"Then there's a strong boot-lick sentiment in the class," returned the other cadet. "But I think Mr. Prescott is going to head a manlier lot than we were yesterday."
When Anstey entered their room at barracks Dodge refused to notice him, or to answer a pleasant greeting.
"I have been trying to forgive Dick Prescott for all of the past," Cadet Dodge told himself darkly. "I wanted to start a new life, for both of us, here at West Point. But the fellow won't let me. He is always getting in my way. Oh, what a laugh there'll be in Gridley, among the mucker part of the population, when they find that I'm not class president, but that Dick Prescott is!"
Even after he lay in bed, following taps, Bert Dodge could not sleep. He lay tossing restlessly, dark thoughts surging through his mind.
"No place on earth seems large enough for Dick Prescott and me together!" muttered Dodge in the dark. "Dick Prescott, if I haven't lost my cunning you shan't be here much longer."
But the forcing of Dick Prescott out of the West Point cadet corps was not easy to accomplish nor were ways of doing it to be come upon quickly.
First, Mr. Dodge realized that he was falling behind in mathematics, and for weeks he had to give all his energy to keeping a place in the class.
Finally January came and with it examinations. The plebe escapes written examinations if he has shown proficiency in the general review of the first half of the academic year. Dick and Greg got through without these "writs." Bert Dodge was compelled to face the written test in mathematics, but he made the grade and stayed on. He was gratified, for thirty-one of the plebes were dropped after this examination.
"I've got to stay on," Bert Dodge had ground out between his teeth. "If I'm to be dropped from West Point, it must be after I've found a way to send Dick Prescott back to Gridley ahead of me!"
Spring came, and still Bert's opportunity was lacking. He and Anstey greeted each other, but that was about all the communication the two held. Yet, one night, having noted the fact that for some time Dodge had seemed depressed, the Virginian asked: