In the Army there is little patience with the law's delays.
A trial must move ahead as promptly as any other detail of the soldier's life. Nothing can hinder a trial but the inability to get all the evidence ready early. In Cadet Prescott's case the evidence seemed so simple as to require no delay whatever.
The weather had been growing warmer within a short time. When Dick and Greg awoke at sound of reveille, they heard the heavy rain no sign of daylight yet.
When the battalion turned out and formed to march to breakfast a more dispiriting day could not be imagined. The rain was converting deep snow into a dismal flood.
But Dick barely noticed the weather. He was full of grit, burning with the conviction that he must have a full vindication today.
It was when he returned to barracks and the ranks were broken, that Dick discovered how many friends he had. Fully twoscore of his classmates rushed to wring his hand and to wish him the best kind of good luck that day.
Yet at 7.55 the sections marched away to mathematics, philosophy or engineering, according to the classes to which the young soldiers belonged.
Then Prescott faced a lonely hour in his room.
"The fellows were mighty good, a lot of them," thought the accused cadet, with his first real sinking feeling that morning. "Yet, if any straw of evidence, this morning, seems really to throw any definite taint upon me, not one of these same fellows would ever again consent to wipe his feet on me!"
Such is the spirit of the cadet corps. Any comrade and brother must be wholly above suspicion where his honor is concerned.