“I feel certain that my classmates would restore me at once to their favor, if they knew the full circumstances.”

“Have you felt obliged to refuse them any information for which a class committee had asked, Prescott?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me do some hard thinking, my lad.  Ah, now, as I look back to the night when you were obliged to report Mr. Jordan for being outside the guard lines, I had myself that night assigned you to official duty near the guard lines.  You were to intercept plebes who might try to run the guard, and to send them back to their tents.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That was special duty,” resumed Lieutenant Denton.  “Now, if you had been asked, by a class committee, to explain how you happened to be out there at the right time to catch Mr. Jordan, you would have felt bound to refuse to reveal your orders from me?”

“I certainly would have felt so bound, Mr. Denton.”

“Ah!  Now I think I understand a good deal, Prescott.  Then, at another time, very recently, you forgot, until late, to turn in an official report to me.  You started to hurry over here, and, in so doing, you must have accidentally encountered a certain cadet returning in “cit.” clothes.  As his company commander, you surely felt bound to report him for so flagrant a breach of discipline.  Yet, if your class did not fully understand or credit the fact that only an oversight of yours had thrown you in that cadet’s way, it would make the class feel that you had deliberately trapped the man, after having spied on his actions earlier in the evening.”

Dick remained silent, but Lieutenant Denton was a clear headed and logical guesser.

“In my cadet days,” smiled the lieutenant, “such a suspicion against a cadet officer would certainly have resulted in ostracism for him.”

“Now, Prescott,” asked the officer in charge, leaning over and resting a friendly hand on the cadet’s arm, “you feel that you have been, throughout, a gentleman and a good soldier, and that you have not done anything sneaky?”

“That is my opinion of myself, Mr. Denton.”

“And yet, feeling that your course has been wholly honorable, you are going to throw up your career in the Army, and waste some twenty thousand dollars of the nation’s money that has been expended in giving you your training here?”

“It sounds like a fearful thing to do, Mr. Denton, but I can see no way out of it, sir.  If I am to go on into the Army, and be an ostracized officer, I should be of no value to myself or to the service.  Wherever I should go, my usefulness would be gone and my presence demoralizing.”

“Now, if that ostracism continued, your usefulness would be gone, Prescott, beyond a doubt, and the Army would be better off without you.  But if justice should triumph, later, you would be restored to your full usefulness, and to the full enjoyment of your career.  Now, Prescott, my boy”—–­here the officer’s voice became tender, friendly, earnest—–­“you have been attending chapel every Sunday?”