er.

Had it not been for the "Blade" Dick Prescott would not have been
as well supplied with pocket money as he had been during his High
School days.

Everyone about the "Blade" office, in the old days, had expected
that Prescott, at the end of his High School course, would join
the "Blade" staff as a "regular." But Dick had had his own plans
about West Point, although he had kept his intentions a secret
from nearly every one but his chums.

Early one bright June afternoon Dick strolled into the "Blade"
office.

"Why, hullo, my boy!" cried Editor Pollock, jumping up out of
his chair and coming forward, hand outstretched. Bradley, the
news editor, and Len Spencer, the "star" reporter, now growing
comically fat, rushed forward to meet the cadet.

"Sit down, Dick, and let's hear all about West Point," urged Mr.
Pollock, placing a chair beside his own, while the other members
of the staff crowded about. "What sort of a place is West Point,
and how do you like it there?"

Dick smilingly gave them a lively account of life at the United
States Military Academy.

"I hope you're keeping track of all this, Len," nodded the editor
to Reporter Spencer. "Tell us plenty more, too Dick. We want
to give you and Holmes at least a bully two-column write-up."

Dick's cheery look suddenly changed to one of mild alarm.

"Do you want to do me a big favor, Mr. Pollock?"

"Anything up to a page, my boy, and you know it," replied the
editor heartily. "We still regard you as one of the 'Blade' family."

"The favor I'm going to ask, Mr. Pollock, is that you don't give
Greg and myself a write-up."

The editor looked so hurt that Prescott made haste to add, earnestly:

"Please don't misunderstand me, Mr. Pollock. But you simply cannot
imagine the trouble that a fine write-up in a home paper may make
for a cadet. If I were a plebe, now, the upper classman would
get hold of the write-up, somehow, and they'd make me read it aloud,
at least a hundred times, while upper classmen stood about
and congratulated me on being such a fine fellow as the paper
described. As Greg and I are now second classman, we couldn't
be hazed in quite that way. But the other fellows would find
some other way of using that home-paper write-up as a club for
pounding us every now and then. Mr. Pollock, believe me, cadet
is mighty lucky whose home paper doesn't say anything about him."

"What is the matter?" asked the editor gravely. "Are the other