The Army had won, eight to five!

When it was all over the middies cheered the victors as lustily as anyone, though sore hearts beat under the blue uniforms of Annapolis.

West Points cadets, on the other hand, were wild with joy.

Again and again they sent up the rousing corps yell for Prescott and Holmes, with Brayton’s name added.

Turnback Haynes, finding no one to listen to him now, in anything he might have to say against Prescott, turned to stare at the heaving lines of gray.

To himself, Haynes muttered curiously: 

“Humph!”

That one word did not, however, do justice to Haynes’s frame of mind.  He was wild with jealousy and hatred, but dared not show it.

That fellow Prescott will have his head fearfully swelled and be more unbearable than ever! growled Haynes to himself.  Confound him, he has no business at all in the Army!  Why should he be?

Then, after a pause, a cunning look crept slowly into the eyes of the turnback, as he throbbed under his breath: 

If I can have anything to do with it, he wont be much longer in the Army!

For just a moment, ere the teams left the field, the old Gridley chums had a chance to rush over to each other.

“I was afraid of you, Dick,” Dave confessed.  “Not more than I was of you, Dave, laughed Prescott.”

“Did you find the Army such easy stuff to use as a doormat, Dan?” queried Greg dryly.

“Oh, it—­it—­it was the fault of the new rules,” retorted Midshipman Dalzell, making a wry face.  “You know, Greg, you never could play much football.  But the new rules favor the muff style of playing.”

Only a few more words could the quartette exchange.  There was time, however, for a few minutes of talk before the West Pointers were obliged to leave for their train.

Greg, sighed Dick, if we only had Dave and Dan playing on the same team with us, such a game would be great!

“Oh, well,” murmured Greg, “whether Annapolis or West Point lugged off the actual score, the service won, anyway.  For the Army and Navy are inseparable units of the service.”

It was a very orderly and dignified lot of cadets who filed aboard the cadet section of the train to leave for home.  Once the train was well on its way out of Philadelphia, however, the pent-up enthusiasm of the happy sons of the Army broke loose, nor did the tactical officers with them make any effort to restrain the merry enthusiasm.

Some of the cadets went from car to car, in search of more excitement.

Dick Prescott soon became so tired of hero-worship that he slipped along through the rear car a few feet at a time until, at last, unobserved, he managed to make his way out on to the rear platform.

Unobserved, that is, by all save one.  Turnback Haynes, who had been watching Dick with a sort of wild fascination, noted Dick’s latest move.