“No,” Dave admitted.

“I just heard it all up at ‘The Blade’ office.  The fact that the Military School cadets escorted us in such formal manner to the railway station attracted a lot of attention in Fordham.  The principal of the High School there started a quiet investigation of his own.  Barnes and two other fellows on the Fordham eleven have been suspended from school until the School Board can take up their cases and decide whether they ought to be expelled.  The Fordham principal has also made it plain that next year’s team will have to be scanned by him, and that he’ll keep out of the eleven any fellows who don’t come up to the tests.  There’s a jolly big row on in Fordham, and Barnes isn’t having any sympathy wasted on him you can just bet.”

“It serves him and that whole football crew just right,” blazed Darrin.

Hazelton’s injury kept him out of school only a fortnight.  The supposed break in his leg turned out to be only a sprain.

While school teams like that commanded by Barnes are rare, they are found, now and then.  Yet the fate of rowdy athletes in the school world is usually swift and satisfying.  Other schools refuse to compete with schools that are known to put out “rough-house men.”

Dick & Co. had laid by their togs.  They had said farewell to school athletics.

In the winter’s basket ball they did not intend to take part.  For the baseball nine, that would begin practice soon after the new year, there was plenty of fine material in the lower classes.

“I feel almost as if I had been to a funeral,” snorted Darrin, when he came away from the gym. after having turned in all his togs and paraphernalia.

“It’s time to give the younger fellows a show,” sighed Dick.

“You talk as though we were old men,” gibed Dave.

“In the High School we are,” laughed Dick.   “We’re seniors.   In
a few short months more we shall be graduates, unless-----”

There he stopped, but Darrin didn’t need to look at his chum.  Both knew what that pause meant.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Would-Be Candidates

The big stir came earlier than it had been expected.

Every boy who has followed such matters in his own interest will appreciate what the “big stir” means.

Congressman Spokes, representing the district in which Gridley lay, had a vacant cadetship at West Point within his gift, and also a cadetship at Annapolis.

"On December 17, at nine A.M., at the town hall in Wilburville, I will meet all young men who believe themselves to possess the other proper qualifications for a cadetship at either West Point or Annapolis."

So ran the Congressman’s announcement in the daily press of the district.

Every young man had to be of proper age, height, weight and general good bodily condition.  He must, of course, be a citizen of the United States.