"I don't care much," replied the stranger named Henckley. "But I can't just picture you as doing anything extremely clever. Even if it was luck, as you say, I can't figure how you were smart enough to know how to profit by it. That's why I'm just a bit curious, but no more."
"Why, you see, it happened this way," went on Jordan. "I saw Prescott, that night back into camp, going into the tent of the O.C. I thought that perhaps Prescott was going there in order to say more about the matter that he had reported me for that forenoon. So I moved close and listened. It seemed that some of the plebes had been running the guard nights. Lieutenant Denton asked the fellow Prescott, who is a cadet captain, to keep a watch and stop plebes before they had a chance to get on the other side of the guard line.
"Well, I knew the point at which plebes were in the habit of getting past the guard line, and so did Prescott, I guess. So, a little after taps, I slipped outside the guard near where I judged Prescott would be watching. Then, after I had heard him speak with the cadet sentry I presently stooped low in the bushes and lit a cigar. Then I stood up straight and the glowing end of the cigar showed from where Prescott stood. He did just what a fellow like him feels bound to do, and what I knew he'd do. He hailed me. I acted as though I wanted to get away, then allowed myself to be overhauled. I was reported, of course, and made to pay the penalty. But I was able to make the other fellows in the class believe that Prescott had trailed me, on purpose to rub it into me. That looked like over zeal, backed by a grudge, and the first class swallowed it in fine shape. They gave him the silence, but had not made it permanent Coventry. Then he caught another man, named Durville, for going off the post in 'cit.' clothes, and that settled the case against that fellow Prescott. But it was my trick that made all the rest possible."
"I don't see that that was anything very clever," rejoined Henckley.
"I told you, didn't I," argued Jordan, "that it was as much luck as cleverness."
"What part of it was clever, anyway?" jeered Henckley.
"Why, putting the whole game through, and making the class take it up, yet doing it all so that the trick could never be traced back to me," replied Jordan.
In the shadow, Durville turned briskly, gripping Dick's hand with his own.
Douglass saw. After a bare instant's hesitation the class president also took Prescott's hand, giving it a mighty squeeze.
In the joy of that friendly grasp from his own classmen, Dick Prescott almost felt that all the bitterness of the last few months had been wiped out in a second.