othing
but my pay, if I do graduate. A fellow like Cameron can allow
his wife more for pin money than my whole years pay will come
to. Really, I've no right to marry any but a rich girl, who has
her own income. And, even if I fell in love with a rich girl,
I wouldn't have the nerve to propose to her. I'd feel like a
cheap fortune hunter."

Having made up his mind to put Laura Bentley out of his inner
thoughts, Prescott did not write her as often as formerly.

He wrote often enough, and pleasantly enough to preserve the
courtesies of life. Yet keen-witted Belle Meade was not long in
discovering, from what Laura thought were chance remarks, that
Dick was "dropping away" as a correspondent.

So, too, Laura's letters were fewer and briefer.

"Dick didn't really care for her, I guess," Belle decided, almost
vengefully. "Then the bigger idiot he is, for there aren't many
girls like Laura born in any one century! But Dick sees a good
many girls at West Point, and perhaps he has grown indifferent
to his old friends. There are a good many very 'swell' girls
who visit West Point, too. Horrors! I wonder if Dick and Greg
think that we are too countrified?"

After the first few weeks, with his resolute nature triumphing
over anything that he set his mind to, Prescott found himself
thinking less about Cameron. It was practically a settled matter,
anyway, between Laura and Cameron, so Dick thought, and Cadet
Prescott had his greatly improved standing in his class to console
him for any losses in other directions. Yet Dick would not have
dared to confess, even to himself, how little class standing did
console him.

So hard had been study in the last few weeks that Prescott had
all but forgotten the existence of turnback Haynes. They were
not in the same section in any of the studies, nor did the two
mingle at all in barracks life. Neither went to the hops now,
either.

"Is Prescott afraid of me---or what?" wondered Haynes. "Perhaps
he hopes I have forgotten him, but I haven't. One thing is clear
he doesn't intend to do anything about that train incident, or
he'd have done it long ago. If he thinks I have forgotten my
dislike of him, he may be glad enough to have it just that way.
Bah, as if I could ever get over my dislike for a bootlick like
Prescott! I'd like to get him out of the Army for good! I wonder
if I can't, between now and June? I'd like my future in the Army
a whole lot better with Prescott o