Whether it was Tom’s fault or not, or whether Captain Hawkesbury singled him out, was not apparent, but, at any rate, Tom received more reprimands than any of the others. Captain Hawkesbury spoke sharply, almost insultingly, so that even the cadet lieutenant looked surprised. But Captain Hawkesbury was his superior officer, having been engaged for just such special instruction work.
“He sure has it in for me,” mused Tom, after an especially sharp rebuke. “I’ve got to expect a lot of this, I suppose, because I beat Clarence out in the test. I wonder where Clarence is, anyhow?”
The nephew had left West Point when it became apparent that Tom had made good, and he had not been seen since.
Again and again Captain Hawkesbury, either intentionally or otherwise, showed his enmity against Tom as the day’s drilling proceeded. And it culminated when Tom made a slight mistake in following a complicated order.
“Mr. Taylor, you seem deliberately trying to do this wrong!” snapped Captain Hawkesbury. “Report at my office after dismissal!”
Tom knew better than to show any resentment. But when he left his chums to obey the command later, his heart was filled with apprehensions.
CHAPTER XI
A LARK
Captain Hawkesbury received Tom with a grim smile. In his heart Tom felt a deep dislike for this man who, in some manner or other, had so profited by Mr. Taylor’s tangled property affairs.
It was an open secret in and around Chester that Captain Hawkesbury and Aaron Doolittle had made a small fortune simply out of the sale of the land to the railroad company, for instead of taking all cash they had been given certain shares in the company, which shares had doubled in value very shortly.
“And my mother might have had those shares if things—well, if things had gone differently,” mused Tom. “I wonder if there’s any chance of ever getting back part of that money—or having a claim on the land which the railroad company would have to settle for with us?”