“I just threw it at him to wake him up. What were you dreaming about then?”
“I was just wondering about that old hall, and what is going on in there,” Terry replied, getting into bed.
“Oh, to heck with that old hall!” snorted Jim. “Forget it!”
A third classman, Officer of the Day, looked in the door and around the room. “Okay, gentlemen,” he said quietly and withdrew. The lights went out suddenly. For a minute all was silent. Then, from Terry’s bed:
“Forget nothing! There is something wrong there, and I’d like to find out what it is!”
3. Disturbing News
A week passed and the boys settled without difficulty into the routine life of Woodcrest Military Institute. They began to enjoy their classes and the drill, which each day seemed to become less burdensome and rigorous. In the afternoons they reported for track work. The evening, while mostly devoted to study, gave them plenty of time for visiting friends and having some good wholesome fun, and at the week’s ending they found that they thoroughly enjoyed their life at the institute.
Colonel Morrell had not as yet appeared at the academy and the boys from Maine were anxious to see him. No one seemed to know precisely what the trouble was, and even Major Tireson seemed to have something on his mind. Not that the routine was at all broken by the colonel’s absence. Things went along as smoothly as they did when the headmaster was present, and aside from a few statements of wonder, expressed by the cadets, nothing was thought about the matter until one evening during their second week at school.
Don and Jim had gone to their room and had been studying for about fifteen minutes when Terry burst into the room.
“What’s the big rush?” asked Jim, looking up from his book with a slight frown.