“Do you place your friendship for Prescott above the dignity and honor of the class?” demanded Jordan.

Stubbs flushed.

“I don’t believe I’ll stay, Jordan, thank you.  But I can offer you some advice, if you feel in need of any.”

“Yes?  Commence firing!”

“Go slow in your grudge against Prescott.  Personally, I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”

“Oh, Prescott won’t really be hurt,” sneered Jordan.  “He told me flatly that he’d decline any calling out that I might attempt.”

“You—–­you didn’t try to call him out, did you?”

“I hinted that I might do so.”

“Call him out for reporting you?”

“Oh, I didn’t specify what the cause of the challenge would be,” returned Jordan airily and with a knowing wink.

“Jordan, old fellow, you don’t mean that you’d call a cadet out for reporting you officially?  Why, that’s against every tenet we have.  And if such a challenge came to the ears of the superintendent, or of the commandant of cadets, you’d be fired out of the corps before you’d have time to turn around twice.”

“Who’d carry the tale that I did call Prescott out?” retorted Cadet Jordan, with a knowing leer.

“Prescott would, if he were a tenth part of the bootlick that you represent him to be,” replied Stubbs.

“Better stay, old man; and I’ll call in a few others.”

“No, sir,” returned Cadet Stubbs, with a shake of his head.  “The further I go into this matter the less I like it.  I’m on my way, Jordan.”

Within half an hour, however, Cadet Jordan had found three members of the first class who were willing to listen to him.  The matter was threshed out very fully.  Jordan, to his listeners, pooh poohed at the idea that he was “sore” on his own account.  He posed, and rather well, as the champion of first-class dignity.

“I think you’re on the right track, Jordan,” assented Durville rather heartily.  Durville was one of the few who had never liked Dick well.  Durville had always been one of the “wild” ones, and Prescott’s ideas of soldierly duty had grated a good deal on Durville’s own beliefs.

“The class won’t take severe action, anyway,” hinted Tupper.  “We might vote to give Prescott a week’s ‘silence,’ but any permanent ‘cut’ would be out of the question.  The man has done too many things to make himself popular.”

“Besides,” chimed in Brown, “look at the place Prescott holds on the Army football eleven.  Why he—–­and Holmes, too, of course—–­were the pair who saved us from the Navy last November.  And we rely upon that pair to a tremendous extent for the successes we expect this coming fall.”

Jordan’s jaw dropped.  In the heat of his anger he had lost sight of the football situation.  Prescott and Holmes certainly were the prize players of the Army eleven.

“Well, it might do if the class decided on the ‘silence’ for Prescott for a week,” assented Jordan dubiously.