Bert Dodge tendered his resignation promptly.  Within a week the notice of its acceptance by the Secretary of War was published before the battalion, and Dodge skulked away, alone, unregretted and utterly crushed, to the railway station.  During the last few days he had been “cut” by every man in the corps.

Three days after his departure the superintendent of the United States Military Academy received a letter that caused him much astonishment.  In this letter Dodge briefly confessed that he, and he alone, was the guilty party in that cribbing affair, and Dick Prescott had had no guilty share or knowledge in the incident.

“Hm!” mused the superintendent, a grim smile passing over his face.  “This Dodge business has all the ear-marks of another affair of Army honor settled unofficially by the corps of cadets.”

Dodge’s letter was published in a special order then read before the corps of cadets, and the affair was closed.

Dick and Greg continued to play in the Army nine the rest of that spring.  It was one of the most brilliant of Army seasons on the diamond, and much of the credit was due to yearlings Prescott and Greg.

Baseball was at last cut short by the arrival of the busy graduation season.

Immediately after the proud and happy graduating class had left to take up its new life in the scattered Army of the United States, the yearling class dropped that designation and became the new second class at West Point.  As members of the new second class, these happy youngsters laid aside their uniforms for two and a half months, and, in citizens’ clothes, made their rush away from the Military Academy to begin the summer furlough that comes but once in the cadet’s more than four years of Academy life.

That evening found Greg and Dick in New York City.  Happy as small boys, they looked at the great city in genuine glee.

“I feel like rubbing my eyes, Greg, old chum!” laughed Dick.  “Are we dreaming, or can such large cities actually be?”

“It seems to me that I have a remembrance of large towns in some previous stage of existence, somewhere in the universe,” sighed Holmes ecstatically.  “But this town is bigger, noisier, fuller of life and fun than anything I can recall.”

“We have until midnight before the home train leaves,” pursued Dick.

“Home!  Now, that is something of which I have a much keener recollection!” cried Greg, his eyes moistening.  “Dick, I’m afraid that, if there were a train earlier than midnight, even the big town wouldn’t detain me.”

“But there isn’t an earlier train, Greg, and there are no taps or sub-division inspectors tonight.  What shall we do?”

“First of all, then,” proposed Greg gleefully, “let us see if there is a place in New York where they know the meaning of the big feed.”

“And then the theater!” chuckled Dick.

“Which we’ll reach in one of those wonderful vehicles that the natives call taxicabs!”