Out through the north sally-port and along the road running between officers’ quarters and parade ground he hurried.

By the time he had walked to the hotel he had cooled off his first excitement somewhat.

He signed in the cadet register, then laid down his card.

“To Mrs. Prescott, please.”

As ebony-visaged “front” vanished from the office, Dick turned and walked to the ladies’ entrance, passing thence into the parlor.

Dick’s mother was found at the dining table.  So were her Gridley friends.  All were finishing a light meal without appetite when the card was laid by Mrs. Prescott’s plate.

“My boy, Dick—–­here?” she cried brokenly rising as quickly as she could.

Mrs. Prescott passed quickly from the dining room, though her friends were close at her heels.  So they all rushed in upon the solitary young cadet standing inside the parlor by a window.

As he heard them coming, Dick wheeled about.  There was a tear in his eye, which deceived them.

Halting, a few feet away, these eager ones stared at him.

Dick tried to greet them in words, but he couldn’t at first.

It was Laura who found her voice first.

“Dick!  Tell us in a word!”

But Belle Meade gave Miss Bentley a somewhat vigorous push forward.

“Use your eyes, Laura!” rebuked Belle vigorously.  “In the first place, Mr. Prescott is here.  That means he’s here by permission or right.  In the second place, you ninny—–­he still has the uniform on!”

“That’s right,” laughed Dick.  “Yes, mother, and friends, the court-martial’s finding was wholly favorable to me.”

“Humph!” demanded Belle scornfully.  “Why shouldn’t it be?  Wouldn’t you expect thirteen old West Point graduates to know as much as four women from the country?”

Belle’s hearty nonsense put an end to all tension.

Mrs. Prescott met and embraced her son.  The others crowded about, offering congratulations.

That night Dick and Greg “dragged” the Gridley girls to the cadet hop at Cullum, and Anstey was a favored one on the hop cards of both girls.  Mrs. Prescott and Mrs. Bentley looked on from the gallery.

“It’s the jolliest hop I’ve been to,” declared Dick with enthusiasm.

“Humph!” muttered Holmes.  “Of course it is.  You old boner, you’ve never been but to three hops!

“I understand,” teased Belle, “that you’re much more of a veteran, Mr. Holmes, than your chum is.”

Cadet Dodge “missed” that hop.

CHAPTER XVII

“A liar and A coward”

Long, indeed, did the memory of that hop linger with Cadet Dick
Prescott.

It had come as the fitting, cheering ending of his great trouble—–­the hardest trouble that had assailed him, or could assail him, at the United States Military Academy.