ralize a company, a troop, a battery or a regiment
if he be given power enough.

Every cadet and every officer of the Army is concerned with the
honor of that Army. If he knows that an unworthy man is obtaining
command, it worries the cadet or officer of honor.

Had he been able to offer legal, convincing proof of Haynes's
dastardly conduct in pushing him off the train on the return from
the Army-Navy game, Prescott would have submitted that proof to
the authorities, or else to the members of the second class in
class meeting.

"But Haynes would only lie out of it, of course," Dick concluded.
"As a cadet, his word would have to be accepted as being as good
as mine. So nothing would come of the charges."

A class meeting, unlike a court-martial, might not stand out for
legal evidence, if the moral presumption of guilt were strong
enough; but Cadet Prescott would not dream of invoking class action
unless he had the most convincing proof to offer.

Class action, when it is invoked at West Point, is often more
effective than even the work of a court-martial. If the class
calls upon a member to resign and return to civil life, he might
as well do so without delay. If he does not, he will be "sent
to Coventry" by every other cadet in the corps. If he has the
nerve to disregard this and graduate, he will go forth into the
Army only to meet a like fate at the hands of every officer in
the service. He will always be "cut" as long as he attempts to
wear the uniform.

"Its a shame to let this fellow Haynes stay in the service," Dick
muttered. "And yet my hands are tied. With my lack of evidence
I can't drag him before either a legal or an informal court.
The only thing I can do is to let matters go on, trusting to the
fact that, sooner or later, Haynes will overstep the bounds less
cautiously, and that he'll find himself driven out of the uniform."

On going to his quarters for a study period one afternoon further
along in April, Haynes found himself unable to concentrate his
mind on the lesson before him. He was alone, his roommate being
absent with a section at recitation.

As he sat thus idle at the study table, Haynes toyed with a little
black pin. How the pin had come into his possession he did not
even recall. It was a pin of ordinary size, one of the kind much
used by milliners.

Having nothing else to do, Haynes idly thrust the head of the
pin repeatedly in under the sole at the toe of his right boo