hold it steadily for
ten or fifteen minutes by a friend's watch.

Dodge began to wobble at last. Anstey was sticking it out pluckily,
but knew his endurance must soon give out. Dick and Greg felt
their back muscles and nerves throbbing. Yet neither Judson nor
Pratt showed any intention of giving the command to stop.

Suddenly a quick step was heard in the hallway outside.

Anyone who has been at the Military Academy as long as had Pratt
and Judson knew the meaning of that particular, swift step.

One of the "tacs.," as the tactical officers are called, was making
an unscheduled tour of inspection. For an upper class man to be
caught hazing, or for a plebe to be caught submitting, was equally
dangerous to either yearling or plebe! It might mean dismissal.

CHAPTER VII

A SUDDEN GRIND AT MATH.

Had Dick's been the first door opened six cadets would have been
instantly in serious trouble.

Fortunately the door across the corridor was the first to be opened,
and the six on this side of the hallway heard another cadet's voice
call quietly:

"Attention!"

It was, therefore, a tactical officer making an inspection.

At the United States Military Academy the superintendent, who
has the local rank of colonel, is at the head of this government
institution in all its departments.

Discipline, however, and training in tactics, comes within the
especial province of another officer, known as the commandant of
cadets, who ranks locally as a lieutenant-colonel, and who gets in
closer touch with the cadet corps.

Under the commandant of cadets are several other Army officers,
captains and lieutenants, who take upon themselves the numerous
duties of which the commandant has oversight. These subordinate
officers in the tactical department are known as tactical officers.
The cadets call them "tac.s."

Each day one of these "tac.s" is in charge at the office of the
commandant, which is in cadet headquarter's building, on the
south side of the area of cadet barracks.

This officer, who is in charge for a full period of twenty-four
hours, when his turn comes, is officially designated as the "officer
in charge." Among the cadets he is privately referred to as the
"O.C." In a similar way, in cadet parlance, the commandant himself
is known as the "K.C."

Now, one of the numerous duties of the O.C., who is an Army
officer and himself a graduate of West Point, is to make sudden,
unexpected tours of inspection whenev