ying, Mr. Treadwell?"

"Of course"--sneeringly.

"Are you trying to pick trouble with me!" demanded Dave, his eyes
flashing with spirit.

"I repeat that I don't choose to believe your explanation, sir."

"Then you pass me the lie?"

"As you prefer to consider it," jeered the first classman.

"Oh, very good, then, Mr. Treadwell," retorted Dave, eyeing the first
classman and sizing him up.

Treadwell was one of the biggest men, physically, in the brigade. He was
also one of the noted fighters of his class. Beside Treadwell,
Midshipman Darrin did not size up at all advantageously.

"If you do not retract what you just said," pursued Dave Darrin, growing
cooler now that he realized the deliberate nature of the affront that
had been put upon him, "I shall have no choice but to send my friends to
you."

"Delighted to see them, at any time," replied the first classman,
turning disdainfully upon his heel and strolling away.

"Now, why on earth does that fellow deliberately pick a fight with me?"
wondered Darrin, as he strolled along by himself. "Treadwell can thump
me. He can knock me clean down the Bay and into the Atlantic Ocean, but
what credit is there in it for a first classman to thrash a youngster?"

It was too big a puzzle. After thinking it over for some time Dave
turned and strolled back to Bancroft Hall.

"You didn't stay out long!" remarked Dan, looking up with a weary smile
as his chum re-entered their room.

"No," admitted Dave. "There wasn't much fun in being out alone."

With a sigh, Dan turned back to his book, while Dave seated himself at
his own study table, in a brown daze.

Things were happening fast--Dan's impending "bilge" from the Naval
Academy, and his own coming fight with the first classman who would be
sure to make it a "blood fight"!

CHAPTER XVI

HOW DAN FACED THE BOARD

"We trust, Mr. Dalzell, that you can make some statement or explanation
that will show that we shall be justified in retaining you as a
midshipman in the Naval Academy."

It was the superintendent of the United States Naval Academy who was
speaking.

Dan's hour of great ordeal had come upon him. That young midshipman
found himself in the Board Room, facing the entire Academic Board,
trying to remember what Freeman had told him the night before.

The time was 10.30 a.m. on that fateful Monday.

Midshipman Dalzell appeared to be collected, but he was also very
certainly white-faced.

Many a youn