“You have stated your position unreservedly and exactly, Mr. Prescott?” inquired Colonel Strong at last.

“Yes, sir.”

“You are certain that you have not more than the merest suspicion of the cadet off whom you have been speaking?

“I am absolutely certain, sir.”

“How does it happen, Mr. Prescott, that you have this suspicion, and absolutely nothing more?”

A cadet is not permitted to hesitate.  He must answer not only truthfully, but instantly.  So Dick looked the K.C. full in the eyes as answered: 

“A cadet, sir, started to say something, and I shut him up.”

“Because you did not wish to know more?”

“Yes, sir,” Prescott admitted honestly.

Captain Bates fidgeted almost imperceptibly; in other words, as much as a military man may.  There were a few questions that he wanted to ask this cadet.  But it was Bates’s superior officer who was now doing the questioning.

The K.C. remained silent for perhaps half a minute.  Then he said: 

“That is all, at present, Mr. Prescott.”

Saluting the K.C., Dick next made a slight turn which brought him facing Captain Bates, whom he also saluted.  Both officers returned his salute.  Dick wheeled and marched from the tent.

As he passed through the camp the cadet face had in it a soldierly inexpressiveness.  Even Bert Dodge, who covertly scanned Prescott from a distance, could not guess the outcome of the “grilling.”

“May I ask, Colonel, weather you agree with my opinion of Mr. Prescott?” inquired Captain Bates.

“Your idea that he is an artful dodger?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If he is,” replied Lieutenant Colonel Strong, “then the young man is so very straightforwardly artful that he is likely to give us a mountain of mischief to handle before he is brought to book.”

“If I can catch him at anything by fair means,” ventured Captain Bates, “then I am going to do it.”

“You are suspicious of Mr. Prescott?”

“Why, I like the young man thoroughly, sir; but I believe that, if we do not find a means of curbing him, this summer’s encampment will be a season of unusual mischief and sly insubordination.”

Perhaps there was something of a twinkle in Colonel Strong’s eye as he rose to leave the tent.

“If you do catch Mr. Prescott, Bates, I shall be interested in knowing the particulars promptly.”

Dick returned to his tent to find his bunkies gone to drills.  The summons before the O.C. had relieved Prescott from the first period of drill.

On Dick’s wardrobe box lay two letters that the mail orderly had left for him.

Both bore the Gridley postmark.  The home-hungry cadet pounced upon both of them, seating himself and examining the handwriting of the addresses.

One letter was from his mother.  Cadet Prescott opened that first.  It was a lengthy letter.  The young man ran through the pages hurriedly, to make sure that all was well with his parents.