as 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