some motive behind his attack," Dave urged.

"It couldn't have been a good motive, anyway," broke in another
midshipman hotly.

"Never mind that part of it, just now," Dave Darrin retorted.
"Fellows, I, for one, don't like to go after Mr. Clairy too hastily
while we're all in doubt about the cause of it."

"We don't need to know the cause," stormed indignant Farley.
"We know the results, and that's enough for us. I favor calling
a class meeting to-morrow night."

"We can do just as much, and act just as intelligently, if we
hold the class-meeting off for two or three nights," Midshipman
Darrin maintained.

"Now, why on earth should we bold off that long?" insisted Fenwick.
"We know, now, that Mr. Clairy has insulted eight members of
our class. We know that he has lied about them, and that the
case is so bad as to require instant attention. All I'm sorry
for is that it's too late to hold the class meeting within the
next five minutes."

Dave found even his own roommate opposed to delay in dealing with
the preposterous case of the outrageous Mr. Clairy.

Yet such was Darrin's ascendency over his classmates in matters
of ethics and policy, that he was able, before taps, to bring
the rest around to his wish for a waiting programme for two or
three days.

"There'll be some explanation of this," Dave urged, when he had
gotten his comrades into a somewhat more reasonable frame of mind.

"The explanation will have to be sought with fists," grumbled
Fenwick. "And there are eight of us, while Clairy has only two
eyes that can be blackened."

The news had spread, of course, and the first class was in a fury
of resentment against one of its own members.

Meanwhile Midshipman Clairy sat at his desk out in the corridor,
clearly calm and indifferent to all the turmoil that his acts
had stirred up in the brigade.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE WHOLE CLASS TAKES A HAND

"Then, Mr. Darrin, you admit the use of impertinent language to
Mr. Clairy, when the midshipman was in charge of the floor?"

This question was put to Dave, the following morning, by the commandant
of midshipmen.

"It would have been an impertinence, sir, under ordinary conditions,"
Darrin answered. "Under the circumstances I believed, sir, that I
had been provoked into righteous anger."

"You still assert that Mr. Clairy's charge that your shoes were
unlaced when you approached him was false?"

"Absolutely false, sir."

"Do you wish any ti