“I’m perfectly willing to, if he’ll let me alone. He struck me first.”
“He deliberately got in our way when we were having a race, and nearly pushed me into the water,” Clarence said.
“That isn’t true,” Tom said, calmly. “And you know it, Hawkesbury!”
Clarence scowled but did not answer.
“Stop this at once!” went on the choleric man. “I forbid this fight to go on. Clarence, you report to me, and I’ll take this matter up with Taylor later.”
Tom did not pay much attention to this. He passed on, rather excited it is true, but feeling that he had not had altogether the worst of it.
“Though I would have had if they’d all piled on me at once, which they seemed about to do,” Tom mused, as he walked on by himself. “I wonder what their game was? Could it be that Clarence wanted to ‘do’ me; to make me lame, or bruise me so I’ll not show up well at the physical examination in West Point?”
Like a flash there came to Tom the memory of certain words he had overheard in the billiard hall entrance.
“Clarence Hawkesbury could easily put up a game like that, with the help of Ike Blake,” he declared. “I wouldn’t be surprised but that was it.
“If I fell down in the physical test, through being slightly injured, or something like that, Clarence would stand next for West Point. If that was his game I’ve got to be on the lookout.”