“Not a penny of them,” retorted the banker sternly.  “It is you who forget that you reached the age of twenty-one just three days ago.  You 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 were there, of course, and so were the parents of Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell, the latter happy in the knowledge that their boys would soon be home for the brief September leave from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.