“That’s just about like Doug,” observed Greg Holmes.  “I’ll bet he never thought until Laura called off the signal for the kick.”

“What’s that?” demanded Miss Bentley.

“Pardon me,” apologized Greg.  “I think in football terms altogether too often.  But I’m glad Jordan saw the goal and then lost it.”

“I think Dick wants to tell us something about the fellow Jordan, and some of the other cadets,” Belle hinted.

Between them the chums told the story of how the “silence” had come to be imposed.  Prescott did not, however, tell his feminine visitors how he had happened to catch Jordan outside the guard line.

“How did that happen?” asked Laura innocently.

“Now, I’d tell you before I would any one else on earth,” protested Dick with warmth, “but I haven’t told Greg or anyone else.  I had good military reasons, not personal ones.”

“Oh!” replied Laura.  And, not understanding, she felt more than a little hurt by Dick’s failure to answer frankly.

Both girls, however, talked very comfortingly, and Mrs. Bentley very sensibly aided their efforts.  All three tried to make it quite plain to Dick Prescott that no amount, or consequence, of lack of understanding by his classmates could make any difference with his standing in their eyes.

Presently Mrs. Bentley consented to the girls strolling down the road between the hotel and cadet barracks.  Dick, of course, walked with Laura, while Greg and Belle remained at a discreet, out-of-earshot distance.

At last they stood again by the gateway through the shrubbery at the edge of the hotel grounds.

“Dick-----” began Laura hesitatingly.

“Yes?” asked the young cadet captain.

“Dick, no matter how far your classmates push this matter,” begged Laura, her eyes big and earnest, “don’t let their acts force you out of the Army.  No matter what happens—–­stick!”

Cadet Prescott shook his head wearily.  “I can’t stick,” he replied firmly, “if I am shown that my presence in the Army is not going to be for the good and the harmony of the service!”

Laura sighed.  Another keen pang of disappointment, was hers.

She now believed that her influence over Dick Prescott was not anywhere near as strong as she had hoped it would be.

A very wretched girl rested her head on a pillow that night, and slept but poorly.

In the forenoon, while the corps was absent on an infantry practice march, Laura, her mother and her friend went dejectedly away from West Point.

CHAPTER VIII

FATE SERVES DICK HER MEANEST TRICK

The furloughed second class returned, the encampment ended and the corps marched back into cadet barracks.

The new academic year had begun, with new text-books, new studies, new intellectual torments for the hundreds of ambitious young soldiers at the United States Military Academy.