are your own master, sir---and your own provider! Now,
go---and never again let any of your family hear from the scoundrel
who has disgraced us all."

Vainly Bert opened his mouth, trying to speak. The words would
not come. His father again advancing threateningly, Bert edged
towards the door.

"This looks like your fun, as it is your work, Dick Prescott!"
snarled the wretch. "Wait! If it takes me ten years I'll make
you suffer for this!"

Crash! Mr. Dodge had again raised his cane to strike the young
man. But Bert had pulled open the door, closing it after him
as he fled, and only the plate-glass panel stopped the fall of
the cane.

"I'll pay for the damage done to your door Griffin," promised
the banker.

"Don't worry about that, sir," nodded the attorney.

"I feel that we've been here long enough, gentlemen," broke in
Cadet Prescott, as he and Greg rose. "Mr. Dodge, I can't begin
to tell you how sorry I am that this scene was necessary."

"I feel sure of your sympathy. Prescott, and of yours, too, Holmes.
Thank you both," replied the banker. "You are both fine, manly
young fellows. I wish I had been favored with a son like either
of you. Now, I have no son!"

Dick and Greg got away as unobtrusively as they could.

Bert Dodge did try to go home to see his Mother, but, by his father's
orders, he was put out of the house by two men servants.

Immediately after that Bert vanished from Gridley. At first he
tried the effect of writing whining, penitent, begging letters home.
Receiving no replies, Bert finally drifted off into the space of
the wide world.

Later on in the course of these chronicles he may reappear.

Lawyer Griffin consulted with the district attorney, and it was
decided not to make perjury cases out of the affair. Fessenden,
Bettrick and Deevers, however, were all three warned and the district
attorney filed away the lying affidavits, in case a use for them
should ever come up.

By degrees the story of Bert Dodge's latest infamy leaked out.
The news, however, did not come through any word spread by either
of our young West Pointers.

CHAPTER IX

BACK TO THE GOOD, GRAY LIFE

A Glorious summer it was for the two second classman on furlough!

Yet, like all other things, good and otherwise, it had to come
to an end.

One morning near the end of August, Dick and Greg, attended by
a numerous concourse of friends, went to the railway station.

The proud parents wer