“See here, sir,” demanded Atterbury, striding straight up to the stoop-shouldered, bewhiskered one, “your name is Jordan, isn’t it?”

“No!” lied the wretch, in a voice that he strove to disguise.

“Yes, it is,” insisted Atterbury.  “Rooming with you nearly four years, I can’t be fooled with any suddenly pickled voice.  Jordan, what are you doing here in disguise?”

“I don’t know that my presence here is any of your business,” growled the ex-cadet.

“Yes; it is,” insisted Atterbury.  “And you’ll give us an account, too, or we’ll lay hold of you and turn you over to some one official.”

At that threat Jordan turned to bolt.  As he did so, three cadets sprang after him.  At the third or fourth bound they had hold of him and bore him, fighting, to the earth.

Even now Jordan used his splendid physique and strength in a determined, bitter struggle.

But “Durry” helped turn the fellow over, face down, and then all three sat on their catch.

“Doug,” however, felt something hard.  Leaping up, he made a quick search, then drew from Jordan’s hip pocket a length of lead pipe wrapped in red flannel.

“Ye gods of war,” gasped Douglass, “what sort of weapon is this for a former gentleman to carry?”

“Let me up,” pleaded Jordan, “and I’ll make a quick hike!”

“Don’t you let him up, fellows,” warned Douglass.  “Now, whom did Jordan seek with an implement like this?  There could be but one of our men—–­Prescott.”

“Have you anything to say, Jordan?” demanded Atterbury.

“Not a blessed word,” growled Jordan, no longer attempting to disguise his voice.

“Then we have,” returned “Doug.”

“But you two fellows hold him until I come back.”

Douglass ran over to the cliff, then, with a mighty throw, hurled the bar of lead out into the Hudson, far below.  Then he darted back.

“Now, fellows,” muttered Douglass in a low voice, “I’d like mighty well to turn this scoundrel over.  But we don’t want to put such a foul besmirchment on the class name, if we can avoid it, the night before graduation.  Jordan, if we let you go, will you hike, and never stop hiking until you’re miles and miles away from West Point?”

“Yes; on my honor,” protested the other eagerly.

“On your—–­bosh!” retorted “Doug” impatiently.  “Don’t spring such strange oaths on us, fellow.  Let him.”

“Now, Jordan, start moving, and keep it up!” Then the trio, after watching the rascal out of sight, went inside, and Douglass, at the first opportunity, warned Dick of what had happened outside in the summer darkness.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION

The graduating exercises at West Point had finished.  The Secretary of War, in the presence of the superintendent, the commandant and the members of the faculty of the United States Military Academy, flanked by the Board of Visitors, had handed his diploma to the last man, the cadet at the foot of the graduating class, Mr. Atterbury.