“What?  After his trick in pushing you from the train?”

“I hope he has lived to regret that,” said Dick quietly.

“You’re not quite a lunatic, old ramrod, are you?” asked Greg wonderingly.

“Oh, I’ve heard of fellows being bad, and then afterward repenting,” murmured Dick.  “Perhaps this has been the case with Haynes.  You see, Greg, lying there in hospital, day after day, I had time to do a lot of thinking.  Perhaps I learned to be just a trifle less severe in judging other fellows.”

Anstey visited as often as he could.  He and Greg did all they could to coach Prescott over the hard work that he had missed.

“There isn’t going to be anything in the academic work to bother you,” promised Anstey.  “You’ll have lots of chance to pull through in the general review.”

“It’s only the physical side of the case that gives me any uneasiness,” replied Dick.  “And I’m not worrying about that, either.”

“I should say not, suh!” replied the Virginian with emphasis.  “I had a chance to talk with Captain Goodwin, one day, without being too fresh, and he told me, old ramrod, that your work in athletics did a lot to save your back from faring worse.  He said you were built with unusual strength in the back, and that many a hard tug in the football scrimmages had made you strong where you most need to be strong now.”

“Now let’s get back to work with our old ramrod, Anstey,” cautioned Greg.

“Surely, suh, with all my heart,” nodded Anstey.  “But by day after to-morrow he’ll have caught up with us, and be coaching us along for the general review.”

The hard work that Dick had done through March and in early April now stood him in excellent stead.  He had, really, only to make sure of the work that he had missed while at hospital.  As to reviewing the earlier work of the second term, there was not the slightest need.

By the time that the general review was half through it was plain enough that Dick Prescott’s class standing was going to be better than it had ever been before.  In fact, he was slated to make the middle of this class.

“I’ll be above the middle of the class next year, if the fates allow me to remain on with the corps,” Dick promised himself and his friends.

“Oh, you’ll be in the Army, suh, until you’re retired for age, suh,” predicted Anstey with great gravity.

The latter part of May passed swiftly for the busy cadets.  The first class men were dreaming of their commissions in the more real Army beyond West Point; the present third classmen were looking forward with intense longing to the furlough that would begin as soon as they had stepped over the line into the second class.  The new plebes were looking forward to summer encampment with a mixture of longing and dread—–­the latter emotion on account of the hazing that might come to them in the life under the khaki-colored canvas.