Very absent minded did the young cadet become in the midst of his perplexed musings.  He heard the sound of martial music and unconsciously his feet moved in quicker time.

It was as though he were marching, led on by he knew not what.

Straight toward the music he moved, with the tread of a soldier responding to the drums.

Then, at last, when he was almost upon the building, Prescott came to himself and stopped abruptly.

“Cullum Hall!” he muttered, with a harsh laugh.  “The night of the cadet hop.  My classmates are in there, free-hearted and happy, and taking their lessons in the social graces—–­while I am on the outside, the social outcast of the class!”

Yet, as there were no cadets in sight, out at this north end of the handsome building, Prescott presently moved forward, nearer.

“The old, old story of the beggar on the outside!  The man on the outside, looking in!” muttered Dick with increasing bitterness.  “Yet I may as well look, since there is none to see me or deny me.”

Around the north end Dick passed, just as the brilliant music of the Military Academy orchestra was drawing to its close.  In his misery the young cadet leaned against the face of the building, behind an angle in the wall.

As he stood there Dick saw the figure of a man flit, by him.  The stranger was dressed in citizen’s clothes.  There was nothing suspicions in that, since there is no law to prevent citizens from visiting the Military Academy.  But there was something stealthy about this stranger’s movements.

“It is a wonder he didn’t see me,” mused Dick.  “He went by within eight feet of me.”

Dick was about to make his presence known by stepping out into sight, when the stranger halted.

“Perhaps it may be as well not to show myself just yet,” flashed through Prescott’s mind.  “If the fellow is up to any mischief probably I can prevent it.”

A cold, biting breeze swept up from the Hudson River below.  It was chilling in the extreme, here at the top of the bluff, but Dick, in his misery, had been proof against weather.

Not so with the stranger.  He stamped his feet and struck his hands against his sides.  Then, after some moments, as though angry at some one within Cullum Hall, the stranger wheeled and shook one clenched fist at the windows overhead.

“Whom has that fellow a grouch against?” Dick wondered in spite of himself.

Just an instant later he heard a quick step coming around the north end of the building.

A cadet was coming, beyond a doubt, and very likely to meet this impatient or angry stranger.

Prescott had too much honor to play the eavesdropper.  He was just about to step out when the newcomer turned the corner, coming on straight past where Prescott stood in the deep shadow.

The newcomer was a cadet, and that cadet was Mr. Jordan.