So Cadet Jordan, first class, saluted, turned on his heel, sought the nearest shady spot and sat down to wait.

His body idle, the young man had plenty of time to think—–­about Cadet Captain Dick Prescott.

“There’s nothing to Prescott but swagger and cheap airs,” decided Mr. Jordan, idly tossing pebbles.  “It’s a pity he can’t be taken down a peg or two!  And now I’m in for demerits before the academic year starts.  Probably I shall have to walk punishment tours, too!”

Somehow, Jordan had come along through his more than three years in the corps without attracting much attention.

He had made no strong friends; even Jordan’s roommate, Atterbury, felt that he knew the man but slightly.

True, Jordan had not so far been strongly suspected of being morose or surly; he had escaped being ostracized, but he certainly was not popular.  If he had made no strong friendships, neither had he so deported himself as to win enmity or even dislike.  He was regarded simply as a very taciturn fellow who desired to be let alone, and his apparent wish in this respect was gratified.

Dick Prescott was of an entirely different character.  Open, sunny, frank, manly, he was a born leader among men, as he had always been among boys.

Dick was a stickler for duty.  He was in training to become an officer of the Regular Army of the United States, and Prescott felt that no man could be a good soldier until the duty habit had become fixed.  So, in his earlier years at West Point, Dick had sometimes been unpopular with certain elements among the cadets because he would not greatly depart from what he believed to be his duty as a cadet and a gentleman.

Readers of the High School Boys’ Series will recall that Prescott, in his home town of Gridley, had been the head of Dick & Co., a sextette of chums and High School athletes.  It was in his High School days that young Prescott had developed the qualities of manliness which the Military Academy at West Point was now rounding off for him.

Readers of the preceding volumes in this series, Dick Prescott’s First Year at West Point, Dick Prescott’s Second Year at West Point and Dick Prescott’s Third Year at West Point, are already familiar with the young man’s career as a cadet at the United States Military Academy.  Our readers know how hard the fight had been for Dick Prescott, who, in addition to his early struggles to keep his place in scholarship in the corps, had been submitted to the evil work of enemies in the corps.  Some of these enemies had been exposed in the end, and forced to leave the Military Academy, but many had been the bitter hours that Prescott had spent under one cloud or another as the result of the wicked work of these enemies.

At last, however, Prescott and his roommate and chum, Greg Holmes, had reached the first class.  They had now less than a year to go before they would be graduated and commissioned as officers in the Army.