Dick and Greg both felt stiff in the legs. Their backs ached from the long-continued drilling in what was yet, to them, the rigor of near-military carriage. Both chums toiled up the stairs to their bare room.
"Oh, you brute!" muttered Greg, standing in the middle of the room and shaking his fist in the direction of the area.
"Meaning—whom?" queried Prescott, with a wan smile.
"Whom could I mean but Brayton?" almost hissed young Holmes.
"Why does that fellow hate us all so?"
"I'll tell you a secret, if you want to hear it," proposed Dick mysteriously.
"Please!" begged Candidate Holmes.
"Then I don't believe he does hate us."
"What?" gasped Greg incredulously.
"I don't believe he'd remember half our faces if he passed the members of his squad in the area right now," declared Dick.
"Then why does he persecute us so?" demanded Greg indignantly.