Once, two years before, Haynes had helped to put this punishment on a plebe, who had soon after quitted the Academy.

Then Haynes had thought that sending another to Coventry was, under some circumstances, a fine proceeding.  But now the like fate had befallen him!

“The fellows don’t really mean it.  They’re excited now, but to-morrow they’ll be sorry and call the whole foolishness off,” thought the “cut” man, trying hard to swallow the obstinate lump that rose in his throat.

In the quadrangle, mostly in groups, were fully two hundred cadets.  But not one of these young men would address a word to the exposed turnback.

“There’s one satisfaction, anyway,” thought Haynes savagely, as he walked blindly back toward the door of his own subdivision in barracks, “I can take it all out on the plebes!”

Just as he was going up the steps Haynes encountered a plebe coming out.

“Here, mister!” growled Haynes.  “Swing around with you!  At attention, sir!  What’s your name, mister?”

But the plebe did not even pause.  He did not avert his head, but he took no pains to look at Haynes, merely passing the turnback and gaining the quadrangle below.

Now the utter despair of his position came over Haynes.  How suddenly it had come!  And even Haynes, with his four years at West Point, could hardly realize how the Coventry had been pronounced and carried out in so very few minutes after release from cavalry drill.

Tears of rage and humiliation in his eyes, Haynes stumbled to his room.  Once inside he shunned the window, but stumbled to his chair at the study table, and sank down, his face buried in his arms.

“Oh, I’ll make somebody suffer for this!” he growled.

Out in the quadrangle, now that the turnback was gone, the main theme of conversation was the discovery and exposure of the afternoon.

Pierson was requested to repeat his statement to a large group of first and second classmen.

“I don’t believe a man could get a pin stuck into the toe of his boot accidentally, in the way that Haynes had his pin arranged,” declared Brayton.  “Has one of you fellows a pin to lend me?”

A pin being passed, Brayton sat down on a convenient step and tried to adjust the pin between the sole and the upper of the toe of his boot.

“I can force it in a little way,” admitted Brayton, “but see how the pin wobbles.  It would fall out if I moved my foot hard.  Some of the rest of you try it.”

Other cadets repeated the experiment.

“I’ll tell you, fellows,” said Spurlock at last; “a fellow couldn’t accidentally get a pin in that position, and hold it firm there.  But I know that, after repeated trying, and working to fit the pin, I could finally get matters so that I could quickly fit a pin that would hold in place and be effective.”

“Of course,” nodded Lewis.  “It can be done, but only by design.”