.
“I haven’t altogether gotten it through my weak mind yet,” confessed the disheartened Army football captain. “I can’t understand how those little middies managed to treat us quite so badly.”
“I can tell you,” retorted Anstey.
“Then I wish you would,” begged “Doug.”
“Go ahead!” clamored a dozen others.
“I don’t know whether you fellows believe in hoodoos?” asked Anstey.
“Hoodoos?”
“Yes; the Army is under one now.”
“Pshaw, Anstey!”
“Explain yourself, Anstey!”
“There is a man in this class,” replied the Virginian solemnly, “who has been treated unjustly by the others. Lots of you won’t see it, and can’t be made to reason. But that injustice has put the hoodoo on the Army’s athletics, and the hoodoo will strut along beside the present first class all the way through this year. You’ll find it out more and more as time goes on. Just wait until next spring, and see the Navy walk away with the baseball game, too.”
“Stop that, Anstey!”
“Put him out!”
“Give him soothing syrup.”
“Wait until June, gentlemen,” retorted the Virginian calmly. “Then you’ll see.”
“What rot!” sneered Jordan bitterly.
“Well, of course,” admitted others in undertones, “we lost through not having Prescott and Holmes on the eleven. But we’d better lose, even, than win through men not fit to associate with.”
“Prescott must be chuckling,” jeered Durville.
“He’s doing nothing of the sort, suh!” flared Anstey. “And I’m prepared to maintain my position.”
CHAPTER XII
READY TO BREAK THE CAMEL’S BACK
From Thanksgiving to Christmas the time seemed to fly all too fast for most of the young men of the corps of cadets.
Dick Prescott, however, had never known time to drag so fearfully. Cut off from association with any but Greg, Dick had much, very much time on his hands.
Full of a dogged purpose to stick to his word given to Lieutenant Denton, Prescott used nearly all of his waking time in study when he was not at recitation. In his classes he soared. In engineering and law, the studies of this term which called for the most exacting thought, Prescott showed unusual signs of “maxing,” or getting among the highest marks. Yet, after all this was done, so much leisure did the lonely Dick have that he found time to coach Greg and pull him along over the hard parts.
“Look at that fellow recite! Look where he stands in the sections!” growled Durville in bewilderment to Jordan.
“It looks as if the sneak meant to stick,” uttered Jordan incredulously.
“Yet of course he knows he can’t. If it were only for West Point he might stick, but the Army, through his lifetime, would be just as bad for him.”
It had been a general notion that Prescott, either too proud or too stubborn to allow himself to be forced out, would wait and “fess out cold” at the January semi-annuals. Thus he would be dropped for deficiency, and would not have to admit to anyone that he had allowed himself to be driven from the Military Academy by the “silence” that had been extended to him.
Jordan knew better than to go near the fiery young Anstey, so he managed to induce Durville to speak to the Virginian as to Prescott’s plans.
“I don’t know Mr. Prescott’s intentions, suh,” replied Anstey with perfect truth and a good deal of dignity. “I am bound, suh, to follow the class’s action, suh, much as I disapprove of it. So I have had no word with Mr. Prescott later than you have.”
“But you know the fellow’s roommate, Mr. Holmes,” suggested Durville.
“I am under the impression that you do, too, suh,” replied Anstey significantly, yet without infusing offence into his even tones.
It was no use. The first class could only guess. No cadet knew, unless it were Holmes, what Prescott’s intentions were about quitting the corps in the near future. And Greg, usually both chatty and impulsive, could be as cold and silent as a sphinx where his chum’s secrets or interests were concerned.
Had he wished, he might have gone home at Christmas, for a day or two, for he was on the good-conduct roll; but Dick felt that Christmas at home would be a heart break just now. As he did not go, Greg did not go either.
The reader may be sure that Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell, at Annapolis, knew the state of affairs with their old-time friend and leader. Greg had sent word of what was happening with Dick.
“Buck up—that’s all, old chap,” Dave wrote from the Naval Academy. “You never did a mean thing, and you never will. Even your class will learn that before very long. So buck up! Hit the center of the line and charge through! Don’t think Dan and I are not sorry for you, but we’re even more interested in seeing you charge right through all disaster in a way that fits the pride, courage and honor that we know you to possess. I asked Dan if he had any message to send you. Old Dan’s reply was: ‘Dick doesn’t need any message. If there’s any fellow on earth who can jump in and scalp Fate, it’s our old Dick.’ There you are, Army chum! We’re merely waiting for word that you’ve won out, for you’re bound to.”
January came, and with it the semi-annual examinations. So high was Dick’s class standing that he had to go up for but one “writ.” That was Spanish.
“I reckon Spanish is where he falls,” chuckled Durville, when Jordan spoke to him about it. “It’s easy to make mistakes enough on Spanish verbs and declensions to throw a fellow down and out. That’ll be Prescott’s line.”
“Of course,” nodded Jordan. Yet Dick’s enemy was very far from feeling hopeful that such would be the case.
“I never imagined the fellow could stick as long as he has,” Jordan told himself disconsolately.
One night Anstey, just before the semi-ans., took a chance. Usually the Virginian was careful in matters of discipline. But now he invited a dozen members of his class to his room to discuss an “important matter.”
“Going?” asked Durville of Jordan.
“I’m not invited, Durry,” replied the other.
“I am, and I’m going.”
“But you don’t know the subject of the meeting?”
“No; that’s what puzzles me,” admitted Durville. “I’m wondering if it has anything to do with choosing the class ring, or selecting our uniforms for after graduation.”
“You simpleton!” cried Jordan in disgust. “You don’t see far, do you? Can’t you guess what the meeting is to discuss?”
“I’m blessed if I can.”
“Anstey, outside of Holmes, has been the most constant friend of Prescott. Now, Prescott has his chance of passing, if the class ‘silence’ on him can be lifted. Anstey is going to sound class opinion. If the ‘silence’ can’t be lifted, then Prescott is going to ‘fess’ down and out, and we shall see the last of him.”
“Poor old fellow!” muttered Durville. “Say, do you know, I’m growing almost sorry for the poor beggar and his long, bitter dose.”
“After what he did to you?” demanded Jordan with instant scorn. “Durville, I thought you a man of spirit.”
“May a man of spirit forgive his enemy, especially when he sometimes doubts whether the other fellow really is an enemy?” demanded Durville.
“Oh, he may, I suppose,” replied Jordan, his lip curling. “On the whole, however, I am a good deal surprised at seeing you accept the loss of all your liberties and privileges so easily as you are doing.”
Naturally, the effect of Jordan’s words was to kill a good deal of Durville’s fleeting sympathy, for the latter had suffered a good deal from the restraint of his liberties, following the escapade for which Dick had reported him.
The meeting in Anstey’s room resulted in the secret gathering of a dozen men. Eight of these were friends of Dick, who would still like to see the class action reversed or ended. But Anstey had been clever enough also to invite four men who were numbered among Prescott’s adversaries. One of these was Douglass, the cadet who had been elected to succeed Dick as class president.
“Now, gentlemen,” began Anstey, in his soft voice of ordinary conversation, “I don’t believe we have any need of a presiding officer in this little meeting. With your permission, I will state why I have asked you to come here.
“For months, now, we have had a member of this class in Coventry. Barely more than a majority believed in that Coventry, but once action had been taken by the class, the disapproving minority stood loyally by class action. I have been among those of the minority to abide by majority action, and I can assure you that I have suffered very nearly as much as has Mr. Prescott, whose case I am now discussing.
“The majority has had its way for months. Is it not now time, if the class will not grant full justice, at least to grant something to the wishes of the minority?”
“What do you mean?” asked one of Dick’s opponents. “Mr. Prescott will let himself be found deficient in at least one study, won’t he, and thus take his unpopular presence away from the Military Academy?”
“I cannot answer that,” admitted Anstey slowly. “Doubtless many of you will be surprised when I tell you that I have had no word in the matter from Mr. Prescott. I have not even mentioned the subject to his roommate, Mr. Holmes.”
“Then whom do you represent?” demanded the other cadet.
“Myself and other believers in Mr. Prescott,” replied Anstey simply. “The very least we ask is that you stop punishing so many of us through Mr. Prescott. Gentlemen, do you not feel that any man who commands as many friends in his class as does Mr. Prescott must be a man above the petty meannesses of which he was accused, and for which he was sent to Coventry?”
“I’ve been one of the sufferers through Mr. Prescott,” commented Durville grimly. “As for me, I’ll admit that I’d be glad to see the ‘silence’ lifted. I feel that Mr. Prescott has been punished enough, and that, if we now lift the ‘silence,’ he would be more careful after this. I think he has been chastened enough. If I could find any reason whatever for refusing to vote for the end of the Coventry, it would come from the question as to whether any one class has the right to upset the traditions and establish a new precedent for such cases.”
“There is the most of the case in a nutshell I am afraid,” declared Cadet Douglass. “In our interior corps discipline we not only work from tradition, but we strengthen or weaken it for the classes that are to follow us. Have we any right to weaken a tradition that is as old as the Military Academy itself?”
These simple remarks, made with an absence of bitter feeling, swung the tide against Dick. The meeting in Anstey’s room lasted for more than an hour. When the meeting broke up Anstey and some of his advisers felt convinced that to call a class meeting would be merely to bring about a vote that Prescott was to be kept in Coventry for all time to come.
Anstey told Greg the result of the meeting, but Holmes did not tell his chum.
“It’s all settled as it ought to be,” declared Cadet Jordan.
“You mean—–” asked Durville.
“Why, either Prescott will have to be ‘found’ in his exams., or else he’ll be bound to resign as soon as he has proved that his departure from West Point was not due to poor scholarship. Which ever way he prefers to do it, the fellow will have to get out of the corps within the next few days!”
“Yes; I suppose so,” almost sighed Durville.
“Why, hang you, Durry, you talk like a man whose good opinion can be won by a kicking.”
“Do you” asked Durville, with a warning flash in his eyes.
“Oh, don’t take me too seriously,” protested Jordan. “But I cannot help marveling at your near liking for the man who landed you in such a scrape.”
“I don’t enjoy hitting a man who is down; that is all,” returned Durville. “I’ve seen Mr. Prescott down for so many weeks and months that I’d like to see how he looks when he’s a man instead of an under dog.”
“Well, I’m glad to say the class is plainly not of your way of thinking,” growled Jordan. “The class is for maintaining higher ideals of the honor of military service and true comradeship. So it’s only a matter of what date the fellow selects for leaving here.”
And truly that was the view that seemed to be pressing more and more tightly upon Dick Prescott. The pressure was becoming more than he could bear. He had followed Lieutenant Denton’s advice, and had put up a good and a brave fight. But to be “the only dog in a cage of lions” is a fearful ordeal for the bravest—especially when the door is open.
Greg never seemed to notice the sighs that occasionally escaped Dick Prescott’s lips. Holmes no longer tried to cheer his friend by open speech or advice. Yet not a thing that Dick did escaped the covert watchfulness of his roommate.
The semi-ans. over, and the results posted on the bulletin board in the Academic Building, it was discovered that Cadet Richard Prescott now stood number twenty-four in his class—a rank never heretofore won by him.
Cadet Jordan was so furious that his face was ghastly white when he made the discovery.
“Will nothing ever drive that living disgrace Prescott out of the corps?” Jordan asked three or four of the men. “Why, the fellow is defying class authority! He’s making fools of us all. He bluntly asks us what we think we can do about it!”
“We’ll have to show Prescott, then,” grimly replied one of the cadets with whom Jordan talked.
“But how?” demanded Cadet Jordan craftily. “Is there any possible way of making as thickheaded or stubborn a fellow as Prescott realize that he simply can’t go on with us? That we won’t have him with us?”
“Oh, I think there’s a way,” smiled the other cadet.
“Then I wonder why some one doesn’t find it?” demanded Jordan wrathfully.
“We shall, I think.”
Greg scented new mischief in the air, yet he was hardly the one to do the scouting.
Anstey, however, could look about for the news, and he could properly discuss it with Cadet Holmes.
With the beginning of the last half of the year the members of the first class found themselves sufficiently busy with their studies. Dick’s affair was allowed to slumber for a few days.
Even Cadet Jordan, whose sole purpose now in life was to “work” Prescott out of the corps, was clever enough to assent to letting the matter rest for a few days.
After another fortnight, however, the first class, in its moments of leisure, especially in the brief rests right after meals, again began to throb over what was considered the brazen and open defiance of Dick Prescott in persisting in remaining a cadet at the Military Academy.
So many members of the class, however, insisted on going slowly and with great deliberation that the Jordan faction did not make the mistake of rushing matters. At any rate, Prescott was in Coventry, and there he would stay.
Thus February came on and passed slowly. To all outward appearances Prescott was as selfpossessed and contented as ever he had been while at the Military Academy.
Now, Army baseball was the topic. The nine and other members of the baseball squad were practising in earnest. Durville had been chosen to captain the nine.
Though there was some mighty good material in the nine, neither the coaches nor Durville were wholly satisfied.
“Holmesy,” broached Durville plaintively one day, “you play a grand game of football.”
“Thank you,” replied Greg, with a pretense of mock modesty; “I know it.”
“And you must play a great game of ball, too.”
“I did once—pardon these blushes. Dick Prescott was my old trainer in baseball.”
“Oh, bother Prescott! We can’t have him.”
“I don’t play well without him,” remarked Greg blandly.
“Come over to practice this afternoon, won’t you?”
“Yes; but I don’t believe I’ll try for the nine.”
“Come over and let us see your style, any way.”
Greg turned up late that afternoon for practice. What he showed the captain and coaches had them fairly “rattled” with desire to slip Greg into the nine.
“I’m much obliged to you all,” Greg insisted gently, “but I told you I wasn’t going to try for the nine. I never played a game without Prescott, and I know I’d be a hoodoo if I did.”
Though a great lot of pressure was brought to bear upon him, Holmes still held out. It was his privilege to refuse to play, if he so chose. Above all, the coaches, who were Army officers, could not urge him.
“That man Holmes is just the fellow we need to round out the team,” complained one of the players to Durville.
“Yes,” sighed the captain of the Army nine; “and Holmesy tells me that he’s a tyro to Mr. Prescott.”
“Then Mr. Prescott must be a wonder on the diamond,” grunted the other cadet.
“I hear that he is,” assented Durville. “By the way, you remember Darrin and Dalzell, who helped the Navy team to wipe the field up with us last year?”
“I reckon I do.”
“Well, it seems that Prescott, Holmes, Darrin and Dalzell were all members of the athletic squad in the same High School before they entered the service.”
“Darrin and Dalzell are going to make it possible for the Navy to wipe us up again this year, too,” continued the other cadet plaintively.
“I don’t believe they would, if we could put in Mr. Prescott and Holmesy for this year.”
“But we can’t, Durry.”
“No; I know it.”
“So what’s the use of talking.” Nevertheless, there was a lot of talking, and dozens waylaid Greg and tried to induce him to reconsider. But he wouldn’t, and that was all there was to it. No one even thought of lifting the ban from Prescott in order to gain either or both of these cadet athletes. West Point cadets are consistent. They will never lift the ban, once they believe it to have been justly laid, just in order to make a better athletic showing. The Academy authorities demand that a team athlete shall stand well in his studies and general discipline; the cadets themselves demand also that the man who carries their athletic colors must conform to cadet ideals of honor. And Prescott, being in Coventry, surely was not to be regarded as a man of honor.
Washington’s Birthday had come and passed, and Prescott still lingered in the cadet corps. Indeed, he seemed as determined as ever upon graduating.
There were limits, however, to class patience. It was Anstey who got on the track of the news and brought it to Greg.
“A class meeting is to be called ten days hence,” reported the Virginian. “The meeting will be announced at supper formation to-night. It is set well ahead in order to give the fellows plenty of time to think over the subject for discussion.”
“That discussion,” guessed Holmes, “is to be as to the best means of driving Dick from the corps.”
“You’ve guessed it, suh,” replied the Virginian sorrowfully. “Whatever the class feels called upon to do, suh, I reckon it will be something that will break our poor camel’s back.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE FIGURES IN THE DARK
And Dick?
The reader will hardly need to be told that this spirited young cadet was suffering his unmerited disgrace as keenly as ever.
More keenly, in fact, for every day that the silence continued it seemed to add to the weight of the burden that bound him down.
Yet Greg asked no questions, for he felt that it would be safer not to do so. He had just barely told Prescott of the purpose of the coming class meeting, which the latter cadet had already guessed for himself, however.
“I suppose I’ll have a few loyal friends at that meeting?” asked Dick, with a sad smile.
“Just as many friends as ever,” asserted Holmes stoutly.
“I’m mighty grateful for that,” nodded Dick. “But what I seem to need is more friends than ever.”
“We’ll find them for you, if there’s any way to do it,” promised Holmes, and there the talk dropped.
“If the class goes against me again, and harder than before, I’m certain I shall have to see Lieutenant Denton once more and tell him that I can’t stand it any longer,” Dick told himself.
The class meeting was to be held on a Monday evening. On the night of the Saturday before, when scores of cadets were over at Cullum Hall at a merry “hop,” Prescott slipped out of barracks by himself in Greg’s absence.
Almost unconsciously Prescott’s steps turned in the direction of Trophy Point. In the darkness he stood before Battle Monument, on which are inscribed the names of the West Point graduates who have fallen in battles.
“Will my name ever be there, or have any chance to be there?” wondered Dick, a big lump rising in his throat.
A tear stood in either eye, but he brushed them aside as unworthy of a soldier. Was he ever going to be a soldier, he wondered.
“I don’t know that I’m really ready to be killed in battle,” thought Dick grimly. “It would be enough to know that my name is to be on the roll of graduates of the Military Academy, and afterwards on the rolls of the Army as an officer who had served with credit wherever he had been placed. But the fates seem against even that much. Hang it all, what was it that Lieutenant Denton said about faith and right, and faith being as much the soldier’s duty as honor? I guess he was never placed in just such a fix as mine!”
For, slowly, all of Dick’s iron-clad resolution to “stick it out” was wearing away. It was becoming plainer to him, every day, that he could not stay in the Army if he were always to live in Coventry as far as his brother officers were concerned.
“I wonder what the fellows will do at the meeting next Monday night?” Dick pondered, as he turned and strolled back by another road. “If the fellows could only realize how unjust they are without meaning to be! But I can’t make them see that. I’ll have to resign, of course, but I promised Lieutenant Denton to talk it over with him before doing anything of the sort, and I’ll keep my word.”
Very absent minded did the young cadet become in the midst of his perplexed musings. He heard the sound of martial music and unconsciously his feet moved in quicker time.
It was as though he were marching, led on by he knew not what.
Straight toward the music he moved, with the tread of a soldier responding to the drums.
Then, at last, when he was almost upon the building, Prescott came to himself and stopped abruptly.
“Cullum Hall!” he muttered, with a harsh laugh. “The night of the cadet hop. My classmates are in there, free-hearted and happy, and taking their lessons in the social graces—while I am on the outside, the social outcast of the class!”
Yet, as there were no cadets in sight, out at this north end of the handsome building, Prescott presently moved forward, nearer.
“The old, old story of the beggar on the outside! The man on the outside, looking in!” muttered Dick with increasing bitterness. “Yet I may as well look, since there is none to see me or deny me.”
Around the north end Dick passed, just as the brilliant music of the Military Academy orchestra was drawing to its close. In his misery the young cadet leaned against the face of the building, behind an angle in the wall.
As he stood there Dick saw the figure of a man flit, by him. The stranger was dressed in citizen’s clothes. There was nothing suspicions in that, since there is no law to prevent citizens from visiting the Military Academy. But there was something stealthy about this stranger’s movements.
“It is a wonder he didn’t see me,” mused Dick. “He went by within eight feet of me.”
Dick was about to make his presence known by stepping out into sight, when the stranger halted.
“Perhaps it may be as well not to show myself just yet,” flashed through Prescott’s mind. “If the fellow is up to any mischief probably I can prevent it.”
A cold, biting breeze swept up from the Hudson River below. It was chilling in the extreme, here at the top of the bluff, but Dick, in his misery, had been proof against weather.
Not so with the stranger. He stamped his feet and struck his hands against his sides. Then, after some moments, as though angry at some one within Cullum Hall, the stranger wheeled and shook one clenched fist at the windows overhead.
“Whom has that fellow a grouch against?” Dick wondered in spite of himself.
Just an instant later he heard a quick step coming around the north end of the building.
A cadet was coming, beyond a doubt, and very likely to meet this impatient or angry stranger.
Prescott had too much honor to play the eavesdropper. He was just about to step out when the newcomer turned the corner, coming on straight past where Prescott stood in the deep shadow.
The newcomer was a cadet, and that cadet was Mr. Jordan.
“Well, my good fellow, have I kept you waiting long?” demanded Jordan, just the second after he had stepped past Dick without seeing the latter.
“You could a jumped faster,” growled the stranger. “With all I know against you, Jordan, it will pay you to nurse my good feeling a little harder.”
“Why, what’s the matter with you now?” demanded Jordan more seriously.
Somehow, Dick could not pull himself away just then.
“Have you brought me some of that money you owe me?” demanded the stranger gruffly.
“Now, you know I can’t, before graduation day,” pleaded Jordan whiningly.
“And I know that, when graduation day comes, you’ll tell me that every dollar you had in the world had to go into uniforms,” snapped the stranger. “I’ll tell you what I do know about you, Jordan, my boy. I know that if you don’t find the money, turn it over and get back my note, you’ll never graduate! Cadets can’t borrow money on their notes; it’s against the regulations. If it was known that you had borrowed five hundred dollars of me already, and that you were defaulting on principal and interest, too—–“
“It wasn’t five hundred,” broke in Jordan nervously. “It was just two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“The note says five hundred,” retorted the stranger tersely, with a shrug of his shoulders. And there’s interest on it, too. And you haven’t paid a dollar. You told me you could get the money from home.”
“I—I thought I could, at that,” stammered Cadet Jordan. “But I wrote my father, and he said he was near bankruptcy—–“
“Near bankruptcy?” almost screamed the stranger. “You young swindler. You told me your father was a wealthy man!”
“Sh!” begged Jordan tremulously. “Not so loud! Some one will hear you.”
“I don’t care who hears me,” retorted the stranger in an ugly tone. “You’ve been swindling me right along, it seems. Now, you’ll hand me some money to-night, and all of the balance by next Wednesday, or I’ll go straight to the superintendent. Then you’ll lose your nice little berth here. You putting on airs, and yet you told me how you had rebuked and paid back another cadet for doing the same breezy thing.”
Dick, his cheeks burning with the shame of having allowed himself to listen to so much, was on the very point of slipping away around the north end of Cullum Hall. But this last remark gripped him, holding him feverishly to the spot.
“Prescott, I believe you said the fellow’s name was,” went on the stranger.
“Yes,” admitted Jordan. “And I put it all over him in a way that should make anyone else afraid of having me for an enemy!”
Dick’s heart gave a great, almost strangling bound. Then it was quiet again, and his ears seemed preternaturally keen.
So sharp was his hearing, in fact, that he heard a sound that did not reach the ears of the other cadet or the latter’s companion.
It was someone else coming. With all the stealth in the world Dick now managed to slip around the end of the building and toward the front.
A cadet had stepped out as though seeking a breath of cool air between dances. Dick darted forward on tiptoe until he recognized the oncoming one. It was Douglass, president of the first class.
“Mr. Douglass!” whispered Dick, stopping squarely before his successor in class honors.
Douglass, without looking at his appealing fellow classman, or opening his lips to answer, stepped around Prescott.
But Dick caught his unwilling comrade firmly by the arm.
“Douglass,” he whispered, “in the name of justice, listen to me just an instant—a swift instant, too! I think the chance has come to clear me of the load of dislike and contempt with which I am regarded here. This appeal is between man and man! Jordan is around the corner, telling a stranger how he trapped me and got me into disgrace with the class. As a matter of cadet justice