Later in the afternoon all candidates were notified that academic examinations would begin at eight o'clock the next morning in the Academic Building.
And now the candidates began to shiver! "Bad" as the start had been, they hoped, to a man, that they would pass these academic examinations. To fail meant to return home, the dream of being a cadet shattered!
"Ugh!" muttered Greg, rubbing his hands in quarters. "Br-r-r! Dick,
I'm afraid I'm scared cold!"
Prescott smiled, but he, too, was worried over the coming mysteries of the academic examinations, which he had heard were uncommonly [Transcriber's note: word missing].
CHAPTER III
THE "LUCKY" ONES TAKE UP THE NEW LIFE
Candidate Prescott did not take the best examination by any means, but he got through without discredit in any branch.
A number of these candidates had spent the last year or so at some "prep." school that made a specialty of preparing young men for West Point and Annapolis.
Greg did fairly in English, quite well in history, geography and arithmetic; in algebra, through sheer nervousness, young Holmes barely escaped going short.
Nearly twoscore of the candidates failed utterly. These went sorrowing home, giving their alternates a chance to enter the corps in their places.