ight in the midst of a lot of loose hay from the bales dumped
there three days before, the leader dislodged with his sword the top of a
clothing box that had been thickly covered with sand and hay--and there
was the outlet. "Easy as rolling off a log, colonel," said old Cobb, with
a sarcastic grin. "This could all be done without a man you've blamed and
arrested being a whit the wiser. They sawed a panel out of the floor,
scooped the sand out of this tunnel, banked it solid against the weather
boarding inside, filled up the whole space, pretty near, but ran their
tunnel under fence and sidewalk, crawled down the gutter to the next
block out of sight of the sentries, then walked away free men. Those
three thieves who got away were old hands. The other men in the
guardhouse were only mild offenders, except Morton. 'Course he was glad
of the chance to go with 'em. I s'pose you'll release my sergeant and
those sentries now."

"I'll do nothing of the kind," answered Canker, red with wrath, "and your
suggestion is disrespectful to your commanding officer. When I want your
advice I'll ask for it."

"Well, Mr. Gray will be relieved to learn of this anyhow. I suppose I may
tell _him_," hazarded the junior member, mischievously.

"Mr. Gray be ----. Mr. Gray has everything to answer for!" shouted the
angered colonel. "It was he who telephoned for a carriage to meet and run
those rascals off. Mr. Gray's fate is sealed. He can thank God I don't
slap him into the guardhouse with his chosen associates, but _he_ shan't
escape. Sergeant of the guard, post a sentry over Lieutenant Gray's tent,
with orders to allow no one to enter or leave it without my written
authority. Mr. Gray shall pay for this behind the prison bars of
Alcatraz."

CHAPTER VIII.

Social circles at West Point at long, rare intervals are shocked by a
scandal, and at short ones, say every other summer--are stirred by some
kind of a sensation, and the "Fairy Sisters" were the sensation of the
year '97. They came in July; they went in September, and meanwhile they
were "on the go," as they expressed it, from morn till late at night.
Physically they were the lightest weights known to the hop room.
Mentally, as their admirers in the corps expressed it, "either of them
can take a fall out of any woman at the Point," and this was especially
true of the elder--Mrs. Frank Garrison--whose husband was on staff duty
in the far West. Both were slight, fragile, tiny blo