“Oh, you lordly brute!” sneered Jordan, his face alternately white and aflame with unreasoning anger.  “Prescott, you had it in for me.  That was why you reported me this morning.  That was why you put me in line for demerits and punishment tour walking.  You are bound to use your little, petty authority to humble and humiliate me.  I shall call you out for this!”

“If you do,” shot back Dick, “I shall decline to fight you.  It would be against regulations and against all the traditions of the corps for me to arbitrate, by a fight, the question of whether I did right to report you.”

“You refuse a fight,” warned Jordan, with a malicious grin, “and I’ll denounce you all through the class!”

“Denounce me, then, if you wish,” retorted Dick in cool contempt, “and you’ll bring trouble down on your own head instead.  No class requires, or permits, a member to fight in defence of his official conduct.”

“Prescott is turning coward, then, is he?”

“You or any other man who presumes to say it knows well enough that he is thereby lying,” came quickly from between Prescott’s teeth.

“Why, hang you, you-----”

“You’d better hush for a moment,” warned Prescott.  “Here comes the corps adjutant, and I think he is looking for you.”

“Yes!  With a message of discipline from the O.C. just because I was reported by a toy martinet like you!” retorted Cadet Jordan.

Cadet Filson, corps adjutant, wearing his white gloves, red sash and sword, came up with brisk military stride.  He halted before Jordan, while Prescott moved away.

“Mr. Jordan, by order of the commandant of cadets, you will confine yourself to the company street, leaving it only under proper orders.  This, for being reported this morning during the tour of engineer instruction.  Any further punishment that is to be meted out to you will be published in orders at dress parade this afternoon.

“Very good, sir,” replied Cadet Jordan, choking with rage.

Wheeling about, Adjutant Filson strode away again.

The moment he was gone, Jordan, his brow black with fury, stepped over to Prescott.

“So!” he hissed.   “The thunderbolt of punishment has fallen, Mr.
Prescott.   As for you-----”

“Mr. Jordan,” broke in Dick coolly, “you are ordered to confine yourself to the company street.  At this moment you are outside that limit.  You will return immediately to the company street!”

Jordan glared, but he had discretion enough left to obey, for Prescott was speaking now as cadet commander of A company, to which company Mr. Jordan belonged.

“Oh, I’ll pay you back for this!” raged the disciplined cadet, trembling as he stepped forward.

By this time, many other cadets were out in the company street.  Soon after the loud, snappy tones of the bugle summoned the two battalions to dinner formation.

A little while before Cadet Adjutant Filson had approached Jordan, the commandant of cadets, sitting in his tent over by post number one, had sent for the Engineer instructor of the forenoon.