“You’ve guessed it, suh,” replied the Virginian sorrowfully.  “Whatever the class feels called upon to do, suh, I reckon it will be something that will break our poor camel’s back.”

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIGURES IN THE DARK

And Dick?

The reader will hardly need to be told that this spirited young cadet was suffering his unmerited disgrace as keenly as ever.

More keenly, in fact, for every day that the silence continued it seemed to add to the weight of the burden that bound him down.

Yet Greg asked no questions, for he felt that it would be safer not to do so.  He had just barely told Prescott of the purpose of the coming class meeting, which the latter cadet had already guessed for himself, however.

“I suppose I’ll have a few loyal friends at that meeting?” asked Dick, with a sad smile.

“Just as many friends as ever,” asserted Holmes stoutly.

“I’m mighty grateful for that,” nodded Dick.  “But what I seem to need is more friends than ever.”

“We’ll find them for you, if there’s any way to do it,” promised Holmes, and there the talk dropped.

“If the class goes against me again, and harder than before, I’m certain I shall have to see Lieutenant Denton once more and tell him that I can’t stand it any longer,” Dick told himself.

The class meeting was to be held on a Monday evening.  On the night of the Saturday before, when scores of cadets were over at Cullum Hall at a merry “hop,” Prescott slipped out of barracks by himself in Greg’s absence.

Almost unconsciously Prescott’s steps turned in the direction of Trophy Point.  In the darkness he stood before Battle Monument, on which are inscribed the names of the West Point graduates who have fallen in battles.

“Will my name ever be there, or have any chance to be there?” wondered Dick, a big lump rising in his throat.

A tear stood in either eye, but he brushed them aside as unworthy of a soldier.  Was he ever going to be a soldier, he wondered.

“I don’t know that I’m really ready to be killed in battle,” thought Dick grimly.  “It would be enough to know that my name is to be on the roll of graduates of the Military Academy, and afterwards on the rolls of the Army as an officer who had served with credit wherever he had been placed.  But the fates seem against even that much.  Hang it all, what was it that Lieutenant Denton said about faith and right, and faith being as much the soldier’s duty as honor?  I guess he was never placed in just such a fix as mine!”

For, slowly, all of Dick’s iron-clad resolution to “stick it out” was wearing away.  It was becoming plainer to him, every day, that he could not stay in the Army if he were always to live in Coventry as far as his brother officers were concerned.

“I wonder what the fellows will do at the meeting next Monday night?” Dick pondered, as he turned and strolled back by another road.  “If the fellows could only realize how unjust they are without meaning to be!  But I can’t make them see that.  I’ll have to resign, of course, but I promised Lieutenant Denton to talk it over with him before doing anything of the sort, and I’ll keep my word.”