Late that afternoon Greg, with a long face, brought in the football news from Franklin Field.

“The Navy has wiped us up, ten to two,” grumbled Holmes.

“I’m heartily sorry,” cried Dick, and he spoke the truth.

“Well, it’s our class’s fault,” growled Greg.  “The Army can thank our class.”

“We might not have been able to save the game,” argued Prescott.

“We could have rattled Dave and Dan a lot,” retorted Greg.  “My own belief is we could have saved the day.”

“You might have played, Greg.  I wouldn’t have resented it.”

“No; but I’d have felt a fine contempt for myself,” retorted Cadet Holmes scornfully.  “Besides, Dick, though I have done some fairly good things in football, I don’t believe I’d be worth a kick without you.  It was playing with you that made me shine, always.”

Late that evening the cadet corps returned, in the gloomiest frame of mind.

“I can just see the blaze of bonfires at Annapolis,” groaned Douglass.  “Say, the middies just fairly tore our scalps off.  I always had an ambition to captain the Army eleven, but I never thought I’d be dragged down so deep under the mire!”

The details of that sad game for the Army need not be gone into here.  All the particulars of that spiritedly fought disaster will be found in the fourth volume of the Annapolis Series, entitled “Dave Darrin’s Fourth Year At Annapolis.”

A lot of the cadets who felt sorry for “Doug” came to his room.

“I haven’t altogether gotten it through my weak mind yet,” confessed the disheartened Army football captain.  “I can’t understand how those little middies managed to treat us quite so badly.”

“I can tell you,” retorted Anstey.

“Then I wish you would,” begged “Doug.”

“Go ahead!” clamored a dozen others.

“I don’t know whether you fellows believe in hoodoos?” asked Anstey.

“Hoodoos?”

“Yes; the Army is under one now.”

“Pshaw, Anstey!”

“Explain yourself, Anstey!”

“There is a man in this class,” replied the Virginian solemnly, “who has been treated unjustly by the others.  Lots of you won’t see it, and can’t be made to reason.  But that injustice has put the hoodoo on the Army’s athletics, and the hoodoo will strut along beside the present first class all the way through this year.  You’ll find it out more and more as time goes on.  Just wait until next spring, and see the Navy walk away with the baseball game, too.”

“Stop that, Anstey!”

“Put him out!”

“Give him soothing syrup.”

“Wait until June, gentlemen,” retorted the Virginian calmly.  “Then you’ll see.”

“What rot!” sneered Jordan bitterly.

“Well, of course,” admitted others in undertones, “we lost through not having Prescott and Holmes on the eleven.  But we’d better lose, even, than win through men not fit to associate with.”